L.A., Part IV

Hi!

I miss you guys sooooo much! I can't wait to get home tomorrow night (even if I do get home after you go to sleep). Then I will be home for 3 days. Yay!

Yesterday my friend April gave me a giant tour of the area near my hotel. Our first stop were the canals in an area called Venice. The canals are little rivers that flow through the neighborhoods instead of streets. Everyone has their boat tied up in their front yard.

Next we went to Venice Beach. There is a long boardwalk that runs along the beach, so you can walk without having to walk in the sand. Plus there are little shops all along the boardwalk. We also saw some crazy street performers. There was a group of men doing crazy flips - two of them would build a pyramid, and a third man would jump over and do back flips. It was crazy! This is me on the board walk.

After Venice Beach, we went to Hollywood. Here's one of the stars on the sidewalk.

You can also see the hand prints and foot prints of famous people.

Finally, we ate dinner in an area called Santa Monica. We got food from a Mexican place like islands and sat aside to eat. 

I hope everyone feels better soon and you have a great day tomorrow. Leon and Mike, have fun on your field trip! Natalia, have fun at preschool! And Jewel, just have fun! :)

Love,

Mom

L.A., Part III

Hi!

I hope you had a great Tuesday. Natalia, I hope you enjoyed your first long day at school! (And I hope everyone else had a good day!)

Last night we went to the Santa Monica Pier. Here's the beach below the pier. That's the Pacific Ocean.

The pier has a little amusement park. There are dolphin-shaped bushes to greet you.

I rode a big ferris wheel with my friend Cynthia and her family. We went on it after dark when it was all lit.

Here's what the ground below looked like in the dark.

We didn't play them, but there were games where you could win prizes. They had a lot of Helly Kitty backpacks!

There were penguin friends for Percy and Waddles, too.

My friend April who used to work in my office lives in California now, and this afternoon she and I are going on an adventure. I'm sure I'll have more pictures from that. Have a great night!

I love you and miss you all!

Mom

L.A., Part II

Hi guys!

I hope you had a great Monday! Dad said you liked the pictures from the airplane, so here are a couple more. These are pictures of Los Angeles. Can you find the houses and roads?

There is a mall next door to my hotel with lots of really fancy stores. They have a Justice, too, and I found this awesome shirt in there. (No, Jewel, I didn't buy you anything. Too much to choose from!)

I had training (my grown up school) all day today, so I haven't gotten out to do much. I thought you would like to see some pictures from our hotel. There's a really big pool.

Even fancier than the umbrellas at Gran and Gene's pool, they have private rooms you can go in by the pool to get out of the sun.

This is one of the buildings you can see from the pool area.

I love you!

Mom

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'm in L.A. this week for work. For my family, at least, this is a long time and a long distance to be apart from each other. For Natalia, it has been emotional. She spent Friday clinging on to Jeff all day and then to me in the evening. Saturday we attended a birthday party for a good friend, which served as a good distraction (even if it meant the kids were crazy all day!). Due to post-party exhaustion, Natalia went to bed with little fuss by Natalia standards, but at 2:30am Sunday I found her sitting in her Elmo chair in her room just SCREAMING. When I went in, she burst into tears and just said, "I'm going to miss you!" I told her I would miss her too, promised to wake her when my alarm went off, and headed back to bed. She was back up 30 minutes later, at which point I tucked her in on the couch. At 5:30am, she asked to climb in bed with us. I was too tired to argue, so I ignored her and hoped she go away. Nope, she just crawled in bed and laid down right on top of me. By 5:50, I gave up on resting and the two of us got up.

Natalia and I had our usual morning battles until about 7:20, but when I went to finish packing, she was a whole new child. Suddenly, she was Helper Girl. She wanted to assist me. In addition to the usual clothes and toiletries, she packed a few other things she thought would be helpful. I started a tradition several trips ago of taking one of Leon or Natalia's stuffed animals with me when I travel solo. This time, in addition to packing Bunny, Natalia packed Bunny's blankie for me. Natalia actually got quite carried away, and I had to stealthily sneak things back out of my suitcase. Currently sitting in my closet at home under a pile of clothes waiting to be ironed are a baby doll, a Barbie, a Little People dad, and what Natalia calls her Harry Potter book which is a hard-backed journal on which she has "written" pages and pages of stories. However, in addition to Bunny and her blankie, I did end up with a few bonus items that made the transcontinental trek. My hotel room currently includes an Angry Bird, a chair for the Little People dad, a My Little Pony, a pair of working miniature binoculars, and a "guitar" made out of a Jello box and rubber bands.

