Junior!

Parker was just promoted on the swim team to the next level which is called juniors. He is the youngest one on it. At first he was worried about longer, more difficult practices and swimming more days a week but now, he is totally into it and claims he will be best swimmer at Wildwood by 5th grade.   Today's work out was 30 minutes of dry land (sit ups, leg lifts, etc) and an hour swimming where he swam at least 2000 yards.  Because his schedule is already overfill with basketball, baseball, chess and piano, he'll transition slowly over the next month or so. He seems pretty proud of himself. Which he should be.

More cookies

Even though we sold all our cookies, the girls enjoyed selling them so much, we did another shift at the piedmont grocery store today.  Wasn't as busy as last time, but they still sold 19 boxes in 2 hours. Not great, but not bad.

Legos

We took the kids to see the Lego movie. Michael and I thought it was great but it was a little fast and confusing for the kids. Parker was quite upset during much of it...anxious and squirming in his seat during the conflict issues, bored during plot explanations he didn't understand and outright crying for the last 15 despite me saying "everything will be ok."  It was only the 4th movie I've taken him to and we left the other three (toy story, wall-e and up) after 20 minutes. I felt bad we took him since he clearly still doesn't like the whole experience.

But then after we were home for a bit, I saw this:

He rarely plays with Legos and usually only does the kits he gets as presents. But he must have understood some of the movie as it was all about building Legos creatively without kits.

Speaking of building things...a friend gave Parker this marble run when he got too old for it. Parker put it together himself with no help from us.  He may not like movies, but he's quite the builder.

Elizabeth girl crush

Elizabeth is pretty much smitten with this girl Rosa in her gymnastics class. And Rosa seems to be smitten with her too.

Cookies

The girls are girl scouts and the whole thing bugs the crap out of me. But they like it and all their friends do it, so we do it.  Last weekend, we all got 30 boxes of cookies to sell.  Well, each girl got 30 so we got 60 boxes.  I knew I wasn't going to let the girls sell them door to door and because our house is so close to Safeway where there is an official booth, we can't just set up shop outside our house.  So, I posted on facebook and within a few days, all the cookies were gone.  Delivered to friends nearby, dropped off at houses, or shipped to Reno, they all left the building.  Michael was upset we didn't keep more for ourselves, but I figured we could always buy more...

Here are the girls selling at a booth in a store in Piedmont in the pouring rain.  In 6 hours, they sold 138 boxes. I was shocked. Despite Elizabeth's face, she had a great time and didn't want to leave when I brought Miranda up to the shift. 

Elizabeth and her pals

Elizabeth with Greta above and Lola below.

A rare sighting

Parker doesn't pay any attention to the foster cats and appears to be quite inconvenienced by their presence.  But on this day, while watching Survivor, he couldn't resist playing with Snow White.

Mercy Watson and eclairs

I took the girls to see a play by the Bay Area Children's Theatre company (that also runs Miranda's after school class) based on the book Mercy Watson about a pig that lives with a nice couple. It was cute, albeit a bit long with a better first act than second.  Before the show we walked to get a hot chocolate and found this place called Paris Baguette which was just a long room filled with tables that looked like this. I'm always telling Michael there are no places to just pop into to get a nice eclair so you can imagine how happy I was to find this place. It's in downtown Berkeley, but I'm sure I'll find many excuses to go there now.

Kittens

Here are the girls with our latest foster kittens that got adopted today.  Well, the black one got adopted, but the white one went to foster adopt with a vet tech which was great since she has cerebellar hypoplasia which means her balance is off and she can't really walk so great. She looks like a drunk cat.  Miranda came with me again and was happy and not at all sad when they both left the building. She said, "Well, our job here is done."  Until the next one, of course.

I submitted this photo to some litter company holding a kittens and kiddos cuddle photo contest. If the two cute twins with the special needs foster kittens don't win, the contest is rigged!

Ohlone museum project

Parker had to do a small research project on the fishing habits of the ohlone Indians. I gave him some tips to get started but he did it mostly on his own.

"Watch out for this Fucker!"

Yesterday on the way home from chinese food, Michael who was in the passenger seat said, "Watch out for this fucker" referring to a car that was turning in front of me.  The girls said, "Dad!  You said a bad word."  Then we started saying things that ended with the work Fucker.  Watch out Fucker. Move out of the way Fucker. Parker was hesitant to join in, but soon enough was yelling Fucker with the rest of it. Elizabeth sounded hilarious saying it. Not sure if it is high pitched voice or her manner, but it made me almost pee my pants every time she said it.  We were all swearing and laughing. It was great. I then had to remind them about not saying those things in school, in front of other kids or parents or really anywhere. They agreed, but I also told Michael it was his fault when they messed up and told their teacher to "move it fucker."