Life with Boose and Finch

Ro's birthday turned out great!  We invited all of the kids in his daycare class and dropped off a few invitations at his preschool.  We also invited a friend of ours who brought four out of five of her own kids to hang out, too.  The only family members who arrived were my sister, B's grandfather, and B's aunt, but that was okay because it gave us a lot of time to talk to the other parents.  I even managed to exchange phone numbers with another mom to maybe have some playdates! Unfortunately, we've been pretty busy every weekend since so I've been dropping that ball.  I am pretty excited about that prospect though because then there's a good chance that Ro will have lifelong friends from his diaper ages.  I enjoy time with all of my friends, but I've found that those are pretty special. After waking up, B left to go biking for the morning and we started the day off with a Starbucks breakfast.  Ro loves getting an everything bagel with cream cheese w...

Excellent Packinghouse Lighting I've always thought of September as a birthday month.  Mine and my grandfather's are at the beginning, my dad's is this weekend, and various friends are scattered throughout the whole rest of the month.  Ro was supposed to be born in October, but I was pretty happy when his birthday ended up being at the end of September instead.   I usually don't even like to tell people when my birthday is or how old I am.  I finally gave up this year and started telling anyone I met that that day was a good day because it was my birthday, my deeply cut finger was healing nicely, and I was excited to have two cans of Full Circle Brewing's Pie of the Tiger waiting at home.  One of my awesome coworkers ho works really hard to keep up with team events such as birthdays bought a delicious oreo cake for after lunch.  Usually around this time of year, we are trapped working in a 40-degree cold storage room all day and have to borrow pe...

So...it has been awhile since that SAR Wild Run.  Since then, not much has happened and a bit has happened. 1. Ro’s preschool seems to be going okay, but we don’t know for sure because he refuses to talk about it. He just says he has fun there. We stopped asking him if he learned any Spanish since he’s in a dual-immersion class because we were worried that he would feel too pressured to learn and would feel bad if he wasn’t learning as fast as he should. He did tell me that they read about Pete the Cat and his new shoes — in English. 🙄 But he did say he was making friends. I took him to preschool one day because I needed to make an addition I forgot about on his emergency contacts. He started to get upset as soon as we reached the gate, but I told him we were going to get breakfast before class. He watched all the classes meet in the cafeteria as he ate his breakfast. We were the last ones to get to his class — not really that big of a deal — and he threw a fit. I checked o...

So, during that self defense class, I had a chance to spar with Josh Teehee from Flowing with Famous and Aikido Discussed .  I mentioned to him that I listed to Flowing with Famous and really liked it at the end of that class.  Then I got a mention at the end of the next Flowing with Famous episode!  Admittedly, you can't tell because my name isn't mentioned; I'm just the "woman from the self defense seminar" because my name is a little different and hard for others to remember.  Usually, I'll use B's name when we're out and waiting for food to be called out.  When I do an online order though for an in-person pickup, I know it's mine by the panicked look on the person's face as they're trying to figure out how to pronounce my name.  Speaking of such, Nobody Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal is also a really good book.  I'm completely off topic... Money: Afford Anything I really like this podcast because of the diverse subje...

I did this run last Sunday!  It was my first run with my new Garmin Forerunner 645 watch and one that I forgot that I signed up for...so that's why there was no running during the Illinois trip. 𝩀 I actually signed up for the half-marathon, but I was able to switch to the 10k after doing some assessment (i.e. running as 10 miles just to see how far I could actually go -- 8.5 running, 1.5 walking).  I'm not sure if I'll sign up again (I'll explain why later), but it was a fun way to donate money to the Fresno County  Search And Rescue team. B, Ro, and I left to drive to Shaver Lake around 0620 for the event.  The flyer said that the runner needed to be ready at 0730, but we figured we'd be fine.  B and Ro dropped me off at the trail head on time around 0730 just after the half-marathoners started.  I had just enough time to use the bathroom and stand around for a bit trying to fiddle with my phone to try to get the RaceJoy app to wo...

I had been trying to plan a trip to visit my Aunt Jane and my Aunt Jean in Illinois for awhile.  Eventually, I heard that one of them was having dizzy spells and other health problems.  I figured that now would be better than later to go -- even if it was in the middle of summer time.  Ro will be starting pre-kindergarten in a few weeks and airplane tickets were just going to get more expensive until next February.   Day 1: We left Fresno Saturday just before noon.  Ro was raring to go on the trip until he realized how long it was going to be.  It didn't hit him until we got on the ramp to go from 99N to 152W.  Then he needed to use the bathroom and we tried to use a side road to convince Ro to go to the bathroom next to the road.  He's told us jubilantly before that one of the grandmas let him pee on a tree, but he just couldn't pee or defecate on the ground next to the car.  We packed him back into the car until we exited...

I took a women's self defense class with Aikido of Fresno this morning.  I really should have sooner considering that it has been over fourteen years since I've attended a jujitsu class.  Once upon a time, I worked to get a black belt in jujitsu.  Now I'm lucky if I can remember that I can slap someone.  A friend had told me that the Aikido of Fresno's self defense seminars were worth going to, and so I bought the $20 ticket on Eventbrite for this one.  And then I bought a $35 card for ten more classes to try out some actual Aikido. Originally, I had been planning to starting another martial art when Ro started a martial art, but it doesn't look like he'll be taking classes with Aikido of Fresno.  Their only kids classes are at 4:30pm during the week even though the adult classes are evenings and Saturdays.  I guess there are enough other people out there who can take their kids to these classes to keep them open.  I'm thinking about getting hi...