Day 37: Even The Manliest of Men Pick Flowers

It was actually almost a warm day today!

Almost. Did you know there's like, an arctic wind that blows through northern California? There is. I think it comes from the north pole. Because it'll be sunny and 70 and you're like "oooh it's spring!" and go outside without a jacket and SUDDENLY the wind comes and freezes everything in it's place like a life action Frozen movie. 

Anyways. 

We took advantage of the weather and the boys tried their new roller skates. Both did very well, but Camden is a natural, and wanted to skate all day. 

Until I caught him peeing on the fence outside, roller skates still on, 2 feet away from the front door. And by taking off his skates and telling him to go inside and sit in time out, I most assuredly "ruined his life" as I heard him screaming from upstairs "I WANT MY WHOAWER SKAAAAAAATES!!!!"

So I guess he likes them. Maybe he won't pee on the fence next time. 

Earlier, my mom, myself and Cam went on a walk this afternoon before Calen came home from school. Cam, who's definitely the more hardcore, rough and tumble, "girls are gross and I'm a manly man" kind of guy, deliberately stopped his scooter at a patch of flowers, carefully picked one (that didn't have bugs, he said), and gave it to his grandma. Then, he ran back to the flowers and picked one for me. 

I guess even the manliest of men pick flowers. 

With a mohawk helmet on. Just to balance out the universe. 

In other news, Calen had his first game of the season today and even though the lost by like a million points (he's definitely not on the playoff team he was on during fall ball), he still 2 for 2 at bat with solid singles, took a grounder and threw it to third base for a force out, and all in all did a pretty great job for his first time on a field in three weeks. 

Day 36: Grass Angels In The Outfield

It finally stopped raining and baseball is back underway. 

Someone forgot to mow the outfield at Cam's practice field today. 

As I laid my blanket down to sit and watch him play, the grass around me was so tall I felt like I was lowering myself into the depths of the Amazon on a jungle safari. 

(Australian accent): Now, if you look through your binoculars and stay very very quiet, you might find a t-ball player in his natural habitat. If you're lucky, he might even hunt a helpless baseball rolling too close to him. 

Post-practice Cam threw himself into the outfield jungle grass and started making "grass angels". At least we could find humor in the fact that the fields haven't been taken care of. 

grass angels

In other news, my inlaws left yesterday and my mom arrived today, so it's another fun filled week ahead. Cam helped her with the luggage at the airport this afternoon. 

Day 35: The Things You Say To Your Kids

Here's another edition of "The things you say", except it's what I had to say to my kid. 

Calen: "Can I bring a gun inside?"
Me: "Sure. As long as there aren't any bullets in it."

Out of context, I'm likely to have CPS called on me. 

But we're talking Nerf guns here. 

Nerf Zombie Strike to be exact. 

So if there's a zombie apocalypse, come to my house. My seven year old will protect us Walking Dead style. 

In other news, here's Camden playing Lego "Batman vs Superman on top of the Jurassic World truck" with monster slippers. Because obviously. 

Day 34: The Dual-Holiday Hangover

I'm tired. 

I mean like tired tired. I thought, after a ridiculous dual-holiday like Birth-Ster (Birthday/Easter) yesterday, I'd go to bed early, and sleep and wake up and feel at least halfway rested. 

But as today wore on, I realized that I probably could have slept for 26 months and woken up and drank a six pack of Red Bull for breakfast and still be exhausted by 1pm the following afternoon. 

We did nothing today. We all needed it. We are sugared out, birthday'd out, Easter'd out, everything else'd out. So the kids laid low and built their new Lego sets and played Lego knights and bad guys and watched The Chronicles of Narnia (the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe) and that was seriously that. 

I need a vacation from spring break. 

The epic boss battle between the blue Nexo Knight and the head boss bad guy

Day 33: The Day You Turned Seven (On Easter)

Today is the day. The little 7 pound, 12 oz bundle of crying babyness is now SEVEN years old. 

Fun fact: this is the third time I've done a "The Day You Turned...." post about Calen on this blog. For a fun look into history, here's his third and fourth birthdays.  

