JapanFest 2012 & 5K Success Story!

Last Sunday, I gave Sidney a hair cut. Here are the before and after photos.  He assists me by holding the water spray bottle while I am cutting his hair.  I have to lock it shut or he will continue to spray it and wet up the rug.  He helped me with laying out the newspaper and lugging the chair part of the way into the family room from the dining room.

Today, we went to JapanFest. It's an annual festival that my company sponsors. It takes place at the Gwinnett Center, which is around 40 minutes north from our house.  We went last year and we enjoyed it.  This year, was a lot of fun too. I had free tickets that my company gave out to all of its employees. I saw only two people from my company and they were manning a balloon fishing booth that Cleo and Sidney enjoyed doing. I don't have pictures this year from them doing it.

We took pictures with a shogun warrior.

Cleo took a picture with two people manning the fortune telling booth.  I paid $1 to get my fortune, it's kind of like a longer version of a generic fortune cookie fortune.

Cleo played a ring toss and got cotton candy.

Sidney found a booth selling an inflated shinkansen train car which he is in love with.  He wants to sleep with it.  He took such good care of it during the festival.  He would look back to make sure it was still on its wheels.  Shinkansen is what the Japanese bullet trains are called.  And an action shot of Cleo about to enjoy her cotton candy.  One of the American attorneys in my department brought back a mini motorized shinkansen train from Japan. She was there for 5 weeks last Fall.  Sidney still occasionally plays with it.

Cleo the Brave posed for pictures on an ATV and speed boat.

Sidney drove his train on the back of the speedboat - you can see him in the above picture and more clearly in the below picture.

Cleo and Sidney sat in a little jeep with two rows of seating. There are other kids in the front row.

Sidney posed with a large inflated lucky cat.

We repeatedly and successfully steered the kids away from the face painting booth since we intended to go immediately home afterward for naps.  The last time they had face painting done, it was earlier in the day.

The last thing we did at the festival was look at the the koi show. It's amazing how large those goldfish type fish can get.  Some were really pretty. There was a white one with a red oblong circle on the top of its head; someone commented that it resembled the Japanese flag.  Cleo selected a purple goldfish keychain that lights up; we bought it from one of the koi vendors.  She presses one side of its gills to get it to light up.

Cleo, Sidney and I fell asleep in the car on the way home.  When we got home, the kids did not nap.  Around 2:15 pm when it was clear they were not falling asleep, I took them to the library to pick up some books that I had put on hold and that were finally in. Prior to going, I packed the kids some lunch - ham sandwiches, chips and water.  Cleo had a ham and cheese sandwich on a wheat pita.

Cleo has discovered that she likes pita bread. I am going to get larger pita bread because it's hard to fit a whole sandwich in a mini pita bread, which is the size that I had bought to make my sandwiches. Sidney had just ham on wheat - I only have him half a sandwich. Cleo had Skittles for dessert and Sidney had a Tropical Tie Dye fruit roll-up. I promise you they eat much better during the week. :-)

Cleo enjoyed her first week of healthy lunches. I learned to not give her a ton of vegetables to dip in the ranch dressing. She cannot finish a whole lot of vegetables in the time she is allotted at school for lunch.  She enjoyed the tofu and asparagus wrap.  And she really liked the spinach and turkey wraps, I put in a lot of fresh spinach.  Roger found packaged fruit slices and we gave her those each day. She also really likes baby carrots and steamed broccoli. She did not care for the yellow or orange bell peppers. We will steam the green beans we got last week and she can take them this week and dip them in ranch dressing.

Today, at the library, I returned all of Sidney's library books.  I found out later that he liked one of them a lot and he burst into real tears when  he discovered I had returned it.  I discovered that he like the book when I was putting him to bed for the night and he asked for it.  I will try to loan it again tomorrow or Monday. It was a Berenstein's Bear book title Nothing Happens at the Aquarium. He hasn't shown any interest in any of the library books I have gotten him lately but he must have read the book with Roger one night.  I felt terrible.

Cleo selected some new books and Sidney selected a book about train sounds titled, "A Train goes Clickity Clack" or something like that.  Cleo and Sidney looking for books:

Cleo and Sidney sharing the rocking chair in the kids section of the library.

