Epiphanies

Backloggery

LeapPad:

1st Grade: Thomas & Friends, Toy Story 2

2nd Grade: The Incredibles

Leap 1: Vocabulary (Richard Scarry), Math Monster Money, Reading Disney’s Bounce Tigger Bounce,

Leap Start: Phonics Leap’s Friends From A to Z

Leapster:

Thomas & Friends Calling All Engines

Cars

Batman Multiply, Divide & Conquer

L-Max

Letters on the Loose

Dora Wildlife Rescue

I guess life got the best of me. I really meant to post almost every day.

Let’s see, highlights of the past few weeks:

1) B did “Take your kid to work day” and missed school.

2) We registered C for kindergarten (gosh he’s growing so fast!!). The process was a bit tedious because noobies didn’t fill out papers correctly. (It’s not rocket science, not sure why they couldn’t fill it out correctly). Bumped into a bunch of people there (Julia who had kids in swimming too), (Lisa, Stanley’s mom), (Evan’s mom – don’t remember her name), (Mahtab – Niloo’s mom), (Bunnee).

3) C went to Julianna’s bday at Chucky Cheese.

4) We went to Spring family picnic. Al did the strawberry pie eating contest. B did the sack race. B and C did egg hunt and bounce house and some crafts. I met Wendy there, Kirsi and Carol. Also met Windy’s hubby and Sandi’s hubby. Was pretty funny. We ate at California Fish Grill and bumped into someone from Indian guides (forgot name).

5) Went to Tustin to check out Cream Pan. Overrated. It’s good but not a place I would go out of my way to go to because I absolutely craved it.

6) Played Mousetrap for Family Night. It was pretty fun building it. The kids had fun (I think). We also played Littlest Pet Shop Game. That was really up C’s speed and fun also.

7) Dh went to K1 speed with his work buddies. He says he had fun.

8) My grandmother (Dad’s mom) died on May 4th. Supposedly their old caregiver left and they hired a new one and she was feeding her milk, but because she didn’t know what she was doing, my grandmother choked? and died. She was 97 I think. The only thing I can really remember about her was that she would spit out these Binlan aka Betel Nuts onto the floor, leaving all this disgusting red stuff on the floor. It used to scare me when I was a child because I thought it was blood. By the time I met her again later when I was in my twenties, she just didn’t engage me in anyway or even attempt to. I feel sorry for my dad but as for myself, I can’t really say I knew her.

9) We went to Kidspace Museum which turned out to be much cooler than I expected. We took advantage of the free museum admissions on BOA May promotion. I want to take my nephews there when they visit California again. This time we’ll be more prepared and do a picnic at the park afterwards.

10) Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection addiction. I’m addicted – this game rocks so much more than I thought it would. The kids have fun with it too as well as Dh. Fun for the whole family. It’s fun building a zoo and trying to figure out how to draw people, how to redirect traffic so that one area isn’t so congested, how to keep animals happy, what habitats are suitable for them, how best to layout the zoo. It really is challenging.

C: Mommy can you help build some homes for some animals when I’m at school?

Me: Sure. Which ones?

C: Kangaroos, rhinoceros, and cantelopes.

Me: Cantelopes?

C: Yes, cantelopes, the ones that look like deers.

Me: Oh ok, sure. (adorable).

11) Tried out swimming with J at the pool up on the hill. Think the pool is called Valley View. Can’t quite remember. We put him in the Body Glove Infant Water Carrier. It worked great in that it was the right height for the water. J wasn’t happy though. Think he was too cold and he kept crying. Maybe we’ll try it again when we go to Hawaii. Saw Cathy and Duc and the kids there. She told me the am teacher for K is strict. Oh no. Hope C has a good K year. Also met Taras and his mom Julia there. Taras took tennis with B before. We planned for a playdate.

12) Took J for his 4 month check up. He’s about 15 lbs – wow. He’s healthy so no worries so far. He had to get his second set of shots. The few days after that was hellish because he had a fever and was really cranky. I was quite worried. We gave him infant tylenol but it’s still worrisome. Dh went out to dinner too that very night so it was kind of hard.

13) Finally got out of our TKD contract (5/9 – last day) at a monetary loss too but what can we do. It’s the breaks.

14) Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digicam for Boys lasted all of a few hours. Sucked. Just wouldn’t power on. Tried to call Fisher Price but it’s difficult to troubleshoot because J has been cranky cause of the shots. Think they’re going to have me reformat the camera. Hope that works.

