Magic Castle Children's Day

It's becoming somewhat of a tradition that every year Robin takes his local nieces and nephews to the Magic Castle on Children's Day.

This year, Aunt Vicky got to go too!

Our number appears to be dwindling. There was a time not that long ago when four kids would accompany Robin to the Castle. We're now down to two. (Yikes! Does that mean *they're* getting old -- or WE are?!? :-O)

My first picture above is our two charges -- Emily and Ryan -- waiting patiently in the front room of the Close-Up Gallery for the show to start. The magician had just gifted Emily with the lovely heart-shaped balloon.

Click any picture to see it bigger.

This next shot I grabbed in the Hat & Hare room down in the basement -- against the rules, mind you, since no one is supposed to take pictures inside the Magic Castle. But I knew Magic Steve wouldn't mind, so I risked it!

Emily is working hard as the magician's beautiful assistant.

Last but not least, the Magic Castle featured Santa in the Blackstone Room, so we decided to grab a family picture to commemorate the day.



I wish I could show you the magnificent orange parrot balloon animal that Denis Forel made for Emily precisely to her specifications, but it suffered irreversible damage before I could get the camera on it. Ballon animal artistry is such a fatally transient art, sigh.

Here's some film showing Magic Steve working with Emily (6 minutes long):
Ryan's off to the side, mostly in the dark. (And yes, Emily is wearing heels!)



And here's Magic Ian with Ryan at his table (5 minutes long):
Be sure to listen for Emily telling the magician that Ryan is 12 years old.



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Raging Waters

A couple years ago Robin took the McPeters kids (his nieces and nephews) to a California water park called Raging Waters for the day.

Everybody had such a great time we decided to do it again.

We didn't get it on the calendar last year, but I was pushy this year. So last Monday was the day!

Normally I'm a stick in the mud about these things. I didn't even go with them the first time! But I joined them for this outing -- and I went on nearly EVERY ride! Yayyy!

The older kids seemed impressed. (Robin was astonished.)

We had a blast.

The irony is that I went to Raging Waters for my 30th birthday, because I wanted to prove I wasn't over the hill yet. And.... I didn't ride a single ride. I'm not sure I even got wet! It was a miserable experience. (I *did* feel like I was over the hill.)

I guess it took a couple more decades for me to become mature enough to enjoy myself.

Go figure!

I have 13 more shots in a little slide show here. You don't have to sign in or sign up or any of that business. Just click the yellow button that says "View Slideshow." When the picture comes up, be sure to click "play" in the upper right-hand corner.

Enjoy!

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Babysitting & Fires

Last week VJ's sister went to San Francisco on a business trip, and all we got was Ghirardelli chocolate.

AND we got stuck with her three youngest kids!

Lucky we adore them, and we rose to the occasion. VJ sez,

I wish I'd had an aunt like me. These kids got to go swimming, attend a street festival and enjoy the carnival. They visited the newly-remodeled Getty Villa museum, ate Mongolian Barbecue, and watched videos galore! ("Surf's Up," "Happily Never After," "On the Reef," "Shaun of the Dead," "The Peaceful Warrior," "Transformers," "Next" -- we never got to "Silver Surfer," sigh!)

The 2 youngest kids went Faery Hunting in Franklin Canyon and saw an improv show in NoHo while the oldest was chauffeured to his soccer game. They all saw "Twelfth Night" in Topanga Canyon. (We like to ensure they get lotsa culture.)

(Before you go thinking I'm some kind of saint, be aware that nobody probably brushed their teeth for four days either, and at least one jar of candy and one super-sized box of microwave popcorn vanished. I'm a rabid culture vulture, not a sensible mommy type!)

Following are pics (click any image to enlarge).

Everybody at the Getty Villa:

The first faery appears at the Faery Hunt:

Emily With the Faery Queen:

The Monster Ride at the street fair:

Barrelling down the Super Slide!:


All in all, it was a great time.

Except for the last part....

The last part was not fun.

On their last day, Sunday, we attended the street fair and then Robin left about noon to catch a plane to Texas to teach the following week. Thus it fell to me to get the munchkins home to mom.

On his way to the airport, Robin phoned to let me know he was hearing reports of fires all over the place. I texted my sister about it. She and her husband were on their way home on the 5 freeway, about 6 hours away. (They had finally gone sightseeing in San Francisco only that morning.)

My sister listened to the news and then began calling around to her Santa Clarita neighbors. As it happened, her 18 year-old daughter (Heather) had stayed home to watch the animals and enjoy some introvert time alone. Fortunately, the neighbors had been alerted, so everyone was watching out for her.

They had been evacuating homes nearby, but not her neighborhood quite yet.

