A real post about the boys and stuff

We've got lots going on, in non-daycare-related areas. We made our (nearly) annual trek up Hwy 1 to the giant Arata pumpkin farm. This year we went with Francis and Emily, and their daughter Mae. Arata has a "river" of pumpkins, and more importantly, a giant hay maze that changes from year to year. Katie in particular is a huge fan. She has here own method for getting through the maze. Finn and I are good at finding dead ends. Here are Katie and boys, deep, deep in the maze.

We got three pumpkins, one for me, Katie+Graham, and Finn. Finn's only metric for choosing was that the pumpkin was "BIG." Katie and chose two with fun stems.

Here is a post from two years ago, at Finn's previous visit to Arata. It's fun that Graham is getting to wear all the same cute clothes that Finn wore when he was 1.

Our neighbors across the street have some elementary-school age kids, and they've given us a few of their old little-kids stuff, like these two folding chairs, which the boys love.

I think that Katie already posted about this, but we managed to make it to the last beach train of the year, which winds starts up in Felton, and winds down through the redwoods down to the beach boardwalk in Santa Cruz. I snapped this cute pic that I like a lot. Sometimes Graham seems pretty big, but he is really just a little guy compared to his brother. Oh, and he's walking more now. Although he CAN do it, more often he has chosen to crawl instead.

The horror! The horror!

Hey, guess what the big Fortney family news is for this week? The boys' daycare is closing and they only gave us and the staff 8 days notice! "What?!" you say? "W-H-A-T?!?!?!?!" is what we said. Over and over again. Katie managed to find out (just yesterday) several hours before any other parents because she dropped Finn off a few hours late. It was supposed to be an "end of the day" announcement....via a letter....pity you if your kid doesn't go on Th or Fr, then you wouldn't even know yet. Yep!

I'm in Germany, at a, um, castle, in the, ah, Alps, at a little workshop about the James Webb Space Telescope. Katie, who I've leaned on a lot these past couple months, and I powwowed over google video chat and we decided that we had to act fast. On Katie's lunch hour (2 hours after the news dropped) she drove a deposit check over to another daycare center in town (which we really liked when we visited) and now Finn is all signed up, 5 days a week, but Graham can only get in M, Th, F, so now we'll have to figure out what happens on Tu-W. But it is better than nothing. I bet if we'd waited a day that this new place would have been all filled up with new kids, and we'd have been in REAL trouble.

So, the boys were only at the new school, A Child's Reflection, for 2 months. Finn had a really fun time there, and Graham seemed to like it pretty well. Katie and I never really found our comfort level. It was bigger and more impersonal than we were used to. It was just OK. But scary to have it leave so fast: Poof!

I'm getting all worked up again just writing about it. To calm myself down I'll think of the nice view from the castle. I'll share the view with you too. Yes, it snowed.

Disneyland!

Last weekend Jonathan went to a conference in Pasadena to accept his fancy award, and the family came down to keep him company. Also because Pasadena is not super far from DISNEYLAND (!!!), and the boys are young enough to be free, but old enough to enjoy it. Well, Finn anyway. Graham would have been equally pleased to be at any old park, I think. We had a great time, and ended up turning our planned half-day visit into a pretty full one when nobody ended up getting cranky or tired. We started out the morning at the Nemo submarine ride, the one thing Finn had heard about through friends at preschool. He noticed that the submarines were yellow, briefly sang some "Yellow Submarine," and then apparently decided we needed a full on Beatles medley. It looked more or less like this:

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da from Katie on Vimeo.
Other highlights included the Buzz Lightyear ride (twice! Finn's favorite), hugging Mickey Mouse, and singing pirates in the streets. All of this was just icing on the cake, apparently, to the fact that WHEN YOU'RE ON VACATION YOUR PARENTS LET YOU KEEP THE BUTTER KNIFE AT THE RESTAURANT ALL THROUGH LUNCH.

Behold: Mickey frigging Mouse.

Graham: "Wow, that parking lot tram ride was AWESOME. How could anything possibly top that?"

This rainsticks-on-a-wheel gadget at Tarzan's treehouse was very popular with all the kids from Finn's age up to, oh, ten.

Despite not being able to properly reach the handle, Graham was not to be left out.