Housekeeping is going to think I'm nuts, but I shouldn't get bored in my hotel room this week!
 

L.A., Part I

Hi guys!

I made it to California! I mostly spent the day waiting around or riding on planes and shuttles, so it wasn't too exciting. Here are a few pictures, though.

First I flew from Wilmington to Charlotte, then I changed planes and had to fly from Charlotte to L.A. There were lots of planes in line in Charlotte waiting to take off.

 This is what the tops of clouds look like!

What the ground looks like from way up high. (We were flying at about 32,000 feet or about 7 miles up!)

Bunny likes her new bed!

Angry Bird and Pony had dinner.

Can you spot Bunny? She was relaxing on the balcony outside my hotel room.

I hope you have a good night and a great day at school tomorrow!

Love,

Mom

First Day of Preschool

Natalia's first day of preschool was yesterday. To minimize drama, I didn't actually tell her when her first day of school was until bedtime on Monday. As her siblings were getting ready for bed, I told her that she also needed to set out clothes for Tuesday since she had preschool. She immediately started with a long list of questions, but thankfully, none of us lost any sleep over school starting. (In comparison to the boys, who stopped sleeping for about two weeks before kindergarten began. They had trouble falling asleep, and Michael especially woke up screaming with nightmares every night. We are still recovering!)

Yesterday morning there were some initial protests, but by the time we were ready to leave, Natalia was dragging me out the door, encouraging me to hurry because, "The teachers are waiting for me!!!"

It is clear that Natalia loved her first day, but getting the details of what actually happened at school has been a bit tricky. All she would tell Jeff about school is that they didn't go outside for recess. So I tried to extract some information from her when I got home from work.

Me: How was preschool? Did you have fun?

Natalia: (Smiling) We didn't go outside.

Me: Oh, okay. If you didn't go outside, what did you do?

Natalia: Everything!

Me: Wow! That sounds fun. What kind of things did you do?

(silence)

Me: Did you paint?

Natalia: No

Me: Did you play with blocks?

Natalia: No

Me: Did you play dress up?

Natalia: No, they don't have that.

Me: Hmmm. Can you tell me ONE thing that you did at preschool?

Natalia: (Still smiling) We didn't go outside.

Me: Did you have circle time?

Natalia: Yes. Two circles.

Me: What did you do in the circles?

Natalia: We didn't go outside.

And then Natalia ran off to play. So first day of preschool was successful. But what actually occurred is a mystery!

Hand Me Downs

We have always been lucky when it comes to getting clothes for the kids. When the boys were newborns, Jeff's cousin sent down boxes and boxes of clothes for them. She had a co-worker with twin boys who were about six months older than them, so not only did we inherit lots of clothing, they even had coordinating outfits.

As they've gotten older, they have a hand me down fairy. At the end of each season a friend packs up her son's clothes and sends it to us. A friend of my mom also periodically sends us bags of clothing, and collectively, the boys are set (especially when you factor in gifts from the grandparents). I was able to fully appreciate the pre-made wardrobe this weekend while I cleaned out their dresser.

It started simply. I am sick of seeing the boys get dressed for school each morning and they are wearing slipper socks, teensy little infant socks, or two horribly clashing socks. (Although I'm not sure the horribly clashing socks aren't intentional. Ree spent two years of her life wanting to only wear "mismatch" socks to school.) So I cleaned out their sock drawer, which resulted in an entire grocery bag of socks to donate to Goodwill. Then I moved on to their other drawers. When I got to long sleeve tees, by the time I purged everything that would no longer fit over Leon's giant noggin, there were two sad little shirts in the drawer. Pants were even worse. I had Leon try on several pairs of pants from last year. Every pair ended just below the knee. We were covered on rainy days, but I thought perhaps we might want some longer pants on frosty mornings.

So I went out to the garage where I keep the extra clothes we receive. Hello, instant wardrobe! I was able to refill their drawers with at least enough clothes to get us through the school week. No shopping required! Phew. Now the task is finding families to take the bags and bags of purged shirts and pants...