Lightning Jets Soccer Team

Paul's 50th Skating Birthday Bash

We had Paul's 50th birthday bash at Skate City's Adult Night. It was great fun, even if they did treat Paul like a little kid, announcing his birthday on the skate floor and singing happy birthday to him, with a decorated table and placemats that announced his birthday.

Lots of friends joined on the floor, including many of us who haven't skated since we were in middle school.

Bill and Andi:

Scott making his way towards cake:

Rob, Mari and Caroline watching the skaters making their moves:

Kevin and Jennifer (coconut flour lemon filled cake not shown here):

K-rock and Dawn taking a break from their fancy moves on the floor:


Xana, Paul and Jim:

Caroline, Paul and Mike:

Kirsten and Mike:

Lisa and Jason:

Wendy and Ross were wonderful to give Paul a gift of having Leo over for a sleepover so we could party late, which we did. And Leo got new roller skates! Free skates came with the birthday party package and just in time too, because Leo has been using Paul's skates to skate around the house and he's going to break an ankle doing so because they don't fit.

Overscheduled!

I've been driving Leo nuts for a couple days, probably the same way I drive Paul nuts. Yesterday, after school, we had a quick early supper, then the Bear Creek School Carnival which was a fundraiser event that his friends were attending. Then we met his friends for a quick pizza and headed to Mari's (Thank you Mari! It's been a hard two weeks with Paul gone) where Leo was having a sleepover.

This morning I picked them all up at 7:45 to get breakfast and then go to soccer. After 3 bad practices/games in a row, Leo actually stayed the whole time and played and kicked the ball a few times too. He said he had fun. Then we had a quick lunch and I had to drag him to the mountain bike clinic. It was Leo's first dirt riding. The new Valmont Bike Park has super huge jumps and tricks for great bikers as well as beginner trails and features. We did the clinic and Leo had a blast. He didn't want to leave. He did fall a few times and leave some blood on the trail. At one point, I got lost and we ended up on the intermediate trails and he rode a twisty steep bridge feature and sort of fell off the bike although not off the bridge, thankfully.

We get home in time for a quick shower to get the blood off and make dinner for the neighbors who have just had their second kid and the husband is out of town. Again, I thought he had fun - he loves little kids.

But there was a LOT of whining, fighting and even the first really nasty teenage comment - "I told you a MILLION times I want pizza!" I let him know in no uncertain terms that I'm not going to take attitude from him. Tonight, he finally found the words to explain that he never wanted to do any of this stuff, that he only wanted to play Legos, that he was tired, that he was really scared of the twisty bridge and he nearly fell off the bridge.

So, I've promised him a down day tomorrow. Nothing is planned. We can build Legos all day. I hope it goes better!

1st grade smile

Books

Leo's teacher is really into writing books. I think the whole school is actually. It's their way of teaching kids to express creativity with a who-cares-if-you-can't-spell attitude.

In class, Leo made a book of "Contin" or counting and it says "one M&M, two bananas," etc. He loved it and read it to his girlfriend Foster in the Kindergarten playground. Last weekend was Foster's and her sister's birthday, so Leo made up two very elaborate book/cards for them. Foster's was a counting book with "one M&M", etc on each page and pictures of the M&M's and all. When he got to 10, he started making jokes, like "Even if you line up all the balls, there are still only 10 of them" or "Even if you put them in a triangle, there are still only 10 balls", etc. I think it was based on the "Even if you line up all your boogers neatly, they are still dirty" line from "The Holes in Your Nose". For Foster's sister, he made a 'lift the flap' book called "Where are My Toys". A little kid is looking for her toys and looks under the bed and behind the shelves and finally finds the toys somewhere. There are little flaps that you lift and under them it says "no toys here" or "here they are". I think this was based on a board book that we had when Leo was like 2 years old called "Where's Spot?" Anyway, great fun, and I wish I had copies of them to paste in a scrapbook! But I'm sure Foster and Grayson are really appreciative!

Second Soccer Game

Leo's second soccer game went a lot better. He actually got to play a bunch this time which was good. He was pretty hot and melty before even getting on the field, however, which made my cheerleading job pretty hard. The coach has all the kids rotating positions so they learn how to play everything. If you can't see the video above, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSfcGp8sd2s

He got to play goalie, which he has been wanting to do forever. He even got the sticky goalie gloves. No goals on him and no saves either, but he got to do a lot of kicks to teammates when the ball went out of bounds. It's a good role for him because he's a very slow kicker and very deliberate and has good aim. I kept yelling at him that he could use his hands. I think he kept forgetting that. He stuck really close to the goal the whole time.

The second clip is Leo playing defense. He might have even kicked the ball once, I think, although he spent a lot of time just watching and sort of jumping up and down in excitement. At the end of the clip he gets tired and it's just so funny to watch. I don't have it here, but at one point, the goalie is going to kick the ball and every kid is watching this except Leo who is turned the other way!

I don't have any clips of him playing offense but he ran the whole length of the field like a banshee playing offense. He seemed to think he was playing both offense and defense. He tried really hard.

We came home and he immediately wanted to practice in the backyard, so I think that's a good sign.

Experimentation

Leo loves experiments. As I write, he's mixing glue and hot cocoa powder and who knows what else in a cup on the dinner table. I can't wait to clean up.

Last night we went to a community dinner, which was great fun, and Leo overhead Lily's mom talking about avoiding foods high in sodium. Leo perked up, "sodium?" He has a fascination with sodium ever since I told him about the Great Sodium Drop in college where we dropped sodium in the Charles River and watched it burn. I explained, "no, not elemental sodium, just sodium chloride". He's like, "oh, salt". Lily's mom said, "maybe you can play with some dry ice?" Leo said, "and maybe some liquid hydrogen?"

Tonight I got the annual physics at MIT magazine which basically talks about how great the research at MIT is and begs for money. I said, "hey Leo, you'll like this, it's all about physics experiments." He opened it up to a section on kids touring Junior Lab, which is the junior level yearlong death physics class. You spend an entire year recreating all the classic physics experiments of the last 200 years. It's death, because it's way too much work - it's really hard to get those experiments to work right and you have to write them all up in gory detail. Anyway, I said, "This is Junior Lab where you get to spend a whole year doing nothing but physics experiments." Leo said, "YAY! I can't wait to take Junior Lab!"

It's great fun creating a warped child.

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: