A Day At The Farm

 Last week, some of the neighborhood mammas and I found ourselves at the park after preschool.  We decided to plan on an Thursday after school outing for as long as the nice weather lasts.  So we decided to head to a farm/park today.  The kids got to see animals, run around and feed the giant geese.

Red Fish finally got to check off one of her summer goals.  She has been dying to climb a tree.  We finally found one suitable for climbing with low branches.  She was one happy girl!

Progress

Yesterday, I went to Red Fish's new preschool to observe.  Red Fish has been telling me that she didn't like school, had no friends etc. etc.  I was extremely concerned and worried that I made a bad decision moving her.  During my visit it was very obvious she is fine.  She is communicating with everyone at the new school really well.  She couldn't have cared less that I was there with her, she was running all over playing with the other kids and thoroughly enjoying herself.  I'm greatly relieved.  One less crisis to deal with!  I asked her to sing one of the songs she learned in school for my camera.  Her progress on articulation is really obvious in the song.  She has really started getting those "f", "s", "v" and "k" sounds.  Even some of the harder blends are there.  It never stops being exciting that she is making such progress on her speech.  It continues to blow my mind that we are in such a different place than we were last year at this time.

We had Two Fish's mom over for dinner tonight so the girls could spend some time with her.  They looked so cute reading bedtime stories together I had to take a picture.

Birds & Bubs

Just a little peak at the personality of our little Bubs.  She performs for us nightly during dinner.  

You also get to see her bossy little ways.

Things have been crazy around here lately so we are concentrating on very small projects right now.  Yesterday we made bird feeders because the girls have been all about birds since they went to the aviary with their Daddy.  We used toilet paper rolls (extra classy I know) with peanut butter spread on them and then rolled them in birdseed.  We used pipe cleaners to hang them up. 

Happy Birthday Bub & Bockum!

 Sunday morning was the primary program.  Red Fish sang "I Am A Child of God" with the other sunbeams in her class.  She really needed a new Sunday dress and I couldn't resist getting New Fish one as well.  New Fish (in case you didn't know) is totally OBSESSED with princesses right now.  She talks about them from morning until night and I knew she would automatically think this was a princess dress.  After church we headed to my grandparents house for a birthday party for New Fish aka Bub and my grandfather "Bockum."  They share a birthday 85 years apart.

 We played pin the tiara on the princess and had dinner together.

 My family is so fun.  I love the way they all completely dote on my girls.  It is so nice to have so many great people around to love my girls and play with them, especially when I was totally worn out this week.  They even humored me by wearing birthday crowns.

 Princess Bub- as she calls herself these days- was completely spoiled and she loved every single minute of it.  She was putting on quite a show for everyone dancing and singing. 

Here is New Fish's incredible amount of gifts.  Good thing I decided to try and rein myself in this year and buy less gifts because these girls get so much stuff from the rest of my family.  She got a stuffed stingray, a new scarf and hat, 3 dress ups, a new church dress, puzzles, princess books, a princess magnetic doll, puzzles, a princess lunch box, two tiaras, a princess bath toy, a pony, Beauty and the Beast the movie, a princess bowl and plate, a piggy bank and some princess art supplies.

New Fish had a wonderful day!  I plan to write a post later this week about how much she has grown up recently.  She is such a cute wonderful little girl!

Party Weekend

 On Saturday I threw a baby shower for my sister in law Lee Lee.  She is due with a little boy next month.  Unfortunately my camera batteries died so I only got two bad pictures of my decorations and nothing of the people who came!  I'm lame.  It was a nice shower with some great people and Lee Lee got some really nice gifts.

Friday and Saturday I worked at the dive shop sale/party selling scuba gear and making snow cones!  New Fish and Red Fish thought the snow cones were extra delicious.

More Flavia

 My reading habbits over the last month have been pretty pathetic.  I haven't been reading nearly enough.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2) by Alan Bradley

I get a kick out of this series. Flavia is hilarious. The mystery isn't quite as good (none of them are really mind-blowing) but I enjoy the story and love the characters.  

