Douglas is funny

Yesterday evening after his bath he saw Violet licking herself and said "Violet's taking a bath too!" Then he watched for a minute and said, "But she doesn't like having toys in the bath like I do." He's going to the zoo this morning with his preschool.

Owen has two birthday parties this weekend, after something of a dearth. His party will be two weeks from Sunday in Alameda. Hopefully someone will be able to come! We're planning to include a sandcastle making contest.

Dan played softball for the "Birkenstock Souls" last night - a local men's team that has been around for many years. He's not a regular, but once in a while when they are short of players he gets a call. The kids and I went for just a little while (the game began at 8:15). They were extremely excited about it and couldn't stop fidgeting and jumping up and down.

All star team

Owen had his first of three practices last night for the All Star game on the 4th of July. There are 2 other kids from his team and the other players come from four other Farm level teams. He seemed to be just about the smallest kid there, but he did ok. The coaches seemed to me to put some pressure on them, mentioning that all the players will be able to hit into the outfield, etc, different from a typical Farm level game.

We booked a house in Tahoe for a few days in late July. Luckily the place we booked is on the north side. The fire is not on that end. The place that's burning is quite near where we stayed in Feb. of 2006, Camp Richardson Resort. So far more than 200 homes have burned. Terrible.

Ouch

Poor Julia was dragged half a block down the street in Rome over the weekend by a purse snatcher on a Vespa.

We had a pretty nice weekend. Not too much went on. The weather was great, in the mid 80s and sunny, breezy and dry. We spent yesterday afternoon at a park with the kids and a friend of Owen's. We had a couple of friends over Saturday night for a low key evening. Also hit the library and Border's over the weekend. Nothing too strenuous.

Owen lost his third tooth over the weekend - one of the ones on the bottom in the front. He was also excited that he won a tennis bag on the last day of tennis camp (Friday). It is huge, actually. The coach was drawing names from a box and picked Owen's for the grand prize.

Owen's first practice for the Farm exhibition game is tomorrow night. This week he is in a baseball camp at his school. Next week is science camp on rocketry and such. Douglas is still in preschool which runs all year, but he is bummed that his best buddy has the summer off because his dad is a teacher so he is at home. We got together with that family Friday afternoon at the park - they live quite near us and also have a son Owen's age and they are becoming friends.

Tennis camp

Owen's enjoying tennis camp this week. Luckily it cooled down a bit too. It was near 100 on Monday but since then has only been in the 80s, and the camp is in the mornings (9-12) so it isn't too hot by the time camp is over.

He finished his second guitar book, according to the teacher at the lesson today. We bought a new one the teacher recommended called "Easy Pop Songs" or something like that. It has Surfin' USA in it, among other things, which he really likes, along with Twist And Shout, Rock Around the Clock, etc. Hopefully having songs he likes will help with his interest level as well.

Otherwise, we're having a pretty quiet week. Douglas is bummed that his buddy Tobin is out of preschool for the summer because his dad is a teacher so is home. Luckily Tobin lives just a few blocks away so we've already been able to get together at the park for one play date.

Congratulations? to Violet

Gee, I almost typed her name as Violent, which would be appropriate considering what happened this morning. I noticed she was playing with a gray fuzzy object on the living room rug around 8 this morning. First thought was "Please tell me that's a toy." I looked closer and thought it might be a gray mouse or shrew. As far as I know though there aren't shrews around here. What it looked the most like was an owl pellet. It turned out to be a bird, probably a bushtit. She had managed to bag her first kill, at least the first one we have found. Yuck.

Yesterday we took the ferry from Vallejo to San Francisco. Owen loved standing outside on the side and feeling the intense wind. The ferry goes to the SF Ferry Building where we had lunch (Owen had a burger and fries at Taylor's Refresher, one of our favorite spots to eat in St. Helena). We then went down to Pier 39, which has a small aquarium and some sea lions to look at. We then took the Muni down to AT&T Park, and the kids had fun playing ball in the Little Giants Park in the Fan Lot. We met another boy named Owen and his brother there, entering third grade, who lives in Noe Valley in SF. It was interesting talking to his mom about life with kids in SF. I asked whether they are in Little League and she said they were for a while but they kept having games out on Treasure Island, which was really inconvenient, so they ended up just playing in the city rec league. I also asked about schools - I'd heard they have a choice - and she said "They say you do but you really don't. We signed my older son up for 3 when it was time to register for kindergarten but he didn't get into any of them; they instead assigned him to Hunter's Point which is the worst neighborhood in the city, so they're in Catholic school instead."

