Andersonville Adventures: 5 yrs 2 months

We've had such lovely weather and trying to get out more on her bike. I've started taking her just on our street and she's gotten really good at breaking and coasting. We can't go very far before a down hill in one direction or an uphill the other. In between there's slight ups and downs all good for improving your cycling skills. Hopefully we can get to the park at some point and experiment without training wheels.

Josie is great with folding her laundry especially when it's bed time.

We made it to one gymnastics meet at Stanford. They beat the Washington Huskies. Nice to have a free event at Stanford.

We met baby Alina and her parents at the Los Gatos library and then out for lunch. We didn't realize story/music time only lasts 15 min or that we'd have to park pretty far away so we basically missed it but it was for babies and toddlers and it needs to be short. It's a cool library. Look forward to having the kids bond at Sierra Camp.

Izzy over for her Friday dinner play date. She was the hippy and Josie the surfer girl.

I asked Josie if I could take a pic of her in cousin Katie's hand-me-downs. She layered up the shirts and "grass" skirt over her jammies and struck up a pose. Well actually a few poses.

Super warm spring evening called for a trip to the yogurt shop.

Happy 5th Birthday Kaira!

One of our Friday adventures was taking the train to Mountain View to see the Peninsula Youth Theatre performers put on Les Miserable. It was outstanding. Josie has been listening to the music on Pandora for probably a year. She learned the music and the story. We watched a high school production on YouTube - 3hrs but watched in increments. PYT performers were high school and middle school students and also some younger kids as well. They are so talented. We both loved it, all 3+ hours of it. The Friday morning performances are $10 and for schools. I figured if we didn't like it or didn't make it the whole way through at least the tickets are inexpensive. We've been listening to the cd from the library and that's all Josie wants to listen to in the car. Who knows, maybe we have a future performer on our hands. In two weeks she starts her theater class with San Carlos Children's Theatre.

Josie wanted kitty to come and she insisted on 3 braids.

Josie loves meeting the cast. She got to meet Jean Val Jean, Cosette, and Gavroche.

Josie had to go to work with me on a Friday for a meeting I needed to attend. She hung out with Sharon our admin and colored and got lots of attention. After we walked over to the Cantor Arts Museum. We saw a very cool exhibit and spent probably 90 min just in that section. Then ate lunch in the Cool Cafe around 1:30. I was surprised how long she wanted to stay in the exhibit. I basically made her leave b/c I wanted to eat. We picked up a kids portfolio kit at the entrance and she spent quite a bit of time sketching.

First she started sketching this picture just outside the exhibit. It was a good one to start with.

The is exhibit we spent all our time in. There was something really powerful about most of the pics. I loved being able to spend so much time really looking at each piece and talking about them. Josie wondered why females had to cover up and why men had all the power. There were other photos of teenage girls in their bedrooms showing some with things and others without.

This was super interesting to watch. It was a video screen and they were empty except for the colored background when we walked up and then slowly the faces would appear. There was no sound but it looked like at times they were singing and praying. We watched for a long time and then Josie drew her interpretation. It was fun to watch her be so engaged.

This one was photographs but her drawing was from the video piece. It was interesting to see that she drew the faces with the full covering, not just the head covering. There were other photos she looked at that had the full covering.

The photographer took a picture of this mother, daughter and baby doll in each stage of covering. We actually started at the covered end and couldn't see the uncovered pics because it was pretty long. It was fun to just notice the eyes and talk about recognizing them just by eyes. Even the baby doll had the full cover.

These photos showed the contrast in the home between husband (soldier) and wife. First one is coat rack with his helmet and her scarf; their shoes with a drip of blood on his boots (I like the reflections in the pics); fruit bowl with hand grenade; bed with some kind of explosive device.