This year shocked me more than most. Seven is old, which means I'm old. He is at the threshold of not being called a "little" kid anymore. 

Wow. 

A million years ago (seven), my BFF Allison mentioned that she had looked up when Easter was for the next ten years or so and that Easter would land on Calen's 7th birthday. I laughed because at the time the concept of my little butterball infant Calen turning 7 was beyond my brain capacity. Calen being 7 was like, a million years from now. 

Yet here we are. 

Normally, the kids' have their friend parties on the weekend before or after their actual birthday, and their actual birthday is family day. The tradition is usually the same: birthday pancakes in the morning, a fun activity in the day (if Daddy isn't working), open presents from extended family in the afternoon, go to the restaurant of their choice for dinner, and then go to Toys R Us afterwards where they get to pick out their present from Mommy and Daddy. 

Being that it's not only Easter but my inlaws are here also, that made today a little more complicated. 

Okay, a lot more complicated. 

So, we got up way early (Calen was already awake of course) and did their small Easter baskets and birthday pancakes:

Then, rushed off to church for the early morning Easter service. Which was probably the best church service I've ever been to in my life. Seriously. 

After church, we came home and I promptly took a huge tote full of easter eggs (that we filled yesterday) and hid them all over our side garden. Up in the trees, in the soccer net, all over the ground, in the bushes. And then the boys and the little neighbor girl had an Easter egg hunt:

Camden is clearly ready. 

Climbing trees for eggs

egg hunt snack intermission!

After the egg hunt, Easter was officially declared over and it was strictly Calen's birthday from there. We had lunch and Calen got to open his presents from family. Highlights of the year included roller skates (from his grandparents) and a Kindle Fire kids edition (from Mom and Dad). Since Calen's birthday activity of choice was the races yesterday, we laid low for an hour or so playing games on the Kindle (while Cam was attached to Calen's shoulder non stop to watch, thus earning the new nickname "Barnacle"). 

Because it's Easter and that continues to complicate birthdays, we switched around the evening and went to Toys R Us first since it closed early today. This year we decided Calen was old enough to be given cashMONEY, and could pick out whatever he wanted as long as he didn't go over the total amount of cash he had. He was very thorough and thoughtful and was cute watching him put things back so that he could afford something different. 

Poor Cam is sick with a cold and holiday'd out and didn't even wake up from the car through the store until we had been there for an hour. 

The very first thing Calen picked out was a .99 matchbox car. ONE matchbox car. He picked through the 100s of cars on the wall and pulled out just one. He tossed it into the cart and happily started marching down the aisle mentioning that he hopes he has enough to get a few more things. 

He had $80 to blow between us and relatives that sent birthday money. I told him I was certain he had enough. 

In the end, after a lot of careful consideration, counting, putting things back and deciding what was more important to him, he picked a Minecraft pickax/sword thing, a bow and arrow, a Lego set and his one single matchbox car. 

After that we went to Calen's dinner of choice: Panda Express for Orange Chicken.

Except, we didn't go to Panda Express, because Panda Express is closed on Easter. 

I knew this in advance, and had called around various Chinese restaurants in the area to make sure they were open today. We ended up going to Chopsticks in Petaluma, which has some seriously delicious orange chicken. Calen was happy and we were happy. 

Side note: you should see Camden go at a plate of orange chicken. The "kid that won't eat anything" ate an adult portion of orange chicken and didn't leave a single piece left on his plate. 

We came home and did cake, including re-lighting trick candles which were a huge hit. And by then we were all exhausted and overtired so we threw in Peanuts movie again (Calen's choice) and called it a night. 

Are you tired by reading this? Because I'm exhausted from living it. 

These dual-holidays are for the birds. But damn it was fun. 

Happy Birthday buddy Calen. I can't believe what an amazing little-big guy you've become. 

Day 32: The Last Day of Six

Holey moley, Calen will be SEVEN tomorrow. 

I swear, yesterday he looked like this:

BABY. One day before his 1st birthday 2010

And now he's a big, smart, funny, smelly, little man-boy. 

