Hey, Mystere!

We are back from Las Vegas, and the kids had a great time, although not for the reasons I expected. I had imagined that they would be completely captivated by the spectacle of it all - the grandeur, the gold-plated everything, the comic excess. But I guess I hadn't really thought it through in their eyes. And in their view, it's the small stuff that counts - a comfortable hotel room, a great pool, some screen time, and good eats.

We made the wise (pats self on back) decision to stay at the Venetian, where we got a very nice suite in the newest tower, and where the entertainment was family-friendly, or at least rated PG. Each night the harlequin dancers and stilt-walkers paraded through the lobby with music and dance, scattering beads and rose petals for the Carnevale celebration. And each day we could watch the gondoliers paddling their boats and singing arias through St. Mark's Square.

As one perk of staying in our tower, we had use of an exclusive pool area that was like a series of Greco-Roman baths. Instead of one big pool, there was a smattering of small pools winding among gardens, statues, and topiary.

If we had been anywhere else instead of Las Vegas, the pool(s) might have been the singular attraction. But as it was, there was so much else to do, we had to limit our time to get in all of the non-pool activities.

So of course we saw the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, the fountains at Bellagio, the volcano at Mirage, and we rode on the monorail all up and down the Strip. But we also stretched a little further to see not one but two shows; Cirque de Soleil's Mystere, and the Popovich Pet Comedy Theater. Mystere was, of course, spectacular. If only it hadn't been at 7:00 at night after a long day of swimming and walking in 100-degree heat. Zach must have said, "Wow!" at least 65 times before falling dead asleep in his seat from sheer exhaustion before the final act. The next day, the pet comedy show was extremely lowbrow, a sort of Vaudeville act with cats, dogs, and geese, but the kids thought it was just funny enough to keep them occupied for a little over an hour.

Most of the time we slummed it, food-wise, with quick picks from chain restaurants or the food court at the Venetian. On the last day, we met my cousin Anne at the Bellagio buffet, which was a great choice for the kids because Luke could load up on bacon while Zach was able to sample everything from mussels to miso-mushroom soup. "The people who built this restaurant must have had a lot of energy. And a lot of ideas," mused Zach.

Added bonus: If we hadn't been with Anne, we wouldn't have known to go just around the corner from the Bellagio garden to find the world's biggest chocolate fountain. Who gets to drink from the fountain, the boys wanted to know. Luke and I decided that maybe it was a prize on one of the progressive slots. So instead of a big display reading $1,064,584.92 and counting, the display would just say "Chocolate Fountain" and whoever won the jackpot would get to step inside the glass doors and drink up.

Gambling? Well...I've gotta admit, this is one of my favorite kinds of vacations: You lounge around in the sun all day, then go back and shower, then get dressed up for dinner and a night out. Except in this case we couldn't both go out. Dave realistically knew that if someone from our family was going to gamble, we would be better off if it were me, so he sent me out two of the nights to do my best at the slots. So I lost a few bucks on the penny slots, but it sure was fun getting there and I sure looked good doing it.

Will we go again? Absolutely. And just to clear things up for the skeptics, it is a fun place to be with the kids - and now that they're old enough that we don't have to deal with strollers, diapers, pull-ups, or naps, our enjoyment has increased exponentially. Pros: Plenty to do and see; fancy hotels and pools made for giddy fun. Cons: Extreme heat in the summertime, extreme crowds once you get closer to the weekend. So you just have to balance it all out.

I'll leave you with some of Luke's more sanguine observations about the city. This is a kid who is not easily fooled:

On whether the cloudy sky was real or an illusion in St. Mark's Square: "Uh, Mom, I can see the holes where the lights go."

On viewing the city and surrounding desert while flying in: "Where do they get their water supply?"

On seeing the tracts and tracts of development around Las Vegas: "If all of the houses look the same, how do you know which house is yours?"

