The Thompson Family

Nora's best Christmas present was a card game called Sleeping Queens by Gamewright. She wakes up in the morning saying, "Can I please have some milk, and then we can play Sleeping Queens?" Truly. Every day starting on Boxing Day. And it is the first thing she asks to play when we get in the house after school/work.

This company makes the most amazing games. Be sure to check them out if you haven't seen them before. Nora has two other games that she loves, also by Gamewright: Wig Out (matching card game) and Feed the Kitty (a dice game). When we filled out our customer comment card after our second Gamewright purchase, they sent back a HANDWRITTEN postcard to Nora with some suggested games and personal responses to her note. Now that is stellar customer relationship management!

Nora, Dell and Otto playing Trouble! Nora is green, Dell is blue, and Otto is yellow. Otto is a ruthless popper... he keeps knocking Dell and Nora back into their home bases.

HOPSCOTCH!
(if you haven't seen the movie, you won't get it)

Like mother (2005), like daughter (2007). Nora found my Corpse Bride costume in the "Boo Box" and wanted to wear it. So we stitched some elastic to hold it up around the neck. We fashioned a bone arm out of an old pair of tights and an undershirt. The remaining part of the tights went to the bone leg. The rest was straight from my version of the costume. A little blue skin makeup and some attitude... and there you have it! View a few more photos on Flickr.

Nora's mermaid party was a smashing success! View the photos on Flickr.

(click to enlarge photo)

Nora's JBBP had a huge "sports day" festival called Undokai, and I took the day off to attend and volunteer. The teachers said "if you are going to go to only one of your child's Japanese celebrations this year, this is the one to go to... it truly is a spectacle." I couldn't agree more! Here is a video of Nora and Ketarie at Undokai doing the ball rolling race - it was great fun for the kindergarteners. The music was actually playing in the background over the loudspeaker, and it was strangely like a Japanese cartoon or a video game or something! View more photos on Flickr.



UNDOKAI: This electrifying annual event is held in schools throughout Japan—elementary through high school. The Undokai event stems from Taiku no hi (Health and Sports Day), an official nationally recognized holiday in Japan that commemorates the 1964 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo. Undokai combines the Japanese word undo, meaning exercise, and kai, gathering. Throughout Japan, schools, cities, and other organizations promote unity, team work and friendship through the Undokai. In this same spirit, the Japanese school divides into teams and holds a series of competitions such as bean toss (bean bags into a basket high up on a bamboo pole), races and team relays, dancing displays, obstacle course, and the classic tug-of-war.

Nora is trying out karate and seems to be liking it. She doesn't have her white uniform yet (it's called a Gi), so she is in her purple t-shirt in the video. I also get a huge crackup out of the boy to Nora's right with the blond hair and yellow belt.

Ms. Tsukamoto and Tanaka Sensei were both very gracious last night in spending time with all the parents at Rosa Parks JBBP for Back to School Night. Nora is doing well in kindergarten, and already knows lots of words and songs, and some hiragana characters.

Nora's drawing is the one in the bottom left corner, with the long dangly earrings. Just click the photo to enlarge and see her rendition of her name in Japanese. Yes, she can already write her name in Japanese too! After just about one month in school. It looks like this:


One website translated it as "The kanji used to write your name mean: Ability, Fine Silk. Meaning: You are a beautiful princess clothed in fine silk who abounds with great ability and achieves whatever she sets her mind to." Hmmmm... sounds like my Nora to me!

Don't spoil the covert operation... Nora doesn't know it is her birthday today. We are celebrating a month late (on October 13th), due mostly to the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference that Dell attends each year, but no worries, she doesn't know the difference... she still doesn't have the months/days thing down yet. I bet we wouldn't be able to pull the wool over her eyes if this was her sixth birthday!

We have had a nice mellow hang-around-the-house day. We have been organizing closets, doing laundry, and kitchen cleaning. The birthday girl watched a few episodes pf Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Wow Wow Wubzzy, and some Power Puff Girls.

The high point was watching an old Star Trek together... the impetus for the vintage tee in the photo. That tee was Dell's when he was a little kid, and Mama T passed it on to us. Nora still isn't quite big enough for it, but she's getting close!

When we dropped Dell off at Dreamforce this afternoon, Nora fell asleep in the back of the car with a My Little Pony coloring book on her lap. She is having a great birthday, even though she doesn't know it is a special day. But when you are five, every day is a special day, right?

