Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Football (soccer) is my second favorite sport.  In Brazil they call it jogo bonito, the beautiful game, and it truly is. I'm loving the the World Cup and today I almost shed a tear for the U.S. team when they lost.  Four more years...

My favorite is baseball, for me it is also a beautiful game. So I was excited to take the girls to their first ball game today. I knew they wouldn't last 9 innings so instead of going to see the Angels or Dodgers, we went to see the Orange County Flyers, part of the Golden Baseball League.  I'd heard that minor and independent league baseball is great but I'd never been.

Today the first five hundred fans got free hats. The kids reallllly wanted a free hat so we got there super early. All the staff thought they were adorable, I agree.

We had choice seats, third row back just to the left of home plate, with tons of leg room.

Today was Armed Forces Appreciation Day so they had a veteran from every major American conflict (going back to WW II) throw out the first pitch. Then a Marine color guard brought the flag out for the National Anthem.  Ah the American pastime, I love it.

I taught the girls about the field and what "fair" and "foul" mean. While Ev followed the game pretty well, Jill was worried about staying as far away from the mascot as she could, so she sat on my lap for half the time.

It's not a ballgame if you don't get a hot dog (nom nom nom).

The cool thing about small ballgames is that you get to be real close to the action without busting the bank. We were so close that I could have called the strikes and balls, awesome!

I think the girls know that I'm a softy, so they kept asking for cotton candy. We compromised, they could have cotton candy if they also had some peanuts. You know, 'cause the song says so. They didn't mind.

There were quite a few servicemen and women there and they had some complimentary items for the fans as well. The girls were excited to get Army water bottles and pins. A nice servicewoman even put the pins in their hats for them.  Though Jill was afraid of the mascot, she wasn't afraid of the army lady.

Even though the kids only lasted three innings, we got to see a two run dinger, a double play, and some great hits and strikeouts. It was cool to see Ev and Jill get excited and clap when the home team played well.  Since it was affordable it wasn't a big deal that we left early. It was a good time, a sharp contrast to a Major League game where people that take pro sports too seriously swear, insult the other team, and get drunk while instructing their team from the stands how to beat the other team. I hope we end up in a place that is close to a minor league team.  For the price of one Major League ticket we got four tickets (only used three), tons of junk food, a few cool souvenirs, and some good memories.

Super Picture Post or How We Got Here From There

When Ben's parents were in town his brother came over and we had a great Brazilian dinner that consisted of: feijoada (black beans, rice, and meat), tomato and palm heart salad, collard greens, Brazilian cheese bread, grilled pineapple and, of course, guarana soda. The food was excellent and the company was better.

Ben did some projecting with his Dad while they were here, they fixed the balcony screen door, installed a screen door in the front door jam (which allows us to enjoy the cool breeze!), and when Dan came over they installed this nifty bike hangar on the balcony so that Ben's bike will be out of reach of the kids.

Here are the girls riding to L.A. to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's hotel...

...in Uncle Dan's cool car.

Ben tried to get some work done on his term papers while everyone else slept at night. This is what it looked like. He had one more paper to finish by the end of June but the professor for that class passed away. Ben is sad about losing a great professor, but some good has come out of it, it looks like every student in the class got an "A", even those who hadn't written their papers yet.  The jury is still out but it looks like Ben won't have to write that last 20 page paper, which means that he is completely done for the summer. Yay!!!

Jillian started her summer dance class. She loves it. Here she is learning about "exploding," which is a dance "energy trait."

We met our friends at her parent's place to swim in their pool. The girls had lots of fun with their friend Lincoln.

This is the last picture we got of the humming birds before they flew away. The last time we saw them they were so big that they were sitting on the edge of the nest because they couldn't fit in it. It was neat to see them grow so fast.

The girls love helping Dad use his tools, but Gordon seems to love it even more. Here he is finding where the studs are so that I can hang a decoration in our room.

Our friends finished school and are moving away so we had a picnic to say goodbye. The girls will miss Ethan a lot, he was always fun to play with.

