Back in the middle of summer, the big event was Siddha's baby banquet at Imperial Mandarin. We had over 30 people from around the globe attending, including Siddha's A-kong and A-ma from Taiwan, cousins and aunts and uncles from up in Northern California, and pretty much everyone we know from around here, with aunts and uncles, grandparents, Poppi's, and the like. We spent almost three hours running the staff ragged (we tip well though) with a pretty constant flow of food and orders. They gave us their entire back room, so there was even space to let the kids run around and go crazy. They handed out ballons and everything, so we couldn't really have asked for a more kid friendly space. Megan hand-baked cakes for everyone, and even an extra little one for Siddha to mangle, so we got to do the traditional "baby-destroys-cake" thing. Overall an excellent time, with many gifts and well wishes given and received.
June was further enhanced by a visit from Grammy Jo, who came down from Idaho and her little private ranch, with the horses and the dogs and stuff, to hang with the kids and the family for over a week. We got in lots of family events, gave everyone a chance to reconnect, and gave Grammy Jo a little Siddha time. All in all, everyone seemed to click together just fine, and we're already talking about coordinating 2011's visit with a trip we may be taking up north. We did get a chance to visit the world famous San Diego Zoo, where much fun was had by all. We checked out the elephants, did the reptile house, and even took the Sky-Fari up and over the whole she-bang.
Summer's drawing to a close, and with it that means the kids are going back to school. Tre's starting at Birney, like we mentioned before, and he's really excited about it. There's an orientation next week that the boys are going to, again, just to meet the teachers and go over the general schedule for the school year. He seems excited, but since he's never actually been except for the tour, I think kindergarten is still very much a vague concept for him. He keeps asking about how long he'll be in school, about the other kids, and the like. I think it'll be good that Nani's going to the school with him, and Siddha will even be there before he leaves, so we have at least a few supporting faces, and hopefully he can do the same for them, since he'll be older. Because of his background, in preparation for school, we took Tre down to the Sylvan Learning Center to have him tested in terms of his reading capability. Turns out he's doing fine, he's well within the average competency. We got to talking though, and for all of us, the ability to read well ahead of the curve in school made things a lot easier all the way around. So, in light of that, we decided to go ahead and put him in a program with Sylvan. It'll take a few months, but he'll be almost a year ahead by then, and it seems like the boost can't do anything but help him out in class, and we'd all prefer that school was easy for him. It seems much more likely to be successful.
Siddha has started going to SDSU Children's Center somewhere between 1 and 2 days a week. Now that she's started walking almost the whole time, we've got our choice of locations. As usual, there was an exhaustive couple of weeks of research and tours, but we settled on the Children's center due to the uniqueness of their program and the fact that the days and hours were so flexible. Siddha herself is doing great. She's gotten up to 50% percentile for height, and her head is still huge, but her weight is still pretty low. She's definitely healthy, and incredibly mobile, so obviously doing fine despite the statistics. She's gotten like, half a dozen more teeth in since the last post, and she's in the process of cutting both her upper and lower canines. She never does anything in half steps, our girl, no she doesn't. This, of course, has meant a lot of grouchy baby and sleepless nights, but she's so damned cute the rest of the time that its hard not to forgive her. Her vocabulary now occasionally includes "Tans!" (Thanks) and "Tan kyuu" (thank you, we think) at Torrey's urging. Courtesy starts early, apparently.
It's been a pretty full summer for everyone. The kids are starting their second batch of swimming lessons (Tre can swim back and forth across the pool completely under the water now) and they just wrapped up a couple of weeks of summer camp at the Joan Kroc Center. I think the themes were Cowboy's and Rockstar's, respectively. Tre had a blast, and there were quite a few other kids from our little posse as well, so it was a good chance to reconnect and give them plenty of time together. Additionally, we're doing the annual water park trip on September 12th (come by if you're free, we're getting a family-sized cabana), and there's the Family Matters Picnic the next weekend after that.
The Dad's got a bit of vacation time at Gen Con this year, the greatest 4 days of gaming! We head out to Indianapolis for a weekend of pure geek-age and shopping. We spent some time on the floor, visited some events, attended some seminars, and I got to see a ton of video game music performed live by the Indianapolis Symphony and a full choir, plus classicly trained opera singer and flautist. Good times all around, and the kids had a great weekend with the girls, and Tre attended a Theater Tots session as well, so everyone got to enjoy the time.
My brother Joe just left earlier today after being out for a week. It's always nice to see him, and give the family a chance to reconnect. He hung out with Dan and Megan, when to some shows, got a chance to catch up on his sleep, and played with the kids. He's apparently deciding on whether to move up to Seattle fairly soon or stay in Salem and apply for the welding program at Chemeketa, which is apparently known far and wide for it's welding program.
All in all it's been a hectic couple of months, but full of good events. Check the Facebook and the Flickr links, because we've uploaded a couple pictures in the last couple of months of various events and kids, so check them out. We should be more regular moving forward, so look for another post within the next few weeks covering the first part of the school year and fall transitions.