We left the library around 3:30pm and headed home.  At home, I played Hungry Hungry Hippos with Sidney while Cleo read one of her new library books, "I Like Me" to Roger.  Then, Cleo, Sidney and I played an interactive, silly Dr. Seuss game. Then, Cleo, Sidney and I played hide and seek.  Roger was on the couch watching college football but he was instrumental during our hide and seek game in getting the kids to count to 10. Sidney would stop at 5 and sometimes Cleo stopped at 7.  Cleo and I enjoy hide and seek but Sidney LOVES it.  Then, we all played Memory with Sidney's Thomas the Train memory game.  That was fun and Cleo won.

We gave the kids baths, ate dinner, a decent frozen margarita pizza we got weeks ago from Trader Joe's.  Roger didn't eat it because he likes meat on his pizza, he ate leftovers.  The kids and I had broccoli with our pizza. Cleo and I had fresh basil leaves on ours; the basil was from our basil plant on the deck.  We are also growing Thai basil and it's awesome. It smells so good and adds such great flavor to food. I stuff a pita pocket with avocado, hummus, spinach, splash of soy sauce, and a generous amount of Thai basil. It's one of my favorite weekend lunches.

Tomorrow, we are going to church, doing some food shopping, and Cleo and Roger are starting one of her school projects. She has to create an "all about me" cube.  Roger got a styrofoam cube on which they will past pictures and drawings.

I almost forgot to provide an update on my 5K race! On Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012 at 7pm, I participated in the Kaiser Permanente 5K race. It starts and ends near Turner Field where the Braves play.  The course runs through Georgia State University and by some big hotels. I ran the first mile with my training partner, Val, but she got a stitch in her side a mile in so I apologetically abandoned her. I ran for most of it and walked for around 5 minutes of it. I even jogged up the hills, there seemed like there were a lot of them. I found out later that Val finished the run in 41 minutes which is great because she got another stitch later on. She's one of the attorneys in my department, there are only 4 of us total counting my boss.  My boss, Jim, did the run too and he did it in 27 minutes.  He ran in those crazy looking skeletoes sneaker type shoes.  Val is 30 and Jim is 45.  Val, Jim, and I were the only 3 from the YKK group to run it.

I finished the 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in 38 minutes!  I cannot believe I did it in such a short time. I was sure I was jogging super, crazy slow but I was doing around a 13 minute mile. I felt amazing afterward. I was so proud of myself. I had not been exercising for the 2 weeks prior because of my banged knee then my stubbed right pinky toe.  The pinky toe still looks crazy bad but my primary physician saw it on Monday, Sept. 10 during my annual physical and said it was suffering from a contusion and was not broken.  I wore sneakers to work all day so as not to squeeze the toe.  It was smart that I didn't exercise for the past two weeks because I am sure I would have hurt more during the run on Thursday.  After the race, I picked up my race t-shirt, grabbed some water and bananas, got a free sample of McDonald's strawberry/banana smoothie, walked slowly to my car, and drove home.  I drove separately from the other 25-30 YKK employees who came in their own cars or the company van. They all live north of Turner Field and I live south. I wish my knees were in better shape or I would train for a longer run because it's such an exhilarating feeling during the run, I don't want to stop! But then my knees hurt a lot after and the day after. When I was training, I could never run more than two times a week. If I ran more, my knees would hurt really bad.

I don't have any pictures of myself from the race. I may have access to a group shot at some point and will be sure to post it at a later time.

Have a great week!

Nature Walking and Trike Riding

Sunday morning, Sept. 2, we returned some things to Ikea, got some organic lunch meat at Trader Joe's, and  went on a nature walk to Piedmont Park.  Cleo had a nature walk project to complete and she had to observe 5 plants, then draw them, and write a sentence about them.  She picked some branches with flowers:

She jumped to take a gingko tree specimen.

She selected a little branch of berries from a tall bush.

Sidney of course wanted his own branch.

We did not take a sample from the below tree but they both wanted to have their pictures taken in front of it. Our little nature lovers!

After the kids took a nap, Cleo did some homework with Roger and I took Sidney outside to practice riding his tricycle. He needed to practice for the Sept. 5 St. Jude's fundraising Trike-A-Thon at this daycare.

Cleo came out at one point to see how Sidney was doing on his trike.

After homework and trike riding, the kids helped me put in a big stick in the planter to anchor the tomato plant. The plant was leaning entirely over the edge and needed something to keep it upright. I found a suitable stick when we were leaving the park. Sidney insisted on carrying to the car despite the fact that the stick was longer than Sidney was tall.

This morning, we took the kids to the Dekalb Farmers Market in Decatur, GA.  We wanted to diversify Cleo's lunches and she also has a plant-related project due on Sept. 14.  That project is now added to the already existing project she has due on Sept. 14. For that project, she has to paste pictures (real or drawn) into a a book (she make the book) and finish 4 sentences.  Her teacher provided the first half of the sentences, e.g., "My friend makes me feel..."  The plant project entails observing 5 plants that we eat. She has to draw a picture of the plant.  We bought the following foods that she can select from:  one little radish, oranges, string beans, Brussels sprouts, two green peanuts (which look like regular peanuts but they have to be cooked before one eats them), one yellow bell pepper, one orange bell pepper, two broccoli crowns, and two bunch of asparagus.  As I was putting her to bed for her nap, she said she was very excited to try the radish because she had never had one before. I suppose we need to expose them both to more of a variety of fruits and vegetables.

There is a bakery in the Farmers Market. Cleo loves frosted cinnamon buns of the Cinnabun variety.  The cinnamon bun at the market was not frosted so Cleo opted for a chocolate croissant. The chocolate was super bitter but she enjoyed the buttery, flaky croissant.  She commented that it was buttery without  our even telling her that there was butter in it. Sidney selected a cream cheese danish. He ate around 1/3 of it. I used to love cheese danish but have not eaten them much in the past 10 years. I took 2 bites of his, it was really good.  When we got home, Sidney ate his golden plum that he picked out.  For some reason, stores are calling plums by the name "pluot." So the bin's sign said, "golden plots." His plum was really good, Cleo had a bite and agreed. Cleo had some baby carrots, which both kids like a lot.

This past week, I have been feeling bad that most of the food items that Cleo brings for lunch are processed. So, from now on her lunch will with have some vegetables incorporated into it. We are going to give her a turkey wrap with asparagus, baby carrots, and steamed broccoli. I am not saying she will have all of those at once. I am saying that if we give her the ham & cracker lunch, then she will have broccoli on the side and no chips that day.  She has had cooked yellow and orange peppers in pasta dishes, but I don't think she's tried them raw.  I am going to give her a little ranch dressing to dip the broccoli and other vegetables in.  I will report on our success next week.

My knee is doing much better. It improved drastically byMonday, Sept. 3. It is still sore and if something knocks against it, it hurts.  I have not gone to the gym or run on it all week. I decided not to go to the gym today but will go tomorrow. I am not sure if I am going to run or just use the step mill.  The Kaiser Permanente 5K is Sept. 13.  My work friend and workout partner is not able to run the entire 3.1 miles so I may walk/run with her.  She has had some knee and stamina issues. When I run 3 times a week, my knees ache. I can run 2 times a week and I am fine. We will see how I feel by Thursday.  After the 5K, my next goal is to start doing my P90X DVDs and not let them continue to collect dust. I can do my own moderate version that ensures I don't injure my knees.

Last month, we were invited to one of Roger's church deacon's 3 year-old grandson's birthday party for today. The Deacon, Niomie, was going to have her party planner send us an invite which we never received. I never noted it in my planner and we forgot about it.  We got an email from Niomi this morning reminding us about the party. We said we would come but after more thought we realized it was just too much to do in light of all of Cleo's projects.  She also has more homework due this week so it would be impossible to just do one project and work on the other project during the week.

This week, Cleo was one of only two kids in her class to be able to count to 10 in French. Her little gal pal at school, Luna, was the other child. Cleo was rewarded with a ballon which she misplaced but she seemed fine about. We told her that she would win many other awards in the future.

