Year: 2009

We went to the Coyote Point Museum’s Halloween Party – Leilani was dressed up in a princess costume from her dress-up box.

She made a flower bouquet and then took a lot of photos of the individual flowers.

Later, at the animal show she sat quietly with her hand raised (as opposed to yelling “Me, Me, Me!!!!”) and really got picked to have the ferret run in a tube that was wrapped around her.

Later we went into a room with science experiments – make scary sounds, and Leilani had great fun

Dry ice… also makes sounds if you put a tuning fork in….

In spite of several warnings Leilani misbehaved so badly on Halloween that she was not allowed to go Trick-or-Treating. She concluded that handing out candy was just as much fun, so the punishment was not as harsh as it sounds (and remember, she can’t eat most of the loot anyway)

Leilani stood out on the sidewalk yelling and advertising to people that we had candy, trying to make them change streetsides…

Andy carved a pumpkin:

We had 2 bowls of candy “good” (organic or at least all natural) and “bad” candy (still the better things from the supermarket, but stuff we would not eat ourselves). At first we gave the kids the choice: “Good” or “Bad” – almost all chose “good”, but later when the “good” bowl was getting empty we switched – the choices now were “healthy and organic” and “regular” – that emptied the other bowl – now upgraded from bad to regular – really fast.

Also done that day… all alone

We took Leilani to the Udhapai Palace in the Mission District to have dinner. We had to park far away, and to entertain Leilani we pointed out that she could hop on all the Xs that were painted or graffitied on the sidewalk.

It worked, she happily hopped, commenting her hopping and also read out the Xs aloud. (There were many… Andy stepped on 2 with one foot…)

So usually it sounded something like “hop, hop, x, x, hop, x…”  interrupted by giggling, then he said: “hop, hop, x, demayo, hop…” All three of us turned around to figure out what she meant. Andy was the first to spot the stencil (and he also found it later on the internet – Thanks Andy) and we realized she had read it.

Bright red, large letters, just like in the awesome reading system that I so raved about in July (and that long since disappeared into oblivion)

(Her usual reading is still pretty bad…” Ae En De…a n d ….. aaa nnnn dddd…aaaaa nnnnnn ddddd…and?” and we don’t even try words longer than 3 letters)

All the kids lined up excitedly for the parade

Leilani wore her unicorn outfit – I had warned her it was too hot…

Camille and Samantha

Leilani and Regina found a little cave…

Anthony was a zombie!

Leilani got really hot and cranky towards the end and wanted to go home and take a nap. Fortunately she got a lot better once she changed into the leaf fairy outfit.

Leilani and I took Tuesday off to visit San Francisco. First we went to the “Mysteries of Egypt” exibition at the De Young Museum

Kids under 5 are free – Yay

But soon we knew why. It was not kids friendly, the exhibits were too high for her to see, and the nicer pieces had stayed in Egypt. Worst of all there were NO mummies. Absolutely none. Leilani had me ask the attendant when we were halfway through where they were, and that was it. We rushed through the rest, but I figured 2 1/2 hours at a museum is pretty good for a 4 year old anyway. And I had to promise her to see mummies at another museum soon… at least we saw photos of them in a book. She could not take this picture it would not focus for her so I had to take it.

We had lunch at the Shangri-La and then went to the playground with the cement slide. Leilani behaved pretty badly, but she did earn extra stars by balancing nicely on a narrow wall.

Help, help, the hermit crab got me and is carrying me of….

But at least the pelican is nice

And so is the turtle

Leilani specifically asked me to take a lot of pictures of her jumping. When I told her I already had a good one of her in mid-air she said we needed more, and I had to photoshop them… so I did.