On visiting the Miracle Mile at Planet Hollywood: "You know, this looks nothing like Hollywood."

Synapses firing

Zach has a speech therapist named Iris who comes to our house, and when she gets here, they make up a little schedule of what they are going to do together. She has a whole bunch of icons of all different activities (trains, painting, Legos, etc.) and they pick the activities and velcro the icons onto a timeline to map out their time together. On Saturday, Zach noticed that she had an icon with a picture of a glass of juice, labeled simply, "Juice." I believe Iris uses it as an icon to denote a snack break, like when a kid takes a break and has a cup of juice. But Zach interpreted it to mean, "Time to make juice." So he gleefully added "juice" to the schedule, and when the appointed "juice" time rolled around, Zach got out some cups, some oranges, and the juicer. Iris was embarrassed and apologetic that they were making a mess in the kitchen, but at the same time she was clearly delighted at his charming interpretation of the "juice" icon. Apparently this is the first time a kid has ever been inspired to make juice when given "juice" time. You know that book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie"? Zach is totally the mouse in that book. Give him an idea for a project and he will take the inspiration and run with it.

Luke's class has been working with iPads at school and he has an app on there called "BrainPop" that has all sorts of unusual science facts. We'll be having a conversation about something and all of a sudden Luke will jump in with some random yet detailed explanation of a science fact (black holes, for example) that is perfectly fitting to the occasion. Anyway, Dave was driving us all in his car today when some lady cut him off. Dave started to say, "What a stupid..." and I jumped in before he could get too far and said, "You know what? I feel sorry for her. Because for her to make a driving mistake like that, it probably means she doesn't have a lot of brain cells. And it must be really hard for her to make it through her life with not as many brain cells as other people." Then from the back seat, Luke announced, "If you built 15 Marriotts entirely out of grains of sand, each grain of sand would represent one synapse in your brain. That's how many synapses we have." This kind of stunned me and Dave into silence for a moment, until I added, "So I think that lady only had one Marriott." And we laughed all the way home about the poor one-Marriott lady who just doesn't have the brain power to know how to drive like a normal person.

Wrapped up

OK, let's see how quickly we can do this rundown...

Luke won the bronze medal at his karate competition. He overcame some initial nervousness and got more confident as he continued. He had to compete in one extra round as a tie-breaker, where he finally won out for third place. Is he awesome, or what?

Luke also had a great, fantastic, roaringly good final report card for 2nd grade. I am a little sad that this year is over because I loved his teachers so much and I think the feeling was mutual with Luke. (I emailed his teacher about his karate medal as soon as it happened, and then I had second thoughts because I realized I might be over-sharing, but she assured me that she was just as delighted to hear it as anyone else and she wants to stay in the loop.) Anyway, among the comments on his report card, I was tickled to see that the teachers were impressed with his growing confidence, especially "when he told the class about going to the restaurant and interviewing the chef."

As a special treat, Luke and I had a "date night" on Wednesday and I took him up to Burbank to see a special screening of "Brave" at the Disney studios. Usually at these screening events they're in a special room where there are no food or drinks allowed, but when you come out there's a nice little buffet or something. By the time the movie got out at 8:45 pm we were both starving and thirsty, so we rushed out of the theater to find...no food, no drink, nothing. (Cue sad trombone.) So we headed back down the freeway back home and stayed up extra-late, teenage-style, eating pizza until (gasp!) 10pm.

Luke asked me the other day, "Mom, did you know (our babysitter) Rose  has stayed up all night before?" and I said, "Yeah, that's the kind of thing you do every now and then in college." And he answered, "No - I was thinking about trying to start doing that this summer!"

Zach graduated from preschool. I think it was one of those moments where I was supposed to be wiping away tears or something, but all I could think was, "I am SO happy that he's finally finished with preschool." If I were more proficient with my new camera I would have a picture of him accepting his diploma. Instead I have a blurry picture of him walking away while holding the diploma. Here's one that's better anyway (thanks, Suzi).

