Camping with Uncle Jeremy

Earlier this week (Wednesday, 12/15 to be exact - I had to keep Dean home from school that day because just as we pulled up in the preschool parking lot to drop him off at school, as I was about to unbuckle him from his carseat, he said he didn't feel so good and then puked all over. Interestingly the barf had a distinctly chocolate smell to it and I later discovered that Dean had consumed SEVERAL Hershey's Miniatures chocolate bars right after waking up that morning after having found my stash that I used to fill the pockets of his Advent Calendar. So yeah, he couldn't go to school because he vomited in the parking lot but it turns out he wasn't really sick AND he had a major sugar high and felt completely fine by the time we got back to the house. NICE) So anyway, I was busy trying to get some Christmas Presents wrapped so I could get them in the mail in hopes they'd arrive at their destinations on the mainland in time for Christmas. Dean wasn't exactly being very helpful and was SERIOUSLY slowing down the process. Specifically, he was wanting to use the tape to hang up some drawings of planets he had been working on. And every time I needed the tape it seemed to have disappeared and I'd have to go hunt it down. I was quickly running out of time (and patience) before the Post Office closed and was on my last few gifts - a couple of things for my brother - and Dean was really upset that I had hidden the tape from him. So I started up this conversation with him (in a very excited voice, hoping he'd feed off that false excitement, which somehow magically worked!)
Me: "Dean! Hurry! go draw a picture for Uncle Jeremy and we'll send it to him with his Christmas Presents. He'll be SO excited"
Dean: "Ok! But what should I draw?"
Me: "I don't know. But NOT a solar system or planets. Draw something else. Draw a picture of you and Uncle Jeremy at the beach or something. Anything except space stuff."
Dean: " Oh! Ok" as he runs as fast as he can to his room where he (thankfully) stays put for the next 10 minutes while I finish wrapping Jeremy's gifts

Now, I have to tell you that I'm pretty sure I've never seen Dean draw ANYTHING other than planets and stars and space-related objects like nebulae and light echoes and dark matter and such (which I mean really just looks like a bunch of circles and splattery looking scribbles if we're being honest about it - but he does try really hard to make them look like the actual phenomena that he is drawing). But my point is, I really didn't realize that Dean COULD draw people and definitely didn't think he could draw a picture of him and Uncle Jeremy at the beach!! So I was VERY surprised when he came back in and handed me this:


He then spent the next 5 minutes explaining to me what that was a picture of. See, it's a picture of Dean and Jeremy camping on the beach and they're roasting marshmallows over a campfire. That's the campfire that's pink and it's really smoky. And the green on the other side of the fire is a plant. And he wrote I love you "because the heart means love" (so cute!). A few of my favorite things about this drawing that I'd like to point out:
- His concept of scale is pretty advanced I'd say - notice that Jeremy is not only taller than Dean, but Jeremy's arm is much longer than Dean's.
- Both of the hands have 5 fingers
- I love that the entire picture is drawn with markers EXCEPT for the marshmallows, for those he decided to switch things up and go with a black pen
- He made squiggles above the fire to represent the smoke, and there's even a smoke squiggle all the way at the top of the page!
- I love the shining sun and that they both look so happy!!

I'm pretty sure Jeremy doesn't read my blog so I doubt the surprise is ruined, but that drawing is probably way better than the lame gifts I bought him!!

Candy Cane Fun

Just some pics of Dean enjoying a Cherry Candy Cane from Whole Foods in front of our Christmas Tree...(and yes, he's in his underwear...again...this child has a serious aversion to clothes...)

and a video of him talking about what he asked Santa for this year (some very specific toys from Discovery Toys that I had to hunt down after our trip to the Mainland when he played with a Marble Works game belonging to Aunty Leslie that he hasn't stopped talking about since!!!). My Mom let me open one of my Christmas presents early last night so I could use it at Dean's preschool Christmas Program - it's a new Flip digital Video Camera and the quality is SO much better than the videos we've posted in the past! I'm having fun playing with it and you can probably expect a lot more videos here on the blog in the future! Just remember, if you get these posts in an e-mail update, you have to go to the blog to actually view the video. Just click THIS LINK, then scroll to the post for today, 12/18/10, and click the play button on the video!

Thanksgiving

OK, well, yeah - so I've been a REALLY bad blogger. Oh well. Life goes on. I just haven't felt motivated to sit down and deal with it. I'm sure part of it has to do with my Dad's death. But it's also actually A LOT of work to keep up this blog - I have to resize every photo I post here - because I take my photos in the highest quality settings on my cameras, so they are very large files, which means if I upload them like that, it takes FOREVER to load on blogger and often they just won't load at all - so I resize them and save the resized photos in a separate folder on my computer (Because I want to keep the large files for scrapbooking). Then there's the actual storytelling. And I'm kind of weird in case you hadn't noticed - like super anal about things. I don't like things to be out of order and it is going to SERIOUSLY bother me to do this Thanksgiving post when I haven't posted the photos and stories from our October trip to the mainland (but that is going to be a SUPER time consuming undertaking) and other goings-on from the last few months. So, I just put it off rather than give myself a stroke because my posts are out of order! ha!

But, I really like this blog. I don't want to give it up. This is more than just a way to keep our faraway family and friends up to date, it's a sort of in-depth journal on Dean's development and the everyday ups and downs of our lives. I think I'm pretty honest here - I don't think I hold things back and only share the good things or try to paint an overly idyllic picture of our family. Because let's be honest - raising a headstrong 4-yr-old isn't always easy!! But I don't want to forget a single moment of these days. And this blog will help ensure that I don't!

So, here I am - about to share the story of Dean's Thanksgiving Program at school because tonight is his Christmas Program and I just can NOT share the Christmas Program before sharing the Thanksgiving Program. And it's my goal to get completely caught up with sharing pictures and stories from the last few months before the end of the year, even if they are a bit out of order. So be prepared for several posts in the next few weeks!

So Children's Garden Preschool had their annual Thanksgiving Feast the day before Thanksgiving. All parents and families were invited to attend a large potluck feast for lunch and eat with the children after they performed a Thanksgiving Program. Dean's class, the Turtle Class, dressed as Pilgrims (I was so proud of Dean for keeping his Pilgrim hat on the ENTIRE time!! Dean does NOT like to wear ANYTHING on his head, so this was HUGE!!) and sang their Thanksgiving song (video at the end of this post). Here are some pictures...



I love this one with all the bare feet and a few rubber slippers thrown in...

Brother Alika gave a Hawaiian Blessing. Those are Green Ti leaves dipped in salt water from the Pacific Ocean just a few blocks away that he then sort of "flicked" on everyone as he chanted something in Hawaiian. It was interesting and cool at the same time.

Dean did a great job singing the Turtle Class' song. He sang the whole thing, nice and loud! Here are the words to the song (tune goes to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star):
Let's be thankful for this day
For our friends and for our play
Let's be thankful let's be glad
For the food and things we have
Let's give thanks for you and me
And our home and family.

The Roly Poly class and the Dolphin Class each performed a song and then the whole school sang a song in Japanese and then another song in Hawaiian. It was super cute!

And here's a video of Dean and his class singing their Thanksgiving Song. (If you get these posts in an e-mail update, you'll need to go to the actual blog to view the video. Just click on THIS LINK and then go to today's post, 12/17/10, and at the end of the post, click on the play button in the video):