I heard kind of an interesting interview this morning on the podcast I listen to from Fair Game with Faith Salie. She was talking to a sports reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who was kicked out of the NCAA semifinal for live blogging the game. ESPN had paid for the broadcast rights to the game so they didn't want anyone else 'broadcasting' information about the game who hadn't paid to do it. The Courier-Journal is going to sue based on the first amendment. I suspect the NCAA is going to lose that round. Here's a link to an article about it.

Pictures from the beach etc.

Attached are some pictures from the zoo, the beach, and home.

Owen helping Douglas check out the zebras at the zoo.









Douglas's favorite part of going to the zoo is getting to read the map. He loves reading the map (which has pictures of the animals as well as words, so he can actually tell what comes next).






Kids building a sand castle.









Even Dan liked the beach.











Owen was quite happy to fool around by the water.













The sand castle had to have a moat, of course.







Mr. Toothless, by our front door (note new house numbers).












Our house looks different now that the carport was taken down. The post was rotting.

School's out for summer

The kids and I went to the park this morning and met some friends, which was fun. Then we went to see Surf's Up, which was sort of cute. And it was air conditioned, necessary since it's 101 in the shade today.

I was quoted in a Sacramento Bee article this morning on keeping your teens safe over the summer.

Last day of school

Today is the last day of school in the Davis district. Owen gets out early, at 12:30. I suppose that's the minimum number of hours they had to run in order to get ADA funding. (Dan could no doubt confirm.)

We just got an email from the coach that he was selected to be on the all-star Farm team which will be playing a game on July 4th. Should be fun.

Yesterday we went to the pool. It was hot, near 100 or so. It is hot again today but hopefully is supposed to cool down a bit in the next few days.

Tues. I brought in cupcakes for Owen's class. The kids with summer birthdays were supposed to bring treats in this week. It turned out the twins in the class also brought cupcakes that day (I'd thought they were doing Wednesday) and for some reason they brought in 2 cupcakes per kid rather than one, so all the kids in the class got 3 cupcakes that day. It was overdoing it.

All I want for Christmas...

Owen lost his other front tooth on Saturday morning biting into a muffin, so now he's got the missing two front teeth vampire look. The apple he attempted to eat Friday night may have helped the whole process along quite a bit. Saturday a.m. he took a bite and suddenly there was blood all over his tooth. It was a little gross. Then he went and looked in the mirror and while he was looking the tooth just dropped out.

We went to the Sac Zoo on Sat. morning and then had pizza at Giovanni's, the only true NY style pizza we've had in the Sac area. The proprietor was kicked out of the same Brooklyn school as Dan's brother.

Owen's last baseball game was Saturday at 5 pm, and Dan and I then went to a friend's (adults-only) 40th birthday party in the evening. It was fun to have an evening out. Her son is in the same class as Owen.

Yesterday we went to Crown Beach in Alameda. It was really nice! It took about an hour and 20 minutes or so to get there. Afterward we explored Alameda a bit and found a really nice main shopping strip on Park Street. We had about the best ice cream we've ever had at Tucker's. All in all a fun day!

Surgery went well...

My mother's surgery for breast cancer went as well as could be expected on Tuesday, although it was something of an ordeal. Still waiting on the final pathology report about whether it spread to the nodes.

Kind of a fun link: If I dig a very deep hole, where will I end up?

Owen's last baseball game is Saturday at 5:00, and then there is a team party on Sunday afternoon at the UCD Rec Pool. The last day of school is next Thursday the 14th. Hard to believe it is almost over, and almost summer!

Campout

Tonight is Owen's class campout at their teacher's ranch. Should be fun. She has horses, goats, chickens and possibly other animals too, plus a barn complete with barn owl. We have to bring our tent for the kids, but we're not spending the night.

He had a baseball game last night which went pretty well. He got a couple of singles and managed a run at the very end of the game but it didn't count since the other team got the third out at about the same moment.