Picture For This Day

Last week Kiernan decided to wear some part of a costume every day.  The first day he picked out a huge green St. Patrick's Day hat.  Next was a gigantic red, white, and blue patriotic hat.  Day three was cape day, apparently.  In each instance he would wear the costume bit into school, bask in the attention, then hand over the costume bit to me as he lined up with his classmates.  I was proud of him for being responsible like that.  I was not so crazy about the fact that he'd insist I put the hat or whatever on, no matter how much doing so amused him and all his little friends.

He's having a blast with Halloween this year.  He was so excited when we got out the decorations and jumped right into dressing up the house with Wendy.  He wanted all the costumes from the costume box to be housed in his room so he could get into a costume whenever, and that weekend when he had the twins, Jon and Matt, over for a playdate he wanted it to be a costume playdate.  Wherever we go he comments on the decorations and loves to pretend to be afraid of ghosts and ghouls hanging up in grocery stores.  For a kid who is so quick to turn off a movie or TV show when it gets the least bit scary, he sure is embracing this holiday.

I find this beyond cool, because it's making this Halloween all the more exciting for me.

October 20, 2010

Picture For This Day

On Saturday one of my friends from my Starbucks days had a small reunion party.  Her son, Samuel, invited Kiernan to join him in his favorite tree.

Looking at this picture I am reminded of my time as a lad in Killeen, Texas.  I was a bit younger than Kiernan, and I spent many hours in our backyard tree.


Palmdale, CA
Saturday, October 16, 2010

Picture For This Day

Sometimes after school I let Kiernan hang out and play for a bit with his friends.  Yeah, this is irresponsible of me.  There is, after all, work to be done.  First grade does mean more homework, which so far has been a good thing overall.  He's learning to brainstorm ideas for writing and in the interest of trying more challenging math he took a whack at his first Sodoku puzzle (btw...don't look at Blogger's spelling suggestions for Sodoku if you happen to be typing up a blog entry with your kid...yikes). I know we should be heading straight home and getting cracking on homework, but some days I can't resist letting him play.  Moments of play are getting more and more precious.

After a little playtime, we walk up the hill next to the school to our car. Often we do this with Oliver and his two little brothers (and Mom).  On this day, as we walked I turned around and saw this.  I realize that the image of Kiernan reading is one I post often.  I can't help it.  I'm just so constantly tickled by how much he loves to read. To see him engrossed in a book with his friend...I just find that priceless.


October 7, 2010

Picture For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

In May we visited Virginia for the graduations of Aunt Hope and Uncle Mason.  Hope graduated on the first weekend of our visit, and Mason on the second weekend of our visit.  You can see his reaction to being at Hope's graduation from law school here.

In going through a bunch of files recently I found these two pictures from Mason's graduation from CNU.

Graduation was held inside due to a deluge of rain.  Hmm.  It happens.

Oh, yeah.  The guy taking the picture was proud, proud, PROUD of his brother!


Newport News, VA
May 16, 2010

Picture For This Day

Last weekend Kiernan got to attend the birthday party of his friends Jon and Matt.  I spent a lot of time brushing his teeth that night.


October 10, 2010

Picture of This Day

Before school play time today.  With his friend Nicholas, who is in Kindergarten and has been Kiernan's pal since they were in Preschool together a couple of years ago.  They tend to structure a lot of their play around a creature called "BaBa Guinea Pig".  This creature, in turn, seems to be inspired by Kiernan's sleeping companion, Guinea Pig.  I've tried on many occasions to get Kiernan and Nicholas (and his twin sister, Veronica) to explain to me exactly what BaBa Guinea Pig is, and how he works into the GP mythology, but it's always to no avail.  They can't explain it, or don't want to.

I love the colors in this picture.  Also, I'm always proud when we get to school early enough that we have time for Kiernan to play.  It's the little things.

October 13, 2010

Picture For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

At the end of Kindergarten last year, we had a final  parent conference.  Run by Kiernan himself.  Kiernan led us to our seats and offered us some refreshments (cookies and juice, natch).  He proceeded to show us a portfolio of work samples from over the course of the year, work samples that he had chosen.  Then he took us on a tour of his classroom to see more examples of the work he and his peers had done.

So cool.

June 14, 2010 (or thereabouts)

A Shortcut to Vegetables

We got our first CSA box two days ago, and I'm just so excited I can barely contain myself.  Contents of said box:

It's silly to get excited about a box of vegetables, I know, but I've been wanting to do this for a couple of years now but have been reluctant to pull the trigger for a couple of reasons.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and for those of you who don't know, it basically means getting a box of produce from local farms a couple/few times a month.  My sister-in-law JoAnne has been doing this for awhile, and I love how she incorporates the produce into the meals we've had when visiting the Tobias Fam.  She's much more talented as an improvisational cook than I am, so I was hesitant in part for that reason.  But also, as is well documented, I live with a couple of Picky Eaters, so I had to be honest about the fact that I'd be the one consuming most of the contents of the boxes every week.  Laying out the bucks just for myself seemed a mite counterintuitive.

