This and That

Here's just a mish-mash of things I've discovered on my phone and details about Drew....

Several weeks ago - probably like a month or even two ago, Drew made this picture and it was posted at school.  It was likely based on a book they read that week.

The descriptions left to right (you can click on the picture to enlarge it a bit more):
Me caught in a trap doing pull-ups...
They are all watching me do pull-ups: "a one-eyed man", Grandma, Mom, Dad, & Grandpa

I had forgotten I'd even taken that photo!

Drew is still loving soccer on Saturday mornings.  It's more of a clinic at this age, teaching them how to listen, dribble and basic soccer skills.  Two or 3 weeks ago,  it was the final class of that session so they allowed parents on the field so Dave went (I was dressed up to attend a baby shower immediately after practice).

That's a shot of Drew trying to kick the ball at Dave who I believe was an alien in a spaceship (great casting if you ask me).

The other day I saw an interesting questionnaire come into my in-box courtesy BabyCenter (a website for parents and parents-to-be).  Dave's always going on about how he hopes Drew gets his vertical attributes from my side of the family - being as he has big aspirations of our son playing MLB.  So when I saw something that offered predictions of how tall Drew would be at age 18 I caved and entered the information.

The requirements were to enter his age/weight/sex.  Then the height of both Dave & I.  The prediction...

Your boy will likely be 6 ft. 0 in. at age 18.

Young men often continue to grow a little past 18 until they reach 21, but their height at age 18 is very close to their final adult height. This prediction is a "best guess" but it's still just that -- a guess. Based on the formula we used* there is a 50 percent chance that your boy's full-grown height will be within 0.8 inches (above or below) of this prediction, and a 90 percent chance that it will be within 2.1 inches.

That ought to please Dave - his son will likely be 2-3 inches taller than him, in fact taking after my side of the family.

And then this final bit of randomness comes from Drew earlier this week (no pictures, just a funny little story).  So on the way home from school Drew - who mind you never tells me what he did at school that day - comes out to tell me the following:

Drew: Roberto said I can go to his house and we can do wrestling.  It will be DrewPro versus Roberto. Then it will be Roberto's Mommy against Drew's Mommy.  And then it will be Roberto's Daddy against Drew's Daddy.  (and extra excitedly)  Roberto's Daddy has tattoos!


Really a tattoo announcement?  And the most bizarre thing, is 30 minutes later he repeated the same story - exactly - for Dave.  Clearly Drew thinks that tattoos make you extra hard to beat.

Kicking Butt

I believe I've mentioned here once or twice before that I run for fun.  I still can't believe I say that about running - even if I've been doing it for nearly 6 years now (minus the 1 year hiatus I took for having Drew). 

Well in the past few months I've been contemplating how I can switch up my workout routines to work on those problem areas - without impacting my running training program.  I have a few 1/2 marathons and shorter races planned for this year.  Before Christmas I looked very closely at doing triathlons - swimming, running & biking.  Problem was I'd need to join an expensive gym to get the swimming portion done, and I'd need to invest in a bike since my Target/Wal-mart bike won't cut it.

I despise gyms and working out indoors with a passion.  I have joined many a gym only to pay for nothing - I stop going after 2-3 months.

So in January I found a Groupon-like deal for Boot Camp.  A friend of mine (Helen) has done a similar one in her hometown and raved about it, while making me a bit nervous about the amount of pain inflicted.  I finally signed up for my "Groupon" boot camp and began going early in the morning at a local park earlier this month.  I cannot say enough good things (I certainly can come up with some bad, but good bad if that makes sense) about the 30 Day Boot Camp I've been going to.

They've been trying to hard sell me the membership - for one year.  And after some negotiating I managed to get them to a price point I can tolerate - and one that Dave was somewhat ok with.  While a gym membership would've probably been cheaper, I know I will be more likely to stick with this.

1. It's outdoors
2. It works on so many other muscle groups than the running I typically do
3. I can do this in conjunction with running - provided I'm not ridiculously sore
4. I run a minimum of 1 mile each boot camp, so I am still getting that cardio
5. It's almost as if I'm getting a personal trainer without having to pay for one
6. I have someone telling me what exercises to do and it changes every day so it's not like doing a DVD where you see the same moves over and over

Now all I need to do is to make the money to support my boot camp habit....

Self Portrait

On Friday night we had a dinner fundraiser at Drew's school followed by an Open House.

Dinner was yummy and we won a balloon prize of 2 tickets to the Jungle -a place for kids to run around and climb on everything -aka get all sorts of germs.

Then for the Open House I volunteered to help clean up from dinner so I couldn't really see much of what the kids had to show off. When I did come in it lead to drama so I went back to finish cleaning up... But just before leaving for the night I spotted this masterpiece from Drew:




Its his self portrait. I asked him what all the dots were - he said his freckles. All the hair - he said his crazy hair and beard. The frown? - he was sad about something.

