Halloween

Another fantastically fun (although a little wet) Halloween is behind us. Molly dressed up as a devil (or a Sewer Devil, to be exact) using the amazing sequined costume Nona found in August in a Burning Man costume bin. Clara dressed up as a Kitty-Ghost-Bat. Yes, all three at once. Kitty mask + tail, bat wings, and the ghost part was painting the bottom half of her face white. Amazingly, once she settled on this idea about a week before Halloween, she stuck with it, right through the end of the day.

Here are pictures of the kids at the school celebrations, the kids at home, with their pumpkins, and with some neighbors.

the bees' knees

This spring has been full of urban agricultural adventures. The most buzzy is, of course, bees! Our neighbor, Iain is not only a fantastic winemaker (check out his wine at eightarmscellars.com) but has also has been bitten by the bee bug. He turned that bite into a neighborhood adventure in bee-keeping by inviting a group of (mostly) neighbors to join him in getting a hive. He calls us the "California Street Bee Co-op" or CalBeeCo. We all chipped in for supplies, and get to help with the hive maintenance. As the member with the most bee-education, though, Iain has been taking lead with the projects, but it's been exciting to watch the installation and bits of maintenance that have happened so far.

Birthday Party - the pictures

Here's the complete set of birthday-party madness pictures. A huge thank you to Iain for his excellent work as designated photographer.

Halloween

The Princess and the Bee had a lovely Halloween with the neighbors. Clara was thrilled to be part of the "big kid" crowd and gathered loads of candy *just* *like* *Molly* (and Nate and Oscar). Thanks to Nate's family for sharing the Bee costume. And thanks to Oscar's family for hosting.

We experimented with the "let them eat as much candy as they want for 3 days only) approach to the candy. It seemed to go okay, until about 1:30am when Molly puked all over her bed. We revised the rule to something like "you can eat candy during the day for the next few days, but we're not going to let you gorge on it all at once". Molly seems on board with it. Clara, less so.

the story of the day

so most nights when i'm putting molly to bed she asks me to tell her "the story of the day", basically just going thru all the things that happened that day. so here goes...

sofia and i woke up this morning at 5am to get ready to go in for her surgical appointment. as most of you know she was having a thyroidectomy. we got out without waking the girls and had an uneventful few hours at kaiser waiting, seeing nurses, and getting ready. here's sofia before they took her into surgery.

by the time they kicked me out it was 8:15 or so, and I headed back home where Mary (AKA Nona) was getting the kids ready for the day. We dressed up Clara as a bear(a) and went over to Kika's house with Nona. Then we all went with Molly and her homemade fire truck costume to Via Nova for their Halloween parade. I dressed up in my usual mechanic outfit. It was a great way to keep our mind off of the surgery going on at that time, marching all around the neighborhood with 100 kids and parents dressed up as everything from hamburgers to traffic lights to, of course, fire trucks.

The rest of the day was uneventful, I did some work and waited for Kaiser to call, which they did around mid-day to say that the surgery went great, everything was removed and there were no signs of additional problems. Yay! After a few more hours in recovery they even decided to let Sofia go straight home instead of spending the night, so I got her and brought her home and set her up with Nona to recuperate here. Then we got the girls, brought them quickly to say hi to mama, then sent them next door for Halloween night with the neighbors. We had a fun night of pizza and trick or treating, a good distraction for the girls of the fact they couldn't visit with their mama much. Nona even joined in the fun with her Fiffer-feffer-feff costume! For those that don't know, a fiffer-feffer-feff is a Dr. Seuss character from Dr. Seuss's ABC's - the letter F stands for "four fluffy feathers on a fiffer-feffer-feff". Finally we all collapsed in exhaustion and went to bed, except for me staying up tending to the ladies and writing this blog post. Happy halloween!

Girl at Play

Left to right, top to bottom: Molly & Nona explore the water play area at Habitot; Molly's prepared for the papa-ratzi with her sunglasses, her friend is caught a little off guard; Molly & Nate at the truck races; blue blue blue; a brief calm moment with Nate; enjoying the painting wall at Habitot.