Weekly Trip to the Bean

A fixture of "Daddy Camp" is the Wednesday trip to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Alice is holding a plastic minecraft sheep and drinking a mocha ice blended, "pure" with whip cream :-)

Grocery Store Trips

Alice goes grocery shopping with me during Daddy Camp and part of her "duties" has been to pick out some fresh flowers each week.  The first week was pink roses.  This last week was some exotic lily that has had a very strong and wonderful perfume.  We've all decided we loved this week's pick; visual and olfactory impressiveness!

Daddy Camp day #4

Daddy Camp alternates between art days (creative expression) and science days (investigating the world around us).  Thursday was our second Art day.  We were all about nature and Mom (Cristy) today, so we expressed that using chalk on our sidewalk :-) 

Kindergarten commencement

Alice's class had a little party, and a lot of fun celebrating their completion of kindergarten.  Both Cristy and I were able to attend.  You can see both girls smiling for the camera in the first picture below.

In the next picture Alice and her class mates are singing and dancing, entertaining the assembled parents and guardians.

 

Project: Monkey Bars

Alice wants to learn the monkey bars.  She is firm in her desire to learn this playground skill, to not be afraid, and to make it all the way to the end.  She clearly says that she wishes to learn this and exhibit it before her classmates.  I'm impressed by her exhibition of will.

She asked me to take her to school after hours so she could practice.  She pushed her Mom too, when I didn't want to go back the next day.  Three days on and we are at two a day practices.  She responds well to coaching.  She seems to understand that it serves her goal and so has no problem with obedience during training.  I say this not because she has any "obedience" issues otherwise, she listens quite well for a six year old.  I say this to contrast it from her naturally skeptical or questioning nature.  Usual interaction has much back and forth.  The training mode she has found provides her with a different mode of behavior, one where she can receive more direct instruction and provide more direct response, without any sensitivity to feelings that might otherwise preclude such directness.

Look at that face, the set of her eyes, the way she is holding her lips, and the preparatory tension in her arms.  She will be a formidable adult.

click for larger image

The Oasis on Lake Travis

We went out to the Oasis this last weekend to enjoy the nice weather.  The Oasis is a restaurant that overlooks Lake Travis (what's left of it).  Really pretty view from their multiple tiers of decks.  We enjoyed watching the water and sipping our drinks.

Outside of the Oasis they built a metal, steam-punk-ish, space ship that visitors take pictures in... Alice immediately wanted a pic in this space ship when she saw it.

A few pics merged into gif... not sure why but kinda fun...

"Lemonade the Musical", co-starring Alice Bickel

All of the K and 1st grade classes performed a joint musical last night, "Lemonade";  fyi - that is a lot of kids, I'm guessing 160-240 (4 K classes *20|30 + same for 1st).  Between songs there was a narrative carried along by 16 short speaking parts (2 kids selected from each class).  Alice was one of the kids selected to represent her class, and she did a great job of delivering her speaking part!  Daddy is proud.

Cristy and Alice picked out new dress and shoes, etc, for her performance last night.  She looked great and felt confident.

On the way home she mentioned that she's looking forward to getting more lines in her next production :-)