More Graeagle Lodge Pictures (8/4 to 8/8)

These pictures were taken 8/4 to 8/8 at Graeagle Lodge and vicinity. I got these from our friends Chris and Tracy. Love this place!

2015 Stanford Summer Classic Division 3, Ant's Soccer Games

Anthony played in 4 soccer games this weekend -- 8/22 9:10am (lost 0-1), 8/22 1:50pm (won 1-0), 8/23 10:20am (tied 3-3) and 8/23 3pm (lost 1-3). This was the first soccer tournament for his Alpine Strikers team. He played goalie for the entire first game and 1/2 of the last game. He scored 1 goal in the 3rd game! He played hard and it was fun to watch him. He is a quick player and can take the ball down the "channel" (down the sidelines) and did it at least 4 times in the 2nd game and at least 2 times in the 3rd game. I didn't go to the 4th game so I can't say what happened then. Notice that Ant's uniform is slightly different from the rest of the team? His uniform #9 is not here yet even though we ordered it a couple of weeks ago. He is wearing Ramsey's old uniform when Ramsey played when he was 3rd grade, exactly 4 years ago.

Mid August Update

 

Mon 8/10, Ramsey biked to Spencer's house in the morning. Ant and I stayed home and made homemade pasta. It was a lot of work but we had fun together. Ant is wearing two different shirts in the above pictures because he got really dirty at one point while mixing and kneading the dough.

Spencer and Ramsey ended up biking back to our house about 3:00. Spencer introduced Ram and Ant to Minecraft, a new video game for the boys.

The boys playing Knock Your Blocks Off before dinner...

Tuesday 8/11, we went to get the boys haircuts! They needed it. In the afternoon, I tried to get them to do yoga with me at home. They were very silly and kept laughing. I finally got Ant to lie down and "rest" at the end of our very short yoga session. We made bread together on Friday morning and played Ticket to Ride together while the bread was rising/proofing.

On Friday 8/14 morning, both boys got invited to impromptu playmates. Ram went over to Kai's house and Ant went over to Siena's house. When I went to pick them up at 5pm, I got a text from William's mom inviting Anthony over for dinner and a movie. When I went to drop Anthony off, Ramsey got invited to stay also. So…on Friday night the kids had dinner (above left) and dessert (about right) with William's family. Hen and I ended up cooking the salmon we had bought at Costco and invited our tenant Barb to have dinner with us. She told us that she is retiring in Feb 2016 and will move to Michigan. We will have to find a new tenant then…which is sad because she has now been with us for 9 years!

On Sat 8/15, the boys went to basketball with Hendrik (Hendrik's game) in the morning while I got to go to yoga. In the afternoon Ramsey had Xtreme baseball bootcamp from 3-6pm  (and also on Sun 8/16) and right afterward both Ram and Ant went to Owen and Reilly's house for a sleepover! Hen and I went out on a date and went to the movies in Redwood City.

Mon 8/17 morning, Anthony went to Ayden's house for a playdate while Ram went with me to a quick PTO-related meeting. In the afternoon, Ayden came over to our house and then we went to Ramsey's orthodontic appointment where they had to take a mold for a new expander for the upper palate because his broke right after his previous appointment (8/10). If it looks like Ramsey is gagging in that shot (above), he is. The taste of the mold goop is nasty he says. After the orthodontist appointment, we went bowling and the kids bowled 3 games. Of course we had to stop for frozen yogurt afterward. If it looks like we had a lot of fro yo, we did! We went for seconds and thus we have 8 cups/bowls on the table.

If you're wondering why I migrated all the content from my previous blog to this new one, it's because on Tues 8/18, our contractor came to look at our buckled wooden floors in the front room/office. The floor is buckled near the wall which on the other side is our master bathroom shower. Our contractor Anthony thinks there is some leakage from the shower valve in the wall that is getting into the hardwood floors. I went and tried to retrieve some pictures from the construction late 2011-early 2012 but since I am not using a macbook, the stuff on the external drive cannot be easily parsed through. I went to my blog and took a screen shot of the shower valve and sent this to our contractor. A few days later, I looked at the traffic looking at my old blog and there were people viewing from Russia! I'm not saying it's because of this picture (above) but I closed it because I didn't want people looking at our lives that obviously don't know us (from Russia???!).

Tues 8/18 afternoon, Anthony had his first soccer practice for the Alpine Strikers team. The practice was 4-5:30. When I got him at 5:30 into the car, he was DONE and exhausted. We dropped Ramsey off for his first Xtreme baseball practice which was 6:15-8:15pm. Ant came home and after showering, opened a bag of Star Wars jelly beans that Aunty Annie sent to him. He even had Biggy and Fuzzer "eat" jelly beans.

