Monterey/Pacific Grove/Carmel by the Sea

This past weekend, Amira's class was having an "optional" family field trip to Point Reyes, CA, which is located on the coast of California.

Due to the weather (rain), we opted to pass on the field trip, and instead headed to Monterey, CA to explore the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Figuring Amira would still be able to explore the oceanic sea life, but under drier conditions.

The weekend weather turned out to be absolutely perfect for the field trip, thus allowing us to take in so much more than the aquarium. We also ventured to Pacific Grove, which is noted for being the Monarch Butterfly capitol as well as to Carmel-by-the Sea, famously noted for Thomas Kincaid's work.

After visiting the breathtaking landscape of Carmel-by-the-Sea, I understood Thomas Kincaid's art much better-----for he depicts the actual beauty on the outside, but not the beauty on the inside of the town's people because there wasn't much beauty to capture upon. Although esthetically the little village on the sea was breathtakingly beautiful the people themselves were somewhat snobby and rude. Of course not all as we encountered some lovely people, but I would say as a general consensus the majority were snobby.

Here are some photos that captured our weekend.

Halloween 2008

Well holding true to how most of this year has progressed along----strangely unpredictable---we spent Halloween with a mixture of events.

The day started our dreary and slightly wet but did not detour Amira's kindergarten group from attending a school field trip to Fog Willow Farm which is a pumpkin patch. Aside from feeling like we were driving to the end of the earth, it was a beautiful drive in farm country.

This place was so well organized and structured. My hat off to the owner and their employees because it was so efficient and amazingly operated. It was the last day of the season tours and I'm sure after thousands of screaming, high strung kids from all over they were ready for it to be the last day; however, their professionalism never led onto their possible exhaustion.

They had stations set up to teach the kids about farm life. We first visited a station where the kids were able to bundle hay. Then we were off to a tiny petting zoo where they could feed goats hay. Followed by selecting our own pumpkin, then onto a hay ride around the farm. After the hay ride, we went to an area where the kids could milk a simulated cow (now that was funny, but for liability reasons I understand why they did it), then to see some cows, a miniature horse, chickens, baby bunnies and an Alpaca. Lastly we had a picnic under some old oak trees. One of the best parts of the whole trip was the rainy weather held off long enough for us to enjoy the wonderful day.

Following the field trip, Amira had a doctor's appointment for her 'kindergarten' check up, which consisted of weighing her, measuring her height, listening to her lungs and asking a series of questions along with dreaded immunization shots, which I don't necessarily agree with but because the school requires them to keep your kid in school we had to do it. Well actually you can enroll your child in school without their immunization; however, should their ever been a breakout of anything then your child is immediately sent home even if they are not the cause of the breakout.

During the physical examination part, Amira told me that she liked doctors, but after the injection lady injected her 5 times through nearly inaudible words she uttered that she didn’t like doctors. Of course, I had to explain that this was a requirement of her school for her to attend there and that the doctors do not intend to hurt people but rather help them to remain healthy. However, it doesn’t matter what you tell someone whose just received 5 shots, they just want to cry and be mad. So, she cried because it didn’t feel good, and I cried because she didn’t feel good.

After leaving the doctor’s office we returned home to get ready to go to my brother’s house for the evening. We were not only celebrating Halloween but his birthday as well.

When we arrived at his house there was a Tinkerbell sighting.

And as unusual as this year has been the trick or treaters were no different. Usually there are hundreds of kids that come through the neighborhood gathering candy, but this year there were only a handful of kids that were out. Makes me wonder if the below capture doesn’t truly depict the Halloween season for this year.

All in all it was a good day with the exception of now dealing with Amira having a low-grade fever due to the immunization shots. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Days of Summer