In celebration of his graduation, Zach has taken up a new hobby. I don't have much more to say about that, except that I'm not really freaked out TOO much. He's not exactly a delicate flower, and he's pretty close to the ground, so that's as good a time as any to learn. Dave reports that after they bought the skateboard, Zach insisted on carrying it out of the store, held tight against his chest. And as they left, a teenage kid heading in to the skate shop sort of did a double-take at Zach and gave him a look like, "Dude, that's how I was when I started too."

We also have a new fish. At the second-grade mall (second-graders come up with an idea for a store and then everyone comes and shops at the stores with play money), one of the stands was a game to win goldfish. Long story short - it was a game that was set up to be extremely improbable to win, and the line was impossibly long, but Zach kept insisting that he wanted a fish. So we got to the front of the line and he threw four balls that missed the target, and the fifth and last ball made a bulls-eye, to the delight of the crowd. So Zach won a fish, named it Diet Coke, and we now have a sprightly little addition to our household.

The last thing is not really important but I thought I'd mention it just as a curiosity. The other day Zach was having a hard day and he was mad at everyone, and pretty much everyone was mad at him too. But somehow he managed to collect himself and get organized over at his art desk. He carefully drew three separate pictures of a person pooping on the potty. Then he methodically went up to each one of us and taped a picture to each of our backs. Somehow, once he did that, he was satisfied and got himself back into a good mood. Of course, Luke was not happy. Dave was...befuddled. But I just thought it was kind of cool and I asked him if I was allowed to wear the picture everywhere I went. I don't think that's the reaction he was hoping for, but nevertheless I saved the pictures. Because you never know when you might need to tape a person-pooping-on-the-toilet picture to someone else's back.

Completely starstruck

Last night when the boys and I went to vote, an election official was standing outside the polling place with solar viewing glasses. So we all got to do double duty - vote, and see Venus traversing the sun. Apparently it made a huge impact on Zach because this is what I woke up to this morning:

Even better, when he saw the picture of Venus and the sun in the paper this morning, he said, "Hey Dad, look - there's an ad for Venus!"

I gotta run because I'm going to Seattle today, but I can't leave without saying that Luke won first place in a karate tournament last week. He got an enormous trophy, and his teacher could not say enough things about his performance. I wasn't able to be there, but Dave has video, and he did a truly commanding performance - he was spot-on with every single motion. If I can pull it together I might try to post the video. Next stop for Luke: Karate Junior Nationals, here in L.A., on June 16.

Automotive expression

You have a close relationship with your car. You rely on it to get you around; and to a certain extent it represents to the world who you are. In Dave's case, he got tired of having to drive clients around in a car that a) had several warning lights on at all times; b) had a non-functioning hatchback door; and c) had lost a key trim piece that flew off on the freeway one day. So it was time for a new car, and I'll spare you all of the calculations that went into which car we were going to get, but suffice to say that he leased a new Highlander (now the second Highlander in our household) last night. I'm calling the color "cabernet."

Kids are funny with their attachment to cars. The Volvo was the only car Zach has ever known Dave to drive. But he absolutely could not contain his excitement about the 3rd row of seats in the new Highlander - he was doing kind of a happy flip-out dance, much to the amusement of the car salesman, until he finally got a chance to crawl back into the 3rd row. I love this about him; he has this sweet, unbridled joy that he almost certainly gets from his dad.

So we harnessed that enthusiasm and took it right over to the dealership's bouncy house so the kids would have a chance to jump around while Dave took care of the paperwork. Zach headed down the inflatable slide in his terrifying new way that involves not just sliding down it but actually propelling himself off the top of the slide so that he bounces his way down to the bottom. (He tried this trick down the inflatable slide at a friend's house into their pool and he had to be stopped. But in the relative safety of the bouncy house, at least, it's pretty funny to watch this small, happy body flying unencumbered through the air.) It was only after he was sweaty, panting, and asking for a drink of water that we were able to convince him to finally come out.