He can read and swim and make his own bed and does homework without help (usually) and does all this crazy stuff I never thought a little baby burrito seven years ago could do. It's weird and exciting and sad all at the same time. 

So, we had another full day. Because his birthday tomorrow is also Easter, We punched out an Easter activity today to try and focus on his birthday most of the day tomorrow. So we dyed eggs out on the front porch. 

The majority of my day was birthday prep. Cake day, wrap his present, get the decorations up. His friend-party isn't until Friday but I still wanted to make it fun in here. As far as I'm concerned, tomorrow is Calen's birthday first, THEN Easter. 

I can see how people born on major holidays would find that holiday a total drag. It gets lost and forgotten behind the holiday. And every store in the nation is closed so you can't even go do anything. 

Calen's birthday wish was to go to the sprint car races in town. Lucky for him, opening weekend was tonight, so we went out and spent the evening watching the races. It was cold (but it's always cold there) and loud and awesome. Calen told me it was his "best birthday present ever". 

Thanks Grammy and Papa!

And that's that in a nutshell. I still have tons of prep to do before tomorrow and tomorrow is only an hour away. 

Day 31: Beans, Bears and Nuts

It was a really busy day. Which, for once, is a good thing. 

Brad took leave today since his folks are still here. He and his dad started working on a couple big projects in the garage this weekend (a bike rack for the kids, and a fence for the backyard to keep our stupid dog from jumping over the completely worthless three foot tall fence we currently have. So this morning, he had the boys help sand some of the wood. I stayed out to watch for a while but then they started talking about angles and math and I'm like "I'm outta here." and did an about face back into the house. 

Let the men do the math stuff. 

Then this afternoon we took them up to the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. We have done this little tour before last month, but his parents hadn't been and we thought it would be a fun (free!!) thing to do. 

Unfortunately unbeknownst to us, half of the factory tour floor was closed due to remodeling, and it won't be fully open again until summer. So we only got to do maybe 1/3rd of the tour. 

See what I did there? That's a fraction. I can do the math stuff too! 

No, I really can't, beyond that. You can keep your maths. 

Brad's folks still had a fun time and luckily the tour is free so we didn't lose out on anything. And of course you get free boxes of jellybeans and who doesn't want to drive an hour for that?

No taking pictures allowed! Only if you catch me. But look at all those BEANS

Post Jelly Belly we drove over to the mall for the grandparents to take the kids to Build a Bear. They've never done it before and got to pick whatever they wanted. The whole Build a Bear process is super cute and the kids loved it. 

Except for the pile of hearts. That's creepy.

Making their bears. That carton full of hearts is creepy.

Once we got home and the kids had eaten 750 jellybeans each and were bouncing off the walls, we put in a new movie that cruised us right into bedtime:

FYI: Peanuts is super funny and cute and even my kids who think that the original Charlie Brown Halloween and Christmas specials are boring loved it. 

I'm tired. I thought spring break was supposed to be a break? 

Day 30: Being Schooled By the Student

Good news, I'm basically almost mostly healthy! Yay!

I'm not ready to like, go eat at happy hour at the China Buffet or anything, but I was actually hungry today, and successfully kept down lunch, dinner, and a bottle of ginger ale without throwing up. 

Small victories. 

My inlaws treated the kids with a new Lego set each yesterday and of course, my Minecraft-obsessed six year old picked some extravagant Minecraft set. He spent all day yesterday building it, then tried to move it on it's own (mistake) and in consequence spent all morning re-building it today. This is his favorite part about Legos. Not playing with the actual sets, but building them. Generally, Calen builds them, Camden plays with them. Everyone wins. 

But this time, for whatever reason, this Lego set called to the play-Gods inside Calen's head. He asked me to play with him and since I didn't have to leave the couch (and continue to nurse my slightly pissed off stomach), I obliged. 

And suddenly, I learned more than I ever cared to know about Minecraft. 

In one gigantic, 3,000 word sentence devoid of punctuation or pauses to breathe, Calen informed me at 105mph everything about Minecraft. The characters. The bad guys. The armor. The weapons. "And this is a lava flow and you have to be really careful when you walk by it because if you aren't careful OH NO LOOK OUT!!!! And now we have to go over here and harvest carrots because you need to eat and carrots are things we can eat and also fruit from this tree let's chop it down and and and and AND...!!!!"

