The Brookston Family Blog
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After Porter left for school, Alice promptly began playing with Porter’s Thomas trains, lining them up on the window ledge as she watched the outside world rom her usual vantage point.

Alice and her trains.

While waiting for ths chool bus this morning, Porter discovered this “Not a Through Street” sign which had been knocked over. I’m not sure if it was a car accident or vandals taking advantage of the loose soil because of all the rain lately.

Porter pointed to and read aloud each of the letters in the sign.

A double rainbow briefly made an appearance.

Day 21 introduces another feature of the FlyLady website, in this case it’s Ask FlyLady, where she answers questions people have sent in. I’m also supposed to dust the small items in the living room, which is today’s mission. Yee ha.

This morning Sarah had to get up way freaking early to make a breakfast meeting in Santa Rosa then attend some other thing up that way later morning. Porter, who is normally up way freaking early anyway, gladly offered to pitch in and said he wanted to help me make Mommy’s coffee.

After scooping the espresso and pushing the button, Porter opened the purple travel mug and waited for the coffee to be made.

Getting ready to pour the espresso in the mug, before adding the milk and ice to make Mommy’s ice latte.

On Sunday we tried to take the kids to the Bay Model, which is generally a good place to take them to get them out of the house when its raining. There’s plenty of room for them to run around and it’s free. But, unfortunately, we forgot it’s closed on Sundays and Mondays. Whoops, so we had to improvise and took the kids to the Bay Area Discovery Museum instead. Even though it was raining and they couldn’t play outside, we figured there was enough indoors for them to do and we also figured that because of the rain it wouldn’t be terribly crowded, and that turned out to be correct. The kids played inside several of the buildings before settling into the art room, where they played with the modeling clay.

Alice and Porter dig into the clay.

Porter patting it into shape.

While Alice reaches for more.

It got nice and sticky, which she liked.

Sarah made a shape for Alice to work with.

But I had to watch to make sure she didn’t try to eat it.

With so many friend’s birthdays over the next few weeks, I’ve been looking at a lot of photographs. It’s amazing how alike we all really are.

For reasons passing understanding, when I finally did come downstairs Sunday morning (around 10:30) Porter wanted to make an airplane out of a cardboard box and had some very strong opinions about how it should look. So I hired a homeless man off the street to do the actual construction.

After drawing windows on the sides and front and adding a nose, the homeless man sleepily cut out wings on the side and then set to work on a tail.

Porter tried out the cockpit to insure a good fit.

While the homeless man added tape to further stabilize the tail fin.

Porter gives the work so far the thumbs up, with the homeless man looking on.

We then added four high-powered jet turbine engines, fashioned from two toilet paper rolls, while Porter added cake stickers to the fuselage.

As far as I can tell, the cake and fork stickers were necessary because the plane’s intended purpose was to fly to Henry and John’s birthday party, which we had explained to Porter, who very much wanted to go, that it was so far away that we’d have to fly there. Given Porter’s love of airplanes, this did not have the deterrent effect we had been hoping for.

Alice hijacks the plane, giving the “V” for Victory sign. “Take me to Hawaii!” She demands, but settles for a tropical flavor popsicle.

At the end of their park visit on Saturday, the kids ambled over to the fountains that feed into the pond.

Porter and Alice at the fountains.

Alice poses by her favorite element … water.

Porter on a rock overlooking the water.

Alice, whose climbing is legendary, follows her brother onto the rock.

Where they take in the scenery.

Until Porter has a shuttle lift off to attend to.

Which leaves Alice with the rock to herself.

But then Porter returns with T.J.

And the three of them drink in the beautiful water vistas at the end of an enjoyable day.

Day 20 I’m supposed to add doing the laundry to my routines. This will be really easy since I already do laundry on Mondays. So take that, FlyLady.

Alice also had a great time at the park on Saturday.

Basking in the sun.

Inspecting the dirt.

In the tunnel.

Just a few random shots from Porter’s trip to the park yesterday with his friend T.J.

T.J.’s fake smile is almost the same as Porter’s.

See what I mean?

Porter loading his blue rocket at the bottom of the slide.

Then blasts it off. You can see it coming back down to earth in the upper right of this photograph.

On Saturday, Sarah, Alice and Porter met T.J. and his Aunt Pat at the Marin Civic Center Park.

T.J. and Porter inspect the track.

Warming up the cars by doing laps.

Let the races begin.

Speeding around the track.

Here’s a Quicktime movie of Porter, T.J. and another boy at the park circling the track and then another trip around the track. You can either download the movies to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

PART

This past year, Porter and John and Henry have been able to get together a number of times; at the BADM, for a pizza party, and the bi-birthday bash and in Seattle at the Rainforest restaurant. And while Porter gets along with both boys, he seems to have forged a special bond with John. The two seem to have an affinity for many of the same things, from trains to crashing things. We only wish we lived closer to them, and not just because of the boys, We don’t see Pat and Christi nearly as much as we’d like to, either.

Henry and John can really swing.

Henry skating.

DJ John, pretty fly for a white guy!

Poppa Pat with Henry and John and Michelle and John’s wedding.

John and Henry playing with their rockets yesterday.

Here’s a Windows Media Player music video of the Runs featuring John & Henry. I’m pretty sure you’ll have to download the movie to your desktop and play it using your windows media player. But I’m an Apple guy, so who knows. Maybe you can watch in the windows environment over the web.

PART

Here are some more photos of John and Henry from the later years, that is age two and three.

At one-year old.

Playing with chalk at two and a half.

Last February in the snow.

Henry strikes a pose with a shovel at a trip with us to the Bay Area Discovery Museum (BADM) last summer.

John tries on a life jacket.

Christi and the boys peer out of one of the fishing boats at the BADM.

Porter and John in Seattle during our last trip to Washington.

Since we’re so far away from Henry and John, Porter wanted to send some birthday greetings their way. But first, of course, we needed cake! Sarah and Porter made cupcakes yesterday and today it was time for Porter to put on the frosting. But the real birthday greeting is the movie at the end of this post.

Porter spreads the vanilla frosting.

Then spreads some chocolate icing.

And naturally he stops to lick the frosting.

“Umm, that is sublime!”

Of course, fingers work just as well for tasting the icing.

Here’s a Quicktime movie of Porter’s birthday greeting to John and Henry. You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).