Inchy's Garden Home and Other News

Lillian lost her two front teeth, she is proud to join many of her friends and classmates in the "double gap" club.

Lillian's climbing abilities are growing every day, she recently mastered rope climbing, by climbing the rope that her tree swing is attached to, even managing to climb up the baby swing while her friend Allison is sitting in it.

The kids found a little green inchworm in the backyard, they named him Inchy and spent a good hour building him a nice home in the garden so he could hide from the hungry birds.

Mardi Gras

Happy Mardi Gras! We celebrated Mardi Gras with our fourth annual Mardi Gras Potluck.  This year Mardi Gras was late and we were blessed with a beautiful sunny day so the kids could enjoy playing in the back yard.  Grammy was in town so she organized felt mask making for all the kids, the masks turned out beautifully and even Nash got in on the costuming, when Jessie made him his very own cape to wear. This year we discovered how much Nathaniel likes Gumbo. He is very interested in food and was curious to try some, he liked it so much he devoured three bowls before the party even started.

Happy Hollow for All

Happy Hollow, the pint sized amusement park and Zoo in San Jose, is one of Lillian's happy places, and now that Nathaniel is a little older he is able to join in on the fun. At just barely 36 inches (with shoes and a hat) now tall enough to go on most of the rides and has the staying power for a multi-hour excursion. The highlight of our visit was a close up encounter with the Jaguar who had just eaten his lunch and was lurking just a few inches from the window into his cage, watching us, watch him. The close encounter ended as the Jaguar lunged mouth open towards Nathaniel's head, banging his head on the glass and promptly retreating to nap on a sunny rock. A bit shaken by our close encounter, we retreated to the petting zoo to visit with teeny tiny and very docile pygmy goats. Nathaniel promptly fell asleep in the car and took a nice long nap after all the excitement at Happy Hollow.

Rainy, Rainy Portland

For the president's day weekend we made a quick trip to Portland to visit Uncle Joe and Aunt Deb and cousins Raquel and Lucas. We were also joined by Uncle Matt and Aunt Jenn.  It was Lucas' birthday weekend so there were lots of balloons, funny hats and of course cake.  Nathaniel was a big fan of their dog Nacho (or Nacko as Nathaniel prefers to call him).  It was a bit rainy so we spent a lot of time indoors, but that didn't slow the kids down a bit from having a great time with their cousins.

A week of Dude

A couple of weeks ago Nathaniel's babysitter came down with the flu and so we got to spend lots of quality time with Nathaniel instead of working as we normally would. The week was made challenging by the ever present demands of work, but a rare treat to have time for some fun outings with our little man. Tuesday he and Eric spent the morning playing croquet at the park with some other neighborhood kids. Wednesday Lillian proudly helped him get dressed, then he got to chase chickens at Hidden Villa with Kristen. Nathaniel and his sister also produced a musicale version of "Old McLillian" with Nathaniel playing the part of the animals, complete with custom lyrics and hand made masks for the cow and the pig. It was all good fun, but everyone was relieved when the weekend came and we all had a chance to unwind after an exhausting week.

Christmas in Phoenix (only one month late)

We made our annual trek to Phoenix to spend Christmas with Grammy and Pop Pop. Our visit was packed to the brim with family, friends, food and fun. Here are a few pictures from our trip.

 

 

Sunny in the City

It's been a particularly warm and sunny winter here in northern California. Normally we would be getting rainstorms passing through every week or two, but not this year, in fact we haven't had any significant rainfalls since the freak September rainstorm rained out our camping plans.This weekend we decided to take advantage of all the sunshine and take a trip up to Dolores park in San Francisco. It seemed like a perfect choice, it's central location, brand new playground and outstanding skyline views make it an ideal choice on a warm winter day. Apparently hundreds of other San Franciscans made the same choice that day. The park was packed with people soaking up the mid winter sunshine and watching the setting sun sparkle on the skyscrapers. Once we had tired of the park we headed to Mission street for diner and then had some bonus playground time with an awesome merry-go-round on Valencia street before heading home for the night.

Little Readers

Sitting around and reading is a popular pastime around here. Lillian has become an expert reader, moving from short picture books into longer form chapter books. She and her daddy are working their way through the How to Train Your Dragon series and Lillian is hooked! Nathaniel loves looking at board books, especially if they have pictures of heavy machinery. 

 

 

All Dressed Up

The other day Nathaniel got himself all ready to go to the store, he put on mommy's big red boots, grabbed an umbrella and then swiped his sister's wallet from her desk.

 

 

 

Scooting

Since we are going to be traveling for Christmas this year the kids opened some of their Christmas presents early. New helmets for both, and a new scooter for Nathaniel, gifts from Grandma Betty and Grandpa Terry were quickly put to good use gliding around the park!