An A's Fix

One of the things that I missed the very most, when we moved away from the Bay Area, was attending summertime A's games. We would go most Wednesdays because it was dollar night (dollar tickets and hot dogs, it did go up as the years went by, but they were still cheaper than regular tickets). When we moved up here to Portland, it was an abrupt end to all things A's. We couldn't even listen to a game on the radio. It was so sad! Levi is still an avid A's fan, but the rest barely/don't remember going to the A's games (although they are A's fans by default!)

So, when we were going down to California for Memorial Day week, we were so excited to join in on the California Severson's fireworks A's game tradition!! We had missed it so much! It was the best and it felt like we had never left. We had a tail-gate party before the game, and Uncle Ralph got everyone tickets. Nothing like catching up with family AND watching a game!! Double bonus! There was a downside though, it was FREEZING! We had double fleece blankets, sweaters, hats... you name it, and still freezing. Good thing we had great treats (thanks to Sue) and company to keep our minds off the cold. The A's definitely didn't do their part......losing in extra innings.... BLAH!! We had to freeze for an extra long time just to see them lose!! Good thing there were fireworks after wards, that redeemed them a little!

The boys, trying to keep warm.

Cheesy Levi

Calder was mesmerized.

Ansel loved it all, especially that his A's hat actually meant something!

KK loved the snacks the most. Can you tell by all the chocolate on his face?

Well, I guess he also liked playing with his brothers. But the game was VERY low on his list.

What Ansel demands, whenever he sits on your lap...... "Draw on my back!"

The A's in action

A pitcher warming up


Jon and Danielle

Cute little Dawna, also enjoying snacks

The two Larrys!

Ralph, the generous ticket benefactor.

Ralph and Sue, trying to stay warm...and sleep, or maybe Ralph is taking down stats.

Marissa, Jackson (Joe's cousins) and Balaine(Joe's Uncle on his mom's side)

Josh, Ansel's only boy "cousin" his age. They are a month apart, but they are 2nd cousins. Who cares, though, right? A cousin is a cousin!!

Blake, Josh's big brother. He loved KK and was playing with him in this shot

and this shot......

and this shot. (I love how KK is trying to imitate Blake's finger art)

Me and my baby boy! (and the A's of course!!)

The game is finally over and it is time for fireworks!!! We went down on the field to watch! It was so cool. It had been years since we sat on the field for the fireworks, and it never ceases to amaze me at how perfect the grass they play on is. They have an army caring for it.

Sleepy Calder (it was nearing 11pm)


Dazed out Ansel.....
Kaelan was really ready for bed, about this time

They always start the Fireworks out with the song "When the lights go down in the city" I can't remember the name, that is just the first line.
When the music came on all of the boys perked back up.




And here they are!! It was so fun to watch the boys, that I only saw a few of the fireworks!

Kaelan woke right up and enjoyed the whole thing, I thought that he might be scared but he was fascinated instead!

What a great day!!

To finish a vacation

Why is it that vacations are the hardest to blog about? I usually put off blogging vacations because of the enormity of the task. So many photos, so many experiences, where to begin, what to leave out...... Am I the only one out there with this issue?

I spent all day today, and all night last night (until 3am) working on handmade Matching Game cards for the upcoming Severson Reunion. I enjoyed it, and as Joe says.."You are way too much the perfectionist" I know it, and so then I have to do all I can to make each photo look its very best, printing, cutting gluing, modge-podging, spraying, varnishing.... and I don't get stressed to start it and I linger longer than I should on the project.

But when it comes to blogging vacations I feel the need to get it done fast, there is this invisible pressure to hurry, to get done, to not take so long. Maybe this is good, and maybe it should be applied to my other projects, so I don't waste so much time, but really it just causes me a bit of anxiety and I feel like I should be doing something else.

That said though, I really love blogging, especially about the little things in my life, about funny instances or weird occurrences. The Creative writing part of blogging, not the chronological blogging. I guess that is what it comes down to. Writing a blog on a vacation is like a report, you need to do it, you like the outcome, it just isn't as much fun as playing with the words in a good story.

So without further ado:
Here are some of the rest of the pictures from our trip to California the end of May, 1st of June.


A While back I blogged about driving to California. When we got there the first thing we did was drop the kiddos off at Grandma's and head to THE city by the Bay. Our old haunting grounds. Joe had a free 2 night stay at a Grand Hyatt anywhere....well just about anywhere. Not any of the really convenient ones, but a free night stay in a Hyatt is still not to be missed.

Ours was the Hyatt by the Airport, not in downtown SF. But it was still very nice!!