The girls played some basketball with our friends Jared and Max. Later Ben was showing Evelyn how to pass the ball and she ecstatically said, "I'm learning how to use the ball. I'm getting ball lessons!"

And of course we went to the beach. Its's warmed up so it was crowded and for some reason there was a TON of seaweed in the water and washed up on the beach.

We let the kids play on the grass above the beach when we're done and it gets rid of a lot of the sand that would otherwise get in the car.

You can barely see the cellphone in Gordo's hand as he says, "He-wO?!"

The family resemblance here is very apparent. He looks like his Daddy and his uncle Dan when they were this age.

Busy, Busy

This first half of June has flown by, I haven't written about what we've been up to for nearly a month. So here it goes:

Beach. We've been just a few times, the last month has been cooler and windy, making the beach chilly instead of warm and sunny. But you still get sunburned. I knew that, but just didn't know how bad I could still be scorched. I've gotten an equal amount of bad sunburns in the short time we've been in CA to how many I had in  my entire life up to this point.

Roseola. I thought this was a mild childhood illness. It was for Evelyn. Well, Gordon got it over Memorial Day weekend, and yuck. He had a fever and sore throat for almost a week, and didn't want to eat, drink, or sleep for about 4 of those days. I thought he had an ear infection, and then the docs tell me it was the flu, and then the Roseola rash shows up when he's feeling better. I'm glad that's over.

Grandma and Grandpa Chickens. Evelyn has been telling our friends about this for weeks. They came to visit us for 5 days, and then were staying in LA for a conference. The girls spent one night with them in the hotel next to the Staples Center, so when one of the NBA finals game got out, Grandma took the girls out on the pool deck to watch all the people party and mingle. They have great, big spotlights there, and those were fun to watch too, I guess. They spent the next morning swimming and walking around, and Gordon and I met them for lunch. The kids loved the adventure, and Jilly loved all the hotel samples because they're miniature like she is.

World Cup. I really had no concept of World Cup until 2006, when Ben watched soccer games for a month. Well this time around, I'm prepared and know what World Cup fever is about (sort of). I was out on the playground during the USA/England match and I hear several apartments resound with "GOOOOAAAL!," all out of sync with each other depending on the broadcast they were watching. It was funny.

Kindergarten registration. This has been an enormous pain in the rear for me. Getting Ev into school here is like applying for college. Minus the financial aid information. It's ridiculous and I'm tired of thinking I've got all my papers together only to find I've forgotten one of the 12 documents they require.

Summer School. Speaking of Evelyn, trying to keeping this almost 5 year old contained and content is becoming a real job. So I'm doing my own pre-school of sorts to keep her stimulated to some extent, and hopefully save some sanity in the process. Jilly will love it.

And speaking of Jillian, I cut her hair to just above her shoulders the other night, and Ben and I are convinced that she is now sassier because of it. In a good and not-so-good way. She's growing up, and slowly coming out of the "I'm a little baby! Hold me! Cuddle me! I own mommy's lap!" phase, and into the "I'm trying to figure out how to be a bigger girl" phase. I welcome this transition, and it's going to be fun watching her mature with Evelyn going to school in the fall.

Gordon is losing some of his technology obsession (thank goodness, you can hear the cell phone sigh with relief). He's not as interested in it anymore, and actually becoming a little entertained by things like balls, cars, and trains. He usually wants someone to play toys with him, and when alone, he'll still go for electrically powered devices. His newest trick is to push the footstool over to our tall kitchen garbage can, which he then climbs onto, and from there, onto the kitchen counter where he pushes microwave buttons or tries to do the dishes. He is walking pretty well now (finally!).

Redecorating. I'm moving things around again, for probably at least the third time. I'm moving mostly wall hangings, and finding some new stuff. I just get in these "creative frenzies," I don't know what else to call them. I get stuck on something for about 3 weeks to a month, and then I'm ready to move onto something else. Right now it's redecorating. It's probably brought on by the new valance Grandma Chickens made for the kid's room while she was here.

The girls have been slumber partying it on my bedroom floor to get Gordon used to sleeping in his crib. Tonight they are back in their room. Hopefully we'll have 3 kids sleeping through the night!