The information on his portrait says:
My favorite food: sausage and hash browns
I like to play with: Jayce
My favorite part of school is: playing boxing

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Feeling Green

Sorry for the sporadic posts, I've been out of town for work. But I do have some pictures on my phone of our St. Patrick's Day fun.

We skipped the parade this year because it conflicted with soccer - Drew wanted to play soccer rather than the parade. Afterward we braved the chilly temps and chance of rain and went to the Dublin Festival.









Drew braved the slide alone (he is afraid of heights and fast slides).

Drew loved this one too! He's on the far right.





Drew had some time for reflecting...

And then we headed to Burger King for some free fries. Dave French Kissed a leprechaun.




Ok so it was the after effects of the green ketchup.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Work Graffiti

There's some graffiti on our walls at work - well our white board to be specific. It was left by a certain four year old tagger....



That would be Drew's favorite term for himself - courtesy wii Sports. The green face is a drawing of my coworker Cathy.



This would be Drew's self portrait.

Drew came with me to work last Thursday because of a Staff Development day at his preschool.  He loves "working" with me.  Believe it or not I did get some work done, and we got our for our daily walk - I even brought the jogger for Drew and we made a pit stop at McD's for his lunch.  

A Heavenly Weekend

Yes I've bored inundated you with a ton of snowy pictures from our one weekend in the snow.  You Midwesterners and East Coasters are probably rolling your eyes at this point wondering what the fuss is all about - because you can look out your window and see all of this white stuff I'm getting all excited about.  Meanwhile I'm sticking my tongue out at you because we're back to the Bay Area where temperatures are back in the 60s and even 70s.

So to wrap-up our fun in the snow we ventured to the Heavenly Village which is on the State line of California and Nevada.  The Village is on the California side.  We visited the Dr. Seuss exhibit at the art gallery we've gone to since coming up to Tahoe for the winter.  Cheap entertainment for a four year old - that is if you call reminding that 4 year old not to touch any artwork, to stop running, to stay with you, to stop touching things... entertaining.

After hitting up Starbucks for some warm liquids we walked over to the Village where Drew was mesmerized by the fountain that had frozen.

He seriously stared at the thing for about 30 minutes from various angles. 

This entire time Dave sat under the gondola puffing on a pipe - watching the Happy Hour goers at Fire and Ice.

I bet he was wondering if we could ditch the kid for a bit to join the Happy Hour crowd.

Instead afterward we found Pizza Hut and discovered they were one of 3 in the country that had a full bar - so we enjoyed $2 drafts while we waited for dinner!  Thankfully it was within walking distance to our hotel if needed.  We're holding onto that nugget for future reference!

We had an amazing weekend and we were all exhausted when we got home.  Hopefully next year we will have a better winter and can get up there more than once.

Frolicking in the Snow

Did I mention I took ton of pictures during last weekend's Tahoe trip?  Yep, here are some of the other highlights of our fun in the snow...

Our obligatory family photo from Day 2.

I know I mentioned somewhere that all Drew wanted to do was throw snowballs... the same was true on the second day as well.

I was even a target!  I had to take shelter in the trees...

My face in this one cracks me up.  Apparently I got really into pummeling Drew with snowballs...

But he forgave me :)

So after I was soaked (he nailed a few snowballs down my shirt) he turned the tides on Daddy!

That would be Drew's stunts... jumping off of rocks while throwing snowballs at Daddy.  He would jump and then roll in the snow.  That child was soaked when it came time to pack it up and head home.

OK are you bored with our one weekend in the snow?  Tomorrow I'll share our final pictures from other things we did around Tahoe - at least those that were caught on camera (we left the boozing off camera).

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

Yesterday I mentioned all the fun we had in the snow during this past weekend's trip to Lake Tahoe - where they had 18" of new snow that week.  It made for perfect sledding conditions!

The first several runs we all tried to go down together - each of us on our own sleds.  It's really hard to go down that big of a hill holding onto Drew.  So after a few runs that first day I let Dave and Drew make the trek to the "top" and come down.

Here is a little video of Dave and Drew on one of their runs... it's from my cell phone so it's not super great quality, but is the easiest to upload.



Of course I did go down a few times with Drew as well...

See holding onto a sled while going down yourself tends to lead to some crazy stunts - like the backward 4 year old.

At a certain point you give up holding on... like this one here with Dave and Drew.

After so many runs, Drew's no dummy - he doesn't want to walk up the hill anymore.  Or am I the dummy for dragging him??

Coming down is sure a lot more fun than going up!

