Highlights
- Evan graduates from preschool
- Evan turns 5!
- Family trip to see the Sequoias
This month was packed with a lot of big moments. We helped Evan celebrate the end of his preschool career and his turning 5! He also played in his first piano recital. The month was made complete with a great visit from Gran and Grandpa. We also took a family road trip to Sequoia National Park. In sports, swim lessons, football and a basketball season all started!
Piano Recital
June started with the arrival of Gran and Grandpa. We did a quick celebration of Mama’s birthday from the day before, then started what was a mini marathon of events. The first was Mama’s studio recital for her voice and piano students. And for the third year in a row, Calan was on the program to play piano. This year was extra special as his still just barely 4-year-old brother joined him in the performance. The two played their cute duet together. Truly precious to say the least. Calan played several pieces including one he’s been playing for the past few months “Free As the Wind”, a classical piece, and then a song Dada wrote back in college, that he transcribed and made as his own.
Summer School…
After taking a break, the boys started their “summer school” routines on June 10. In music, Calan continued to play piano and restarted violin again after a small break. He incorporated a little more improvising in both. In science, we had fun watching the caterpillars Evan got for his birthday get bigger in their little habitat. They would begin emerging a couple weeks later, with only a couple really surviving. Evan also caught a bug in a new bug catcher contraption he got as a present for his birthday. Calan is still doing Prodigy math, and is about 39% of the way through the 6th grade level.
Trip to Sequoia National Park
Our family road trip this summer turned out to be a winner. Thanks to Mama’s careful planning, it was a trip that was perfect for our crew’s speed at the moment and something the boys just loved: being outdoors and exploring. Also, being relatively close to home was a huge plus.
We left on Father’s Day (6/16) after packing up our rental car from the Toyota dealership. We took our time heading to the Central Valley where we would stay in Tulare. We made stops at the honey bee farm between Fillmore and Piru and a rest area along the way to Tulare. The kids had been to the honey farm before, and it was too much fun trying out different flavors of honey. We also ate our lunch there; munching on sandwiches Mama packed while ducking into the shade as best we could to get out of the hot, early summer sun. Frequent stops and stretches were good since Dada was nursing a slipped disc and couldn’t sit for too long.
We made it the Comfort Suites in Tulare in the late afternoon. The boys were in their usual excited mode when arriving someplace new, especially a hotel. Once settled, we ventured over The Habit for dinner. The Habit would be our go-to place for nightly dinners for the week. It was relatively cheap and offered the boys safe and agreeable dinner choices.
Over the next four days we ventured up the mountain from Tulare into the park where the boys thoroughly enjoyed taking in the gigantic trees, looking for and spotting animals and swimming in Lake Kaweah and the hotel pool. Each day we set out a plan on where to go and what to explore in the park. Most of where we went in the park was about an hour and fifteen minutes away from the hotel, so it wasn’t too bad. It was definitely worth the money saved versus staying closer! The car rides were filled with anticipation of what we’ll see with a soundtrack of good music playing through the speakers (the boys eventually identifying their favorite songs in the playlist such as “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”)
The trip experience was great, prompting many requests of doing a similar trip again soon. Some big impressions from the trip included seeing the largest tree on Earth in General Sherman, the first time swimming in a real lake, and a treacherous drive of 10 minutes or so when we took a wrong turn onto a side road leading down to a camp. The problem was the road was just wide enough for one car, twisting along the face of a large hill, with a steep, rocky incline on one side and drop-off of more than hundred feet on the other with no guard rails. Of course before we could get to where we needed to turn around, a truck came from the opposite direction. Needless to say, it was a very tense moment figuring out how to get by each other. Of course we survived and have a little story to remember and associate with our vacation.
