Drew's Don't Circle

While I was in Boston here is the "don't circle" Drew made for Daddy.




That would be a "don't be sad and don't throw away games" circle.

Most of Drew's artwork is a bunch of scribbles, so it's nice when we can recognize what it is!

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Bye Bye Boston

This blog brought to you from the Boston Common.


That is the Park Street Church - the view from my spot.

Another work trip nearly finished, but I'm waiting for the souvie man to finish opening up shop. Can't go home empty handed to a 3 year old - nor back on the subway smelling foul from the 7 mile run I just completed.

Yes I just ran 7 miles along the Charles, to Boston University and back down to the Museum of Science. Then there was Monday when my 8 mile route brought me through Beacon Hill, Boston Common, along the Charles, MIT, near Fenway and back to Boston Common. Do I know how to sightsee or what?

Can't wait to get home to my boys though!


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You're Not Going to Believe This..

"You're not going to believe this..." those are the words Drew utters several times a day.  It could be for anything - like he discovered a "Don't Circle" on something the other day, on my computer power cord.  (If you haven't seen his fetish for "don't circles" you need to catch up here)  Or it could be "you're not going to believe this" - about what one of the characters on his TV show said.

Well here's something you're not going to believe.  After refusing to eat noodles for nearly 3 years - Drew ate them the other night with his spaghetti.  And he actually asked for more!  While he would mostly put them on his garlic bread and eat them with his sauce, he did take several bites of them on there own.

While most of you are thinking, so what it's noodles... you don't understand.  My child would gag at the sight of noodles for the past 3 years.  Throw up the moment they touched his lips.  This is a major battle we won - finally.

Like I said, you're not going to believe this!

Gotta Love Me Time

What's better than "me" time?  It feels like this has been a long time coming.  Dave gets it every Monday/Wednesday night or any day in-between.

Finally I had my chance a little more than a week ago, joining Drew's preschool teacher and members of her family for some great scrapbooking time.  I loved playing with some new cricut cartridges and finding some new gadgets - which I'm asking for for my birthday... (and I know Dave got them from me since I gave him the Michael's gift card and I received numerous texts with pictures trying to make sure they were the right ones).

Here is what I accomplished in the few hours I was there... (I removed the flash so there wasn't a glare - which is why the pictures appear a little grainy).

This first page I was really excited to play with the bigger cricut and use one of my new Mickey cartridges - I used a film sheet and cut pictures from Lisa's wedding in it.  I loved how it turned out!

Page two I used the cricut for the snow flake and then used blue paper, with a border and then matted the pictures.

My third page was fairly simple and I sued blue paper, with a cream colored mat/accent.  I founds some arrow rub-ons to finish off the page.  The letters were punch-outs I have on hand.

The final page of the day was the easiest layout I did this time around.  I had a zoo paper which was really busy, so I matted the photos with brown cardstock.  Voila!

At the end of the day I was slamming out a few cricut designs which I'll use on two upcoming pages I hope to do sooner rather than later.  Seeing as the last time I cropped was 6 months before this!  Oh how I miss it.

Unintentional Mooching

Last week I got a groupon for a doubleheader A's game, only to learn later that day that my brother Matt had connections for that game to be in the skybox.  Since we already paid for the game - which was this past Saturday - we said we'd stop and say hi, but had every intention of watching the game from our seats.  Seventeen innings later (1 game plus another 8 innings) we finally left the skybox that Matt's soon-to-be father-in-law reserved.

Matt, Rana, and Rana's dad Kent

Who could beat a view like this?

Drew was completely entertained in the skybox - he watched the game, had company in the likes of Adrina and her cousin - and they played hide and seek for quite some time.

Drew and Adrina

The shot below is Dave and my brother Matt - who really is a Giant's fan, but was seen wearing an Oakland A's shirt - haha!

Of course we wanted to get a picture of Dave and I - and Drew volunteered to take it.  Kind of funny if you ask me!

Thanks to facebook, a friend of mine from high school joined us for a bit of the second game.  He was there with his brother-in-law and two nephews.  Of course about the time that Drew had more friends to play with, Drew crashed for a bit.

Of course I can't waste a moment to take a picture with Fergal - my high school friend - from the sky box.

So believe it or not, we were not intending to mooch (for a long time anyway) in the skybox, but we did have a great time, and I have to say it was the only reason we stayed as long as we did. There was no way Drew would've survived 2 games from our regular seats - which were only 3 sections over from this box.

Thank you Rana and her Dad who were so sweet and welcoming to have us join their family for some afternoon/evening fun.

From This To That!

Who said three year olds weren't strange creatures clearly hasn't been around very many of them.  Here are a few pictures from Dave's phone.

How can a child go from this....

To that?

I love the peacefulness of sleeping children - especially after an especially scary dream.  The bottom picture is from this morning when a bear was scaring him - Dodger Dog to the rescue.

Of course as we were leaving for school this morning Drew had to let Dodger Dog outside to poop in our bushes.

When Preschool Asks You to Call in the Middle of the Day...