So then I try to engage in playing with him while he takes half a second to take a breath. 

"Okay, well Steve here is going to go over here and mine some stone."

Insert disgusted look and legitimate rolling of eyeballs from Calen.

"Ummm actually it's cobblestone. Not 'stone'." 

Oh....sorry. Geez. 

Me: "Well this ghost is coming! Oh man, pull out your sword Steve! (makes "oooooooooooh!" ghost noises)

"Ummmm....actually it's called a ghast. With an "A". And it doesn't make ghost noises. It's almost silent like a "whooosh" noise."

My turn to roll eyeballs. I clearly have no idea what I'm doing and am being schooled by a First Grader. 

Actually, Calen and I really had a good time playing Lego Minecraft. It's rare that we play with things involving storylines and plots and dialogue. Because there's only so many "vroom vrooms" you can say while playing cars/monster trucks/space ships before it gets a little dull. 

Until you add in toy dinosaurs and/or sharks. Carnivorous violence always adds spice to playtime. 

Bonus photo: I told Camden to get juice cups for him and his brother. I never realized this is how he got them.  

Spider-Cam

Day 29: Round Two, Fight!

This isn't a real blog tonight. Just an obligatory post to the daily blog for a year challenge.

Just when I thought we had all gotten past the sickness, I caught it. The full blown stomach flu.

Round two: Fight!!

The bad news is that the kids are home for spring break. The good news is my in-laws flew in yesterday, and elected to take the kids out to town for a grandparent date the majority of the afternoon, so me and my campout on the bathroom floor could be left alone in peace.

This is what the real world has, you know. Grandparents near by to call and beg to take your kids away while you're sick. Majority of military families find this to be a rare anomaly.

Maybe I'll have better content for you tomorrow that doesn't include bodily fluids.

Day 28: Dead Men Tell No Tales

It's still spring break and the sun finally came out but it was not particularly warm. We went to the pool anyways because spring break + open swim = pool time required. But it was cold. I mean 45 minutes later their lips are blue and shivering so violently you might have thought they were having a seizure cold. 

As my neighbor said: "Nothing like mild hypothermia to get them to sit still for five minutes"

What 45 minutes of swimming will do in Northern California in March: blue lips and goggle eyes

I declared that it was Pirates of the Caribbean week here in the Hansen household. After all, it's a mere 8 months from our next Disney World vacation, so we better start prepping them ("them" meaning Cam since he was only 2 last time we went) with essential Disney characters. So yesterday we watched The Curse of the Black Pearl and today was Dead Men's Chest. 

Parental Guidance warning: Camden at first was freaked over the sea creature pirates in the second movie. But then laughed when one got sliced by a sword and little fishies flopped out. So I guess...rated PG for sea life violence?

As a bonus, I will give you a tremendous throwback of 4 year old Calen going through pirate training with the real Captain Jack Sparrow in Disney World circa 2013. And in true Calen form, he was a show stopper. 

Back story: This was a street show in Magic Kingdom, and he was picked out of the crowd along with maybe four other kids. He was the youngest (and smallest) by far and was last to take his turn, but when he did Jack Sparrow said "Now, we've all been waiting for THIS one!" Calen didn't follow the instructions well at first and attacked Jack's first mate freestyle, causing the whole audience to crack up. Serious Disney Magic caught here in only the first ten minutes of our first day in the parks. 

Day 27: Spring Break

Spring break is every kids' reason to jump for joy and every parents' reason to drink an extra glass of wine. You mean, I can't just send them to school and expect the teachers to entertain them for six hours straight? Well crap. 

Bonus wine points if it's raining the entire first day of Spring Break. 

So like a good parent, I kept the screen time low today. By letting them play video games (Disney Infinity) for 3 hours. And then I fed them eat a super healthy lunch (chicken nuggets). 

I've got this spring break thing down pat. 

