Spring Break!

Spring break this year started with a bang... the literal bang of Caleb's face against a pole on the playground.

I apologize for the scary face. He would not pose normally. Anyway, as you can see, he chipped his front incisor pretty good. We are headed to the dentist tomorrow to see what we can do about that.

Later that day we headed to Picchetti Ranch for a hike with some friends. Elinor and Jacob M. managed to catch a few tadpoles which we took home to watch slowly die. Turns out we are not great tadpole caretakers.

Super cool old farmhouse with informative plaque out front.

I think everyone is feeling the approach of summer!

Tuesday we stayed home for doctor's appointments and catch up.

Wednesday we went to Castle Rock per Elinor's request. She wants to have her birthday party there, crazy girl!

It was super cold, but beautiful. Very green and mossy from all the rain we've been getting.

Climbing on rocks - every kid's favorite pastime. 

And Thursday? Well, Thursday I went a little crazy (sorta the same disease I was afflicted with over winter break) and drove the kids an hour and a half south to Pinnacle National Park. It was AMAZING. 

We did the Bear Gulch hike. It was perfect. So many rocks (talus piles?) for the kids to climb on and explore. I'm pretty sure Elinor was training to be Link in the next Zelda game.

The trail led to the Bear Gulch Caves, which were of course, so exciting for the kids to explore. They had packed flashlights earlier, which they gleefully whipped out when needed.

Once we made it through the caves we headed up to the reservoir.

It was such a fun surprise to turn a corner and be greeted with this beautiful vista. 

We ate lunch up by the reservoir. The kids dipped their toes/legs/torsos in the water while we rested.

Headed back down the trail, doing their best to avoid a puddle.  I'm thinking it was a lot of effort to go to after basically dunking in the reservoir.

More Zelda training. I love how lush and green everything is right now! So different from 2 years ago.

The visitor's center had this funny "Match the Scat" game for the kids to play here. That rubber "scat" sure looked realistic.

We spent some time working on the Junior Ranger requirements before taking the oath, receiving badges, and then heading home.

The drive home was very calm. We stopped for milkshakes and the kids watched a movie for most of the way. This adventure was definitely one of my crazier ones to attempt solo, but I am so glad we did it. Everyone had a great time and it was surprisingly not super stressful for me. I sure feel lucky to live near so many National Parks!

Seussical

Emily has been loving drama lately. Luckily, she is a sweet girl herself, so her drama participation is all part of a positive, creative enterprise. So far she has been in Alice in Wonderland (as a flower), Peter Pan (as a fairy/mermaid), and Seussical the Musical (as the mayor's wife). She is looking forward to being in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat this summer and then Mulan in the fall.

Seussical has been her favorite so far - all the kids have every song memorized. It was so much fun to go see her perform at the end of March.

Great job, Mrs. Mayor!

Headed Back

Something about me not everyone knows is that I love being in school. Our family has gotten to a stage where the kids are becoming more independent (Jacob starts kindergarten in the fall!) so I decided to think about going back myself. I sent out a few applications earlier this year, feeling intimidated because the schools around here are so high caliber, but luckily received some good news a couple of months ago: I am starting a master's program at Stanford this fall! I am so excited to begin. Also excited that the weather around here is so gorgeous, making outdoor study sessions with the kids running around the yard especially enjoyable.

A Last-minute Adventure

Did I never tell you guys how our winter break ended? It was bananas, even by my standards. I figured we couldn't let the break pass without doing something adventurous, so decided to head out to the Jelly Belly Factory. It is quite a drive, so before we left I told all the kids, "Hey, why don't you guys pack some pajamas, swim suits, and extra clothes in case we don't make it back tonight." I texted Joseph and told him we were headed out, not sure when we would be back. And then we left.

The Jelly Belly Factory is in Fairfield, a good 1.5 hours away. We made it there without incident, but were very happy to finally pull into the parking lot.

We entered just as a tour was beginning, so we put on our hats and jumped right in.

There were all kinds of pictures and sculptures made of jelly beans. And, apparently, Jelly Belly owes a large part of its success to Ronald Reagan, so there are tons of portraits commemorating him.

Super cool to see the process, and all the robots and machines involved.

A fun interactive computer game that the kids loved.

Apparently, two other families from church were there at the same time, and they saw the kids but I didn't find out until Sunday. :(

After the tour we bought some treats and Belly Flops and then sat at a table to figure out what to do. It was pretty cool to see all this, but not really exciting enough for the kids. I was on the fence about traveling further, but they really wanted to so we decided to go for it. We piled back into the car and headed to Fort Bragg. It got dark quickly and who knew the road would be so treacherous?

Beautiful, but so scary at night time. And long! Like 20 miles of this. Thankfully we made it all in one piece and checked into a room, which I had hastily reserved while still at the Jelly Belly Factory.

We went out for pizza and then headed to bed. The kids settled in, and after a lot of horsing around finally fell asleep. I slid in between Jacob and Elinor to sleep afterward.

The next morning we ate breakfast (gotta love the complimentary continental breakfast!) and then checked out of the hotel. Next on the agenda was Glass Beach. It was so great to be at the beach again after several months of not going.

We wandered around for a bit, not totally sure of what to expect.

We asked a local who was out walking his dog and he pointed us in the right direction.

I was honestly underwhelmed, but the kids could have stayed there all day.

And the glass was pretty cool.

It was a crazy last minute adventure, but so fun. We headed home that afternoon and were home in time for dinner with Joseph.

It's always a treat to drive across the bridge!

