the 4th day of July (and all the other ones, too)

I thought this blog post would be about the 4th of July holiday but as it stands, we didn't do much! Or, at least, we didn't do much documenting.  Since the 4th fell on a Wednesday, and with our memories of Bay Area fireworks displays being hardly worth the hassle in terms of driving, camping out for hours in advance, and battling traffic to get home, we decided to forego any formal fireworks display this year (and sadly, the DIY fireworks are completely banned in most Bay Area cities).  I had work to do the next day and Neal had jobs to apply to so to school Eli went.  Imagine staying up 4 to 5 hours past your normal "bedtime" only to be expected to wake up at your usual time and head to work as if it was just another weekday.  So yeah, keeping Elias up until 11 or so on a weeknight is not such a good idea.  Instead, the highlight of the day was checking out the family-friendly afternoon celebration at Oakland's Jack London Square, with requisite firetruck:

...and bouncy house:

Backing up a bit, we celebrated Neal's birthday the weekend before with equally inexpensive activities like an easy hike in Redwood Regional Park.

Is it just me or does Elias look impossibly kid-like and grown-up in this picture?

This is how at least a portion of all family hikes goes.  With Neal's birthday and 4th of July so close together, we made a decision that whenever possible in the future, even if all we can afford is rustic camping, we're just going to go on vacation for both. Or in the very least, take the day after off.

Other July photo highlights include mysterious preschool shenanigans, above (I'm not sure what they were doing here - some sort of group walker?), as well as slightly creepy preschool art projects, below.

Also this month we wrapped up our first year of informal soccer fun with fellow preschool buddies with a potluck and medal ceremony a couple of weeks ago.

For the first time all year, this "practice" ended with a scrimmage and Elias was one of several kids completely mystified by the concept of putting all the drills together in a team sport game format. There were basically two groups of kids - one group that moved en masse around the ball, and one group that stood there dazed and confused.  Plus the one or two kids with actual soccer experience who stood ground as goalies.

Finally, this past weekend we pretended we were on vacation here at home after a last-minute offer to spend the weekend at Neal's family's cabin at Donner Lake didn't quite work out (a minimum three hour drive there and back for less than 24 hours of R&R didn't quite seem worth it in the end).  We temporarily relaxed our austerity measures and enjoyed lunch at Alameda's version of the food truck craze Off the Grid, had ice cream a couple of times (more on the supposed gestational diabetes and "experiments" like these after tomorrow's follow-up appointment with the dietitian), including trying out the unbelievably-priced $2 ice cream sandwiches at Cream, and spent the entire afternoon at Crown Memorial Beach. Now if we could just do that for an entire week, preferably away from Oakland. Sigh.