It's not a good sign when the preschool asks you to call to talk to your child because he's having "a difficult" day. 

When I call, his teacher tells me he first punched a new boy in the face because he walked across some letters he was playing with on the floor.  Drew started using his words to complain about the child walking across his letters, the boy argued back and that's when Drew went all Rocky on him.  Time out given.

Then Drew continues with the aggressive attitude and pushes other kids for various violations and then proceeds to throw out his "Well you're not coming to my birthday party" argument.  He uses this as a way of fighting back when he's ticked.

In the background as the teacher is passing the phone to Drew I hear a Time Out being given to him, and then here's the conversation between Drew and I:

Me: Drew are you being naughty?
Drew: Yes, I kicked her.
Me: Why did you kick her?
Drew: Because she told me I couldn't marry her.
Me: Because she said you couldn't marry her? Do you kick your friends?....  I then continue to lecture him and tell him he has to go to time out.


When his teacher comes back on the phone, she mentions he's seemed to regress with the aggression and not using his words now that the preschool is combined - all kids together, rather than his smaller group setting during the year. 


Kids!

Now Who Has the 'Eye of the Tiger'?

Friday was Parent's Night Out (PNO) at Drew's preschool, so what did we do to celebrate?  We joined our friends at the Alameda County Fair to see the group Survivor - they're probably most known for "Eye of the Tiger".  If you've been living under a rock, that's one of Drew's favorite songs because after all it is a Rocky song and all...

But this trip to the fair was just Dave and I with some of our other friends...

Dave was plenty excited to see the group and wore his Rocky shirt and brought a Rocky CD hoping to get an autograph.

That's our friend Travis in the yellow shirt.

The crowd was pumped up for the last song of the night... "Eye of the Tiger"

Unfortunately we spent an hour waiting for the band to come out and autograph Dave's gear.  In the meantime our friend Stephanie (Drew's former daycare provider) staked out a mechanical bull and bought Dave another beer and dared him to ride it....

He did!

Dave is still dealing with whiplash from his headbanging during the concert and the bull riding!

"Don't Circle" Interpretations

Looking for a laugh this Friday?  Here's a video of Drew's interpretation of what the "Don't" messages mean on the paper shredder...



He came home from school and instantly wanted to show me the "don't" circles. Dave and I were howling.

Lions,Tigers and Racoons... Oh My!

As you saw earlier this week from Drew's candids from my phone, we spent the 4th of July holiday camping.  While this story may not exactly have anything to do with Lions and Tigers, we'll get to the racoons in a bit.  This trip we ventured back to Olema on the Pt. Reyes National Seashore.  There we called this castle... home.

And we had the essentials - wine and were armed with rocks. 

That was our ammo for the racoons who were brave as all get out and were scrounging for food.  We've camped here for 20+ years and never had a wild creature, let alone racoons who had absolute no fear.  We didn't have the ammo that first Friday night... and by Saturday when this picture was taken of course those darned racoons opted not to return.  Some of Grammy and GrampC's friends came up and brought 2 dogs with them.  While I'd like to think those coons knew we were going to scare them with the rocks... I'm sure it was the dogs that kept us safe.

In the meantime, Drew was kept busy for a while with the bubble machine.

This child was my reason for drinking early into the trip.  We weren't camping more than 2 hours when he started begging to come home.  He didn't like that we didn't have cell service and he couldn't play his games on my iPhone.  Spoiled much?

While it's a picture of Drew chillin' in the background, I got a shot of our dinner cooking in the dutch oven.  Campfire lasagna - a first for us.  Turned out pretty darned good!

For two days we tried to find some local tidepools to keep Drew happy and busy during the day - a double strike-out, but we did find a cool beach to visit next time around (we opted not to wait the 20-30 more minutes for parking - that we had yet to pay for).

So instead we checked out a little community activity in the Town of Tomales.  A cute quaint little area and Drew got to get some of his wiggles out.

See here, he's trying to do his "Rocky Pull-ups".  As you've seen Drew does his Rocky one-armed push-ups, well now he's working other arm muscles with the pull-up version.

 

My little human wrecking ball...

When Drew climbed into my lap around the campfire we knew it meant he was getting tired.  Grammy and GrampC however were ready to party all-night long.

We knew it... within about 10 minutes of climbing into my lap, he was O.U.T.  And it wasn't quite 7pm yet!

Despite the pesky racoons, Drew's whining (what only child - and a 3YO at that - on a camping trip wouldn't complain), and a death in the family of one of our fellow-campers... it was a great weekend.  I have to say, camping Dutch oven cooking ROCKS!

Camping Through Drew's Eyes

I was going through my phone tonight and came upon the pictures Drew took while camping this weekend...
























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God Made Me Special

The other day when I picked Drew up from school, I saw the following art project in his cubby about why "God made me special".

In case you cannot read it, Drew's picture is of "me [him] pushing the lightening to make it stop raining".

I guess we weren't the only ones traumatized by the random rainstorm earlier this week.

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