Saturday, December 29, 2007

Banned Books

S has banned books from the bathroom. I was more than half way through The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a really good book. And I finished The Ghost Map too, which I'm going to blog about on some other blog.

But more importantly, if I don't read those books on the toilet, where can I read them? And (between you and me) I tend to find that if I don't have a book to read, I tend to get bored leave the, errrmmm, area too soon, and then have to go back to finish off what I should have finished the first time.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Christmassy Video

Here's a video of boys opening presents.

Christmassy Pictures


Here's some pictures from our Christmas Day adventures.

First, to Mother's Beach, in Marina del Rey. It's not a desperately pleasant beach, but it's got a playground which the boys like. (As in they like a playground, wherever it is, and they particularly like this playground.)





The beach is at the end of the marina, and so tends to be rather muddy, and the water doesn't look desperately pleasant there.









Then Alex and I went for a walk, to try to find a mountain to climb, while S and Daniel went to Beverly Hills to potter about. We didn't find a mountain, but we did find Will Rogers State Park (we were trying to find somewhere else, which I'd forgotten both the name and location of, so it's not surprising we didn't find it).

As we sat there (eating clementines, on a picnic table, if you want a complete reconstruction of the scene) a deer wandered by. After some encouragement, Alex wondered if it was Santa's deer.




The second time we saw it, the setting was less rusty.









There were also some impressive views. (Click on the picture, and then click on it again, and you can zoom it up quite a long way. Then you can see the festive oil tankers.)


True Meaning of Christmas

We were driving through Santa Monica on Christmas day, and passed some life size Nativity Scenes (and thanks to the power of the internet, you too can see them here, here, or here).

The boys asked what they were. I said they were Nativity Scenes.
"What's a Navitivy scene, Daddy?"
"Well, they're scenes of when Jesus was born. Do you know who Jesus was?"
"No."
"Well, Christmas happens because it was at this time of year that people say that Jesus was born, and some people say he was the son of God. Do you know who God is?"*
"No, Daddy".
"Well ...." but luckily their goldfish like attention spans had moved on, and I didn't have to explain that one. At least in England, where they don't have this separation of church and state business, they tell them this stuff at school.



*Of course he wasn't born at this time of year. What were shepherds doing watching their flocks in December?

Moments of Genius

All parents have anecdotes where they provide evidence of the giftedness of their child(ren). We're no different, so here are two of ours.

Daniel (I think, but it could have been Alex) was trying to express a negative number (he was trying to explain something like how sad he was, I forget). He doesn't know about negative numbers though. So he said that he was "G9". In the elevators here (and in our previous apartment) the floors are numbered 1, 2, 3, as you go up. The garages are below, and so go G1, G2, G3 ...

S was driving through Santa Monica the other day, and passed Google's offices (which, incidentally, are a whole lot less impressive than Yahoo's Santa Monica offices, but I digress). When they saw the Google logo on the side of the building, they said "Look, it's the word on the computer!"

(Aaron, a friend from work, suggested it was the colors not the letters that they responded to. But in my urge to only seek positive information about the giftedness of our children, I ignored him.)

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Sledding in Big Bear

The purpose of the trip to Big Bear was to play with a sled. (It's called a sled, not a sledge. A sledge is a really big hammer, and when you go into a shop, and ask for a sledge for them [pointing at your 5 year old twins, who smile back sweetly] they think something's wrong.

It's quite hard to find a good place for sledding. If it's really good, then someone's made it into a ski slope, and if it's not, it tends to have trees, buildings, rocks, roads, cliffs, or something else inconvenient in the way.

The first day we found a place in the woods, without too many of those impediments.



For the second day, we asked around a bit more, and found a closed road. I tested it first, and found it to be sufficiently uneventful.






Then we put Daniel on the sledge, at the top of short, not especially steep bit that ended with a flat bit. He went down the hill, went over the flat bit, and kept going. We ran after him, shouting things like "Shit" and "Oh shit" and "Daniel jump off", while onlookers leapt out of the way and looked surprised. The problem with this road is that there is something of a steep drop on the right hand side. Where we were there was a ridge which gave some protection (you can see it on the video earlier). But later on it was much reduced, and he went over this, and about 10 feet down the much steeper hill, which fortunately had fresh snow and therefore wasn't conducive to speedy sledging. I stopped by crashing into a snowboarder and knocking him over (he was possibly feeling pleased that he'd managed to avoid Daniel; but he took it well) and we helped Daniel to get back up.

A friend of the snowboarder (who had a sled) said "I've been trying to do that all day".

Dan seemed rather unfazed by it all. He claimed not to have been worried, but he didn't go on the sled on his own for a while. After that, we found a better slope, with a longer stop before the barrier, and we took turns being 'in goal'.





Update: A commenter asked where this was.

The first video was taken in the woods. On the map, here, we parked on the 18, and went into the woods. We looked for places that other people were parked with sleds. Parking was a little tricky - there was a bit of a layby, and we walked through the wood for a while to find a good spot.

