Oktoberfest!

We finally had a Saturday where we had no scheduled activities, so we made our own fun by taking a morning bike ride to Rengstorff park.  Lillian continued her sampling of the cities monkey bars, while Nathaniel managed to fill his pants with sand.  We all tried out the big cement slide, but Nathaniel found the experience upsetting, even when he was just watching his sister ride.  On the way back we stopped by Steak Out where they were hosting an Oktoberfest celebration to benefit the German International School of Silicon Valley.  We ate some sausage, chicken and pretzels and drank some beer while watching people in lederhosen.  It was a pretty good time.

 

 

 

 

Flying Trapeze

Last weekend Kristen's friend Angie had a birthday party at Trapeze Arts in Oakland. Her and a bunch of other mommies learned how to fly through the air with the greatest of ease! It was great fun, but now Lillian is getting ideas about running away to join the circus.

First Crush

After last year's cider making experiment, Eric decided to try his hand at making his own wine. His co-worker has a grapevine of some sort of wine grape and when Eric expressed an interest in making wine from his grapes, a giant box of grapes appeared on his desk. Without access to a press, we went with the old fashioned method using people power to crush the grapes. Lillian had great fun stomping on grapes while Nathaniel crawled around. I will note that we did ask Lillian to clean her feet before the crushing began, but the true cleanliness of those feet will never be known. Also only a small amount of dog poop was consumed in the process, thankfully none ended up in the crushed grapes.

 

 

 

RockClimbing Part Deux

Last week Lillian had shortened school days due to parent-teacher conferences. The extra time in the afternoons gave us an opportunity to revisit some of our favorite afternoon outings like Full Circle Farm and Rock Climbing at Planet Granite. It has been several months since we last visited Planet Granite, and Lillian was a little more confident than the last time, but still not didn't have the confidence to go all the way to the top of the wall. Maybe next time. Nathaniel enjoyed crawling all over the gym, chewing on ropes and generally getting himself underfoot as much as possible.

 

 

 

 

Picture Day

Lillian dressed up in her cutest little dress and put a fancy bow in her hair for picture day at school. The results were darn pretty cute!

 

Walkathon/Caminata

Yesterday Lillian's school held their big fundraiser for the year, a walkathon. The walkathon was good fun for all the kids with a big pep-rally and lots of fun and games (and awesome, home-cooked, Pan-Latin-American food). Lillian was a trooper and walked 52 laps, or a little over 5 miles and raised over $100 for her school. They had lap prizes every 20 or so laps, and Lillian collected a water bottle, a button, a bracelet and pink hairspray. She really wanted to make it to 65 laps where she would have gotten a cold fruity drink, but the walkathon ended before she got that far. I think next year she will have no problem making it to 65 laps.

 

 

 

Good, (not so) clean fun

We're in the throes of our annual fall heat wave. Today it was over 90, and Nathaniel really wanted to play in the mud puddle at the park. So I stripped him down to a diaper and let him smear mud all over himself. After all, that is how pigs beat the heat. It was good fun, but all good things must come to an end and the clean up process wasn't much fun for either of us.