15) Went out with my gfs. We ate at Corner Bakery because it was a friday night and the Spectrum was packed as usual. Wasn’t too bad. I had some kind of chicken pesto sandwich. Bought some kind of pitching toy for C and B to practice baseball at Target. C recced it. Hope it works.

16) Met up with Dh to go to the post office to get a passport for J. We needed expedited service (an extra $60) but it’s a 10 week wait now because of the unusually high volume of passports apps this year. She was out to lunch though so we went to eat at Champagne’s Market, near where we used to live at Newport Bluffs. We split our sandwiches. Dh had a salmon one and I had a chicken grilled one. He had it on some kind of squaw bread. In the words of Dora – Delicioso!! Mmmmmh, just thinking of it now make my mouth water.

17) Played Risk for Family Night. 3 letters – UGH.

18) I think we’re going thru some bad karma the last few months. Things have not worked, or are damaged, we’ve gotten hit with a bunch of fees, we’re losing money here and there. Must think of something to get us out of our slump.

19) B walked the dog and he went for a long time so I had to run out there and see what was keeping him. (That’s the overly protective side of me). He was hanging out with the blond kid who lives right by the park. B told me they got bullied by some older kids (12 yo) on bikes. They were taunting the other kid calling him a scaredy cat when he ran away from their bike. They tried to taunt B too but Sammy barked at them and so they left him alone. They were trying to “run them over” according to B. His friend was on a scooter. One of the bullies was brown and one was white, says B. I’m definitely going to say something to them if I ever see them. B says they live in the neighborhood. Anyway, B tried to tell them off about not bullying kids younger than them. He asked them “Do you want someone trying to run you over?” They replied “Yes!” B said they answered like that because they were embarrassed at their behavior. I’m glad B can stand up for himself.

20) Met a new mom Yumi (her kid’s name is Takumi). He’s on second grader in Liam’s class. She seems nice. She also has another son who is 4 but going to turn 5 in Dec so she’s going to hold him back.

Anyway, those are the highlights. Back to your regularly scheduled program…

I’m sold.  It couldn’t get any easier.  Cut up a pot roast into smaller pieces, salt and peppered it and threw it into the slow cooker and wala – dinner.  Well, I had to do the rice cooker too but still, it was an easy breezy way to cook meat.

Practiced multiplication with B.  I almost fell asleep during one of the sessions.  I broke it up so that I could keep B’s attention a bit longer and mine too.  Talk about boring stuff.

J had stinky poop today – I think it’s a residual formula poop from the other days.  Makes me want to nurse him for longer if it means I could avoid changing the stinky diaper.  Boy was it nasty.  Forgotten how foul it could smell.

Forgot to mention C did diving in the outside pool again yesterday.  Well, more like belly flopped in but he’s still cute doing it.  I should have filmed it.  B came along since he’s on spring break.  I made him write a book report on one of those Deltora books that he’s reading.  P and I chatted about her new movie which is going to be shown this friday but unfortunately I can’t make it because Dh has a poker game with his buds and I have to take care of the kids.  I mentioned that I heard her neighbor is selling her house (which has a lake front view) for $1.1.  It’s tempting but she said it wasn’t worth it.  I already knew that but it’s still tempting.

B went to the batting cage with Dh the other day but I think he took out his frustration (couldn’t  hit a lot of the balls) on DD and DD had a  nervous breakdown (haha).  Poor Dh.

We played Candyland – Dora the Explorer.  B won so he was happy.  Think he’s been a bit perturbed by his losing streak so this was good.  I really want the kids to be laid back about losing at games.  It’s all just a game – nothing to get huffy about.

Didn’t do much today. Al woke up early and weeded. They played wii later. Then we went out to Mitsui to use a 15% coupon. We tried out the Korean bbq. Not good. Deja vu roll was pretty good. Then we came home and played Clue.  C won in spite of not being able to read.  I think this family fun night is working out well.  The kids love it.

So B finally earned enough to buy a Nintendo DS Lite.  He’s been working for weeks to get it, walking the dog, feeding the dog, doing random odd jobs for me and getting Chinese New Year money as a bonus.  It’s been really hard to get at the $129.99 price (keeps going out of stock) with free shipping so I’ve sort of been stalking a few sites to get it ahead of time for him.  I was afraid that we wouldn’t be able to find it once he was ready to buy and that we’d end up paying more for it than we should.  The white one (which is the one he wanted) seemed to be especially hard.  Black and pink seemed relatively easy to get.  Anyway, finally bought it at Circuit City and it arrived a week ago.  B though will be able to try it out for the first time today.  He’s really excited about it.  Since it’s GBA games compatible, I’ll give his GBA to his little brother.