 

A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce #3) by Alan Bradley  

This one was definitely darker than it's predecesors but still a quick, enjoyable read. I enjoyed the development of Flavia's family relationships. Hopefully it is the start of a larger story that will tie the series together. Flavia was as always, delightful.

 

Apples to Apples

Red Fish made this lovely apple print piece in preschool.  New Fish was incredibly jealous.  From the moment she woke up this morning she was determined to "paint apples."  So I sliced an apple in half and gave her some paint

 She made about two prints of the apple and then her little hands went straight into the paint.  Notice her face is already blue because she colors herself at least once a day.  Luckily the markers are extremely washable.  That's important when you have such a messy little artist.

Here is her "apple art".  She told me it was "very red."  I'm happy I could oblige and help her fulfill what was apparently a very important vision.

When Mommy Is Away... The Kids Will Play With Daddy

While I was gone Two Fish took the girls on several adventures.  He took them to a local aviary and to the store to buy cookies.  Red Fish was so impressed with the trip to the store and the pink cookies that she even showed them to me on google chat. 

Notice that they are dressed in cute clothes and have their hair fixed.  I was impressed.  Two Fish is such a good Dad that he not only took them on fun outings but had them appropriately attired. 

 The girls loved "the bird zoo" and I think they barely missed me at all!  They had way too much fun with Daddy. 

 There was also an awesome trip to the park.

 Monday was spent at Grandma's house playing with cousins.  It sounds like they had a pretty great time overall.  It makes me feel good that they love their daddy so much and that he takes such great care of them!

This last picture was taken by cute cousin E.  I stole it off her facebook.

San Francisco- Day 4

I think we've zig-zagged across most of the city now.  We've been relying mostly on the public transportation and doing a whole lot of walking.  We rode the bus everywhere today.  On one bus there was a ninety-four year old woman who gave us a pretty great laugh.  She was hitting on the bus driver and telling all sorts of wild stories about her life.  Apparently she is like Alaska, everyone knows what it is but nobody wants to go there.  She definitely made our ride more interesting.


We went to Golden Gate park and The de Young museum.  They have a nice permanent collection.  There are a lot of American works including many colonial pieces and many from the Hudson River school.  There were a lot of landscapes, which aren't my favorite.  The hard thing about living so far away from great museums is that I have to visit them all in a few hours.  It's difficult to absorb that much work in a short amount of time.  I'd prefer to be able to see parts of the collections over extended periods of time so that I could digest them more easily.  S'est la vie.

The main reason for visiting the de Young was to see the Pablo Picasso exhibit they are currently hosting.  It contains just over 100 of the artist's personal collection, usually housed in the Musée National Picasso.  It was a great exhibit comprised of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints drawn from every phase of the artist’s career.  I enjoyed seeing the wide range of artistic movements and styles that Picasso went through during his prolific career.  There were pieces from his blue period, rose period, expressionist, cubist, proto-Surrealist, Surrealist,  and Neoclassical.  Seeing them all together gives you a real respect for Picasso's scorn of fixed ideologies.  Picasso's ability to assimilate new ideas, political influences

I wish the exhibit had been curated slightly differently.  It seemed to jump around too much. The works weren't really placed together thematically or chronologically.  I almost think placing them chronologically would have been the most interesting so it would show his progression through different styles and also demonstrate how he sometimes revisited previous periods and worked in multiple pictorial modes. 

The work in the exhibit is filled with paintings I have seen frequently.  I couldn't help but hear lines from my kid's Picasso book, Painting with Picasso (Mini Masters), in my head since many of the pictures were in the exhibit.


The exhibit is definitely worth seeing.  I always enjoy Picasso and seeing them in the flesh is always so much better.

San Francisco - Day 3

This morning we went out for crepes and then waited in line to ride the cable car.  We were the first ones on so I decided to hang off the side on the very front spot on the train.  It was fun.  I had a lot of tourists take pictures of me.  I'm totally famous now. (wink wink.)

