We went to Rohan’s birthday party on Saturday afternoon.  We arrived a bit late and there were already many kids who had been dropped off and were in the game truck playing.  Logan and Connor quickly hopped into the truck to join in.  Inside the truck was where they were for the next two hours and they had only come out once for something to eat.  Shortly after our friends showed up, Stuart and I hung out with them to chat the rest of the afternoon.  When the truck left, we sang Happy Birthday to Rohan and had some cake.  Some parents started to arrive to pick up the kids, and the rest of ours just continue to stay and play together.  We finally left after 8pm.

    On Sunday morning, the boys were invited to Maxim’s house to play which gave Stuart and I a chance to battle each other in tennis.  I also did some grocery shopping before picking up the boys to go home.  After lunch, I took Connor to his classmate’s birthday party at Chuck E Cheese.  By then I was tired and hoping to sit down, but Connor wanted me to walk around to play games with him.  After a couple of rounds of the facility, Connor finally went off with his friends, and I could hang with a few moms to talk instead.  Before the moms and I realized, the kids had already been called back to the party table and were eating pizza.  Connor was a little worried if he would still be scared of Chuckie, but fortunately he now was brave enough to stand next to him to take picture with the group.  After singing and eating cake, Connor wanted to play another round of games so I added more money for him.  We played and picked up some prizes from the tickets before we left.  As soon as we arrived home, Connor could not wait to find their neighborhood friends to come out to play.

   Friday was the last Art Vistas lesson for the school year.  In the past, I would start preparing a few days prior to the lessons, and this time, Stuart was teasing me how slacking I was as I was just reviewing the materials the night before.  I met up with the two moms at drop off to start setting up for Connor’s class.  This lesson was about another element, value, the lightness and the darkness of a color.  I began with the introduction, and I used tempura paint to demonstrate how to make “tint” of a color by adding white to it, and how to make “shade” by adding black.  The class surprised me by ohhing and ahhing with each tint and shade I added; they were so cute.  Then one mom and I showed them how some famous painters incorporated value in their paintings. The kids were very interactive as usual, and it was always fun having a discussion with them.  Next the mom talked to the class about using different tints and shades to create a “monochromatic clown”.  This class always did a great job following the instruction and patiently creating their unique clown painting. At the end, before the class head back out, the teacher had them thank the three of us for volunteering, and Connor gave me a hug too.  I am going to miss this class a lot.

   After cleaning up and chatting with the moms, I went home for a break and a lunch, then it was time to head back to school for Logan’s class.  Another partner mom and I gathered the materials and shortly the class arrived at the cafeteria.  For this lesson I talked with the class about one artist Paul Klee whose main style of art was abstract art.  I showed them several of his paintings and I could tell the kids really enjoy seeing them.  The class was also very interactive and I loved it when some kids answered exactly what I was looking for.  Next the mom showed the class the project, using construction and tissue papers to cut and paste to make a portrait inspired by Paul Klee’s “Head of a Man”. The children patiently cut out different shapes and put together many beautiful faces. We were also pleasantly surprised seeing some great use of tissue papers to add 3-dimension touch to the paintings. Some kids made portrait of each other and one kid even made a portrait of her mom. It was very sweet.  The only frustrating thing was that Logan was in a grumpy mood and could not be inspired to make an artwork.  I left him alone and periodically walked back to try pushing him again.  Finally I gave up and offered him to gather some supplies to do the project at home as I really did not want him to miss one.

   The mom and I then cleaned up, and it was almost time for pick up.  We now had to prepare and coordinate for the art show and the open house in May.  There will be quite a bit of work that I will have to do some at home and spend some time in May at school as well.  The school year is coming to an end soon; the part I really will miss is spending time talking with the kids.  But with the amount of time spent this year, I don’t think I will dare to take on both classes again next year.

   We have been busy contemplating a house project plus our boys are older now that Easter did not really cross our mind.  This weekend we have also forgotten that many stores actually closed on this holiday, so we could not go buy a bunch of things that we needed and the boys did not get their haircut.  Since it was raining in the afternoon we had asked their friend Maxim over to play with the boys while we were home anyway. 

     Today Connor had suddenly asked us to prepare an egg hunt for them.  So after Maxim left, we quickly put together a mini hunt for them.  Just when we were in the midst of that, our neighbor stopped by to give both an Easter gift bag as well.  The boys were happy with these unexpected surprises.

   The weather was nice, and the boys looked forward to joining the neighborhood kids on Saturday night to play.  Stuart and I had hardly seen them eating their dinner so quickly, and by 7pm, we let the boys out to go down a few houses and ring their friend’s door.  Luke came out to play four squares with them and later another boy joined in.  Probably by 7:30pm, some older kids started coming out; we also saw a couple of kids riding their bikes in and a few being dropped off by cars.  Logan by then came back to hand me the ball and gloves, and he was so thrilled to share that the group would be playing “Kick the can”, “Shark and minnows” and “Capture the flags” soon.  The neighbors had put out some flashing lights to alert if any traffic and there were so older kids, so Stuart and I were ok letting our boys stay out, but we were also outside keeping an eye on them as well.  The kids were all running around having fun; I could hear our boys’ names being called and being part of the games.  By 8:50pm, it took Stuart awhile to find a good break between games to get the boys back in for the night.  Connor was hoping that they could stay out longer, so we had to remind him that the two of them being the youngest would have to be first to go to bed.  The boys certainly had a great time; they were so excited, interrupting each other, to tell us about the games they played.

     This was what the boys were doing last week when they had spare time.  Connor was writing nice letters to each one of us while Logan was making cool mazes.  They both were proud of their work.  Connor wanted me to keep mine in safe place or hang it up, and Logan asked Stuart to make copies so I could take to my coworkers to try his maze.

    We had stopped signing up the boys for team sports but we decided to sign them up for a weekly basketball lesson just for fun.  It started last Monday following the spring camp.  Stuart picked them up from camp, changed them and took them to the gym within the same building.  Stuart just hung around in the building during this one hour of lesson.  He watched them periodically.  The boys were separated in two different age groups and they seemed to be doing fine and participating.  Stuart observed Connor making some baskets even though the hoop was higher.  At the end of lesson, Logan gave it a good remark but Connor only gave it  5 stars out of 10.  We think that he gave it a low score as there was something he was not pleased with the team he was in, but at the end, he seemed to enjoy it and did not mind that it is a recurring thing.