Sidney did well in his trike a thon and thanks to you all he raised $180. Because of that amount, he will get a t-shirt, a bear puppet, and an umbrella.  The fundraiser was on Wednesday. Thursday morning, he asked us if the trike a thon was happening again and when we told him it was not he was very disappointed.

Sidney can now make the "d" in his first name and does not make a "b."  He is so proud of himself. He's still making his "e" backwards and sideways but he will get it eventually.   He also makes a super big lowercase "n" when he writes his first and last names.

Cleo's teacher has asked to ensure that the kids read 10 books a month.  There is a sheet we fill out daily that lists the title, author, illustrator, and number of pages in each book we read or Cleo reads.  For meeting the 10 book goal for August, Cleo was rewarded with a voucher for a Personal Pan Pizza with one topping from Pizza Hut. We are so proud of her.  We are not sure when she will redeem her voucher.

When I put Cleo to bed, I read her 2 books.  Roger reads her one book so Cleo is reading or having read to her a lot more than 10 books each month.  I got her around 8 books from the library this week so that she could have some variety.  I got two Charlie Brown books but I am not digging the language used, e.g., words like "stupid" or "blockhead."  I forgot how much name calling there was in Charlie Brown, of course it's Lucy using the not so nice language.  The other Charlie Brown book was about Linus and his attachment to his blanket and Lucy and his grandmother giving him a hard time.  The words used regarding Linus' love for his blanket were not kind.  I suppose I am looking at it through the lens of a different generation and Charles Schulz' generation was a lot more harsh and impatient with kids who acted babyish.

The kids are napping. We will get them up around 3pm. Cleo will start one of her projects with Roger and I will entertain Sidney.  We got him a little Avengers bowling set and he really enjoys that. Cleo plays with it a lot too.  I will work on writing his name with him. Last week, I worked on both of Cleo's projects so its Roger's turn. He likes doing the projects with her because he likes sharing in Cleo's artistic development.

Have a great week!

Leapin' Lizards and Braves v Phillies

Today we attended Quintin and Alexandria's 5th birthday party at Leapin' Lizards. It's a bounce house inflatable toy party space.  Q & A are Cleo's pals from daycare, they attend a different school from Cleo now.  Below is a picture of Sidney with his pal Sidney and her older sister Shelby, who Cleo is friends with. Shelby attends a different elementary school than Cleo but they both attended Kids R Kids for summer camp.  Sidney and Sidney are sometimes in the same class but right now they are not - Sidney girl's birthday is later in the year than our Sidney's birthday.

Our big, brave boy going down the big slide feet first. It was a slide that Cleo flat out refused to go on.

Cleo and her best bestie Alexandria.

Sidney playing air hockey with a big boy.

Cleo playing air hockey and the birthday boy, Quintin, looking on.

The party ended around 3:30 and we eventually left at 4pm. We then made our way to Turner Field to see the Braves lose to the Phillies.  A picture in front of the "baseball pig" as Sidney called it.

A nice Phillies fan took this picture of us.  It was hot out there. It took me around 20 minutes to stop sweating from getting up to our upper level seats.  For free seats, they were fine. (Cleo's summer camp class wrote to Tim Hudson, a pitcher for the Braves, and he sent free tickets to all of the kids.)

Me and Cleo in front of the Braves Statue of Liberty.

Cleo alone doing a more authentic imitation of the Statue's pose after Sidney pointed out that Cleo needed to pretend that she was holding a book.  Cleo is doing it with reversed arms but I think she looks cute.

The four of us really enjoyed the Braves game. Cleo got popcorn, cotton candy, and a soft pretzel. She shared all of it with Sidney and me.  Roger got french fries and chicken strips.  The fries were good. We left during the 8th inning.  The Braves lost, I don't know the final score.  Fans still do the tomahawk chop at Braves game and there's a huge mechanical Chick Fil A cow that does the tomahawk chop - there is so much un-PC stuff in Georgia.  Roger and I are boycotting Chick Fil A because of the owner's stance on gay marriage.  Since this is one of the reddest states in the country you can probably guess that the owner is against gay marriage.

