Pasadena Kidspace Museum

One day during Chris' conference the boys and I went to Pasadena's Kidspace Museum. It was a perfect place to go on a hot day. They had a Early Childhood (crawlers/preschoolers) room with places to crawl on, jump in and slide down as well as wooden puzzles, blocks and wall art using magnetic and Velcro shapes.

They had a museum with lots of bug/insect/earth exhibits. One exhibit was a "Raindrop Climber" with plexi-glass circles overlapping enough to climb up two stories.
There were trikes and a track to drive along with road signs! Alec wanted to put his helmet on by himself. You can see Charlie taking a quick nap in the stroller there in the background. He ended up doing that for most mornings. What a trooper.

Probably the favorite activity of the day was the stream/waterfall/pond the kids could play in. Alec was nervous with so many kids around and wasn't sure about getting wet in his clothes, but quickly warmed up to the idea. Charlie would've crawled right in the water no matter how deep it got! Trying to keep an eye on Alec, a hand on Charlie and take pictures while standing in the rocky pond was quite a balancing act.

We would usually get home from these morning excursions around 1:30 and then take naps in the hotel room. Then we'd either play in the room more, go swimming in the pool, or take a walk before going back to the hotel room for dinner. Each day was a good mix of busy exploring and confined, if not quiet, relaxing.

COMING UP NEXT: The Huntington: Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens ...

Its been a while

Yes, it has. Chris did a fantastic job presenting his paper at the IJCAI conference and workshop in Pasadena. (So I heard. I wish I could've seen it myself but I think with the two kids we would've been a tiny distraction) He also made some good contacts; one of which being with the VP of Disney Research.

The boys and I enjoyed our hotel and some local kid-friendly places in Pasadena. We've got loads of pictures and I'm tempted to do small, frequent posts about the trip to stretch it out, but we all know that I rarely follow through with my declarations to post more later. So maybe I'll throw them all on here. On second thought, I should use this nap time a little more productively so I'll just post some "fun in the hotel" pictures on here and save the rest for subsequent posts... I PROMISE!

This picture was taken from me standing on our HUGE and comfy king sized bed. We had Charlie in the pack n' play in the corner and Alec had a little tent/bed under the desk. We all knelt around the small table for meals and ate here most of the time thanks to cereal, bagels, PB and J and microwave mac n' cheese.

The boys' favorite hotel past time was to drive around these wind-up cars. They also enjoyed throwing balls into the ice bucket acting as proxy for a basketball hoop and looking out the window at the pool 2 stories down.

COMING UP NEXT: Pasadena Kidspace Museum...

SIDE NOTE - In other big news, Charlie has a tooth! He's putting everything in his mouth like crazy and thinks its a game when I say, "Not in your mouth, Charlie!" while swatting the leaf, stick, rock, or shoe away from his face.

4th of July

Its been somewhat of a rough week. I guess you could call it a bad case of the post-vacation blues. As a result, we both wanted to keep the Independence Day festivities fairly low key. We went to our ward breakfast/program Saturday morning where Alec saw people dressed up (really authentically) as George Washington, Betsy Ross and Abraham Lincoln. Alec was, as you guessed, scared of them and said really loud, "Mommy, don't I yike doze dies." This is another example of why I'm glad Alec-ese is not something easily understood by the casual listener. We had a really yummy and fun BBQ with some friends for dinner, played kickball and did some toddler-friendly "fireworks": wanna-be-sparklers, snakes and a few strobe ones. Then as any lame and tired parent would do, we put our kids to bed around 8:00. Regardless of our low-key celebration, I am extremely proud and honored to be an American. I love our country and I'm grateful for our founding fathers' courage and insight, and for the men and women who have defended our freedoms. Happy Independence Day.

Alec, Charlie and I made a 4th of July fireworks painting complete with glitter. Ok, Charlie didn't help much but he sure enjoyed it!
Charlie's first bike ride.
Charlie was actually having fun until we took the picture.
"So big!" is one of Charlie's first tricks.

Big Betteridge Blast 09

My family's skit: A dance tribute to Michael Jackson

Not only did my immediate family have a reunion this past week, but we piggy-backed it with an extended Betteridge family reunion. Talk about fun: pools, bike rides, movies, root beer floats, play grounds, ultimate frisbee, mountain biking, hot tubs, lava caves, golf, surfing simulator, crafts, shopping, pizza, skit night, pasta, and probably the most anticipated activity for me, the 1/2 marathon race. We truly did have a blast.

Inside the lava cave (Sarah, Loren/Merlene's family, Jordan, Ethan, Chris, Me, Alec and Charlie)

Alec and his cousins walking around Sunriver Village (Alec, Cameron, Ethan, Tyler, Mary and Andrew)

The flow rider / surfing simulator. Too many cousins to name, but they're all family.

