Celebrating Children

Daddy's work holds a celebration in honor of the children. Even though Phil was out of town this week, Mady and I stopped by for some fun. Mady enjoyed the petting zoo and wanted to be sure to pet every animal.

 Mady toured a search and rescue boat.

We had some lunch and listened to Cowboy Jared and then it was time to go home and take a nap. Mady wasn't too excited about the nap part.

Random Pictures

Concentrating on her math problem,

while professor Boris keeps a watchful eye on the courtyard.

Our own Balmer Hon.

And now she is ready to rumble!

Tumbling Zachary.

 Wild hair Alex.

VIB

Zachary brought home a Very Important Buddy for the weekend. Meet Dangles.

Dangles hung out with us for the weekend and then Zachary wrote about their adventures in Dangles' journal. We've been walking home from school on Fridays, so we stopped to show Dangles the fountains. Dangles enjoyed camping out in Zachary's bed tent!

Kindergarten Field Trip

Zachary's class had a rainy day field trip to the Oakland Zoo. A lot of the other chaperones brought umbrellas. The other boy in my group asked me where our umbrella was. "Honey, I'm from Seattle. We don't do umbrellas." The look he gave me was priceless!

The class had a chance to do some activities indoors and explore the zoo. Part of the program was Animal Close-ups. There were five animals that the instructor talked about and then let the kids pet. Zachary is using the "I don't want to touch" pose. On a cute little hedgehog.

But show him a blue tongued skink, or a king snake, and he is all about touching it.

I thought our last encounter with the lions was close, but the lions really put on a show today. They must like rainy days.

 The spider is going to eat well tonight! What a fun day with the kindergarteners.

Adventurous

While Zachary and I were touring the zoo with his class, Mady and Daddy were having fun too. After Lil' Kickers class, they went out for dim sum.

Mady is a big fan of pot stickers and egg custard tarts.

Spring Break 2014 part 2

This afternoon we went to the airport to pick up Aunt Leslie and Ryan! We let our travel weary guests relax for the day, and planned some adventures for the rest of the week.
Thursday:

Ferry to Alcatraz

We had a perfect day for a boat ride and a tour of Alcatraz Island. We tried to get the kids into solitary confinement, to varying degrees of success.

 Alex wasn't having it.

 Ryan and Zachary used the buddy system. So much for solitary.

Mady was definitely the bravest of all!

 Alex came to visit Ryan in the Big House.

I stood as far back as I could, and then laid down on the ground, and still couldn't get the top of the lighthouse. The troops were getting restless, so we had to go with what we had.

Friday:

We went back to the city to run wild at the Exploratorium. Ryan jumped right into the wild behavior.

Everyone had fun doing all of the different experiments. Mady wanted to be a part of everything.

 Much like Ryan, I have no idea what is happening in this picture.

Saturday:

Oakland Zoo day! We saw the animals. We rode the rides. Fun was had by all.

Sunday:

Alex and Zachary had a baseball game so we kept it simple and played at the park and at home.

 Hitting machines!

Monday:

Spring break is over and Alex and Zachary are headed back to school. We corralled the kids for breakfast and then Ryan rode with us to drop the boys off at school.

 Mady tried to keep Ryan from going home.

She wasn't successful, and a great visit had to come to an end. Thank you for visiting us Aunt Leslie and Ryan! We had so much fun.

Spring Break 2014

This winter has been crazy. California is in a drought, and there has been very little snow in the mountains. Our favorite ski place was open, but yesterday they announced that they were closing for the season. So, we had to find a new snow adventure for spring break. We decided to go sledding at Adventure Mountain. It is right on the border of California and Nevada, and is at 7,300 feet. We didn't see snow until we were over 7,000 feet!

We arrived mid-afternoon and decided to just use the little plastic sled we had borrowed from friends. The boys went down the hill once or twice, and then they saw the big pile of snow to climb up! They sat up on the hill with their snowball makers and had lots of fun. Mady really liked sledding and Phil and I took turns riding down a small hill with her.

At the end of the day, we decided to take the kids to a new state, and crossed the border into Nevada. We ended up at Harrah's Hotel and Casino for the night and thought that Zachary would enjoy looking at the walls at the Hard Rock Cafe. Our meals actually exceeded my expectations. And everyone enjoyed the videos and memorabilia. For breakfast, we ate at the hotel's restaurant. There were a bunch of carved bears that Mady enjoyed. We had trouble pulling her away.

Lake Tahoe in the morning.

We returned to Adventure Mountain and rented a big inner tube for the day. Oh my gosh! The inner tube was so much fun. We wound up renting another one. Alex and Zachary started out sharing the tube and riding down together while Mady played in the snow.

They started out on a shorter hill, and didn't climb all the way up and by mid morning, they were at the top of the big run. I went down will Alex once, and we went so fast my hat flew off and we jumped the side of the run! Mady even went on a couple of runs by herself.

She was crying on the way down, but laughing and asking to go again at the bottom. Alex and Zachary tired themselves out and just wanted to play on the big snow pile. While they were doing that, Mady and I found an unused short run nearby and went up and down and up and down. We closed the place down and headed home for part two of the spring break adventure.

 Making snowballs on the big pile of snow.

 Zachary and Mommy

 Daddy and Mady

 Too tired to pose for the picture

Making snowballs explode