Holiday party

Kids stayed home with Jim and Allie. 

Nick and I went downtown for my work holiday party. While Nick didn’t walk away with the first prize Apple Watch, he did get $200 to Williams Sonoma (Christmas shopping for me is done!). We ended up at Bernadette’s with 11 of my coworkers for an after party. But then Nick and I left because we had to get home.

It rained!

Help from friends

Calvin, as much as he tries to be a big kid, relies on his friends to help him. His friends taught him how to tie his shoes and helped him with the “tying board”, the Montessori lesson on tying. And today he was struggling with zipping up his jacket/sweatshirt and I saw his best friend run over to help him. 

Thanksgiving 2018!

Food, games, family and fun.

Only child

I think Calvin has been enjoying his time as an only child this week. Although he has shed a few tears because he misses Ellie and is counting down the hours till Thanksgiving. 

We made cookies together. He wanted to do fancy cookies so I found a recipe for chipperdoodles, snickerdoodles with chocolate chips, and he helped make the dough (he’s become an expert at breaking eggs) and rolled the cookies and then flattened them on the tray. 

Today we went to special breakfast. He marched up to the counter and asked the barista if their hot chocolate could be made with soy milk or almond milk. They said it could, and he proceeded to order himself a hot chocolate without dairy milk. The barista was slightly taken aback by the litte boy who knew what he wanted. 

Feast

Today was the Multicultural Feast at Meher. It’s always a fun event with lots of great food and fun people. Today Calvin samples Armenian cheese pastry, Cuban savory and sweet plantains, mushroom polenta, Chinese dumplings, turkey, fruit, Indian chicken and rice, and turkey shaped sugar cookies (our contribution). He ate it all but said the mushroom and garlic polenta was his favorite. I liked the savory fried plantains with salt (courtesy of Ellie’s piano teachers husband who is Cuban). 

He requested dressing up for the feast. He chose a red, white, and blue plaid button down because it had America’s colors and the freast was to celebrate America. 

Calvin also shared with me a craft where he wrote out all that he was thankful for:

My mom

My dad

My teachers

My friends at school

Kindness cards

Materials

My birthday

New rugs

Soccer season keeps going

This pst Saturday was our first game as past of the Coastal Soccer League, League Cup. Which is like playoffs for all the club teams in Southern California...or from Bakersfield south. Because we are playing in the Silver division (upper division) we didn’t play in the first round of the Cup and got a by into the second round. We had two games on Saturday against teams who made it out of the first round or got a by into the second round. 

The girls pulled out wins in both games!! Despite colds, lack of practices, and missing a player (so there were no substitutes) the girls played really really well and won. Ellie has some great saves, intimidated some players on breakaways so they missed shots, and got complimented by the referee for her communication with her teammates and calling of plays on the field. 

And so the season continues into December.

And we got Calvin’s school pictures today...so great

Promotion

I got word today that I was promoted to Associate Principal and am now part of the WJE Senior Staff. It’s been a process and it was exciting to get the news today. 

So we went to dinner at Roy’s with the kids to celebrate. The kids devoured teriyaki salmon, lobster pot stickers, and Thai chili calamari. Ellie also liked the macadamia nut encrusted mahi mahi. And of course, all devoured the pineapple upside down cake for dessert. 

I didn’t get any photos at dinner but all in all it was a great time and good celebration. 

So here is an example of my management skills in action. (Calvin at my desk working on Monday while I was working. Ellie was in another office doing her homework.)

Morning sweetie

This is how he greeted me this morning after waking up...

We aren’t morning people.

Winning

Calvin got another kindness card for helping a friend at school and he tied one shoe all by himself this morning. He was very very excited about it. 

Food drive

Calvin was very excited to take the food that he picked out at the grocery store this weekend to his food drive at school. He was proud of helping others, and I’m proud of him too! 

Fires

It was a crazy weekend due to the fires in TO and Malibu. Ellie’s soccer game in Camarillo was cancelled and Nick worked a lot of overtime (it was s rough news week in SoCal). But the silver lining meant that Ellie and a friend went to the ninja gym and got to hang out and I took Calvin to the Pasadena Arts and Crafts fair and I got a couple trinkets that I didn’t know I needed (clock earrings!!!!). Calvin also insisted on going to the grocery store to pick out food for the food drive at his school. Sunday the air quality was still bad so most the day was spent inside. A couple of bread loaves got made and things got cleaned up. I mean...look at that pantry!

Tie shoes

Calvin has to have these tie shoes when we saw them at the store a while back. They are cool and have his favorite super heroes all over them. I made him promise that he would work to learn how to tie them himself if I got them for him. 

Today, he ties one show by himself. 

Earlier this week he got a lesson on the “tie board” at school. His good friends Julius and Eli helped him. This morning after several attempts his sister helped him with where to hold the loops so that he could tie them. And he was successful!

In other news, Ellie pulled straight As on her report card!

Freeze Tag

Today, after Ellie’s piano lesson, when we got to Meher to pick up Calvin, many of his friends were still there and playing outside. Calvin asked if she would play tag with them. And, off they went...playing a game of freeze tag. 

Instafamous

Calvin made the Meher Instagram account

Game night

A little while ago, we got our the Wii and played Super Smash Bros with the kids. And then we played Wii sports with them. One of Wii sports games is baseball where you can pitch and hit in the game. 

Well Calvin was hooked and asks for game night every weekend. He loves tennis and baseball. He actually beat Nick in the baseball game...and I don’t think Nick was playing easy on him.