I tried to take pictures while riding on the side.  Not such a great picture but a fun memory.

 We rode the cable car to China town and walked around for awhile.  Then we walked to Union Square and did some shopping.  All of our meals have been fabulous because we've been eating in all of these family owned restaurants and they are fabulous.  I love eating at places like that.  Today we had lunch at Sear's Fine Foods and dinner at Pompei's Grotto.

 

San Francisco - Day 2

This morning we got up early and went for a pancake breakfast.  We rode the ferry over to Alcatraz and took the audio tour.  It was pretty interesting to listen to the former guards and inmates talk about their years there.  I can't imagine being one of the guard's families who lived on the island.  What a crazy way to grow up.

 After lunch we rented some bicycles and rode from the pier around the coast and up over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County.  It was a great ride once I got my bike adjusted a bit.  It has been forever since I went on a real bike-ride.    It was a fun adventure.  The bridge is extremely crowded and I was almost mowed over by an enormous man in a fur coat but other than that it was great.

After dinner in a local Italian place we went for sundaes at Ghiardelli.  Fabulous day. 

San Francisco- Day 1

 For my 30th birthday (which isn't until November) my Mom took me to San Francisco, California.  It has been a long time since I have gotten to spend this much time with my Mom and this is a trip we have actually tried to take twice before so it was long overdue.  Two Fish is home with the girls.  My mom and I flew in late last night and we were off early this morning to see the sights.  We are staying right near Fisherman's wharf and we will be here until Monday.

The first thing we did this morning was go to Boudin's bakery for sour dough french toast.  Yum.

We went to pier 39 and did some shopping and saw the fabulous sea lions.  We ate lunch on the pier and watched the sea lions lounge about and try and push eachother off of the pier.

We went to Ghiardelli square and visited some of the art galleries.

The best part of the day was visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  It seriously made my whole body buzz with excitement.  It has been so long since I have been in the presence of truly great artwork all in one place.  One thing home is missing is access to a great art museum.  The permanent collection is very nice.  I really wish I could visit them with my children and really let them experience the art the way it was meant to be experienced rather than showing them pictures in a book.  Sigh… Someday.

Anyway- we had tickets to the Stein exhibit and it was completely amazing.  It may be the best exhibit I have ever visited aside from when the Van Gogh museum exhibit came to the LACMA when I was in high school. 

Gertrude stein and her brothers Michael and Leo were extremely influential in the early 20^th century Bohemian Parisian art scene.  They befriended most of the most avant-garde artists of the time period and filled their homes literally floor to ceiling with paintings and sketches by these “wild beasts” and fauves’ artworks.  It was an astounding collection.  The exhibit features real photographs of the insides of the Stein homes that are literally mind blowing.  The collection was beyond amazing.  The pieces now reside all over the world and in dozens of museums and collections.  I can only imagine how much work went in to securing them for this exhibit. 

The exhibit is interesting not only because of it’s vast coverage of Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne (one Lautrec) and other 20^th century artists but the story of the Stein family’s connection with the artists.  I loved seeing a note from Picasso inviting them to lunch to “check out the latest Gaugains.” As if that is a normal everyday occurrence.  Some of the exhibit notes talk about Leo and Gertrude Stein having artistic differences and arguing over the importance of the cubist movement and practically dissolving their relationship.  I can only imagine the raging discussions that went on in that home.  The epiphanies that took place in those walls must have been incredible. 

The Steins had sketches and portraits of themselves by Matisse and Picasso.  They had Picasso’s early sketches preparing for Le Demoiselles d’Avignon.  They studied with these artists and have notebooks filled with notes. They introduced Henri Matisse to Pablo Picasso and inspired a bitter rivalry.  Sarah and Michael Stein were almost single handedly responsible for introducing Matisse’s work to the US.  I’m excited to read more about the Stein’s relationship with all of these people and about how the exhibit itself came together in the book I purchased of the exhibit. 

Completely inspiring and amazing.  A truly lovely day.  I’m such a lucky girl my mom brought me and lucky my wonderful husband is taking care of the girls.