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Another busy, busy weekend!  We got Pizza my Heart for dinner and saw Avengers Friday with Brett and the girls and Derek - was a lot of fun.  

Saturday Eli had Relay for Life with the Scouts.  It was very sunny and beautiful (though perhaps a little too sunny midday) and Eli and Ben both participated in the opening flag ceremony with Eli's troop.  It was pretty cool.  There were a lot of booths selling stuff and doing fundraising - the scouts were selling glow bracelets and doing "rent a scout" - for $1 a scout will do a lap.  One booth had "rent a bra" - these funny garish bras.  A couple of younger scouts each got bras and were walking around the track in the opposite direction of traffic promoting the scout booth - it was too funny / cute.  Eli and I had an interesting conversation about doing embarrassing things and having the self confidence to do them.

Ben wasn't feeling well, so I let him off the hook for doing any more shifts, but Eli and I came back for his shift, 2-4pm, and then again after our Cinco de Mayo mexican dinner with Grandma (where we had to share menus because Alicia's was pretty busy... food was good and the top shelf margaritas were better than that).

We took Maizy to Relay for Life in the evening after seeing other people bring their dogs and she had a great time meeting people. The boys played frisbee and other games.  The luminaria were beautiful and it was very moving.  Eli and I walked a memorial lap in memory of Jen and held hands and talked.

And Sunday we had a beach day with Brett and the girls and had a total blast (in spite of kids being worn out from Saturday) - boogie boarding, bbq hot dogs, and ice cream at Marianne's. 

Saturday morning at 5am a drunk driver side-swiped our neighbor, drove up onto the sidewalk, into our yard, and then rammed into the cars - all three - that were parked on my driveway. Amazingly and ironically, she missed my car, which was parked in the street, but did a lot of damage to the newer, nicer cars. Fortunately, no one was hurt.  I came out to see what was going on and it was all very surreal and I think, in spite of the shock, I still wasn't fully awake for about half an hour.  Since then I've been dealing with three insurance companies and trying to sort it all out...

In spite of that, I took the boys boogie boarding later that day.  It was a rough start because the weather was beautiful and everyone was at the beach - parking lots for the state beaches were full all the way down to Sunset.  We parked in a residential area and walked down to a beach near Manresa, but there were some bad rip currents and the waves were breaking too close to shore, so I told the kids, "how about we go back to Rio Del Mar, and even if I have to drop you guys off at the beach with our stuff, park a ways off, and walk a back, we'll do that?"  They were agreeable but when we got there we got lucky:  A parking spot right in front of the Pixie Deli in Rio Del Mar!  Seems like fate changed and decided to smile on us, so we got clam chowder, cokes for the boys, a beer for me and things were really looking up.  Great clam chowder, btw.  After that we went boogie boarding in some great little rolling waves (perfect conditions) under the warm sun.

Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts has been busy.  Between the wreck and boogie boarding, Eli had a fundraising event with his boy scouts (during which I was on the phone with insurance companies) and last week Eli's troop had Camporee and I took Ben to half of that.  Eli had a great time shooting bb guns and other activities and while Ben missed a lot of the really cool stuff, he still had a good time whittling and making new friends.   

A couple of years ago Eli got a cool RC car that has a digital controller - up to 4 cars can use the same frequency.  Plus, it is a really good car; nice nice and plenty of power.  Other RC cars were underpowered, too large, lost the battery packs, etc.  So as we gave away or threw out the other cars I had told the kids I'd get them new, good cars like the ones Eli had.  I finally did that in January.

 But then I didn't ever get them out - until tonight.  We had some free time and I gave them some ideas of stuff we could do and we ended up taking the new cars down to the library and racing them around and getting pizza form Little Caesars and making a ramp out of the pizza box and it was a really good time.

My friend and surfing partner is a teacher at the elementary school, and the school has a project to make a garden that he is pretty much leading.  He was telling me about the project and we were brainstorming when I had an inspiration:  setting up the garden would make a good Boy Scout service project.  So, I proposed it to the troop and we did it Saturday.  It went off beautifully and the boys had a good time (which kind of surprised me - I had expected it to be received more as a "duty" then something fun).

 Later in the afternoon, we went surfing and had a really good session.  My friend said it might have been the best session he's ever had.

We were graced with another beautiful day and small swell, so I took Eli and Ben to the beach for some boogie boarding yesterday.  On the way we stopped at Play it Again Sports and bought Ben a full length 3/4 wetsuit and some booties.  I think they made lots of difference - we all played in the water for about 2 hours and had a great time.  I think Ben was a lot warmer than he used to be.  