I've gotta say, these kids of ours are at such a perfect age right now. Everyone buckles their own seatbelts, dresses themselves, can communicate, can walk, and can eat regular food but they're all young enough to be enthusiastic about family adventures. They were all such good sports for coming along with me on this hair-brained spur-of-the-moment trip.

extracurriculars

Jacob has been into Ninjago for a while, and is pretty sure he's going to be a ninja when he grows up, so we thought it best to enroll him in karate classes. We found this great karate place just a couple of minutes from our house and Jacob has been loving it.

Fingers crossed that this teaches him discipline and self-control instead of increasing his already violent tendencies.


We have had a lot of trouble finding a sport for Caleb. Then we were watching this video one day

And decided to look for parkour classes in our area and guess what! It's a real thing! So he started taking these classes in San Jose and has really been having fun with it.

I had a cute video of him in class, but it's not working well with blogger for some reason.

It keeps the family busy, but I am really happy Caleb has found something that he likes so much.

Birthday Time!

March 1st is a special day in our house. Not only is it the day before Dr. Seuss' birthday, it is both Caleb and Joseph's shared birthday! It has been a lot of fun to have them share the day.

Here is Caleb opening one of his most highly-anticipated gifts...

... a bow and arrow! This has been super fun and only confiscated 6 or 7 times in the past 3 days.

And I haven't been sewing much lately, but I did put in some time to make a scripture case for Caleb since he received his first set of real scriptures this year. I made a similar really cute floral case for Emily when she turned 8, so it was fun to work with Caleb to choose fabrics this year.

That night we did a trifle because trifles are delicious. I also knew that Joseph loves them and Caleb would be getting a cake at his party on Saturday.

This year, since Caleb turned 8, we invited a few friends over and had a little party. Anyone that knows me knows that organizing things like this stresses me out so we kept it small and I relied a lot on Joseph to keep things running smoothly.

Joseph made this perfect cake the night before.

He also made this simple but so awesome pinata.

Caleb blowing out his candles.

And a terrible picture of present time.

It's been so fun to celebrate Caleb and Joseph. Lots of other stuff going on, but for now I am breathing a sigh of relief that the birthday party is over and beginning prep in earnest for the baptism next Saturday.

Rainbow Bridges

So, California has this crazy thing called Winter Break, colloquially called "ski week" by the locals. It always catches me completely by surprised, so we found ourselves this week all at home (minus Joseph) with nothing to do. I have a really hard time sitting around all day, especially in a small house with four young children, so on Tuesday I decided to venture out and see what we could find. We were lucky to have a sunny day, as it has been raining most days for the past couple of months. Great for the drought, but a little tricky for finding free entertainment.

Anyway, on Tuesday we headed out to the Rainbow Bridge Park in Palo Alto. It is a lot like the Park for All Abilities in Austin, built to accommodate the needs of all children. When we first arrived, the kids raced to a dinky little playground that was within view from the car. They played there for a long time, talking about how it was the best playground ever and that they never wanted to leave. (We really hadn't been to a park in a long time.) All the while I was saying, "I think there's an even better playground just across the field over there" but they were happy.

Elinor is a climber. She has been working for a long while to become the "master of strong." I think she's pretty close.

I finally put my foot down and we headed to the real reason we had driven out to Palo Alto, and it was totally worth it. This playground was amazing! There were always new things for the kids to find and discover. They could have stayed there for hours.

There was this big hill in the middle for all the slides to run down.

I do not enjoy these kinds of toys, but Caleb and the other kids had no problem with it! Caleb spent a long time here pushing any kid (or adult) who wanted to ride.

 

We totally need one of these in our backyard.

 I got hungry though and we left. We grabbed a quick lunch at Chipotle and then headed home.

It was super nice to get out of the house. This little crew of kids is so fun! It is so nice to not have diapers and to have them all able to more or less eat independently! I am not far enough out of that stage yet to not fully appreciate these small luxuries.

Black out!

The other day Jacob and I were at home, just hanging out. I was doing laundry, Jacob was wandering around doing whatever it is that 4-year-olds do to keep themselves occupied. Then, in the middle of all this exciting activity, the lights abruptly went out. My immediate thought was to flee to Target because that is often my immediate thought. Jacob was not excited about that though, so we lit a few candles and I proceeded to clean the kitchen and then both bathrooms while Jacob continued to wander around in his 4-year-old manner.

3 hours later the big kids were home from school and the power was still out. In fact, the power had gone out at the school as well, so the poor teachers had been bravely carrying on by the light from the windows. I decided at this point that we had to do something so we walked to Safeway in the rain and bought 3 Duraflame firelogs. We had to walk because, as it turns out, the garage door is electrically powered and Joseph had the other car that is normally kept outside.

As you can see we were in very poor spirits due to the hard times we had fallen on.

But anyway, these logs are great for our situation since they are so benign and steady-burning because we don't have much of a hearth so any kind of spark ends up in the carpet.

And that is how we ended up, on a Friday night, gathered around a fire roasting marshmallows* and eating Amazon Prime Now PF Changs.

In all we were without power for about 6 hours. Things were getting pretty dire - my phone battery was at like 4% and in power save mode by the end of it all. We did survive the ordeal though, with all 7 gallons of milk in the fridge intact.

*And yes, I know it is not totally kosher to roast in the fumes of a Duraflame, but I looked it up and it seems like there are no toxic chemicals, it just makes your food taste weird. And the sugar content of the marshmallows was enough to overcome that for our kids.