Luke, on the other hand, is a little more complicated, sensitive, and harder to read. Like his mom, he's the kind of kid who would stay up at night worrying about things. And having a bad cold this week (which turned into an ear infection; he's been up for the last two nights and stayed home from school today) he's been a little down to begin with. But the changing of the cars has really knocked him off-center. He's surprisingly mournful about the thought of losing the Volvo. Yesterday he told me that he was as sad about losing the Volvo as he was about moving last year. Heartstrings. Tugging.

If we had been willing to spring the extra $200 per month to get the fancier Highlander with the DVD player, would he be more excited about it? Dave walked him through the math and they concluded that it would be far more economical to buy a 2nd iPad than to have the built-in entertainment. And that resonated with Luke...sort of. We'll just have to wait until it all settles in his mind a little bit more. And we'll have to make sure that the Volvo goes on to a really good person who will love it as much as it's used to being loved.

Out of the Woods

It is hard to have your own business. You're basically working around the clock, marketing yourself, with no safety net, hoping that you can somehow convince people that you are the one who can help them solve their problems. And when people don't choose you, you have to dust yourself off and get right back out there because there's no other choice.

The past few years have been a long, tough journey for Dave. But he amazes me every day with his resilience and sunny outlook. If it were me, I would be a whimpering, sniveling puddle on the ground by this point. But Dave is up like clockwork every day at the crack of dawn, snapping his fingers (which means that he's got a plan) and humming cheerfully as he plans out his day.

This month, after an incredibly long dry spell, things are finally turning around. Dave had a wildly successful campaign in Oregon and he will have closed on three houses. I can't tell you what a relief it is to feel like we are finally starting to be able to pull ourselves out of the hole we've been in. We're going to need to have a few more good months like this before we declare victory, but we are headed in the right direction - out of the woods - and that alone has been enough to lighten the mood for everyone.

And I know you're thinking: Did she get the pictures totally wrong with this? Nope. Dave had to spend some time on the phone yesterday with another new client, so I took the boys to the wilderness park. Nothing like sticks, stones, and happy kids to make it feel like nothing else truly matters.

Personal assistant

There's been so much to say about Zach lately; Luke deserves a turn too. Today I had to go to L.A. to interview a chef, so I took the opportunity to bring along my "personal assistant" Luke with me. I figured he'd be interested in listening to what the chef had to say and maybe checking out the kitchen; I didn't realize how much a kid's perspective could actually help in the interview. Of course it helped that the chef was a super-cool guy to begin with, and he lightened the mood by getting Luke started off with an enormous milkshake before anything else happened.

So I was talking to the chef about trying new foods, and he was telling me his theories about stepping out of your "comfort zone," and someone mentioned Korean barbecue. This got Luke all excited because we had just recently been to a Korean barbecue place with some pretty crazy unidentified foods. This got the chef all excited because he had just been to a Korean barbecue place at which he felt obligated by his Korean friends to eat a very large and scary-looking veal intestine.

"Wait - I've got a picture of it! You've got to see this," he crowed, flipping through the pictures on his phone. "Just hang on, it's in here somewhere. It'll be totally worth it, I promise."

About 5 minutes or so later, he finally found the picture, which generated the same grimace from both me and Luke, but the chef assured us that once he tasted it, it was truly "sweet" and "tasty." Had Luke not been there, would the chef have been so excited about showing me his veal intestine picture, and would I have gotten that particular insight into his personality? Signs point to "no." So the moral of the story is, bring your kids to work with you whenever possible. Oh, and wide-eyed Luke now has some good stories to share with his friends when he gets back to school tomorrow.

View finder

So...is it the new camera, or do I just have incredibly photogenic subjects?