First day is under-way! VIEW THE PHOTOS from before school on Flickr.

Today was Nora's graduation from Children's Village preschool. It was a bittersweet day, as Nora has been at the daycare/preschool since she was only 18 months old (most weekdays for the last 3-1/2 years!). I was up and down all day - fine, then teary, excited then melancholy.

There was a lovely ceremony where the kids sang a few songs - one in English (a jazz number called Little Red Rooster - LISTEN NOW, with scatting included!) and two in Spanish (El Coqui - LISTEN NOW | Samba Le - LISTEN NOW).

For each graduate, the school director Molly read "What I Learned in Preschool". It was at the same time very touching ("I learned to help my friend up when he falls down hard") and scathingly funny ("I learned to tell my friends not to pick their boogers because they have germs").

Thank you to all the amazing teachers and staff at CV that have show love, caring, patience, education, and fun over the years. We will miss all of them deeply.

VIEW THE PHOTOS on Flickr.

Check out Nora swimming for the first time without a life vest or arm floaties! She is a little dolphin now... we are so proud of her!

I got to babysit for Grant and Quincy (and Nora too). I can't tell you how amazingly perfect Nora and Grant were. Truly. I got to pay full attention to Quincy - giving her a bottle, changing a poopy diaper, singing her a song, cuddling her up. I got a nice "infant fix".

The two preschoolers kept themselves busy with pretend play (saving the princess - Nora, of course - from a dragon), and lots of building blocks (they pretended they were bugs and they were roasting them up to eat them). There wasn't any hitting, pinching or hair-pulling! I think those two are turning a big corner in Cousin-hood.

View the photos on Flickr.

Miss Lotus (a former coworker at Mortar) had a little get together at Mars bar, and Nora and I stopped by...

It was a "rockstar" party, so Nora wore her "My mom is a rockstar" tee, but we pinned a Nora-hand-written note over the top replacing mom with Lotus, because Lotus truly IS a rockstar.

Nora didn't last too long, as it was pretty loud, and I gave her a Shirley Temple before giving her food. I should know by now... but I got her out of there pre-meltdown.

Unfortunately, I didn't avoid the meltdown -- it DID happen, once Nora realized we weren't going back to the party.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Lotus! We had fun at your party (while Nora lasted).

I found myself laughing out loud to this article, "Just Say Yes" written By Sandra Tsing Loh (on the Wondertime website). It begins:

I'm not going to sugarcoat this, and anyway, I don't know the politically correct wording. The fact is, I have an impossible 4-year-old.

Lakeport's Memorial Day parade was a hit with our family. Nora and Grant scored big on the candy grabbing. There were lots of floats to support the veterans. And there were about 100 Corvettes!

View all the photos on Flickr.

WOW - A truly awesome experience tonight. Mortar treated for a night at the ballpark in the bullpen seats. They are just to the right of the visitor dugout, basically IN the visitor bullpen area. Catered food and beer/wine, a really nice usher named JT, and lots of perks like Lou Seal coming down to visit.

A few kids from the Mortar family got to join us, including Charlotte, Georgia, Bea, (Mark's girls), Jack (Todd's son), and of course, Nora. And there was a whole contingent from Isilon, including some of their kids too. It was the familiar story of advertising agency + clustered storage leader + kiddos hopped-up on cotton candy w/ foam fingers + winning Giants baseball... a combo for a perfect night.

One of the Houston Astros bullpen catchers leaned over and gave Nora a baseball. Nora got filmed by the TV crew and even got on the Jumbotron! I missed the shot of her on screen, but my coworker Todd says he was Tivo-ing it (in HD even!) so hopefully the she got onto TV too! We also got to chat with (and get an autograph from) ice skating Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi who was a "Ball Dudette" for the evening.

We were truly spoiled, and sitting in any other seats will feel so mundane! A huge THANKS SO MUCH to Mortar for the extra-special treat. View the photo set on Flickr.

Children's Village had a lovely picnic today out at McLaren Park. Lots of Nora's friends were there, as well as teacher and parents. The weather was perfect, although it was a bit gusty. View the photos on Flickr.

Dana Smith and his amazing Jack Russell terrier named Lacey were there for some impressive juggling and fun family entertainment. Here is a video of Lacey doing her Evel Knievel impression, jumping through a hoop over six preschoolers!

Nora, Grant & Dell do a cheer old skool style. Lots of extras in this one!