This afternoon I injured my left knee when I was getting into Sidney's bed to read him some books before I put him down for a  nap.  I really, really jammed it hard on the end of his wooden sleigh bed. It hurts to put any weight on it.  It severely hampered me during our activities today. I am not going to be able to go to the gym tomorrow and I am worried that my knee will not be 100% for my 5K on Sept. 13.  I am clumsy and accident prone, e.g., weekly paper cuts but this is the most serious self-injury I have ever caused.  I put some arnica gel on it that my neighbor gave me - it's a natural remedy that is supposed to help bruising and swelling but I suspect my bruise is too deep for some topical gel to penetrate into.

Sidney can spell his first and last name now. His writing of his name improves seriously every week.  He is finally writing a "d" in his first name and not a "b". His "e" is still backwards and sideways but he's trying.

Cleo is now trying to read signs wherever we go. Today, she was trying to decipher signs in Turner Field.

Cleo has two projects due on Friday, Sept. 7, so we will try to get a jump on them this weekend. One involves taking a nature walk and drawing 5 things and writing a sentence about them, that she sees during the walk.  We are going to go on the Silver Comet Trail this weekend for a nature walk. It's a cemented trail that people jog, walk and ride their bikes on. It's around 20 minutes from our house.  It is super close to where our friends Eric and Shellie lived when they were still in the Atlanta area.  The trail is long but the section we will go to is in Smyrna, GA - it's the area of GA where Julia Roberts is from.

In addition to the nature project, Cleo has to paste some pictures of her best friend into a homemade book and write 5 sentences about the friend.  I made sure I took some pictures of Cleo and Alexandria today. We have some others from their May ballet recital.

Cleo did well on the other projects she has worked on and handed in - ones that I reference in earlier blog posts. She doesn't get a grade, just a smiley face and acknowledgment that she completed it.  Kindergarten is no joke.

This weekend, we have some food shopping to do. Cleo loves ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch. We let her take ham and cheese Mon-Weds. then she has other sandwiches, e.g., cheese alone or peanut butter and jelly. We get organic ham from Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is far away but we try to fit it in with other weekend errands we run. This week, she took Ritz type crackers and ham and cheese Mon-Weds. She assembled little sandwiches with the crackers, cheese and ham. Pretty cute. She also likes turkey so we may get her some when we go to Trader Joe's. I went to the Whole Foods near my job on Friday and they did not have sandwich meat. They did have canadian bacon but that's not appropriate for Cleo's lunch.

Have a  good week!

Festival and Date Night

Saturday, August 25, Roger and I went out on a date to the Fernbank Museum of History. The firm I worked at when we first moved to Atlanta throws an annual Mingle at the Max client and "friend of the firm" appreciation evening. The evening involves a theme-oriented menu, open bar, an iMax movie and dessert.  The theme this year was Ancient Greece.  I had a really nice time.  Roger had a good time too.    Ms. Angie babysat Cleo and Sidney, they were both very excited. Ms. Angie braided Cleo's hair, which came out super pretty.  Ms. Angie works at Sidney's daycare and was Sidney's infant room teacher.

Earlier that day, we took Cleo and Sidney to the Grant Park Festival. The festival had an entire kid section.  It was a lot of fun, hot, but fun.  I will do a rundown of the festival in pictures.  Cleo and Sidney won mini frisbees which we played with for a while right before we left the festival.

Cleo played hopscotch in the Blue Cross Blue Shield "get more active" area.

Sidney gave a man a high-five after throwing a ball on a shelf in the same "get more active" area.

Cleo's "princess mask" facepainting.

Both kids love getting their faces painted.  I was so impressed that Sidney sat so patiently while the woman painted his face.

Sidney's cheetah facepainting.

Sidney holding his sword made out of newspaper.

Cleo holding her wand.

Cleo and Sidney creating their screen printing artwork.

Eating lunch - chicken wings and fries.

Sidney dancing but looking like he's about to catch a frisbee. He's funny.

Cleo picking up the frisbee.  Roger watching the dancers that Sidney is attempting to imitate.

More dancing cheetah moves.

Sunday we hung around the house.  I went to the gym.  After the kids' naps, we went out back and played in the pool.  The tomato plant that we planted earlier this summer has around 9 baby tomatoes growing on it.  Here is a picture of a set of three.  Cute!

Cleo's braided 'do.

Sidney doing his squinty smile.