Luckily the (indoor) base pool was open for extra hours today so we actually did get out and do a fun activity. Even though it was pouring outside and the kids lips were quite literally blue, they were as excited as if it were Christmas morning. 

Almost. 

One day down, SIX days to go!

Day 26: Top Chef Juniors

We had great ambitions to go to the Muir Woods trails today. Again. But we didn't because it rained. Again. 

The Seattle-ite in me should be thrilled. The California resident in me is screaming. 

Soooo, we stayed inside and worked on a few house projects, and I decided it was a good day to have Calen "make" dinner, like he did a few days ago. So we made an eloquent 5 course meal of prime rib and asparagus and...

Who am I kidding. I don't even cook that kind of fancy crap. 

So we made spaghetti and meatballs. 

Let's be honest. I'm not a chef. I can barely boil water or roast a chicken. If you say to me "meatballs," I think of a bag of frozen pre-made-way-less-work-and-probably-cheaper Great Value meatballs from Walmart. But this was a cooking adventure and quasi lesson and we were going to cook, dammit! So I consulted my most trusted professional cooking consultants:

Pinterest. 

People like me would have never survived dinner parties or potlucks 20 years ago. If someone is like, "Wow Ashley, that's really good!" I'm like "hell yes it is!" and then direct them to whatever pin on my Pinterest cooking board. 

So, I put out all the ingredients (and minced garlic, by hand...and then after 10 minutes of chop/chop/chop/chop/chop Brad yells from the living room "were you aware we have a garlic press?" I was not aware we had a garlic press. That information would have been extremely useful you know, 3 garlic cloves ago. 

Thanks Brad. 

Anyways, I put all the ingredients out and Calen did the rest on his own (with step by step verbal instructions). He mixed it all together, he rolled them into little balls, he put them in the oven on his own. 

Camden begged to be a part of it so I let him hand mix the meatball...mix...together with us, and pour the pasta sauce into the saucepan. Other than that, I did nothing but boil the water for Calen and read the instructions out loud for him to follow. I did pull the meatballs out of the oven too. That kid is accident prone, let's be real. 

Look, I'm in a picture! You're welcome. 

Plated

And they turned out pretty damn good! 

Look out Top Chef Juniors! This kid will be making filet mignon before you know it. 

As long as there's a Pinterest recipe for it. 

Dinner is served! Thanks Buddy

Day 25: Hippopotamus Fart Jokes (aka: Photo Shoots With Little Boys)

First of all, everyone is healthy! That was the longest week in the history of ever. And now back to our regularly scheduled program. 

Calen's birthday is a week from tomorrow (:sobs: :wails: :wipes snot:), which means the priority of this week was to do our annual birthday-time photo shoot. 

Last year we did both boys' photo shoots at the beach, because, San Diego. This year I found a couple of rad locations within a block of each other in downtown Petaluma that I thought would be fun and a little different from what I normally do with either kid. So Calen and I got up super early (for a Saturday) and headed into town. 

First we took some shots in front (or back?) of some kind of old brick factory on the waterfront: 

Note: Want to know how to make six year old boys smile naturally for the camera? Fart jokes. A lot of them. So I shouted a lot of fart jokes. Loudly. And any poor unsuspecting tourist taking a break from winery touring by meandering through Petaluma within a block of me got the pleasure of hearing what happens when a hippopotamus eats too many burritos or how whales farts come out of their ears. Sorry tourists. Next time tour Napa. 

And who cares if my fart jokes were loud or stupid or had no content other than the words "Hippopotamus" and "butt" and "farts!". Calen laughed and smiled. Genuinely and naturally. 

My God boys are easy. 

And then we went up a block and a half to this super rad mural we found in an alleyway:

This mural, though. 

The best part was at one point in each location Calen got d-u-n "done" with taking pictures but his "I'm done and your fart jokes aren't funny anymore" face totally made for a great mini-model pose. 

Not to be biased, but my kids have incredible eye color. Calen's are blue with brown around the irises. (He was over pictures by this shot)

This was probably the easiest photo shoot I've ever done with my kids. Maybe because it was only one kid (without the other one even on location) or because they're getting older. 

Enjoy your last week of being six big man!