Wed 8/19 we went to the California Academy of Sciences with Ayden, his sister Kylee and their mom Janne. Our yearly membership to this museum expires 8/31 and I don't think we will get another chance to go. In the afternoon, Anthony went to play at Siena's house.

Thurs 8/20, the boys and I read together in bed for a while. Then Janne came to pick up the boys and they went to a rock climbing lesson at Planet Granite. The boys said they had a lot of fun climbing.

In the afternoon, I took Ayden and Anthony to soccer practice from 4-5:30. The Thursday field is SUPER far away and it took 35 minutes to drive there and 45 minutes back. Geesh. Meanwhile, I took Ramsey to his first soccer practice (AYSO, Coach Lars is assistant coach) at Hillview from 5-6pm. I picked up Ant and Ayden and we went to Laurel to see what class the boys were in (class lists posted 4pm) and were so happy to see they both were in the same class and have Mrs Seely for a teacher.

Thursday night Ayden and Spencer slept over. We had dinner and dessert and then the kids went to bed at a fairly reasonable time. I think Ant and Ayden fell asleep at 9:30 and Spencer and Ram at 10 or 10:30pm. The younger boys got up at 6:15am and laid in bed quietly until 7. The older boys wandered out at 7:40am. The kids played a game of Blokus before Ayden and Spencer went home on Fri 8/21 morning. Then Ram and Ant went to the Exploratorium with Michael and Lesley while I went to Hillview to setup for the schedule pick up "Luau" event.

 

Ramsey had another Xtreme practice Fri 4:15-6:15pm. Ramsey didn't go to the Hillview "Luau" event and after baseball we went to Hillview and got his schedule. He is in the Pipeline Academy.

Fri night we checked in on the boys and found them asleep like such. Ant had Biggy sleep so that he blocks the closet because Ant is afraid that there are robbers in the closet (doors closed). Ram has taken to sleeping on the mattress on the floor because he says it's more comfortable than sleeping on his bed. Uh huh.

Sat 8/22 Ant had 2 soccer games at 9:10am and 1:50pm. (I'll put up another post about soccer games.) After the 2nd soccer game, we drove him to his friend Owen's birthday party at Tech Rocks! in Belmont and they played computer games.

Hendriks' friend Baptiste invited him to his 40th birthday/15th wedding anniversary party at a winery in Saratoga that night. It was a black tie affair. Hen had a tuxedo made in Thailand back in 1999 or 2000 but I had never seen him wear it. He found it but had to go out to buy a new tuxedo shirt. I had to alter the pants at the last minute because both of us have gained weight! I tried on 4 (black tie appropriate) dresses and only 3 could zip up. Even the one I ended up wearing was uncomfortably tight. My lovely son Ram said, "Don't wear that dress mom, it makes you look fat!" Gotta love that boy for his brutal honesty. We left our house at 6pm. Ramsey went with Kevin and Michael on an overnight fishing trip to Santa Cruz! We found them on the freeway as we were both headed in the same direction.

I didn't manage to get a picture of Baptiste's wife Renee. It was a beautiful party with about 80 people there. The view was spectacular (of Silicon Valley).

   

Ramsey had a great time fishing with Michael and Kevin and Kevin's boss who owns the boats. Yes, two. One (the nearest above) is where the slept at night. Kevin, Michael and Ramsey each had their own bedrooms on that boat! The next morning 8/23 they left at 6:30am on the fishing boat and caught about 12-15 fish total! Rockfish. I now have the filets in my refrigerator and maybe we'll cook some/all tonight.

Meanwhile, William's parents picked up Anthony along with William from Owen's party and Ant slept over at William's house. How fun! We were told they fell asleep at 9 and woke up at 7…apparently they were tired and didn't stay up all night (they usually have awake overs instead of sleep overs!) and we picked him up bright and early at 8am since he had another soccer game on Sun at 10:20am (and then got into the championship bracket so had a 4th game of the weekend at 3pm).

Ram came home on Sun 8/23 afternoon about 2:30pm. He was pooped. He went to SVBC basketball practice 6-8pm and they managed to get a team picture.

Mon 8/24 we went to Hillview to pick up Ram's iPad and then went to Stanford Mall for back to school clothes shopping. The boys want only sports clothes and protested when I wanted to buy these Gap shirts (and I did).

We had a buffet Indian lunch at Darbar.

And ended up deciding on Champion shirts from Macy's and Target shorts for their back to school outfits. We bought baseball cards for the boys at Target (which was super crowded because of back to school!) and they wanted to go to their "lucky spot" to open the cards. Mon 8/24 night I found that Anthony had set up his animals (not all) in a circle surrounding him on his bed. Hmmm…are they his protectors?