Day +1536: Summer plans

Wow, can't believe it's been almost three months since the last update. No excuse, really. Life is busy, but it pretty much always is. Also can't believe we are well into summer now. Keri and kids left for the Northwest on Monday. They have spent at least half the summer in the Northwest every year except 2005, the year when Mina was recovering from her transplant. They are in Portland now visiting Mina's dear friends from the preschool, Anika and Calvin, who both moved up here with their families during the last year. I will fly up and meet them in Portland on Friday, and we will head to Keri's annual family camping weekend at Lake Mayfield in southwest Washington. From there we will head to Wenatchee for a week or so, then I'll fly back to SF while Keri and the kids stay on in the Seattle area. Should be another fun summer of camping and outdoor stuff, visiting relatives, etc. The kids should be able to do some real hiking this summer, so that will be nice for the rest of us. Kids may not be so happy about it -- Mina complains and complains when we want to go on a hike. Maybe we didn't get her started early enough.

Things have been going pretty well for us. Mina has recovered from her surgeries, and we seem to have settled in pretty well to the routine of wearing contact lenses. She has some really thick, coke-bottle glasses that she can wear at night and first thing in the morning, but she doesn't like them and usually wants me to put in her contacts right away. It's kind of a little routine we have, and it's much nicer now that we have figured out how to get the things in on pretty much the first try. It took a lot of practice and some tears of frustration, but Mina's motivation level was pretty high since she really doesn't see much at all without her lenses. Luckily she sees 20-40 with her contacts, which the doctors are very happy about.

The family spent a Camp Mather up near Yosemite during early June. Mina and Isaac's school had class up there for the last week of school, and we slept in a tent all week. Kids had a ball, running around all week with their friends, riding their bikes around, etc. Their school gave two performances during the week. One was a version of Billy Goats Gruff that they gave at the camp talent show, with Mina and Isaac starring as the Big Billy Goats Gruff and a special guest as the troll (http://www.flickr.com/photos/heidicoffer/3625124561/in/set-72157619733007296/). The other was a performance of a fairy tale about an old man and old woman, a rooster and some robbers. Isaac played the Old Man, and Mina was the Fairy Queen. Isaac was a little shy about speaking his lines, but Mina was not shy at all about doing the Fairy Queen dance! There was also some donkey riding (http://www.flickr.com/photos/heidicoffer/3625766014/), climbing on rocks, playing in the creek, swimming, and lots of other fun. Keri and I even were able to get a day away and take a quick trip to Yosemite Valley. We hiked up to Vernal Falls, which looks like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/darthfabry/72094141/.

Should mention that we ended up pulling Mina out of Grattan School and sending her back to NPG for the last month of school. The hardest part for us to deal with was the expectation that Mina should do homework. I mean, it's kindergarten! There was also the general issue of how the kids were required to continually wait in line to do structured activities, and having little free time for imaginative play. There have been a lot of problems with the administration of NPG, but the structure has always been great for the kids, and Mina was happy to go back there. Next year the kids are going to the Katherine Michiels School, which is a relatively affordable, play-based private school in San Francisco: http://www.katherinemichielsschool.org/. Isaac will be in the "4s and 5s" class again, and Mina will be in the 1st-5th classroom. But there is a lot of interaction between the classes, so they will see each other a lot. A number of NPG kids are going there because the program is similar to NPG in a lot of ways. Julie thought KMS would be a great transition for Isaac, because he is clearly not ready for kindergarten and he has anxiety in new situations with lots of kids and noise. This way he will have several of his best friends from NPG in his classroom, and his big sister in the vicinity, though not in the same classroom which is good. The only problem is it's not exactly in our neighborhood. It's on 26th and Valencia in the Mission District, and Keri will have to drive them to school every day. Luckily Keri likes the Mission and will be able to visit coffee shops and get some of her own work done.

Speaking of which, Keri is trying to find a time to go back to India to do some additional research to help her write up and publish some of her dissertation research. She has a lot of great material, but circumstances have prevented her from doing much writing these last few years, and she needs to "refresh" her research by interviewing her contacts about 9-11, Afghanistan, the Muslim-Hindu issues in Gujarat and Mumbai, etc. It is still unclear when exactly she will be able to go, but it's something we will be trying to plan and the kids and I may even be able to come and visit.

Since school has been out, the kids were in dance camp for a week and had some swimming lessons, then Keri took them up to Point Arena for a few days to visit Zeedie, Russell, Emma Skye and Otter Moon who were visiting Russell's relatives. They seemed to enjoy dance camp pretty well, and they did learn some new moves which Isaac has been keen to show off. They really encouraged us to keep Isaac in dance because "we need boys!" They had a great time with the Molines as well. They love Emma and Otter and the girls are very patient and kind with them.

In addition to dance, the kids have continued with their violin lessons, and this weekend they put on several "shows" for us while Mina's friend Bliss was here for a sleepover. In one of the shows, Mina got out her violin and played both a scale and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Mina has picked pretty quickly once we got her eyes fixed so she could see the strings, and her teacher has been very impressed with Mina's "muscle memory". Isaac has had a harder time, both in terms of focusing during his practice sessions and also because he doesn't seem to have the coordination in his fingers. We will probably have him take a break this coming year and just observe Mina's lessons, and maybe put him back in when he is six. He just seems a little young. His interest in music has continued unabated, however. He loves any picture or story with a music theme, and I've taken him to the symphony a few times and he seems to really enjoy that. He loves to stand up on a footstool with a chopstick and play conductor. His favorite music to conduct to is "Choo Choo Boogaloo" by Buckwheat Zydeco, though he also likes some classical tunes, especially Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. We got to see the SF Symphony perform that live during our last visit on July 3rd, and that was a treat for both Mina and Isaac. After it was over, Isaac just sat there ruminating for a while, and then he said "That ending was not the same!", referring to our CD version.

Thanks for reading, I will try my best to update more frequently going forward. I also have a desparate need to organize and post some pictures!