Chris surfing!
Some of the racers. Mom, Dad, Me, Loren, Merlene, Ben, Kelsey, Marshall, Anthony, Jordan
Nicole, Me and Amanda... Pre-race (thats why we're standing up straight and smiling) I'll do a post with more race details later
Tribute to Michael Jackson movie

Play School

So all of us moms decided to take a summer break from our co-op Playschool. We started the year with 7 kids and ended with 5. Its been sad but a bit of a stress-relief. My week feels more open although it sure is more boring for Alec. I've tried to still come up with fun things to do. Last week, we rode the bus to the Stanford Shopping Center and rode the escalators at Bloomingdale's, threw pennies in the fountain and played/ate ice cream at McDonald's then rode the bus home. We also went berry picking at a somewhat local u-pick farm and made strawberry freezer jam. This week its been less eventful. We've basically just done our usual once-a-week library run, watered the garden and played outside. Maybe if it gets hot enough we'll bust out the kiddie pools and have some fun in swimming suits. Oh, which reminds me. At Bloomingdale's we had to walk through their summer dress section to get to the escalators. Besides being scared of the mannequins, Alec pointed to a strapless short dress and said, "oOOoo swimming suit! pretty swimming suit." Some of them practically were swimming suits. What a cute, modest little boy.

Surprises

Alec is constantly surprising us. Here are some recent experiences.

Nap Surprise - Alec has started getting out of his bed during nap/bed time. We give him 1 chance then we tell him we'll have to take away his blanket/ci-ci if he gets out of bed again. Most of the time that works, but sometimes we actually have to follow through. The other day after giving him his 1 chance, I didn't hear anything for a while so I assumed he fell asleep. Charlie started crying an hour or so later so I run up to take him out of the room before he wakes up Alec, and Alec is no where to be seen. I start to panic a bit and look around upstairs. I find him like this on our bed.

I should have known. One of Alec's favorite spots to go on his nap/bedtime escapades is our bed. He lifts up the curtains and watches the activity out on our playground. I guess this time, it wasn't entertaining enough and he fell back on our pillows to sleep. I'm not sure if the green pillow fell on him or if he put it there. Either way its cute. (Yes, I checked to make sure he was breathing before running downstairs to grab the camera).

Movie Surprise - Alec likes to watch movies. His favorites are Caillou, Berenstain Bears, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and now Madeleine. Actually these are all TV shows but we get them on DVD from the library. They are gentle, simple, short and entertaining. Chris and I think he watches them just barely shy of too much, but Alec of course, thinks he doesn't get enough movie time. This morning I was getting dressed/putting Charlie down for a nap while Chris was showering and I left Alec downstairs sitting at the computer watching his cousin's Andrew's recent-est blog movie of him singing, "Take me out to the Ball Game." All Alec has to do is push the space bar and the movie repeats. Mid-change I thought I heard a man's voice and some children laughing. I thought maybe the neighbors were watching TV really loud and I finish changing. Chris gets out of the shower and notices the noise too. We decide it needs to be checked out and we go downstairs to find this.

Alec is watching our newest library "movie" Madeleine, on the computer. Looking around I wondered if someone (any of our neighbor friends) had stopped by and Alec coerced them into putting on a movie and so they obliged and sneaked back out of our house and disappeared. Ok, that sounds a little crazy but so does the only other option: Alec did it himself. Then I notice the little chair right next to our entertainment center where we keep our Library movies, and I remember how yesterday, Alec was playing with the computer's CD/DVD Rom drive, pushing the button and watching the thing slide in and out. Apparently Alec went outside to grab a chair, used it to reach the library movies, opened the case, took out the DVD, put the case back!, went over to the computer, pushed the DVD-Rom button, put the DVD in, closed it, waited for it to load(here I'm guessing it had an auto-play feature... there is NO WAY Alec knows how to use the mouse to double click correctly), and then climbed in the chair to bask in the animated glory of all his hard work.

Not to be out-down by his older brother, Charlie surprised us this week by crawling up a stair for the first time. Actually, make that a whole flight of stairs. Good thing I was watching and good thing the camera was a foot away so I didn't have to leave Charlie to get a picture and video of it. Video coming soon.

new shoes and happiness

Spending money is so much fun. Wait, let me qualify that a bit. Spending money on things you know you'll use and love for an awesome price is so much fun, and only if you don't do it very often. Today, I had so much fun. A while back I set myself a prize of buying new running shoes and new running clothes after I ran 10 miles. Last Saturday, my running friends and I ran 10 miles which, for us, is about 2 hours of straight running. To give you an idea of how fun it was I'll roughly quote one of my friends during the run, "This is like one of our girls night outs except instead of all the yummy food, comfy seats and fun movies, we're running, thirsty and tired." It actually wasn't so bad, we set a doable pace and just never stopped. Keep in mind this opinion is coming from a recently fed, sitting, 4-days-later self. Sweet wonderful Chris and our cute boys met us around mile 7 with water and sports drinks. The sight of his smiling face (and hands full of water) made me want to jump and sing parts of the Messiah. Unfortunately, or probably fortunately rather, a shallow wave and sweaty kiss was all that came out. He is so supportive. He makes it all possible for me.

Anyway, I have new running shoes. I have new running clothes. They are so sweet I'll feel like a poser when I wear them on our next run. I still don't consider myself a runner and yet I do enjoy running anything under 6 miles. I never thought I'd say that but wouldn't you know it ... the world is not flat and I enjoy running.