Then I got lucky.  A friend of ours, we'll call her Dr. Rachel, worked with a local farm called Underwood Family Farms to get a CSA program going at CSUN (her and Wendy's employer).  Once a week boxes of produce are delivered right to campus where folks who participate can pick them up more easily.  I liked this idea, but still was hesitant due to the above reasons.  Lucky for me the boxes of produce were too much for our friend Dr. Rachel and another friend, we'll call her Dr. Sally, to handle.  So they wanted to start sharing boxes with us.  That would mean us getting two boxes a month, one every other week, for a very reasonable price.  I was mildly dubious as to why these friends of ours were having trouble consuming the vegetables, as they were subscribing to the "small" boxes in the Underwood Family Farms CSA Program, but I figured this would be a good place to start.

Let me just say that farmers clearly have a different definition for the word "small" than the rest of us do.  Here's the small box:

It's only the first of our boxes, but I have to say I'm totally in love with this program.  I'm totally into surprises, and so getting this box home and opening it and laying out all the surprises on the counter was pure heaven.  Kiernan really got into it too.

All your counter space are belong to us.

Last night we had the first of the produce with dinner.  Main course was one of my favorites, artichokes.  Not a part of the box, alas, but I found some lovely ones at Trader Joe's for $.99 a piece!  [Lookie there!  A reason to love living in California!]  I cooked up two of the ears of corn (microwave method: in husk, three minutes, turn, three minutes, wrap in kitchen towel for five minutes on counter), cutting the kernels off of the corn for Wendy and Kiernan since one just started on braces and the other is missing most of his front teeth.  Cut up some of the carrots in a salad with that lovely lettuce and some of those radishes.

Amazing, beautiful stuff.  Best corn I think I've ever tasted.  Also, I've gotten into a rut buying packages of baby carrots.  These carrots are so much more...um...carroty.  And the radishes were just vibrant.

I'm not sure what to do with the other stuff.  Any suggestions are welcome.  Especially for this monster:

Anyway, happy times.  If you're at all curious about the CSA thing...do it.  Find a friend and split it.  Just do it.

Picture For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

We got the chance to have a lovely lunch with Wendy's cousins, Sarah and Sam Kiernan.  Kiernan loved the chance to meet more Kiernans.  I mean, who wouldn't?

I'm sure someone will say something after looking at the post that is below this, so I'll just head you off and say that, yes, that shirt was in heavy rotation at that time.

Northridge, CA
January 16, 2010

Picture For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

Today's project involves me going through hundreds of picture files so I can print out a bunch of pictures from a list given to me by my loving wife and child.  On Friday Kiernan is to present his "Me Bag" in school, and in addition to the paraphernalia that goes in the bag that will declare who he is, the outside of the bag is to be adorned with all manner of photos.  Since I'm the family archivist, apparently, hunting down the pictures falls to me.  Furthermore, as Wendy's printer (which is much newer than mine) steadfastly refuses to print pictures properly, the printing falls to me as well.  I'll just say this...Wendy claims she doesn't understand why her printer won't print pictures.  But she knows.  Oh yes...she knows.

At any rate, as I go through these hundreds of files I will find stuff I forgot to put up this year.  Stuff that I'm sure I meant to get to.  The above shot is from our January trip to San Diego, thanks to a gift from Gammy and Grance.  We got to visit the Wild Animal Park and had a delightful time.

On our way out, Wendy and Kiernan hid behind a rhino.  Like ya do.

 
The final shot of this post is from the trip back home from San Diego, when we stopped in one of our favorite places, San Clemente, for lunch.

I'm not a fan of posting pictures of myself here, to be honest.  But a certain reader of this blog, we'll call him Pap-Pap, has requested I do so.  And so now I have.


San Diego & San Clemente, CA
January 10, 2010

Slideshow For This Day

As I mentioned in this post, we visited family in Colorado a few weeks ago and got so stay a couple of days at Villa de Granddaddy Jake y Omi.  We had a lovely time getting to know their beautiful new deck.  Also, we learned a new game.  Chicken Foot.  No, really, that's what it's called.  Or at least that's what Jake told us it was called.  I'm pretty sure it's not really a game at all and he was just making it up as we went along.

No matter, since Kiernan handily won at least one round of Chicken Foot, as you can see in the above slide where Wendy is getting up to shake his hand and congratulate him.  Good sportsmanship has to be carefully taught.*


*This should not be done with the game Monopoly.