Fun Run for the Arts!

Sebastian's school organized a fun run to raise money for arts programs at the school - they bring in authors and clay artists and painters and sculptors to work in the classrooms with the children, to create projects and explore various mediums, and they have all-school assemblies with dance, music, and theatrical performances. It's an really wonderful array of opportunities, all funded by this one spring run event.

We were told that the kids would run laps around the track, which is 1/6 of a mile, and that people could pledge money per lap or a flat amount.  I asked various family members to contribute, and when asked how many laps I expected Seb to run, I responded that I'd never seen him run more than three or four in a row. Less than a mile, certainly.

On the Friday of the fun run, I learned that it was a timed event, and the kids would have 30 minutes to run or walk as many laps as possible.  I started to wonder.  Seb is a competitive little boy, and he was determined to beat all of his friends and to (I quote) "send my grandpas to the poorhouse".  As it turned out, the kid was amazing - he ran for nearly the entire time, stopping only occasionally to walk at most a quarter of a lap. He lapped some of his classmates multiple times. He ran 16 laps, and was working on number 17 when the whistle blew. 16!!!!  Nearly three miles!  My poor father, who'd pledged $10 a lap! Seb was beside himself with pride and glee, and we were really impressed too.

 Mrs. Huntley leading the warmup. 

 On your mark, get set...

 And, they're off!

 Go, Seb, Go!!

Our tired, but proud boy. Did I mention it was raining??

T-ball!

Sebastian is playing T-ball this spring on a coed school team. It's adorable. It's funny. There's so much standing around! :) But so far he's really liking it. They have Thursday practices and Saturday morning games until early June.

playing and hiking with friends

Liesl and I are as busy as ever with classes and playgroup and fun playground meetups with our friends.

We hosted last Thursday's playgroup, and since the weather was cooperative we took the kids over to the school playground across from our house.

 Meetup at Sellwood Park, a new favorite playground.

 Hiking the Balch Creek trail with Rowan and Vivienne.

 Mary hunting for lizards and salamanders.

Dance performance at the fairy house.

planting our garden

On Sunday morning the kids and I went to the plant nursery to buy some compost dirt and seeds and plant starts, and start planting our garden for the second year. Last year was an unexpected success - truly unexpected, since we started in late June and it was my first garden, and truly successful - we got so much food from it!

We spent a few hours getting everything in and becoming really mucky and then came home for lunch... 20 minutes later it hailed. Eeep! The hailstones were small and melted within half an hour, and fortunately the plants survived just fine, but it's not exactly what I wanted to see after all that hard work!

We planted peas, broccoli, fennel, chard, spinach, lettuce, carrots, and some flowers. We'll put in tomatoes and zucchini a bit later, along with kale (they were sold out). Our rhubarb plant is thriving and I was able to harvest a half dozen stalks already.

 

Easter!

We spent Easter with the Raabs on Long Island, along with the rest of Steve's siblings, their spouses and children, assorted cousins, aunts and uncles, etc. It was grand. There were not one but three Easter egg hunts. There were games of kickball and soccer. There was far too much candy eaten by all of the small children. And there was even a visit from the Easter bunny. It was a wonderful conclusion to our visit to New York.

a Westchester day and a morning at the beach

Steve and I had a lovely date day on Thursday: we dined on Japanese food at Sakagura, visited L.A. Burdick (our favorite chocolatier), and enjoyed amazing pizza at Motorino. We started in the Flatiron district and walked down to Union Square and and then further south to the West Village. It was fun to see all of the places we'd frequently visited during Steve's law school years.  Mom Raab kindly watched both our children and cousin Rio for the day.

On Friday we packed the three kids into the car and headed up to Westchester. We wanted to visit our old town, see our former apartment, play at Matthiessen park on the waterfront, and stroll the aqueduct.  (And Steve wanted to visit Red Barn bakery, of course, home to his favorite lemony olive oil cake.) It was nice to be back and to see our old haunts - Seb was super enthusiastic about the visit.

Afterwards we drove down to Columbia and I spent an hour visiting with my former colleagues in advising, which was just really sweet. I miss them.

Rio has apparently become very interested in chess, so she and Steve played a few games.

On Saturday morning we drove over to Robert Moses State Park, on the ocean, to play in the sand and dip our toes in the very cold waves for an hour or so.