The second day was somewhere around the center of this map. It was on a gated road, that led up the side of the mountain. When we got home and looked at the map, I think we were looking for here.

Mallard Bay Resort

We stayed in a cabin, which was part of Mallard Bay Resort - that sounds more elaborate than it is. It was actually a collection of 9 (?) cabins.


That's ours, with the open door.

Having stairs was a novelty, which never wore off.




It had a swimming pool too, but they'd drained the water out. And what they hadn't drained out was frozen.


The cabin was very pleasant, but also very, very cold. It had a gas heater, and a gas fire. The gas fire looked nice, but had no effect on the temperature of the cabin (as far as I could tell). The heater didn't look nice, and had a small effect on the temperature of the cabin, but was fighting single glazed drafty windows, and -9 C outside. There were lots of warnings about being charged extra if you ran the heating at night, so I put it to 50 F (the lowest temperature the thermostat could cope with), the heater then ran all night anyway, because it coudn't warm the room to 50.

That's slightly unfair though, as it was open plan, and the heat tended to go straight upstairs, warming the bedrooms slightly, before sailing out through the windows.

Big Bear


We went to Big Bear Lake which is a town, which is near to, but separate from Big Bear City. It's also right next to the lake, which is also called Big Bear Lake, but it's a lake, not a town. It's all very confusing, but if you call it Big Bear, everyone seems to know what you're talking about.

We went there, so that Alex and Dan could play in some snow. And so that they would understand the true meaning of 'cold', and not say 'I'm freezing' because the temperature has dropped below 15 centigrade (that's about 60 in old money).

Anyway, rather than write one really long post, I'm going to write more than one (how many? We'll have to see) shorter posts, partly because I suspect that you don't have the attention span to read them, but mostly because I don't have the attention span to write them.

The main winter attraction of Big Bear is snow for skiing, and the like, but it's also reasonably attractive. The picture below shows the lake, and the solar observatory. (For reasons I forget, but I'm sure you could find out with 5 minutes worth of Googling, Big Bear Lake is a particularly fine place to put a solar observatory).

Having been in Los Angeles for a year, all the boys winter stuff is a) ineffective and b) too small. I went to a shopping to buy some winter boots for them - they wouldn't come, so I had to take a too small boot for comparison), and found some in a supermarket. (I also had to buy some for me - I took some boots, but somehow managed to take two left boots.**) The boots were something like $25 a pair, for thickly padded snow boots. At the cash register, the person serving was shocked by the price - "Are you sure you want to pay that much?" she said. I said "Hahahaha, you mad woman, I'm paying 12 pounds and 50 pence for a pair of boots, and you think it's too much." Actually, I didn't, I said "Is there an option?" and laughed.

When I left, I found out there was an option, because there was a K-Mart just down the road, where I imagine they would have been much cheaper. (I was in Vons, think Sainsbury's 20 years ago; for K-Mart, think a really grotty old, really big, Asda, then take all the friendly people out, make sure all the trolleys don't work, and make the aisles just a little too small).


**If you wondered, a few years ago, Vegetarian Shoes announced that they would stop selling Doc Marten's Boots, and as I'd worn nothing but, for the past few years, this was potentially traumatic, so (much to Susanne's annoyance) I bought all they had in stock, in my size. So I have something like 4 pairs of identical boots, hence the two left boots mistake is easy to make. (They almost immediately started selling a substitute, which is almost exactly the same).

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Daniel's First Sentence

Daniel made a computer, from a cardboard box (not a real computer, obviously). He wrote what I believe to be his first spontaneous (written) sentence on it - that is, without someone telling him what to write, or him asking how to spell something. Here's the picture:



It says "Daniels and not Alexs".

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Morning

The boys took some photos of what happens in the mornings.

First, they get up (at 6:30) and they lie on the sofa.

Watching Blue's Clues.
Sometimes they write stuff. This is a letter than Dan made for his teacher, Ms LeBouf.

We walk to school. We've just left the entrance to our apartment complex, and that's the school across the road. It's not far, but it still makes their legs hurt and knees hurt, and we have to stop and rest, several times.

They meet some pals on the way. This is Ryan, who lives near us.

We wait in the playground.

Their are some benches that are next to the tables, which the children eat lunch on. Parents tend to sit on them, unless they're wet from dew, and then only I sit on them.
There's a play structure, to amuse the kiddywinks.

Here's Alex's teacher, Mrs Stamp, getting ready for the day.
And here's Daniel's teacher, Ms Lebouf.

Thanksgiving Pictures

This is the two kindergarten classes. Alex is at the front, on the right, wearing a turkey hat. Daniel is on the right, about half way up.

This is a slightly better view - you can see Alex on the front left.This is the children having their thanksgiving feast. Alex is the second from the front, on the right, wearing a pilgrim hat. Dan is at the other end, on the right, with a Turkey hat on.

Here's the pictures of thanksgiving that I promised earlier.