Mom, me

Mother's Day 2012 -

Preparing for the Mother's Day dessert: The boys dip strawberries into chocolate. Note: The boys both appear wet because they just finished a water gun battle.

There it is, in all its glory: A view of one of the better strawberries, through my camera. (The regular lens, not the food lens.)

And last but not least, a Mother's Day special: Pieces of my heart on display:

The Ides of Five

Did anyone notice that Zach turned five? Here he is in class on his actual birthday, in all his over-cupcaked glory.

He is such a perfect little bundle of mischief and maturity. Example: He and his friend Palmer had their first sleepover (OK, mock sleepover - Palmer went home at bedtime). At one point they disappeared into the big closet, a.k.a. "treasure room" and did not want to be discovered. I didn't think much about it until I saw some suspicious candy wrappers in there. Whatever; I decided to let them think they got away with something.

Anyway, the next morning Zach and I picked up Luke from his sleepover, and after Luke finished telling us all about his night, I told Luke, "You know, Zach had his friend Palmer over last night and he had kind of a big night too."

"Yeah," added Zach, "And he ate your Dr. Pepper jelly beans."

[Insert the sound of screaming, wailing, and the 8-year-old version of cursing, along with threats that Palmer is "never allowed in our house again."]

On Friday Zach also spent some time hanging out with his little friend Ava after school (not Ashley - another woman!) and after they finished playing he invited her out for ice cream. And of course the moms agreed, because how cute is that?

And then, the strangest new friendship of all... A few weeks ago Zach went to a kindergarten screening. After the screening, he started playing trains with a little boy who was also at the screening. A few weeks later I got a mysterious note from the boy's grandmother asking if Zach would like to play with him. Turns out this kid, Nicholas, has been heartbroken since his best friend moved away. But when asked if he met anyone else who he might like, he said that he liked Zach from the kindergarten screening...so they tracked us down, albeit not in a stalker-ish way.

Anyway, Nicholas and Zach had a playdate, and it went as well as could possibly be expected. Lots of train talk, giggles, hand-holding, and a big hug at the end. Nicholas has promised to draw Zach a picture of an N-scale Amtrak (per Zach's request). The best part of all is that they are both slated to be in kindergarten at our school next year and (fingers crossed) possibly even the same class, so now he has at least one buddy who will be going to the same school as him.

Last but not least, Zach loves to be of service. Unfortunately, Luke knows this too and has started asking him to do servant-like things for him, which Zach is only too happy to do.

However, having someone in the house like this can come in handy. Our babysitter was sick the other day, so Zach came home and was left to his own devices while Dave worked upstairs. Of all things, he chose to...clean up the driveway in and around the garage. Well, OK then. No complaints here.

My hero

Question: If your kid was extremely traumatized at the sight of his/her toy being swept away into the ocean, would you leap in with your clothes on to grab it if you could, no matter how cheap and inexpensive the toy? (Hint: Answer "yes.")

And if you didn't get it, would you then peel off your wet clothes and then spend at least 10 minutes consoling said kid while scanning the horizon for any sight of the toy? (Hint: Answer "yes.")

And if a glimmer of said toy suddenly appeared in the waves, would you go racing back into the water to grab it, at risk of losing your favorite baseball cap and your prescription sunglasses? (Hint: Answer "yes.")

And then when you got to shore with all of your kids safe and your items intact, would you relish a little moment of being the hero? (Answer: "Of course.")

Random sweets

More from the collection...

A soft ride:

A soft landing (from Zach's party):

A not-so-soft landing:

A quick scoot:

Serious concentration:

A goofy group:

Proud parents:

King of the almost-five-year-olds:

A tour of random sights

Bemused Jewish guy on Easter morning

Preparing to tour the Korean dumpling factory

Repairing the 13-year-old Kitchen Aid mixer, with a solemn observer

Some random teenager flipping French toast in the kitchen

Cheerful cowboy

Shark shock

Climbing the walls

Made it!