Conner's Grade Two Performance

Tonight all the grade two students at Tassajara Hills Elementary performed their annual musical for the parents. Tonight's production was an Aesop's fable collection of stories put to music. The stories included the Hare and the Tortoise, The Lion and the Mouse, as well as The Country Mouse and the City Mouse. Conner had a long speaking part in the starring role of the country mouse. All went well! Everyone knew their lines, the songs were all sung, and everyone took a grand bow at the end.

A good time was had by all.

Dianne Sleeps!

It may seem odd to most people, but Dianne rarely sleeps through the night. In fact, it happens about once every three years or so. That makes it about as common as Haley's comet.

Yesterday we celebrated! Dianne headed to bed at her regular time of 9:30 or so. At 5:15 a.m. she bolted upright. "Hey, I think I slept through the night!!" After a quick mental analysis, she again confirmed that the night had been good to her. No checking the alarm clock at 2:00 am and every 15 minutes thereafter, no work nightmares, no waking up. Wow!

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet!

I've been branching out from triathlons and 5K's this year and have attempted some bicycle racing. This weekend was my first team time trial race. Teams consisting of two riders each, leave every 30 seconds and race in the Berkeley / Orinda hills for 16 miles at top speed, up and down a couple of very big hills.

I'm learning that bike racing is a cult unto itself, with lots of unwritten rules. Next time I need to bring the aero helmet, areo wheels, aero water bottle, sunglasses, and then when I drop another 20 pounds, I bring on the skin tight skin suit! Lots of very fast people on the course. I heard that Levi Leipheimer set the course record here at the Berkeley Time Trials a couple of years ago. He didn't need a team mate.

My local club, Forward Motion had 10 of us riding on 5 teams. Carrie and I learned a lot, had fun and enjoyed the day. We finished 4th out of 17 in our category, about 10 seconds out of 3rd and 90 seconds out of first. We were the first Forward Motion team too.

I'm sure there will be more bike racing on the calendar!

Cub Scout Father and Son Baking Contest

Kira is an awesome baker. Conner and I, sadly, are not. Every year the boy scout troop puts on a cake baking contest. Dads and sons only. No help from other, more talented, members of the family.

We had a great idea. We really did! The thought was to recreate the annual pine wood derby car racing contest. Bake a cake, cut it with a downward slope, cover in icing, apply fondant, place cars and trophies on top. How hard can that be? Well, actually it can be really hard :).

The fondant was the first disaster. It seemed really hard out of the package and we couldn't roll it, so we added water to make it more malleable. Bad idea we tried to fix by adding flour. Another bad idea. We decided to scrap the fondant and just use white icing for the main cake and chocolate icing for the piping of lanes and other decorative twists.

The cakes baked up really well. I was surprised! Unfortunately, taking them out of their pans didn't go as well. Big chunks broke off. We figured we would "glue" them back on with the icing.

Stacking and shaping the cakes went fairly well. We tried to ice between the cakes, but quickly realized it was a dumb idea. The icing just broke the cake apart. Conner made some comment about my skills. I handed him the knife to spread the icing, waited 10 seconds and then we both laughed. His skills were equal to mine. Not good!

With the icing between the cake going badly, we pondered icing the outside of the cake. We decided to go big, use plenty of icing and see what may come. Well, a disaster came. The icing wouldn't stick and pulled the cake apart no matter how we tried to patch it.

2 minutes in, the end was near. Conner embedded the cars in the icing, pushed the trophies into the cake and we both agreed this was not to be our year.

Next year we will invite Kira home, ask her for some sage advice, spend a weekend practice baking, and come out stronger and wiser.

Maybe it's time to pay more attention when watching the "Ace of Cakes" on the Food Network :)

Toothless Parker

I think Parker is doomed to lose all his teeth sooner, rather than later. He lost a tooth last year and badly loosened anther one. Today the second one fell out. Parker was thrilled as the extraction was painless. Also, his desperate attempt to find a cool share today for Tuesday pre-kindergarten came to an end. This was the best! The only four year old to lose not one, but two teeth.

I see hockey in his future!