Hummingbird update

So I make a terrible bird journalist. I've been checking on these little guys, but I finally got a picture taken of them yesterday. I took a picture of the "tree" the nest is in the top of, hopefully to give some perspective to how small this whole little bird drama is. It's the little tan speckled blob in the top section of the tree.

The chicks are about 10 days old, and have easily tripled their size. The parents don't sit on the nest much any more, and I guess I wouldn't want to either with those little sharp beaks poking my underside! I was watching them yesterday, and they were sticking their tiny, skinny, yellow tongues in and out, probably much like they suck nectar from flowers.

My Beautiful Wife

Shaunie is taking care of a not-sleeping-well-because-he-might-have-an-ear-infection-Gordon right now and she doesn't have time to post pictures of her adorable new haircut...because she's been "structuring" her Relief Society Lesson for tomorrow.  So I thought I'd post a couple pics, I think she looks incredible, she is incredible. I thought she looked great before the cut too, but sometimes a new haircut or some other small change re-emphasizes the beauty that we sometimes forget is there because we see it every day. An old, dead, Russian critic named Victor Shklovsky called this process defamiliarization. Here is a snippet from his wonderful essay, "Art as Technique":

"Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife and the fear of war. 'If all the complex lives of many go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.'

Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object as seen, not as recognized. 

The technique of art is to make things "unfamiliar," to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception. The act of perception in art is an end in itself and must be prolonged. In art, it is our experience of the process of construction that counts, not the finished product."

I submit that this haircut is art and that it is making Shaunie Shaunie, or perhaps I should say that the haircut emphasizes her Shaunieness, which, when we were dating, I referred to as The Cuteness.  Does that make sense?  Anyhow, she is bee-ootiful, isn't she?  I'm a very, very lucky man and I'm glad that she got a haircut that she loves.

The girls wanted to pose with the "new do" and show off the cool scripture charts they made at a primary activity today.

Hatchlings

They hatched sometime in the last 24 hours. They are TINY. One of thier heads, from side to side, only measures about 1/3" I'm guessing. I was generous on the nest size too, it's just about 2" wide. The eggs were the size of jelly beans. They are a dark purple color, with longer gold-colored feathers poking out of thier bodies. This picture is good for seeing what the nest is made of too: spider webs, eucalyptus tree bark, fine grasses, and moss. It's nice and fuzzy inside, at least it looks that way, I'm not going to touch it and find out until the birds are gone for good.

Nature!

When we first got to California, I considered it a pretty sterile environment, as far as animals go. There were, and still are, very few flying bugs. We hardly see houseflies, and get the occasional silverfish (never saw these until I moved here, small, and non-biting).

 We have had a few dandy-long legged house spiders which move at the speed of molasses, so they are easy to catch. (We do get GIGANTIC garden spiders though, and black widows, both outside thankfully). I saw my first cockroach a week or two back, and would have crushed it, but I just cannot stand the "crunching" sound large bugs make. It gives me the willies like nothing else does.

 There is quite a large bunny population, and they have been fun to watch nibble on the grass in the late afternoons and evenings here. I thought they had very few to no predators around. Enter the bobcat.

There is one that prowls the apartment complex, hunting the multitude of bunnies. (He or she is very shy, hasn't bothered anyone, so I don't think they're making a huge effort to catch it).  The bobcat leaves the mostly-eaten carcasses around sometimes, and it allows me to teach my kids about the natural order of things, so I don't mind too much.


Hummingbirds are year-round residents here. The last few weeks, as I came to the bottom of my stairwell, this hummingbird would fly past me. I didn't think anything of it until yesterday, when upon inspection, I found a tiny nest.

It's not more than 3 inches wide. The nest is right at my eye level, so I can peek in and check on it. So cool. Growing up, I only saw hummingbirds a few times a year, and just a few of them. So this is quite a treat. The kids are really excited and I will keep putting  up pictures of its progress. I think the above-pictured hummingbird is like the one taking up residence in the garden below, but I can't be sure because I haven't been able to get close enough. Those little things fly so fast.