One can learn fascinating facts by rooting through purses. For example, Sabriya (5) conscientiously fills her Sunday purse with: scissors, tape, crayons, band-aids, and gum.
Alphabet of Silly Walks. To amuse Anya during a sick day she took this past Monday, Jan showed her some Monty Python videos. She thought they were fairly funny, but the Ministry of Silly Walk sketch had her laughing out loud.
Anya is now constructing an alphabet of silly walks. She and her friend Ivy have divided up the alphabet, and each girl is responsible for coming up with a different silly walk to stand for each letter. By walking in a series of silly walks, one can spell out a (short) word.
Here Anya demonstrates the walk for the letter “F”. (If she were bending her raised knee, it would be an “A”.)
Mission to Mars. A parent in Anya’s grade organizes a large group trip to Boeing’s Museum of Flight, and Jan helps chaperone the kids. They spend the morning going to through a “Mission to Mars” event, in which they have to play various roles in a (very roughly) simulated Mars mission. Half the kids start out in the Mission Control room, while the other half are in the spacecraft room. In the middle of the morning, the groups switch — which is good, because everyone agrees the spacecraft room is much cooler. Plus, the astronauts on the spacecraft side get to wear NASA jackets.
As one might expect, about five minutes into the simulation, things start going wrong, and the kids deal with a sequence of crises. Anya ends up playing the role of a medical officer, which she says is kind of boring, even though she does play a small part in dealing with a simulated radiation leak. Here she checks the radiation level of her classmate Dylan.
Jan’s inspired to try making gnocchi (Italian potato pasta) from scratch. The result is just okay, but that’s fine — the best part was actually having all three girls help “rice” (mince) the potatoes and form the little gnocchi.
Sometimes Bree likes to run to the front window when Jan’s pulling out of the driveway so she can wave goodbye.
We find out that Sabriya will be going to the same school as her sisters when she starts kindergarten this fall!
We’re very happy that all three girls will be in the same school. They should be there together for three years, until Anya graduates from 8th grade in 2016. Given the six year difference between her and Anya, this will be the only school all three will ever attend at the same time.
Anya really loves pickles. Whenever we eat lunch at the nearby Essential Baking Company, Anya always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich this way: “Grilled cheese, with pickles on the inside AND pickles on the side”.
Apparently the people at the bakery who take orders from customers occasionally rotate from the back side of the operation (where the food is prepared) to the front (to take orders). Sometimes when we place an order for Anya’s grilled cheese sandwich, the order-taker will say, “Ah! I know this sandwich!” because they’ve encountered the order at some point in the past.
Now all the girls want their grilled cheese sandwich this way. Even these pickles aren’t enough: after finishing her lunch, she asks Jan for some more money to buy more pickles.
Jan gets together with an old friend from Waseda for lunch. At some point in the past, Jan put together a little Facebook group of classmates from Waseda’s International Division 1988-89 class, and he recently tried to track down one classmate, Nobuko, whom he’d lost track of over the years. It turns out she’d moved to Seattle! Jan’s happy to reconnect with her, and they enjoy a nice (Japanese) lunch together at Kisaku, south of Green Lake.
Sabriya’s pre-K class celebrates the beginning of spring with an evening potluck dinner party and play. Bree’s role in the play is the sun, so she wears a gold foil hat and bright orange clothing.
We have a nice family dinner at the home of friends Joe and Kristina in Yarrow Point. Their twin girls, Sydney and Piper, will be entering the same kindergarten class as Bree in the fall, which makes it all the more fun to get the girls together to play.
Bree and Angela are enjoying a fine first day of Spring Break at the local Starbucks. Angela is teaching Bree math with her first Kenken puzzle. Multiplication and division, watch out!
All done and proud!
Anya plays piano in the annual Seattle Young Artists Music Festival hosted at the University of Washington. This is a chance for children to play in front of an experienced adjudicator. Anya’s group of three kids plays for University of Nebraska music professor Paul Barnes, who turns out to be erudite, engaging, and funny. Anya does a good job with her four pieces, and Professor Barnes’ lesson with her is fascinating to watch.
Anya’s piano event is at the University of Washington’s School of Music building on the main quadrangle, and as luck would have it, we’re on the campus on a beautiful sunny day when the cherry blossoms are at their peak. After walking through the magical trees, we stop for a celebratory treat at Menchie’s frozen yogurt in University Village.
Spring means its time to pull the bikes out of the garage. Bree pedals hers up and down the block in front of our house.