Leo's bakery

Leo has been asking to make these special cakes for a while. Homemade easy roll-out frosting over sponge cake. Yum!

Domo!

Paul was gone this week so Leo and I took advantage of the opportunity to eat Japanese food. Lots and lots of soba noodles. And donburi (rice topped with teriyaki pork or tuna sashimi). Miso! etc. Leo talked me into taking him to the Domo Restaurant in Denver. It's homestyle Japanese food in a rustic setting. The tables and chairs are pieces of a giant tree. They have a zen garden outside. I think they teach Taiko drumming there too and have other cultural events. Needless to say, we had the time of our life stuffing our faces.

Leo's visit to NJ in December

Leo wrote a little story about visiting NJ in December. 

For those of you who can't read "kid", it says, "Over the break, I traveled to my grandparents' house. In Jersey. for my mom's sister's birthday party! The cake was awesome! After the cake my mom's other sister gave me a present. It was the mini musical claw. "Ding dong" it went! After that my mom gave my cousin a present! It was a static electricity wand that makes a 8 fly in the air. I love winter break! The End. 

Reading at the dinner table

Yay! My dreams have been realized! Leo is reading a book silently to himself at the dinner table! I know I will regret this in a few years when he reads incessantly but in the meantime I will savor this!

Comics!

Leo produced his first comic book today. He made five copies to sell at recess today. It is titled, "The Fart that Ate Colorado" and details Finn's fart that becomes toxic and mutates and how everyone smells the fart to save the day. Unfortunately, this is followed by everyone burping, which sets us up for the sequel. He made 75 cents selling this at school and has more orders.

When you have homework to do, it's time to make a video

Leo had to make a poster about himself for homework this weekend. It consisted of like ten questions and some coloring. You would NOT believe the fight we had over this today. He got tired of coloring, his neck hurt, he decided it wasn't really due tomorrow, etc.

But he did have HOURS of time to make this video, consisting of 766 pictures. It is not yet done, either. I am sure he will make plenty of time to finish this:



If you can't see this, go to
http://youtu.be/Nqslh1Sg5bM

Regarding the music, my choice. He asked for scary music. I had none on the ipad. I suggested this. He asked me what it was about, but he did like it!

Kristin's 40th!

Kristin's 40th Birthday Party! Vicki got this amazing cake:

We had a huge blast. Kristin loved it - about 25 of her friends and family showed up. We danced, ate candy, laughed a lot. Here's the fam:

 We celebrated the next day too at a Thai restaurant:

 And I got to see some of Kristin's friends at work:

 

The Chocolate Fountain for Traditions Day at School

For Traditions Day at school, the kids were asked to speak about a family tradition and bring in some traditional food. Leo brought in a chocolate fountain. And he spoke about Burning Man and the Zander Lander. I don't think any parent had any idea what he was talking about!



If you can't see the video, go to:

http://youtu.be/43YplEC_68I

I'm not sure why, but it was also mustache day so all the kids came into school with mustaches:

Party in a Box

Leo started a new line of cards:

Art

Some cool art in Lisbon. It was a free museum of some rich guy's collection. The museum went on forever. It was definitely more fun than the castles and monasteries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ljPIRuPMmE&sns=em

Leo as a roly poly for Halloween

Leo dressed up as a roly poly (pillbug) for Halloween this year. Paul and Leo spent months on this costume, dissecting real pillbugs to figure out how they worked.




If you can't see this, go to http://youtu.be/-T2ETFOi5c8

Oops! The videos should work now!

Sorry about the settings on the youtube videos from yesterday. It should all work now if you want to try again!

Sushi Chef Leo

Leo in his new happy coat making a happy meal.

This is O-nigiri, a type of sushi. I have O-nigiri every day for breakfast in Japan. I buy them from the 7-11, where they come in the refrigerated section and are wrapped with layers of plastic that keep the seaweed fresh. They come in all kinds of flavors: raw tuna, eel, plum, caviar, etc. Turns out Leo loves this stuff too!



If you can't see this, go to http://youtu.be/mJfCm8UdXK4

Stick Bomb!