Yesterday was Amira’s first swim party, which was a school field trip. The little school she attends three days a week has been a blessing for both of us, alhamdullilah. Her teachers are so incredibly gifted a taking care of children. These kids are being educated with actual curriculum, daily activities of life, and all the while allowing them to keep their individual personalities as well as develop their creative side. When I first decided to enroll Amira………well, I don’t know if I should use the word “decided” as I was fighting the process of change because it went against my grain to put her into school before she was 5 years old, but the struggles to survive were out weighing these options and therefore I finally yielded to enrolling her. Moreover, I realized that if I wanted to keep my same flexible work schedule of being self-employed in order to stay with her maximally I needed to do this. Otherwise the alternative would have been to get a Corporate job which would have me working a minimum of 45 hours a week, which would result in me only seeing Amira on the weekends as the week days would be shot after working all day. This was not an option for us. Moreover, I can remember being so angry at this situation because my goal in life or at least as long as I could remember was to be married and have a family. To raise my children and not put them in day care for someone else to raise. However, funny how life works out. We never truly know what’s going to happen from any given moment in our lives. I think we like to convince ourselves we are in control, but in reality only God is in control of everything. It’s our goal to learn, grow and even be bendable through lives experiences in the hopes of feeling we are always yielding to God’s will for us.

Anyway, sorry big digression there. Amira’s school is small, maybe 10-12 children maximum and it’s in an intimate setting of someone’s home. From the very first moment I entered Susie’s home I felt so wonderfully peaceful there and the energy that filled the space was unbelievable. Amira has been attending there for now a good year and a half and her school has had a number of field trips, alhamdullilah.

We received a couple of weeks ago a little flyer from one of the parents of Amira’s classmates that had extended an invitation for the entire school to come to their home for a swim party field trip. Well you can only imagine the excitement of the kids.

We all gathered at the school Friday morning at 9 with the kids already dressed and their swimsuits on under their clothes and their energy was so incredibly high I almost couldn’t sit in the house waiting because it was so grand.

We loaded the kids and headed over to Matthew’s house. Well let me tell you something, Matthew and his sister should never have to leave their home for anything. Oh my goodness! This house was huge. At first glance walking to the front door they had a beautiful little English style courtyard with a running fountain and scads of beautiful blooming flowers. Walked through the front door (didn’t pay much attention to the house), through what I believed was the living room area and on out to the backyard. Oh my gracious! I could not believe this backyard. It was a genuine park. It was enormous in size, beautifully landscaped around the perimeter of the property with flowers, and had manicured lawns with cement walkways throughout the yard. Aside from being unbelievably beautiful and large it had every kid’s toy you can possibly imagine. They had a little pool just for toddlers with a slide built into it; a swing set that had a teeter-tauter, swings, another little swing/chair thingy that held 4 and a slide; a sandbox table with tools; a kitchen set; water guns; bicycles and best of all they had a motorized Hummer car and motorized Kawasaki quad. All of these items mentioned were for toddlers. You can only imagine their overwhelmed excitement of seeing all these items. You could see they didn’t know where to start first or what to do as there was so much. However, they managed to get into their groove and play for hours. At one point I somehow placed myself in the position of being the “bus operator” on the swing set contraption and was pushing all the kids (8) on this one swing/chair thingy (which is only suppose to hold 4....hehehehe) and they all kept chanting “faster, faster, faster” which was fun until I felt the swing set start to pull out of the ground. LOL Apparently the family didn’t cement the swing set legs in the ground, which would make it dangerous if the kids really got going on it as it could tip over. Anyway, we were having a good time and the swing set managed to cooperate and not tip over, alhamdullilah.

Lunch time came and the kids barely ate their half of hot dog and fresh fruit salad, except for Amira. That tiny little girl takes mealtime seriously. :-) Although I think the other kids normally eat well but because of their excitement their appetites seemed to have escaped them.

The only conflicting part of the day was getting my head to shift from being on the field trip and wanting to relax to then switching it to work mode as I still had clients to take care of and tend too. Thankfully though it was a relatively slow day and there didn’t seem to be any major fires to put out, just calls to return. At one point I received a voicemail message from one of my boss’s asking me to go by the office and check the mail; I nearly felt like crying because I was really trying hard to just enjoy the whole day and not have to work at all, but just like life, things don’t always work out the way we want them too, so we must be grateful for every moment we do have, alhamdullilah.

The field trip started to wind down around 2:30 as some of the kids were starting to get cranky and all of us parents nearly at the same time thought, “ahhhhh a nap would be nice about now”. :-D

Well all cleaned up, gathered our things and Amira and I headed to the office to check the mail. After doing such, we headed home which was now nearly 5 and hung out at home. It was fun to listen to her recap about her day. The last thing I remember doing before going to sleep is thanking Amira for a nice day and for sharing her field trip with me, giving thanks to God for wonderful day, and finally praying.

What a great day!