While we were there, there was a huge KublaCon Convention for gamers. And if you are thinking video games, you are way off. These are the serious D&D gamers, board games-not your Milton variety, but the expensive complicated strategy kind. One of the nights we snuck in and got a "Days of Wonder" game called Pirates Cove for $20 bucks, normally they sell for $50. It was fun. Aimee, you would have loved it! They also had real live game competitions going on, with your typical single white, fat, middle aged men (who still lives with his mom) at every table!!In this picture are the view from our room out to the bay, into the Hotel courtyard, our room, and the KublaCon convention. Click on it to view it better.

The thing about SF is that you don't really want to drive into the city, you want to take public transportation and then walk where you want. Parking is a nightmare.
But, since we weren't in the downtown Hilton, the convenience of just walking out the door to see the sights wasn't an option. And since the SF Airport Hyatt isn't actually in SF, but south in Burlingame, we had to get a little creative in our transportation. We took a shuttle from the Hotel to the Airport, hopped on Bart at the airport station, rode that into town and then walked everywhere, and rode the trolley. Lots o fun. That was half of our day right there. But, really it was fun.

It's amazing to go somewhere without kids, all of a sudden you exist in other peoples eyes, and you can strike up conversations and meet interesting people. It's a whole new world! We met a really neat couple from England and hung out with them for a good portion of the day! It was so Cool.

In this picture collage, is our many different types of transportation. Good 'ol BART, a trolley, walking...and walking. I even got a snapshot of Joe's old BART Train line he rode on everyday to work and the BART gates. Again click, I don't know why the collage it fuzzy on the blog, it is fine when you click on it.



Walking around town here are some of the sights we saw:
A street Dancer (or 3)
Interesting Architecture
Interesting people
Lombard Street (the crookedest street in the world)
Building art (what a graffiti artist's dream job would be)
Random Heart Sculptures throughout the city
an old church in the midst of skyscrapers,
all in the day of the life of a city

While we were there Joe was nice enough to let me persuade him to go to the SF MOMA. It was a blast! I mean where else can you find a pile of rocks displayed as art, or a tangle of wires, or a bunch of toothpicks!! It is way too much fun! Joe actually really enjoyed it too, even if we did have to "check" our water bottle at the front desk.
Of course, there was also the standby urinal art, but I didn't get a shot of that.

Here is the rest of what we saw at the MOMA, including Alexander Calder's Mobiles (my son Calder is an artist and loves Calder's work -of course), various sculptures out of random materials, paintings and... across the way (out a window) Waldo is hiding for you to find. Can you fin him in the center photo? Click to enlarge. Also there is A. Calder's welded autograph. Very cool.

I want to go again, way too much to see and so little time. I get lost in these places (in a good way)


Of course, a trip to SF wouldn't be complete without dining on ice cream and Chocolate at Ghirardelli's.
YUM!!
My favorite part is watching the chocolate be made, very cool!!
A great time with a great hubby!!
Thanks for the one on one time babe!

Better late, than Never.

Poor Kaelan. He has only had two birthdays, and his mom neglected to blog both until a few months later, making the funny things that happened that day, the memorable experiences disappear through the mist of time. He turned two on May 1st. A great day!!
I will try my best to say the things that best describe the day and Kaelan at two.

The following are my thoughts and observations of KK at two, so feel free to skip over to view the pics, if you aren't interested in reading about all of his behaviors and little quirks:

First off, he is SO MUCH fun! I think with each consecutive kid you start to enjoy your children more and more -- all of them. The stress starts to dwindle and the joy is multiplied!

Kaelan has my heart in his hands and makes me smile when he walks in the room.

He has the BEST kisses.

His daddy would do anything for him.

He LOVES, is OBSESSED with Cars. Not just any cars, the ones from the movie. They go where ever he goes in a little green backpack.

He has a doggie that he talks to everyday, and gives such great hugs to that it makes his mommy jealous of the stuffed dog.

He is SO independent and will play by himself for most of the day.

Kaelan.. what a daredevil!! He will try anything the looks dangerous.

He loves running and climbing and will go for hours, covering twice as much ground as the rest of us.

Trains are his second obsession, he plays with them nearly as much as he does the cars.

He needs his personal space and will demand it if necessary.

He loves Scooby Doo and will pretend that there are ghosts in the house.

He LOVES his brothers and wants to be with them all day long, doing what they are doing.

He loves binkies and will be truly upset when he has to give them up (I have been cluing him into it everyday)

Hair, Hair, Hair!!! That is all I can say. Hair is what he wants day and night. If mom is near then hers, if not, his own.

I get a kink in my neck most days from him grabbing my hair around for his hands to caress and play with.

He loves to play with all his toys behind the leather recliner, at the windowsill.

If you can't find Kaelan, check the loft. He will be up there with the cars, probably throwing them off the balcony. Watch out for flying cars!

He loves to get the mail with me, and takes the key to open it. Of course, he has to do it all by himself.

Did I mention cars? Yes, it even extends into the larger, more real, kind. He loves parking lots and will go up to all the cars and pat them and say "oooohhh, e-Car.... cool" He loves them all, he doesn't play favorites.

Oh, that reminds me... Whenever Kaelan wants something, or for you to see something, he simply inserts the hard "e" sound in front of whatever item he is focused on: e-book, e-juice, e-mom-mom, e-night-night, ... you get the picture.

A favorite past time for Kaelan is to go into the garage and request to just sit in the car, soaking up its wonderfulness.

He has an extremely bad binky bite, my first child to have one. SO sad. He sucks on it a weird way and pushes his top teeth out. Braces here we come.... hopefully the permanent don't follow suit.

He loves Starfall on the computer and knows all of his letters and their sounds, but will rotate through letter names throughout the day. Whenever he sees a letter, one day all letters will be "p" or "s". But, if you ask him which letter it is, he will tell you the right name straight off.

I love how he communicates. If I ask him if he would like to go outside, he will respond by saying the sentence backwards to me, like so: "Yes, outside, go, like..." With a definite pause between each word. Making sure that I understand what it is he is agreeing to.

He rarely says "no". Instead he says "uh uh" with attitude and the name of whatever he dislikes attached to it. "KK would you like some milk?" he responds "uh uh, milk, uh uh like milk" Its the same pattern for all refusals, he never varies. Except to say "No, Milk, uh uh!"

He loves baths, but not showers.

He likes to make his mom laugh and will do funny things all day for a smile.

When he is tired he will go glassy eyed and softly chant "mm mm mm mm"

He is a mommy's boy which I love, and will put up with any amount of kissing and hugging from me. He has no personal space with me, and will melt into me when he is tired. It is the best.

He is truly ambidextrous and his doctor is amazed that he really isn't showing a true handedness. She says that in 20 years she has never seen a kid be this truly ambidextrous this old, and thinks that he might end up staying that way. He uses both hands (and legs) equally for everything. We shall see. More than likely though, he will turn out to be left handed, because (from what I have read) most young ambidextrous children eventually choose the left, and most left-handers are ambidextrous. Interesting huh!

Kaelan loves sleep and takes 4 hour naps everyday. He will often put himself to sleep, and I will go looking for him and find him asleep in his bed!!

He doesn't like hats because they interfere with his hair fondling abilities.

He isn't afraid of ANY animal, and will even try to chase down wild deer or huge growling dogs. Which is kind of scary for mom.

He loves the outside, especially if brothers play with him.

He loves to pretend that he got your nose, and will "take" it off of you and put it on his own. (don't know where he got it from, actually)

He will eat anything, but swallowing is another matter. He will carry around food in his mouth for hours, and then finally decide he is done, but instead of swallowing, will spit it out. Especially if it is hard textured or has a skin, like apples, nuts, etc.

We call him Kaelan and KK, but he prefers KK and will refer to himself as KK.

I love you Kaelan Patrick Severson!!! Happy Birthday!!

For his birthday we took him to the zoo for two of his favorite things, Trains and animals! He was so happy, especially about riding the train. That made his day! Here are some pics from the zoo trip:

BTW it is better if you click on the picture so it will blow up to a clearer, better viewing size.
(that also goes for the Chevy's one below)

Remi was with the family, it was so much fun to have her here to celebrate with us!!

After the Zoo, which was amazingly pretty empty, we went to Chevy's for dinner and present opening.
KK didn't know what to think about the crazy singers or the giant sombrero, but he definitely loved the dessert they plopped in front of him and he loved opening his presents!! Cars, Cars, and more Cars!!
IT was a day just for KK!!

Another "hair" post... A hairy Mess...

Levi has the award for the most high maintenance "hair-cutting" hair, but his daily do, takes no time at all. He can wake up and look like he just did his hair, even when it is long. A wonderfully amazing thing.

Calder's is just the opposite. Cutting his hair is NO problem, easy peasy pie. Doing it on a daily basis though.......... that is another story. I have tried every thing, he even sleeps on satin pillow cases, and still awakes every morning with a newly formed rats-nest in the back of his head. His hair is ULTRA fine, and tangles at the slightest provocation. We spend 20 minutes every morning just combing out his hair. It is SUCH a pain. But well worth it! He has the most beautiful curls a child could ever be born with.

Sometimes, though, that daily routine gets waylaid and we end up with the MONSTER hair from hell. This is when mom get very tempted to shave the whole thing and let it grow back, but alas, she has weakness for his golden curly locks, so she forbears.

Even when it comes to this:
And these photos don't even do the thing justice. It was HUGE and solid, it felt like he was keeping a small animal inside. Well, we worked and worked and worked on it .... for over an HOUR!! It was awful. Poor Calder's head was so sore by the end that we vowed never to let a day pass without combing his hair through, at least a little.

Here are some of the casualties from the battle, and the weapon of choice:
Another thing about Calder's hair is this....

When dry it looks like this:

(this was just before the most recent hair cut)

And wet it looks like this:

Now those are some serious LONG locks!! It is amazing how much curl effects the length of hair!!

Okay, now I have got the hair fetish out of my system. It is time to move on. (Sorry, Ansel, your hair is just too "easy" to need to blog about. You have just the right amount of curl and thickness that it isn't hard to cut and it isn't hard to comb and it always looks nice. You will just have to be satisfied with that!)

I have a hair twirler

The trouble with all that hair twirling,
is that his hair......

always looks like this:!!

People may think that I just don't ever do his hair, but the truth is I do! It never lasts, though.

A few months ago, I thought that maybe if I cut his hair short that would solve the problem.........
Yeah, not so much. For about a good two week period he couldn't go to sleep because his hair was all gone! Yikes! A mommy nightmare. He kept saying to me "Uh oh, mom-mom. Hair all gone" and then proceeded to commandeer my hair as his sleep aid. (you can hear him frequently demanding my hair, throughout the day... as in: "Mom... Hair!" Only he says is "heh")

Never again, I tell you! That kid keeps his long messy hair, for my sanity's sake!!

A Heavy and Hot, mop of hair.

That's what Levi calls it anyway. He is very precise in how he likes his hair, and it always depends on the seasons. In winter he likes it long (and so will start growing it out as soon as school is in session) and in summer he wants it short. He claims that it is just too hot to keep it in the summer (good thing he is not a girl), and he wants it cut as soon as school is out, but not a moment before.

Levi, with his luscious locks:

We only run into one issue. How much hair he has, and how fine it is. It gives our clippers a coronary. He is by far, the hardest of the boys, to cut hair for. It is so silky soft and so thick that is slips out of the blades, or jams them.

So, after a few attempts at the clippers, I decided that I needed to just chop most of it off with scissors, and then attempt to cut it with the clippers. UGH!! What a pain. He kept telling me that he wanted his "summer" hair to be like Micheal's (a close cousin/friend), a little daunting for me, since I hadn't cut it like that before. I started to try, but was feeling a little nervous about it. Fortunately, Micheal's dad was over, and since he knows how to do the "Micheal" do, I persuaded him to have at it.

Apparently Micheal and Levi have very different hair, so even the professional "micheal do" stylist had to modify the cut to fit Levi's difficult hair. He did a great job! Thanks, Allen!

Here is Levi's newly shorn look:
Okay, Summer can start now!

It's been a while.... I know.

Maybe if I got one of these I could focus better on my blogging.....I'm just sayin'......

(leave it to the Japanese to come up with some ingenious/crazy way
of lending privacy and focus to a public computer session.. hahahahaha!)

It's true, I have been MIA in the blogging world for a few weeks. But it's not my fault!! (insert a serious stamping of the foot) I have been either crazy busy with end of the school year activities or thoroughly enjoying my summer vacation. Well, okay, so I guess it is my fault. Ahem. Anyway, as a result I have much to catch up on and very little time to pull it off (you know, like when more fun comes my way, and I have to answer its call).

This has made me realize a pattern in my blogging activities over the years. During the times that the most stuff happens (ie. summers), is also the time that the fewest blogs get posted to record them. (duh.... I know) Then I am really backlogged and I end up skipping those important memories, moving on, and so, I go through life with my summers mostly missing from my blogging life, and therefore from my history in general.

I need to be okay with blogging in past tense, well, I guess historical past tense. I am trying to be better this year, we shall see. But, I am here, organizing photos, collecting thoughts and trying to pull it all together before it becomes really too late. I promise though, amazing things are in the works.........

coming soon:

What happens when you take clippers to a thick mop of hair,

Jumping out of an airplane with an Australian fish,

A super two year old hiker (6 miles all on his own two feet....twice!!),

A's games and camping,

A Snake charming toddler,

Chalk, Chalk, Chalk... It definitely won the fight.

No more school OR baseball (my favorite "no more"),

Star Wars piano recitals with squawking two year old accompaniment,

Toddlers putting themselves to bed (complete with blanket, doggie, and cars),

A broken $700 camera, and TOO many bugs.........

(and a few other little posts. ;-))

Be back soon.