I got lucky and finally found the stick bomb toy on my trip to Tokyo.

If you can't see this, go to
http://youtu.be/2UB1omYwFVk

Tokyo

Arrived in Japan about 4pm to figure out the long commute into Tokyo from the airport. We had big luggage so we took the bus which is more direct but got stuck in Sunday traffic. Got to hotel about 7 pm. Then it took over an hour to meet co-worker's cousin at subway station next to hotel because it was so confusing. We then met cousin and took two different subway lines (which means getting out and walkin to different stop and paying again). Got lost trying to find sushi place and finally arrived for dinner at 9pm. Ate some really expensive sushi (cheap for Japanese standards) and made it home around 11pm way exhausted.

I wanted time to myself so I left the group to find Studio Ghibli which unfortunately is very popular and has restricted visitation plus is far from center of Tokyo. So I went to the Mori Museum. Did the Tokyo City view tower and spent morning viewing contemporary Arab art! Very cool and disturbing stuff.

Then an hour wandering around trying to find tempura soba to satisfy craving. I can't remember my Japanese alphabet well so it takes a LONG time to try to read menus and am in the foreigners area so here's a lot of pizza and no soba! Plus some restaurants have ticket machines or eve computers where you order and it was too intimidatin for me.

Settled for tuna rice bowl. Like poke bowl. It comes with teapot of soup stock. Not sure why but it is yummiest soup stock ever. Nothing like MSG to brighten a soup!

Can't get data plan working on phone or ipad but I try to find wifi when I can. Hope all is well back at home!

Finally getting around to reading!

As you know, I've been frustrated with Leo's pace of learning to read. We made a big breakthrough this week! I bought a couple Dav Pilkey books at the community garage sale last week, mostly because the guys at the table looked so sad, like they hadn't sold anything all morning. Dav Pilkey is famous for his Captain Underpants comic series of books. We love Captain Underpants but Leo can't read it easily - "As the two boys discussed the similarities between elementary school and forced confinement in a harsh, authoritarian penal institue..." Someone must have told Dav that kids who like underwear humor can't read his books, because he created another series called Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot. It's a 'chapter' book in that each book has a dozen chapters, which makes a kid feel smart. But there are pictures on each page, only a few sentences on each page, and it's way easy to read. So we've finally got Leo reading books all by himself. I'm so excited. Next step is to get him to read silently...

Homemade Gold Claw Lego Bionicle Kit

Leo spent a week making this Lego Bionicle Kit. He calls it Gold Claw!

If you can't see this, go to:
http://youtu.be/eO2jGkAN3mc

Garage Sale

There was a community garage sale at the rec center yesterday, run by kids. Leo put together a nice display of toys with his box of 'free stuff with purchase' and halfway through, his "running out of business 50% off" sign. Here he is in front of his storefront with Samantha, whose store was the next table over. The kids did great with the math and customer service. They made a bunch of money too which Leo is very excited about.

Since there were about 20 families there, it meant we brought home nearly as much volume as we sold. Leo bought this fancy roboraptor real cheap because the remote was not working. We fixed the remote and it's a fantastic toy. Here it is operating in autonomous play mode, reacting to a dancing stuffed animal:

If you can't see this, you can go to http://youtu.be/qYi1WYxQMXA

Tomato Hornworm

Leo found a giant green tomato hornworm in the garden. Rather than let me kill it, he decided it should be a pet. So we cut off tomato branches regularly to feed it:

And after a few days, it stopped eating and started turning more brownish. Last evening, it shed its skin (you can see the big brown plop to the left of the chrysalis and you can see feet on that skin!) and made a chrysalis. Technically, I thought it ought to be a cocoon since it will grown into a hawkmoth, but sure looks like a chrysalis to me. This morning the chrysalis was all brown.

Vicki says it will take a long time to emerge. Until it does, this is our new kitchen table companion!

Leo the pirate

We went to the neighbor's pirate-themed birthday party and our neighbor's tenant (who is a professional face painter) did this great skeleton face for Leo. She forgot the crossbones, but that would have been too scary for the two-year-olds