 Eli boogie-boarded the whole time (and had a blast) but Ben decided about mid-way to body surf some.  I think he really enjoys the feeling of floating int he water and bobbing on the waves.  Happily, he wore a life jacket, so he was nice and floaty.  This saved him from at least one surprise big wave.

 Afterwards we had a sunset dinner at Zelda's in Capitola and the kids both did pretty well eating the clam chowder bread bowls.  Oh - and they had Ghiradelli chocolate hot chocolate

 On other topics, last week I was carded at Lucky's while buying Triple Sec.  As I handed my ID card to the cashier I remembered that I'm 42... and that is double the drinking age...

We spent New Year's Day the best way I can think of: at the beach.  Mother Nature must have felt like welcoming the new year too, because it was in the low to mid 70's in Santa Cruz with very little wind - terrific beach weather.  The sea was feeling friendly too, with mid sized waves just right for the kids to boogie board, or like I did, to surf on a longboard.  A little volleyball and some hot dogs roasted over a fire, and then finish they day with a trip to Maryann's ice cream.  

 Hopefully a day that sets the tone for the rest of the year.

This has been a rough year... My father-in-law passed away in the spring, my aunt-in-law (?) died on Dec 23, and in the beginning of the year, both our dogs died (separately, disease and old age).  I really miss my father-in-law; he was an important figure in our family and no one was expecting to lose him so soon.  His passing has created a lot of other change rippling through our lives as well, so it's not just the grief and the void of him not being here, but also the stress that comes with a lot of change.

Losing him has made me think a lot about the nature of loss and grief, and about mortality, too... although some of that is probably due to grappling with facing middle age anyway.  I routinely forget that I'm 42 - it just doesn't seem real.

Other changes:  Eli (and the rest of us) is wrestling with the onset of puberty.  My company had a big layoff (and my job isn't going the way I had expected anyhow).  Eli changed boy scout troops (a smaller troop, which is a much better fit for him).  I've been surfing more, but not exercising enough otherwise... but the surfing is fun, and I'm slowly improving.

Looking back over my entries for 2011, it strikes me that I've skipped over some of the biggest impact stuff.  I think it's a combination of still wrestling with so much loss, and having some hesitance to share too much in public.  It was a year of really, really big change for our family. 

Idea for powerpoint / lecture / something

Apple - the core has seeds, that's what's important to the tree

Core values (diagram showing circle within a circle)

Venn diagram shows to people (with cores)

Shifting core values (discomfort)

Maybe sitting leaning to one side to illustrate discomfort 

I do not believe in punishing my kids.  That is to say, I do not believe that a parent should do something bad to their children when the child misbehaves as a way to prevent the child from misbehaving again.

 Unfortunately, I haven't always been able to live up to that standard.  I have never hit my kids (spanked them, or otherwise), but the child psychology-ish speakers I've listened to - where I got a lot of ideas I have about good parenting - promoted the idea of "consequences" instead of punishment, and sometimes it seems like a pretty fine line.

 Sometimes this is very natural and simple - if you don't eat your dinner, you can't have dessert.  This just feels reasonable, and I do not feel at all that withholding dessert is "punishing" my child.  But in other situations the line becomes very fuzzy... what about when one kid whacks the other one?  What's the consequence of that?  The kid that got whacked has a bruise, that's what.  If there's going to be any other consequence (that the whacker can comprehend, anyway) it's got to come from me, and whether it's a lecture, timeout, or loss of a "privilege", it's smacks of punishment.  But I don't have any brilliant ideas...

Eli is noticing girls.  Apparently he and a friend were passing a note in class today about who do they like (but the answer was "no one").  Eli said it's all very confusing, but that he can feel that the way he thinks and feels about girls is changing.  I told him that it's all totally normal for a preteen, and that it will probably even get more confusing - but it's still normal.

I'm trying to get some work done on my laptop computer while lying on the floor, but Maisy is bringing me toys and standing on the other side of my computer screen so the toy hangs in front of the computer screen.  Smart dog.  Has me figured out. 

Ben often has a hard time finishing a meal he doesn't like in a timely manner, especially when there is a good distraction, like a movie or cartoon.  The other night Ben was still finishing his chicken (yuck) when bedtime rolled around, so when he wanted ice cream I said he should've asked earlier.  So tonight, in the middle of a show, he asked for ice cream, and when we pointed out that we're in the middle of a show, he said, "Well if I ask you later, you'll say I should've asked you earlier!"

Laughing, we had to concede the point, and all took a break for ice cream.