Lemonade stand

Leo's best friend's mom organized an amazing lemonade stand for the kids today. They live at a perfect corner for this. Tons of people on bikes, foot, skates and cars stopped to have lemonade.

In addition to lemonade, the kids handed out free cookies and Leo made his free samples. Ever since Hawaii's farmer's markets, Leo has been in love with the idea of free samples. He makes them up at home and wrote 'Free samples' on his chalkboard and has been begging us to let him do a lemonade stand. Some of his free samples have consisted of bread dipped in green sugar water - you can imagine how eager we were to set up a stand for this. Having a whole lot of kids is a lot more compelling to potential customers than just one so we had 11 kids out here. Leo's free samples today consisted of black olives stuffed with parmesan cheese - he set up on this cooler (he's in red)

We had other classmates stop by and join the party. Nancy made big batches of pina coladas which helped the parents deal with the heat.

The kids did great. They got really good at pouring the lemonade and serving the customers. Making change was hard for them but they got a lot of tips which eliminated having to make change. You'd think 11 kids was too many to run a stand, but it all worked great. They all got turns doing different part of the sale and a bunch of kids eventually took over Leo's olive stuffing effort.

They pulled in some $35 in less than two hours. We ran out of lemonade which was fine since they all wanted to play anyway.

First soccer game

Today was a really full day for us. Leo had his first soccer game. He didn't get to play too much - one quarter playing defense when his team's offense happened to be really good. He didn't really seem to care all that much and was more interested in eating the snacks. But he said he enjoyed it.

Reading!

This summer I tried to read with Leo. It was like pulling teeth. He'd read a few words and get tired. It was so frustrating. Even stuff that I knew he could read, he would just be too tired to try. I was worried that a lack of perseverance would not do him well in life.

Well, I guess I was bit vocal about it, or maybe it was when Paul told Leo last week that I was worried about his lack of reading, but this week Leo is reading! He brings short books home every day and is reading them easily. The books are categorized by level of difficulty and he actually picked a hard book to bring home today. He said he picked it out because it was challenging and he'd probably need all week to read it. Being a huge bookworm myself, I'm just so psyched he's becoming a reader!

More than life itself

I told Leo in a fit of maternal frenzy, "I love you more than life itself!"

He thought about it and smiled and said, "Well, since I came from life, then it's a tie!"

Independence!

Thanks to Paul, Leo is finally becoming independent! We can now tell him to take a shower and he will strip, turn on the water, wash his hair and body, dry off and get dressed! It's amazing! To me, at least, the coddler, who secretly wants to rock him to sleep.

First day of First grade!

School started today in Boulder! It was Leo's first day of first grade. Here he is standing in line to go in. His new teacher is a guy, Mr. Nieman. We're all excited because Mr. Nieman likes robots and science. Leo rode his bike to school for the first time (last year he was on a third wheel trailer bike) after spending the weekend practicing. Apparently there are no Legos in first grade. But they get to check out two books from the library at a time which is nice. It all went fine and Leo's best friend Claudia is in his class which is great. He still seems to be playing mostly with girls - after school he was running around the playground, trailed by a pack of girls. All in all, we are all very hopeful about the new school year!

Leo's 6th birthday party pix

Some pictures of Leo's birthday party. Sorry for the repeat for those on Facebook.

We had a successful party, thanks to help from Porpor and Poppop who came in from NJ to join the festivities. Leo asked Paul for another magic show this year because his new kindergarten friends didn't believe his dad could do magic. Paul obliged. Leo did a trick too, as part of the show.

Here's Leo doing the wingardium levioso spell on a steel ball to make it levitate:

Before the show, Paul takes a shot of the crowd:

Leo was showing off for his new girlfriend, Foster (in pink), whom he says he's going to marry.

The traffic jam on the slide:

The second highlight of the party - the Transformer pinata. I have never seen kids move so fast. The pinata was completely smooshed to pieces by the end of this.

Leo's new magic trick

Leo did a magic trick as part of Paul's magic show for his sixth birthday. If you can't see this, go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP7WuCPeeRc

Yosemite

We were very very lucky on this trip - Jean's mom's friend had Yosemite camping reservations and had to cancel out. So we got to spend a few days in Yosemite Valley with Jean's family which was great fun. Leo and Jean's kids, Mateo and Hugo, get along amazingly well and spent most of the time playing on their own, leaving the adults to nap, drink wine and chat.

We put Leo to work, holding up the rocks:

Here's the requisite Yosemite Valley picture of Half Dome and El Capitan. I included the yellow school bus - just in case you forgot the huge crowds and traffic jams of the valley during the summer.

At Mirror Lake (which used to be a loop trail that now ends where part of Half Dome fell across the trail), Leo decided to have a picnic on a rock in the lake:

We fought the crowds at the Mist Trail that goes up Vernal Falls. Snowpack is at record levels, making the waterfalls 2-3 times their normal flow at this time of year. The footbridge of Vernal Falls looks safe here but when you're on it, it feels pretty scary, and even in the 94F heat, it's cold at this spot:

And the requisite shots of family at Glacier Point, overlooking Half Dome. By the time we were done, Leo knew the name of this rock and knew that when he was old enough, we'd take him to climb up it and stick his eyeballs over the edge:

The Ku-Tsai's at Yosemite

Jean's mom's friend got Yosemite reservations and was unable to go so we got to go to Yosemite with Jean and Minh and the kids and Jean's mom. We had a great three days running around on the rocks and hiking in the hot sun and cooling ourselves in the frigid waters. The kids got along fabulously. Here's Mateo on the rock:

We hiked up the Vernal/Nevada Falls trail and the kids got to cool off a bit in the water:

The rocks were awesome, of course:

Mateo and Hugo had a great time bouldering:

Finding a hidden rock cave on the Mirror Lake trail:

Jean showing off the moss:

Fremont Peak State Park

Turns out its nearly impossible to get a campsite reservation on a summer weekend in California. So Root and Erik and their crews got together with us at Fremont Peak State Park, up the hill from Monterey. Here's Elaina showing us just what spectacular fun can be had:

We had a great time camping in the rain. So we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to get dry:

Mira at the touch pool:

On our hike, we found a great hole in a tree filled with water and mosquito larva:

Leo and Xander, tired or bored?

Leo and Xander would go tearing down the trail and I'd be running after them (there was a ton of poison oak everywhere), yelling, "Leo! Xander!". It sounded just like me at home yelling, "Leo Zander"!

Bath, Beach and Boys

We went camping in New Brighton State Beach in Santa Cruz with Jean and her boys. Had an awesome time on the beach and eating gourmet camping food. Minh grilled some filet mignon for Leo which received his highest marks ever - all ten fingers, ten toes, all his teeth and all the hairs on his head - way more than a thumbs up!

Leo and Mateo found a teepee on the beach:

Jean was flattened by her boys:

Paul was attacked by the kids:

Jean showed off her frog-like tendencies:

Paul expresses his love of beaches:

The Tsai's enjoyed flying our swag kite:

But the best fun was the standoff with the waves:

That ended with a lot of wet, cold kids:

Kids getting clean:

Mateo singing in the bath: