Bees, Wolves, Peaches and Girls Night.

What a fantastic week it's been!!  It all started off with some spontaneous shaving cream art...

And then it moved on to wanting a workout but really not liking our local gym, so investing in a Kinect...it's already paid itself off in fun...

There were late nights and innovations (this girl is a bit of a night owl and seems to do her best brainstorming then--here she is creating a Feather Book)...

A trip to Lindsay Wildlife Museum with friends (and a golden eagle!)...

Of course LOTS of trains, blocks, games, YouTube, Netflix, Kinect, projects, jumping, parks, Dollar Store goodness, bike riding, interesting conversations, silly jokes, sprinkler jumping, mess making, art projects...

I'd been waiting for my Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 game for the Kinect to show up.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but we all love it!  Not only do you get a good workout, but it is FUN!  We all love brick breaking the best.  The jump roping one is also a favorite, although not of mine (after explaining why I sprinted from the room after the first time attempting to do this particular game, Brooklyn said, "I'm sorry Sam and I ruined your body, Mom." HA! ...thanks Russ...)...

Shelan is Master at most of these games, especially brick breaking...

On Friday, I signed us up for a class about California wolves up at a ranch.  The entire 5 minutes I watched was interesting--they actually had 2 wolves there and they talked about how wolves were eradicated from many areas, especially California in the 1920s and then were re-introduced in the '70s and that now people think it's fun to try and get them to own...well turns out at around 6 months old, any dog with wolf in it will try and "test" you to figure out where you and he stand hierarchically...it normally ends in a call to animal control and the animal is destroyed.  That's where the people giving the presentation, Never Cry Wolf, come in.  They used our fee for the class to go towards taking care of those wolves and wolf-dogs and finding places for them to live out their lives versus being destroyed.

Like I said though, I got about 5 minutes of it before Sam was tired of it and decided to go try to feed the chickens bark pieces and terrorized the ranch's peacock.

On Saturday, Russ and I cashed in one of our Groupons--a 3 hour beekeeping class and honey tasting!  Russ has been really into beekeeping in the recent past and researched quite a bit, but it was nice to be able to ask questions from "the expert" and such.  Plus he brought some bees with him--they really are amazing.  Now to find some acreage we can live on where we can have them....

 On Sunday morning we decided to head to Brentwood for the insane amount of U-pick farms.  First up, peaches!  35 pounds of them to be exact, which took approximately 15-20 minutes for us to get, awesome!  We now have fresh peaches, frozen peaches, peach jam and peach sauce (for Popsicles or fruit leather).  Then we went next door and got apricots and cherries.  YUM!

We ventured into Brentwood to check it out.  I'd always assumed it was just some conglomeration of suburbia, but all of the U-pick farms (and a couple of For Rent signs on houses out that way) urged us to look around a bit more.  The town itself was weird...definitely suburbia, but it had some nice things--this was city hall, it was HUGE and had this park, complete with splash pad out front.  There was also a theater, etc. there.  But it's so far from anything else!

 Have you heard of Voca People??  After I saw tickets for these guys, I wanted to get them for Shelan and I (knowing that she loves acapella), but tickets were just shy of $70 each, so passed.  Then I get an email from a deal site offering tickets for $35 a piece.  SOLD!  So watch this video, and pay particular attention at about 1 minute, 33 seconds.  See that woman getting dragged up onstage?  Yeah, that was Shelan on Sunday night...


It was SO much fun!  SO much energy!  SO much talent!  My favorite guy was the beat-boxer, I think, but they were all so great.  Oh, and I also got to play a part as well--at one point I was chosen to be a "trumpet" for one of them...Shelan got a pic that I'll have to steal from her.  :)
By the end of the performance though, we were up and dancing.

Afterwards, everyone kept telling Shelan how great she did up onstage--she was blushing so much, but she did such a good job going with it!  After snapping the above pic, we grabbed a quick bite at a sandwich joint before catching the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) back home (best idea EVER!  Was leery about taking it into the city, but was SO easy!).

Today was such a great day.  Nothing "special," except that it's ALL special.  From the morning routines--Sam and I out of bed around 7am, me making a cup of tea, he begging Russ to watch cartoons with him and snuggle, then Brook stumbling out of bed around 9 and all snuggling and watching or reading or playing outside or...filling Styrofoam coolers up with cold water to stay cool (this was at approximately 10am this morning...it was HOT today!)...

...aaaaaaand apparently the windows needed washed...

We passed on going to the park that morning with Lanny and the boys that she nannies in favor of snuggling on the couch, but the kids have been begging to go back to Landon and Brennan's (some homeschool friends) pool! 
My little water bugs...

Then we came home and vegged for a bit.  Well, Sam and I did.  Brook headed out to the garage to supposedly watch a movie.  She came in about an hour later, "Uh Mom...I'm really sorry, but there is a mess in the garage.  A huge mess.  I made it, and I'm sorry, I was just so bored, and everything in there was just interesting.  So I listened to my movie and played with this and that and made a big mess."

It was obvious she either wanted me to come and make more of a mess with her or she was overwhelmed at cleaning it all up herself.  Turns out it was both and we had a great time making party hats from some styrofoam cones.

Russ got home and we were all in the garage and Brook says, "I'm hungry, do you mind if I go get some dinner?"  Nope.  She comes back with jelly tacos (she used the 3/4 full jar of Russ's homemade jam.  As in...all of it! HA!  Those were some sweet tacos!!).  It was sooooo sweet!

Then Brook decided to go next door and ask if Seth could come and play.  It was 7:45pm...erm, no.  Oh well, doesn't hurt to ask.  Guess we'll have to play in the sprinklers alone!

Gah, love my babies!

Here are a few pics I stole from Shelan's blog:

The kids having pizza while we watched our first ever Harry Potter movie.  It was funny, as each character came on screen Sam would ask, "Is it Harry Potter?!"  No, Sam.
Dumbledore came on the screen and I asked Brooklyn (who we read the book with--Sam had absolutely ZERO interest), "Who's that??"
Sam, "HARRY POTTER!!!!"
Ermm...

We're having bittersweet moments as our polliwogs are finally getting all of their legs and are losing their tails, but they keep ending up dead.  So I think we need to take them back to the creek tomorrow.  Anyway, along with the polliwogs, we got mosquito larvae!  They were SO interesting to watch and investigate!  This is a photo Shelan took with her phone, looking through a microscope.  It was amazing to watch this guy--you could see all of his working innards.  The beating heart, the simple digestive system...it was amazing.

And I love this pic Shelan got of Sam and I at Tony Hawk...he is my snuggler!

Aaaaaaand I'd might as well post this as well as I have no shame anymore.
Sam was running around nekked after a bath and I was attempting to help persuade him to put undies on and thought that if I were Super Undies Woman or something then it would be cool...
"Sam, don't you want to give your butt super powers?!"  Then I thought about it...if that kid had butt super powers, we'd all be in trouble.  Blech.  "Nevermind, you already have them."
P.S.  No, my attempt did not work exactly as planned, but Yes, he did get them on...eventually. :)

Until next week!