Aaron and I went whale-watching for our anniversary this year (many thanks to Jon for watching the boys overnight, and on a school night, no less!) and had a great time. Got some pictures of the dolphins that were surfing in our bow wake and under the front of the catamaran, but they don't do it justice. The first pod we came across had about 5000 dolphins, and the second had about 3000. They were everywhere, jumping, breaching, spinning, spread out as much as a mile across the water. It was a nice trip, we were cold by the time we got back to land, but it was totally worth it. We finished the trip with a beautiful sunset as the sun dropped behind the Channel Islands.
Everyone was off Monday except for me, and I had a tidepooling field trip with my marine invertebrate zoology class, so Aaron and the boys came with me. They spent a little time building a sand castle, and a little time checking out the critters, but Levi didn't want any part of standing on the rocks where the seastars were, he was convinced they were going to eat him. Never mind that the seastars were much more concerned about drying out and dying than getting any food, or that one of his feet is larger than the mussels most seastars can eat, or that he isn't a mussel, he was terrified. To everyone else, it was actually pretty funny, but he thought for sure that he was in danger.
Other things to mention...I am starting to look for a pre-school for Levi. Hard to believe it's time for that, but if I don't start now, he may not get in to a good one. Two years of pre-school and he'll be in kindergarten. Amazing. I've been volunteering in AJ's classroom once a week for a month now, which he really enjoys. It has been interesting to observe what goes on in first grade
these days, since it's been a while since I was in first grade myself. He's been doing very well, and the next round of report cards comes out in a couple of weeks, so we're eager to see what he has accomplished since November. He has started piano lessons with me as his teacher and is enjoying that also. The book we are using includes notation for the teacher to play a duet with the student, so he sounds pretty good once he gets a handle on the music and we play it together. Yesterday morning, as I was taking Levi to daycare, we heard Vivaldi's "Gloria" on the radio. He asked, "Mommy, what is the song?" I told him I didn't know, and he said "I like it, it's pretty music." He then asked more forcefully for the name of the song, by which point the choir had sung the word "gloria," so I could tell him what it was. He sat there with a very cute little smile on his face the rest of the ride to daycare. Lastly, the rain. I know many of you have had a really rough winter this year, so I don't have any room to complain, but it's been a little dreary here lately, with rain and clouds more often than not for two months, which is very unusual for Southern California. Last weekend I was supposed to be in the field for two days at Catalina Island, but the wind had picked up the waves too badly for us to work (5-7 feet!), so now I don't know when I will get out there. Really killed my research plans for the winter. Oh, well. We'll figure it out.
