A Day at the Zoo

Elliott and I had a wonderful opportunity to spend the day with our friends visiting from Montana. It was SO nice to see them again since we haven't seen them since our visit to Montana in November!  They were in town visiting family, which also corresponded to an event their organization, Guide On was sponsoring at the zoo. (This is such a great group that they founded to help the children of our fallen military servicemen/women.)

The boys had a great time together. Elliott had so much fun with them and seems to have really bonded with Matthew (they even held hands :).  We even were able to finish off our fun day with a yummy sushi dinner, which was perfect since Elliott's new favorite thing is sashimi! (He ate 7 pieces of salmon!)  Here are some pictures from our day...(which I of course am sharing or else I may have a grandma mutiny on my hands soon!! Sorry its been so long between photos.)

Elliotisms

Here's a couple more "Elliott takes" on things he enjoys around our house:

Toy Story - "Buzz"
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Count with Me (Sesame Street DVD) - "1,2,3,5 Friends"
Move With Me (kids yoga DVDs) - "Poses"
Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss - "Walking Book"
corn kernels - "baby corns"
salad dressing - "salad sauce"
binoculars - "eyes"
paint - "colors"

Just wanted to record them for posterity!

Granpa's Helper

Elliott is a helper. I've talked about it in the past and its definitely one of the funnest aspects of having a two year old around the house. Unfortunately, there's only so many projects you can help with when you live is a fairly small rental condo. Fortunately, there's a place he can go to get his project helping fix.

Ready for today's project!

When Elliott spends the day with my parents at their house, my dad plans little projects. Sometimes these are things that he specifically plans for Elliott to help with (constructing the garden windmill, for example) or they may be projects that were already on the agenda for the day (such as fixing the leak in the bathroom sink).  Regardless, Elliott is invited to help.

Inspecting plants for weeds

In the past, I've only seen the finished product of the day's projects. But last weekend, I got to 'help out' as well. The main project for the day: installing a new water faucet in the lower garden. My dad had already tapped into the main water supply and had separately built up the pipe structure that would connect the water to a new garden faucet - all for the ultimate goal of having a water source at the bottom of the property. 

Learning how everything lines up

Making sure the facet knob works

So the day's project was attaching the faucet structure to the water source.  This was great fun because it involved digging a trench with a special trench shovel, connecting the pipes, leveling everything out and then testing the water.

Making sure everything's level

And this is where I must talk about how great my dad is with Elliott. Throughout the day, he was continually sharing what he was doing with Elliott, explaining how things worked, and why he was doing what he was doing. And as these pictures show, this is not lost on Elliott. He is taking it all in, processing it and storing it for later use. In fact, just the other night when I was getting something out from under our bathroom sink, Elliott kneeled down and pointed to the pipes under the sink. He then proceeded to explain to me how the water went through the pipes and how you had to make sure they were very tight. :)

Learning how to tell the difference between the plant and the weed

For a kid who wants to know how things work, I think its pretty safe to say he has a good time with grandpa. He loves to show off what he's accomplished for the day and still likes to make little 'tweaks' to the windmill when he gets ahold of a screw driver ;)

Showing off 'his' weed

San Diego County Fair!!

Sisters

Moo

Creepy People Eyes

Kids

So Many Goats, So Little Time

"Race Car!"

Thinking: "What the Heck?" about the junior sling shot

$6

"Oh, Wow! Ride it?"

A Boy and His Dog

Buzz, Buzz

Fair Goers

Requirement Fulfilled: Smoked Turkey Leg

Plum Tuckered

Weekly Retrospective 6/19-6/25/11

Summer Time

Ahhh, summer.  Have I mentioned how excited I am that it is summer? I know for me, as a working adult, it hasn't meant all that much to me over the last few years. Just more work weeks, weekends, and avoidance of the San Diego tourist crowds.

Even since Brad's been back in school, he's usually in summer school, so again, its usually more of the same.  But this summer seems different.
 

 

When Brad initially applied to UCSD, he planned to take the summer off if he got in.  But when we didn't find out in March or April like we initially thought we would, summer school was back on the books...until the San Diego Community College District canceled summer school all together - hello, budgetary cutbacks.

Fortunately, Brad is in such a place with his schooling that it didn't really make a difference. He would have had enough time next fall and spring to take the classes he would have needed at Mesa to apply to UCSD as a guarantee transfer in 2012 without needing summer school (thank goodness!). All this to say, even without the most awesome-est of news, that Brad is in fact heading to UCSD this September, he was going to have a summer off.

And now that we do have that most awesome-est of news, the summer seems even sweeter.  Its a great chunk of time when we can focus just on our family.

I don't think most people realize how hard it is to be in school and have a new family. Just like how the obligations of parenthood never go away, neither do the obligations of being a student when you are in school. You can never relax. There is always something that needs to be done. Something to read, something to write, something to study for. There is no down-time. Life ends up being a great balancing act. This also means that sometimes things have to dip more into the school side (during finals and major exams) than the family side. So we compensate and shift things around as needed. Because that's what partners do.

But when school's out? Ahhh...so nice!  I'm trying not to get spoiled, since I know the next three years (or so) will be busy and crazy and juggley. Which means that I'm also enjoying every moment of this summer. So far we've had such a nice mix of things to do and down-time. And I look forward to taking a bit of time off work here and there to make even more of it. In fact, a weekday trip to the San Diego County Fair is next on the agenda (the theme this year is 'cars' after all, so we couldn't possibly miss that!).

I also want to plan a beach day and hopefully a couple little getaways, one as a family and one just the two of us. The details don't really matter. The important thing is spending time with my guys and just 'being' together.

Weekly Retrospective 6/12-6/18/11