So my sister texted me with updates while I smiled angelically at darling little children and pretended everything was lovely. I fed them lunch, we went swimming. I took the two littlest ones back up to the street fair (but it wasn't wonderful because a rogue wind was blowing fiercely and threatened to knock tents down).

Ryan noticed the smoke in the sky, and overheard at least two people remarking on the fires. I felt anxious that he might figure it out, but luckily his 11-year-old brain isn't that adept yet. I distracted him so he wouldn't think about it long enough to add up.

We strolled to the video store to return what we'd watched, and we picked up a couple new ones.

Then we went home and settled in for movie viewing. I was texting with my husband and sister the whole time. It was stressful!

After the first film, I cooked up some microwave lasagna for dinner. And then we settled in for "Transformers." Sheesh, that movie is loooonnngggggg! Which turned out to be great news, because the youngest one fell asleep and Ryan was too sleepy to wonder why mom hadn't come to get him yet. Just to be safe, I called Nancy and we invented a ruse about all the "traffic on the freeway" that was making her late. She talked to him a bit and suggested he go to bed, reassuring him that she would come for him soon enough.

So I put the kids to bed.

It turns out my sister had a helluva time getting home. All the roads around her home were closed, and the security people wouldn't let her through, despite her having a daughter waiting at home! Luckily, my resourceful sister knows a secret road in, and she managed to sneak home that way.

Apparently some tents in their back yard and her new gazebo had blown away. They began packing up their motorhome in order to evacuate, and her husband took an ATV out to investigate the area. Some neighbors had evacuated, but not all.

I invited them to come and crash here. So after the young ones went to sleep, I bustled around cleaning up the kid mess. Did dishes, picked up toys, rearranged furniture that been moved. I made up the couch for sleeping, and inflated one of our air beds and made it up. It looked very inviting, if I do say so!

At 2AM I got another text message from my sister, so I called her for their status. She said they were probably going to spend the night packing up. They had just suffered a power outtage five minutes previously, and they were working on the source of that problem.

I was exhausted, so I told her I was going to leave the front door unlocked. Everything was ready for guests, so if they showed up, great -- and if not, that was okay too. And then I toddled off to bed -- exhausted!

The following morning there was no sign of anybody. So I sent off some more text messages. Apparently they had worked all night long. The unenviable task of letting Ryan know why he was still hanging out at my house fell to me. (There was no need to let the 6-year-old know, and I had already let the 14-year-old know the situation the night before.) I got my sister on the phone, and pushed the young guy outside to have a comfy chat with mom, which helped a lot I think.

We had run out of bread, so we went off to the grocery store for supplies. I grabbed some sandwich makings and pork chops I found on sale. When we came home, I pitched the pork chops in the crockpot for dinner. Then I got a text message from my sister saying they were on their way! Yay!

So about 11AM there was a joyous reunion (and lots of Ghirardelli chocolate)!

It turns out the fire had come within about 50 feet of my sister's house. It burned down a fence between her and a neighbor, and took out a barn in her neighbor's back yard! Too close for comfort!

I fed everybody lunch with the sandwich fixings, and then bundled up the crockpot of chops to send home with them. Then they headed off, and I collapsed with exhaustion. It was HARD being Command Central for all that time! (And I'm not accustomed to deceiving children.)

Everything seems to be fine now -- I still get the occasional text message from my sister about fire flare-ups and road closings. I still have the beds made up and ready for occupancy should they be needed.

But for now, it seems the worst of it is over.

Yayyyyyyy!

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She's Hilarious!

This is my five-year-old niece, Emily. (Her preferences are for ENFJ, for those who keep track of such things.)

Don't let her angelic appearance fool you! This little gal has a wicked sense of humor. And she got off some amazing wisecracks over the holidays that we're still laughing about.

For instance, if you admire her dress too much (like the white one she's wearing), she'll let you know right away that it doesn't come in *your* size.

Here are a few other highlights:

I made some remark to her at Christmastime, and she looked at me and said, "Watch it or I'll use my 'cute voice' on you."

As we were moving into our new house, she announced she was going to imitate my husband. Then she stomped up the staircase and said (in a loud, fake-male voice), "Honey, I'm hooooome!"

On Christmas Eve day, my sister set out a spread of deli items for us to snack on. Robin is a vegetarian, and he had some cheese and dips. Emily came over to him with a slice of salami, waved it tauntingly in his face, and said, "Meeeeat, meeeeat, meeeeat."

My sister tells me the other day my oldest niece wore an elegant fur coat to class for the first meeting, and on the way home she commented that she probably looked like a dork. Emily piped up from the back seat, "But you're a beautiful dork, Heather."

