Family

Moving On…

It’s been a busy June. We finally moved to our new abode, which involved moving vans, storage runs and such. Thankfully, we’re all set. We just need to sell our previous house, and we’re good to go. We’re still putting things away a little at a time, figuring out everything’s new home.

Allison is excited to go to kindergarten at her new school next year. We went to the New Family event yesterday. Allison and Katherine promptly headed for the playgrounds. We peeled them off for a trip to the classrooms, the snack table and for a presentation in the auditorium. Allison was surprisingly quiet with the kindergarten teachers, saying a brief hello. She finally opened up when a teacher asked if she liked to read Magic Tree House. Allison promptly answered that Yes! she loves the series, and even has the first half of books at home!

These days her book selection is more varied. She’s migrated to Katherine’s old collection of Rainbow Magic Fairy books. And, Katherine has moved on to the Bailey School House kids, occasionally still reading through her A-Z Mystery Series. Thankfully, we get the library summer reading list later this week. And, the girls are excited to sign up for the library reading program, which awards a new laptop to the Grand Prize Winner.

Making Money

Katherine loves trips to Office Depot. I’m not sure I understand the appeal. But, she loves to stand in the writing utensil aisle, count her allowance money and see what she can purchase. I’ve told the kids they can earn extra money if they help around the house. So, both kids mopped and dried the laundry room floor and vacuumed their rooms and got an extra dollar. Allison also mopped the downstairs bath and vacuumed the entire downstairs…very fastidious and careful in the process. Allison told me the other day, “Mom – thank you for buying this new house. I will help you clean it since you can’t do it by yourself.” Gotta love that!

Our Spring Break

We tagged along with Steve down to Palo Alto on his recruiting trip, turning a one day commitment into a family vacation. Our goal for this vacation was to visit places we hadn’t been before (or the kids didn’t remember visiting):

1) Day 1: Drive from Palo Alto to Monterey Bay Aquarium in Bay Area traffic. We have tons of amazing pictures of the fish, and the kids took pledges to eat one less burger a week to save the world. Whew!  You may/not remember the blue shell, where we took a picture of the girls when they were 4 and 1. This picture turned out just as interesting. 🙂

2) Day 2: Stay in Palo Alto. The kids were SO excited to visit the pool, which was frigid. So, you can see pictures of them wrapped up in towels basking in the sun. If nothing else, we got lots of vitamin D – and less swimming than expected during the trip.  Dad made good on his promise to jump in but quickly jumped back out due to the cold water.

3) Day 3: Go to Exploratorium, San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf, then the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio. We met KJ at this very new museum which we ended up exploring more fully on our last day. Without kids, we could have easily spent 2-3 hours reading the exhibits, but with the kids it was a much shorter trip. Allison enjoyed watching the old Disney cartoons.

4) Day 4: Go to San Jose and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. Wow! The outdoors were amazing. Allison and I played almost a full game of Senet, before Steve and Katherine pulled us away for an In-and-Out Burger run. The inside was fascinating. Again, it was a speedy trip thru the exhibits as Allison’s main preoccupation was….mummies. There are four mummies, and she looked at all of them. We also walked thru the mockup of an Egyptian tomb. We later hung out with an old friend and his family while Steve recruited at Stanford. The kids loved running around the Palo Alto park and playing with their buddies.

5) Day 5: Check out, go to San Franciso for some last sight seeing which included the museum, Embarcadero and Coit Tower.

House Stuff

Our home is finally (well…within a couple hours) of being on the market. Funny enough, to me and Steve, this means having a sign in front of our house. To Katherine, this means having a home on the Windemere or Redfin web site.

The last couple of months, she and Steve have been surfing the Windemere web site for homes. Ironically, all the things that she thinks are cool are the things on my “do not buy” list, including hot tubs, pools, elevators… Allison is aware but less focused on the home selling/buying process thankfully. Her only concern is making sure she gets a decent room in the new house! 

For the time being, Bisco has been relocated to his new condo in the garage, e.g. a roomy wire crate with a nice pad. He goes in during the day when we’re cleaning or when we might have realtors/prospective buyers visiting. Then, he comes out at dinner time to hang out and socialize during family time and the evening. He’s also getting brushed with his new furminator brush, which seems to be cutting down on shedding significantly.