dinner with friends

we had a fun dinner at tomas and ceci's house with denis, george and eddie! the suncle and guncles had a great time tossing our kids around :)

marin symphony family concert

this past weekend the marin symphony had a family concert based on two dr. seuss stories. the kids seemed to love it and afterwards they got a chance to try out the instruments with the help of the marin youth symphony. they tried the violin, oboe, trumpet, trombone, xylophone, drums, french horn and base. both of them enjoyed the french horn (of all things)

noble's first emergency room visit....

not something most moms would document...but it all turned out well! mahala, being such a good sister, bought noble a scone from a charity bake sale. she even made sure they were from the gluten-free, nut-free section. but after he ate it, he got very sick...i could only assume that there was nut flour in there since that is his only level 4 allergy. it was a long afternoon and an eventual visit to the ER where they just wanted to be sure his reaction was not going to get any worse. three hours later we were out - noble was great the whole time and clearly had some moments where he enjoyed himself! he got to have sweet medicine and got a pair of rubber gloves to take home...now how exciting is that?? so the next day, after getting the bake sale coordinator to trace the scone back to its chef, we found out that they made a mistake and these scones had almond flour in them - only noble's WORST allergy! we'll have to learn to not take baked good from strangers!

performance fieldtrip

noble and his preschool-mates went to a performance of "are you my mother" this past wednesday. it was also picture day at their school so they are looking pretty fancy - especially noble in his shiny indian attire!

ice skating

we headed up to santa rosa today to check out "parent and puppy" skating. the rink was so much more kid friendly than the last one we went to in the city. kayla joined us on the ice and so did some chairs to help the kids learn. the did so well! noble was cruising with the chair and mahala got out there on her own and is now a pro. now i can take them both by myself instead of making kayla act a mom #2 :) and of course now both kids want to go "everyday!"

yy.

born this way

noble showing that he was "born this way"!!!

archery

after getting immunizations, we took noble out to get a little prize and he picked this bow and arrow set. the kids had fun drawing targets on the back wall of the deck.

stevie's haircut

first tennis lesson

mahala's first tennis lesson - the quickstart method - through the girl scouts. she's a big fan now!

cactus fruit

our friends amanda, miles and aero guided us through our first cactus picking excursion across the street from mahala's school. mahala has been eyeing this particular cactus since she started school (2.5 years ago!). armed with oven mitts and tongs, we picked about 40 of these beautiful cactus fruit. we ate some fresh and then i made some cactus fruit sorbet.

at-home tutoring

mahala seems to have made it her job to tutor noble in the subjects of alphabet and phonics. this is a part of a video that i found on my camera!

winter break

during winter break we always have "girl time" on two of the days since noble still has school. so mahala and i went for pizza and played games one day and then the other day we went to the city for ice skating at yerba buena in san francisco. her friend josie joined us for part of it. this was mahala's first time on real ice!

our girl scout

mahala just joined the girl scouts and is now a brownie! cookie selling season started soon after the first meeting. we were in charge of picking up 50 cases of cookies....600 boxes of cookies! we sold them in front of the market near our house.