Oh my, she's a pistol.

I'm going to update this from time to time with new Emily humor -- stay tuned!

10/31/07
My sister ran an errand, and when she returned home and pulled into the driveway, Emily looked at me and said, "There's your little sister!"

5/15/08
My sister bought a party dress. It was a Grecian-style gown, with gold sequin trim under the bust, laid over classically draped white chiffon. She looked elegant and lovely. But she reports that Emily looked at the dress and said, "Mom, the Eighties called. They want their Roman dress back." Pretty sassy for a 6-year-old!



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The Purple Fairy Visits

We have an adorable niece. Her name is Emily, and she's five years old. Her favorite color is "purple," and that's also her word for imaginary things. So if she tells you she's calling her "purple mommy" on her "purple cell phone," you know that's all in her imagination. So cute!

For Halloween, she wore a "Butterfly Fairy" costume that she picked out herself. Clearly she loved being a sparkly fairy. (Can you make out the sparkly butterflies at the end of her antenna? Click any photo to enlarge it.)

So anyway... Robin and I have habitually taken each of our nieces and nephews individually for one weekend each year and done something special with them: visited a museum, given them a surf lesson, taken them to Arizona in a convertible, whatever. We take them away for a couple of nights and do something really splashy for them.

Well, Emily hasn't had that opportunity yet. And after Halloween, we found ourselves in the local Ross store "channelling" Emily and thinking "purple." And so we went a little overboard collecting some purple things.

Now Robin's been traveling quite a bit lately, and it doesn't look like we're going to squeeze in a weekend visit with Emily before the end of the year -- so last weekend while they were out of town for Thanksgiving, we broke into my sister's house and did a "makeover" on Emily's bed.

What dya think?

FYI: this is the bottom of a bunk bed she shares with her older brother.

Now you would think that bedspread is scratchy, but it's not! It's smooth and cuddly. Serious! There was a sticker on it that said it had been available at Kohl's Department Store for $134.99 or something. (Are you kidding me?!?) I got it for $18.

The fuzzy pillow just felt good, the memo board seemed fitting. Can you make out the kidsize purple sunglasses we hung on it? The purple star is actually a lighted plastic Christmas decoration from Ikea.

We laid the butterfly headband from her Halloween costume on the pillow so she would connect it all together in her mind somehow.

And of course we couldn't resist the sparkly book about Christmas that cost all of a dollar!

Isn't it cute?

My biggest fear was that Emily might get upset about my demoting her "Dora the Explorer" bedding. So I folded it neatly on the end so it didn't look abandoned.

They got home yesterday, and I would have given anything to see the look on her face. All I know is that her older brother IM'd me last night and said [quote] "the purple ferry came by and gave emily some new stuff for her bed." So I figure Robin and I are representatives of The Purple Fairy now -- and I infer from my nephew's message that the bed was a hit!

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Halloween 2006 Report

Halloween was a tad bizarre this year. We didn't do pumpkin carving OR trick-or-treating.

First of all, we had a guest in from Germany this month, so that required some attention. Second of all, the house is still in mega-pieces from all the remodeling projects I'm into. Third of all, Robin and I alternated coming down with a truly nasty cold that landed us each in bed for several days in a row (albeit not the same days, which is good and bad news -- figure it out).

So the Halloween celebration turned into a variety of mini-celebrations strung over a number of days.

We attended the Magic Castle costume party on Friday night, where we also worked as volunteer Castle Knights. We got dolled-up for that party. He's a magician and I'm the Queen of Hearts -- of course! (Click any picture to enlarge it.)

We had a lot of fun, although I think Robin nearly passed out after I pushed him a little hard on the dance floor. He turned a shade of green I don't think I've ever seen before. He actually had to go lie down and recover for a bit.

It was fun to see all the costumes, and I always enjoy the amazing creativity that gets generated on Halloween. I used to love attending the West Hollywood costume parade, but usually we go to my sister's house and enjoy Trick-or-Treating with her kids. But since Robin was out of town on Halloween this year, we went up and did a little costume parade on Saturday afternoon at my sister's home. The whole family got in on the costume parade! We have the Superhero Parents, of course. The boy on the left is a "chick magnet," the little girl down front is a butterfly, the boy is a knight from "The Chronicles of Narnia," and the girl on the right is a half-dressed "Tokyo Pop Princess."

I had to get in on the act (of course), so I donned a little witchy-poo costume for the Saturday soccer game. The umbrella isn't normally part of the ensemble, but man it was HOT that day. I thought those striped stockings were going to melt right off my legs! ("I'm melting, I'm melting!"...)

I hope your Halloween was happy! BOO!

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