I love this one of Drew carrying his own slide up the hill (I was up there waiting for him - he wanted to go down head first by himself so I remained at the top of the hill).

But Daddy's brave enough to go down on his stomach flying like Superman with Drew (it was really icy and bumpy that second day - I wasn't feeling that dare devil-ish)

I had so many more pictures of sledding, but I think you get the idea... it was fun and what goes up must come down.

Back from the Tundra

We are back from the frozen tundra - otherwise known as Lake Tahoe.  We picked an awesome weekend to head up there, that's for sure.  For those who haven't followed the Northern California winter weather reports... we really haven't had a winter so to speak.  Thankfully the Tahoe area was hit with a foot and a half of snow last week, so conditions were perfect - even if the weather hit 50-degrees during the day.

Yes you midwesterners/East Coasters - we have to drive to find real winter weather.  That we don't have to plow/shovel I might add.

Since I took something like 260 pictures I expect to "spam" you with all the fun we had this weekend over the next couple of days. 

We drove up Friday afternoon and arrived around dinnertime - only we weren't hungry yet.  So after checking into the hotel and relaxing a bit (it's about a 3 1/2 hour drive from our place) Drew and I took a walk to scope out our food options.  We settled on a pub that offered 20% off our bill thanks to our room card - that included the bar drinks.  And since we walked there (about 1/2 a mile from the hotel) we could indulge a bit.

Saturday morning is when the real fun started - we hit the snow!  We venture over to Nevada and Highway 29/Hwy 50 where there is an awesome sledding hill - and it's free!

Today's post will show some of the fun we had in the snow that first day.  We spent about 3 hours at the sledding hill that day.  All Drew wanted to do was throw snowballs like on the movie Elf.

See all the snowballs he collected?

Of course Mom and Dad had to pose him for a few cool photos before he got too tired from sledding - and therefore an uncooperative subject...

After doing some sledding (I'll share our sledding escapades tomorrow) we built a snowman.  Here's Drew with his pal Punchy.  Notice Punchy appears to be a Dodger fan?

And here was all that was left of Punchy the next day when we came back.  Drew thinks an animal - likely a rabbit - came and ate Punchy's nose.

 

Did I mention that all Drew wanted to do this weekend was throw snowballs?

And a picture of the sweethearts while Drew knocked himself out throwing all the snowballs he wanted.

We had a wonderful time that first day and even had several sledding runs in before it got too crowded.  People in this area don't know proper sledding etiquette so it's kind of a pain to dodge the adults not to mention the kids who can't put the sledding brakes on.  Tomorrow I'll share our plethora of sledding pictures - and even a video!

Still Kicking!

That's right - Drew's still kicking... at soccer class that is.

Drew is next to last in the row of kids. 

He absolutely loves his weekly soccer practice at an indoor clinic.  Dave and I are in a little disagreement about registering him for Fall "real" soccer.  By "real" I mean he'd be in the Under 5 group who just goes out there to kick the ball in "games".  From what I understand it's a lot like what he's doing now.

He starts his Spring soccer session in 2 weeks - and he's already looking forward to it.  The past few weeks they've started having scrimmage games and the parents get as excited about it as the boys do!

Kids Day at the Winery

So it was kids day at the winery this past weekend.  Well not literally, but we made it one.  We recently met our neighbor and the kids have been inseparable since.  Technically we met them, but haven't had the chance to really chat - until President's Day.  That's when we found out our neighbor's Uncle owns one of the wineries we're members at.

On Friday we all had dinner together and made plans to have a picnic lunch at the winery and we got the royal treatment after some wine tasting.  The kid who are always welcome to roam the vineyards took the opportunity to run amok around the gazebo and anywhere their hearts felt content.

Our neighbor also invited a friend of hers and her 3 year old son to join in the fun.

The boys enjoyed throwing rocks into the creek and the tunnel the bridge made.
L-R: Christopher (our neighbor), Drew, Dylan (our neighbor's friend)

The three musketeers:  L-R: Christopher, Drew, Dylan

They were even given some bribes to behave/keep quiet.  Lollipops!  Here they're looking at some cool birds - I believe this was a hawk.
L-R: Drew, Christopher, Dylan

Then we ventured off to another neighboring winery to do some additional tasting.  Well the adults... here's what the kids did. (Dylan and his mom left we made plans to meet up with them at their house for dinner)

You know these two....

And then here we are with our "new" neighbor Julie.  We love her - she's normal (well as much as we are anyway) and  she's a great person who has a kid the same age as ours - technically about 9 months younger.  The boys are attached - all they do is talk about getting together.  It's so stinkin' adorable! 

Both Dave and I (our neighbor Julie too) remember having neighborhood friends to play with, we didn't have that until now!  We feel lucky to finally have crossed paths... and yes we toasted to that!