Calan
Aside from being busy with our road trip and starting summer school, Calan started up quite a bit on the sports front this month. Summer flag football and his return to basketball after a couple YMCA seasons. He adjusted well back into football after being away from it for over a month. He did great job handling most of the QB snaps again without any anxiety challenges. Coming back to the Y after the Future Pro season made for any easy transition. Basketball also ramped up quickly – his coach (Al) was coaching both D1 and D2 levels with his son in both, so some of the D2 team did practices with the D1 team. Calan stuck it out in the optional back-to-back practices, but it definitely wore him out. Swim also started this month with Coach Lynn returning once again. Calan also got into playing solitaire recently. It took awhile before he won a game but with some persistence and a few “workouts” for his patience muscles he finally prevailed and loved finding wins when he could. Another thing he enjoyed was getting to ride his bike to Josiah’s house by himself for the first time. Not only did he get to do something independent that felt like a big deal to him, he got a play-date out of it with his best neighborhood pal.
Evan
This was definitely a big month for Evan. After playing in his first piano recital, he graduated from preschool a few days later. He ended his school year with a regular morning and then a performance with his class of the Hungry Caterpillar story. He also earned the most laughs and “best answer” from his teacher as she went down the line of students asking them what they wanted to be when they grew up. When asked, Evan replied in front of the big, crowded room: “When I grow up I want to be a MAN.” It was the perfect, steady delivery that sent waves of laughter across the seats filled with parents, grandparents and siblings.
The next day, Evan turned 5! We all celebrated in typical fashion as a family. With “the Gs” we headed to breakfast at the Waypoint cafe. It was a 15-minute wait despite it being a Thursday. The boys ran around out back, watching helicopters land and take off and other little kids chasing birds. Evan ate a filling breakfast of eggs and blueberries. Of course his favorite part was the chocolate ice cream dessert with chocolate covered strawberries – of course delivered by a young waitress. Around noon, we dropped by Home Depot to look for some gunny sacks and tug-o’-war rope for Evan’s upcoming birthday party. We all did this while Mama hit Target for party supplies. The boys loved going around in the “car” cart as we killed some time waiting for Mama. Getting home around 2:00, Evan played out back while the rest of us got ready for a mini-family party inside. We did some basic balloons, set out presents and set up the cake that Mama put together. Evan came in and opened presents from everyone, including Nanna and Poppa. His favorite present was a little kit that contained 12 preserved insects in little pexiglass cubes. He also like his giant “5” balloon and went about playing with just it for awhile after the party. In the late afternoon, we headed out to Calan’s first football practice of the summer season. Gran and Grandpa got to watch a little. Towards the end of practice, we had Evan’s meet-and-greet for his summer basketball season. Evan hung out in childcare at the Y while everything was going on. We had a bit of planning to do to coordinate Calan’s basketball season with Evan’s. Only the second time we’ve had both boys in the same sport at the same time (soccer in 2017). Evan said he had a fun day, and was ready for sleep when we tucked him in around 9 o’clock.
Also noteworthy for this month was Evan giving his third organized sport a try. His first basketball season! The idea was also for Calan to be a helper for his team. This was mainly to help give Calan some confidence. This proved to be a lot harder than we hoped but he had his moments of stepping in and helping either Evan or the team. Evan was mostly engaged in practices and games, although the goofy side of Evan definitely came out. It didn’t help that they combined the younger age groups, so not only did you have 3 and 4 year olds playing with older and more experienced kids, you had a lot of players on the team. Of course this meant sitting out more than you should, which then brought out a goof ball tendency for Evan. He would try hard and be mostly focused in practices. In games, where the noisy gym became a big box of chaos Evan would lose that focus and be more of a class clown at times during his time in the game than actually playing anything resembling basketball. It was hard to watch, but kind of silly too. We figure he’s got to start somewhere, right?
Notable quotes this month:
Evan: “Mama!” (yelling).
Mama, standing a few feet away around the corner “Why are you yelling at me?”
Evan: “I’m sorry, I yelled at you on accident. I didn’t know you were right close to me.”
Calan, during our road trip heading into Sierra Nevada Mountains: “I wanna see a bear.”
Evan: “They might be tumbling down on this side. pointing out the window on trip.”
Going to bed one night, Evan says “How are towers built?” Mama explains, then tells him maybe he could be an engineer when he grows up. He replied, “No, I just wanna grow up and be a man like Dada.”
“When I’m infinity I’m never ever gonna have a birthday again.” …Now that’s some deep stuff!
