Ciao, Coles Family

Last night we hosted a good-bye party for Jen & James Coles. We had at least 50 people come through the place during the two hour party, which I hope you recognize says everything about the Coles and nothing about my hosting skills. I now have the good-bye party hangover...sadness.

But, in trying to keep with the spirit of the blog title and not wanting to bring everyone down, I also wanted to share a quick summary of an article I read this morning in The Chronicle on the Opinion page. It was about Berkeley High and how they are trying to fight the requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act to share the personal info with military recruiters of all the junior & senior students enrolled. They have been actively resisting since 2001 - only sharing the info of students that "opted in." Things have finally come to a head this year - the school district will lose $10 million in federal funds if they don't comply. So what do they do? Hold a student assembly for the juniors and seniors and lets them know that they can "opt out" of having their information shared with the military. I think at this point, 90% of the students have said they don't want their information shared and parent volunteers are going to contact the other 10%. Now I'm not against people joining the military if they choose to, or obeying a draft order, but recruiting high school students? making districts share info of minors as a requirement for money? That's what I'm against.

So, hats off to Berkeley High and the Coles Family for making Berkeley a place I love to be.

little people

Mathilde turned 5 at the end of April. We had a cute tea party to celebrate with her friends. She loved her pres-school experience this year and she is looking forward to Kindergarten next year. She enjoys dancing, cooking, yoga and all kinds of learning projects... She is a great big sister to Lilou and she and Ethan are perfect friends for each other (most of the time).
Ethan is finishing 1st grade. School is all right but playing, inventing things and running around are still his favorites. The children built a gorilla nest in the tree in the back yard. They made it "cozy"with branches and leaves, it is a great spot for the children to stop and sit long enough to eat bananas.
One day Ethan brought back some trading cards from school that his classmates had given him. As he wanted to get more trading cards he simply drew a few inventing names and super powers for these new kinds of mutants. He was so excited at the prospect of trading his cards for the 'real' ones. We thought it would be all heart brake and hard reality when the other kids would categorically refuse any kind of trading with our new found artist. Our surprise was complete when Ethan returned home with new trading store bought cards. He had traded everyone of his home made cards...

This is Ethan's first suit. It is with much surprise that we have seen our boy, who lives for warmer days and shorts, really get into this new and fun item of clothing!

Linnea will be 3 next week. She is very mischievous, she is a tease and knows how to get great reactions from her siblings. You can hear her sing "it's raining, it's boring" and other grand renditions of children's classics. She loves princesses and thinks she is one.
If you are in our neighborhood and you feel like feeding bananas to 3 little monkeys please come and see us!