Sunday Hike

Best Track Ever

We got Porter this hand me down train table for a steal over two years ago. He plays on it everyday and I can safely say it was possibly the best $30 we've ever spent. There is often a train track set up on it, but occasionally you can find a big landscape of roads, legos, plastic animals, or even pet rats. Today we disassembled this track that Tim declared his best ever. 

Porter loves his trains a whole lot, but Tim and I get just as into (if not more) building tracks and conquering the spacial challenge of looping tracks around and back to make them fit within the rectangle. This track had enough mileage that several people could all drive at the same time, with Porter's hard-won permission, of course. Before we took it down to make room for lego building today, Tim had to take a picture in case we want to recreate it another time!

Peter and the Wolf

After seeing several school productions last year, Matilda decided she wanted to participate in the after school play. This session they did Peter and the Wolf and Matilda was given the role of the duck.

White duck in action: 

Porter was very captivated with all the action.

Here she is swimming in her pond. She was so cute and funny. The whole time in the "pond" she kept moving with her arms flap.

Final bow time with the duck understudy, 

 Happy duck with filthy dirty knees and some friends who came along to watch.

Beach Day

It was rainy and overcast today, but the rain stopped just at the right time when we arrived at the beach and started again on our drive home. We also, by luck, timed it perfectly for low tide and got some good tidepool-time in. Porter may have picked up every one of the zillions of hermit crab on the beach!

The seagulls were also out in force.

 Watched this seagull catch some lunch. A squid I think?

We also found great joy in (gently) poking the anemones to watch their reactions as they retract and squirt water. One actually squirted water higher than I have ever seen, maybe 6" high. The kids were thrilled with that one!

 Skeptically watching a lone surfer, the only other person on the beach.

 Happy kite flyers.

 The wind was not very strong, which led Porter to the great temptation of chasing the low flying kite.

I love the beach so much better in the winter! No sign of sand hills for sleeping built up yet, but we will be checking back for certain. 

For the record, Porter's goose egg is looking fantastic today. Not so swollen now but beautiful shades of yellow, purply rainbow bruise. He mentioned tonight that he might not want to go back to school tomorrow, just in case they were going to do jet packs again. He rejected my suggestion that he just make a "medium speed" jet pack. Silly mama.

Jet Pack + Goose Egg = Donut

At preschool today they made super cool jet packs. Here is Porter wearing his:

Porter's jet pack was so powerful that it propelled him super fast across the playground, leading to a trip-fall-bonk scenario. His goose egg was so huge that they called me to come pick him up. This photo does not do it justice. The bump is enormous, even still.

Thankfully he did not have any lethargy, vomiting or irritability (a very subjective thing to measure for a three year old) that the pediatrician asked us to watch for. Even after a SECOND afternoon fall-bonk on the same spot he hung in there fine.

A donut did seem to help relieve the left-school-early/big-bonk blues.

Hopefully the swelling will settle down soon and his forehead will someday look normal again in case we ever get him a haircut.

Go Vote!

Soccer Practice

Early this afternoon I got an email that Porter's last soccer practice location was changed from the field near us to the Los Angeles Police Academy. It was a really nice location in the canyon near Dodgers Stadium but there was a little bit of background noise that was distracting:

Birthday Mom Visit

My mom was here. Last month! For her birthday! We celebrated. We also dragged her to two birthday parties that were NOT for her. Here she is at the first one which featured animal masks and an animal show.

Instead of a party for mom, Matilda and I surprised her with tickets to see a ballet performance of Alice in Wonderland. It was an amazing performance and so fun to watch Matilda enjoying it. 

 For birthday dinner: enormous bowls of pho noodles.

Porter seemed to enjoy his.

Followed by ice cream sundaes at the Disney Soda Fountain. I think we fed mom alright! :)

On the way to the airport Monday, Mom treated Porter and I to the new grilled cheese restaurant in Silverlake. It was delicious! Local folks, get yourself there!

They even have real apples with the kids meal, not old, pre-sliced cellophane wrapped ones. So yummy!

Double Header: Pancake Breakfast vs. Birthday Party

Just a regular busy Saturday today with kid fun all around! (I have to admit, grown up fun, too.) First up was the fundraiser pancake breakfast at preschool.

Soccer ball face painting by teacher Adela, to go with his new Beckham jersey. 

Matilda and another first grader alumni pal got in on their old playground action with the zip line thing. 

Artsy craft thing with the famous video playing in the background. There was also a kids band that came to rock out for an hour and some story telling in the back yard. Super fun and a great fundraiser!

Next up, neighbors rainbow unicorn birthday party.

In addition to the standard taco truck, bouncy house good time, they had this awesome rainbow crayon craft. First up choose your colors.

Next, hot glue them to the canvas.

 Hit it with a heat gun (or I think in a pinch a hair dryer would do).

Porter's final product.

They looked so fun all lined up drying.

Pinata madness. Porter takes a big tongue-hanging-out-in-concentration swing. Check out that line of kids waiting behind him. There was probably 50 kids there.

The candy grab part always cracks me up.

Switch Witch Report

So today there seemed to be no remorse over the candy the witch took. Luckily we had a birthday party to go to so there was a new source of candy/cake! Matilda actually woke up before 6 this morning as she was so excited to check out her toy and got to squeeze in an extra hour of play with her new Cheetah doll before school. 

Instead Porter has moved on to the next major kid-pleasing holiday, making wish lists. He kept himself quite occupied with circling items in the big Target toys catalog that came. Not quite the enormous tome that the JC Penney catalogue of my youth was, but it kept him occupied for a long time. 

Trick or Treat!

Here's our crew headed out in search of candy last night. I am pretty sure they were all yelling "candy" as we took this picture!

 Stella had an adorable little frog to go with her princess costume!

Our Halloween loving family, assembled for action!

We stopped by the neighbors house where all our buddies were gathering before they hit the streets.  The kids were so excited to see each other.

 Stella in awe of enormous rainbow eyelash extensions.

We then went over to our old neighborhood to trick or treat, where it is always jamming. Friends who live there report they gave out 1200 pieces of candy!

They also really get into decorating their houses over there. This soldier guy was greeting all the trick or treaters at one house and had Porter captivated. 

Captain America wanders in a candy daze, with his mouth full of chocolate, near the end of our night. 

 Another fabulous holiday for our Halloween crazy household. The trick or treating was so successful that we have invited the switch witch to come tonight. The switch witch (a friendly witch) will come tonight while we are all sleeping and take all the candy and in its place leave Porter and Matilda with a cool new toy. Matilda is not too candy crazy and was immediately excited about this idea and agreed. Porter followed Matilda's lead in agreeing to let the switch witch visit, but I am a little afraid of tomorrow morning when he realizes the full impact of this swap! As he went to bed tonight I heard Porter say, "The switch witch is mean!"

Halloween Fright!

A fitting discovery at the end of Halloween night: 

 a black widow living in Matilda's jack-o-lantern!!!