May & June 2017 - home bits

May & June 2017 highlights:

The joy of whisky-o-clock!

Locking up her bike at school - only 1 year left at elementary!

Cat food sculpture

Cuteness

And finally, the last day of school!

For the last 6 school years, William and Iain have biked to school together nearly every day, 3th-8th grade.... and frequently for a year or 2 prior.  This, however, was the last day that William would be biking Iain to school, and it certainly felt like a passing of an era for him.  Last day at Middle School, in the fall Iain would be biking in the opposite direction to the high school.  And, one year to wait before biking with Ria.  Cheers!

Ria's last day of 4th grade, with Ms. Purvi and Mr. Korten

And, Iain's 8th grade graduation!

He folds a mean origami crane out of cloth napkins!

Sweetness ;-)

We had big clean-up project in the living room.  First we cleared out all the old boxes of joy that the kids used to play in, all annotated on nearly every surface.  Yes, there was a transmogrifier spot somewhere ;-).  Huge piles of kid c*ap piled up to donate.

....so that Iain could get his new Ikea desk, and set up his new computer, built 95% from castoffs from William's old computer!  Now Iain and I have side by side computer stations.

Not only do we place stuffed cats on cats, we also place stuffed elephants on girls.  Its a thing.

Cousins!! A visit from England - April 2017

Also in April, we had a visit from Alastair, Bev, and Rowan! Most of the pictures were from our hike on (I think) Windy Hill.

Iain giving me the hairy eyebrow, a classic teenage specialty.

Hmmm, I keep picking group pictures taken by Bev - this was at the point we turned around.

Geocache time!  And, proof that Bev joined us ;-)

A nice one of just William and Alastair

Oranges!

Game time

Bye, see you in a few months ;-)

Feb - Apr 2017 - More retro posts!

...and it continued to rain, and the creek got even fuller!

Ria did a major clean out of little kid books, as *she* had run out of shelf space in her room and was overflowing into piles on the floor.  We cleared a bunch out of the living room kids shelf too.  These are the "give away" piles!  It took us 3-4 sessions over the February break, it was epic!

Bwa ha ha!  I tricked Iain into looking at me while smiling!  (Well, really Lar did that, since he was reading a Looking For Group book.)

Oreo was very helpful while Ria worked on her California Mission poster for school.

Here's Ria just being darn cute ;-).  We were up at UCSF in our re-boot of the quest to figure out Ria's gut and make it work.  We figure that maybe if someone can figure out why she's been constipated from something like 3 months old, maybe they could fix her gut up to work, and then maybe she could tolerate gluten again, someday.  The re-boot quest started in the summer of 2016, 3 month wait for doctor 1, refernce to dr 2, 3 month wait for appt with dr 2 (that was this picture), 2 months to 2nd appt with Dr. 2, then got reference to dr 3, the special gastroenterologist.  She's the one we've been wanting for the last 6 years.  Then there was a 3 month wait to meet with her.  Now (Sept, while I'm typing this) we are actively working with the new GI, 1 year after the start of the rebooted quest.  Hopefully, soon we'll have a plan.

Lovely blossoms on the trail

Lunch out with my kiddos on April break!  Iain had just eaten a few too many jalapenos, hence the funny face, but Ria looks so pleased with her meal that I thought to post this anyways!  Her food preferences are in some ways so different from the other 3 of us - she had brussel sprouts with her burger, tried them, and loved them right away!

Retro-posts! December 2016, January 2017

Happy Christmas and New Year!!  2016

Love the new front garden so much that we got the back perked up.  The lawn was dead from no watering for 3 years, and everything was just sad.  The new grass is a low water, low maintenance grass

I got a snazzy new phone that has some fun camera effects that I used for 3 days and since then have ignored ;-)

...and, it RAINED.  Lots.  The previous winter we had water in the creek for exactly 2 school days (Ria and I cross the creek while walking to school every day).  This time it was full for something like 4 straight months.  It still had water in May!!!

Cat torture.

Fall 2017 School photos!

Oh dear... 1 year nearly since the last post....its a new school year!  I have posted absolutely nothing since the last school pics.  Ah well.  I am pitiful ;-)

First day of school.... I just could NOT get Iain to smile more than this - he was just not willing to fall for my pitiful little mom tricks, so mild snark on his end, entirely appropriate for a High School Kid!!!  9th grade!  And Ria is in 5th, only one more year of elementary.  Because Iain is standing a bit forward of the gate relative to Ria, he appears slightly taller against the gate, but she's still about 0.5-1" taller.  He's hellish hungry lately, so maybe he'll get a growth spurt and pass her for 1 week somewhere before she passes him again!

This year, good pictures for both kids!  When I first saw Iain's pic in a micro version on his ID card, I thought it was bad, but in full resolution it is just fine (except for the bit where they had stickers on their shirts during Freshman orientation day, and didn't take them off for the pictures!)  Ria looks lovely with her longer hair and beautiful smile.