Our little Tom Sawyer

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“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” 

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticized the effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”    ~ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

R had come home a day early to help out with the aftermath of the accident and to provide some much needed huggles and moral support. He got home around 5:00pm and E was very excited to see him. Especially since Daddy always brings a present.

After we had our hellos and hugs and ate a bit of dinner we settled in to relax on the couch together. E decided he wanted to do his big floor puzzle which is black & white on one side so that it can be colored with crayons.

A Wordless Wednesday Post

70's Themed Holiday Dinner Party

Check it out, man. 

Esmerelda held a 70's themed holiday dinner party on Saturday night. There were four couples, 5 kids, a baby and a dog. That's actually not important so forget I mentioned it.

We had a friend of mine show up dressed like Santa just before dinner. He told us he had been mapping out his run prior to the big night (don't want to get lost on Christmas Eve you know) and needed a few directions. He'd been at the mall, you see, and swerved left when he should have swerved right on his way back to the North Pole.

Adventures in Rock Painting

I got all up in Esmerelda's face about painting really great words of wisdom on some rocks after seeing a picture of such a thing on Pinterest. So I set about planning what we'd need for materials:

• rocks
• paint
• something to put paint on rocks aka paint brushes

The thing about rocks is that unless you live beside a river there aren't of a useful shape lying around - they need to be fairly flat and round in order to have aesthetic appeal. The search began…

Read about the epic adventures of rock collecting and how brilliant minds are bad at painting after the jump.

The Mission: Acquire Rocks

While planning our paint date over chat with Esmerelda  I suddenly remembered that the house next door has river rocks along the side of their house. Telling her to hold on, I darted outside in my jammies to do some recon and sure enough, river rocks all over! Unfortunately the house has been on the market for a very long time with no yard maintenance, meaning the rocks were super grimy, broken and mildly depressing.

With my hoodie up over my head I grabbed a couple handfuls of decent stones and sauntered back to my own house, trying to appear as if I were merely going for a small walk around the front lawn, 'taking the air' if you will.

Back inside, I raced to my laptop to tell Esme what I'd found and she wasn't effing there anymore. Nice friend, had I gotten caught and charged with some archaic NoCal law regarding rock kidnapping I know who would NOT have been available to bail me out.

Anyways, I had 14 decent specimens in hand which Ender helped clean up and then hijack. Ender – 14, Me - 0.

Later that day we drove to Palo Alto for some business of R's and I forced him to cruise neighborhoods with small streets while I eyeballed the walk ups for appealing rocks. The thing about R is that he is in no way shifty. He just pulls up in front of a house and says 'how about there?' Yes, those are great. However I'd like to remain free of a criminal record so I'd rather we don't stop in a wide open area where I can see 9 people without even turning my head. Finally we found a sort of unclaimed sidewalk and I stood outside the car pretending to suffer motion sickness while covertly stuffing stones in my pockets.

Alas, still not enough to supply both Esmerelda and myself along with our kids. So R took me to a craft store where I found two bags of candlescaping rocks shipped here from China, because that makes economic sense, and the brushes. Yay! Let the inspirational juices start flowing!

See the finished product after the jump!

Feeling blue? Get stoned.

I really like these. I'm going to make some if I get some spare time over Thanksgiving and then use them for inspiration and creating feel-good emotions in myself.

And then when Esmerelda comes over with bottles of wine I will probably try to convince her of how cool they are by tossing them at her until she agrees. 

Soccer Camp & Swimming Lessons?

Ender started swimming lessons when he was just an infant for two reasons: (1) he has loved the water since he was born and (2) I believe that every kid needs to know how to swim as early as possible.  No, I did not think that he would be able to save himself from drowning at 8 months old but I wanted him to get used to the idea very early on.

1 year old in the wading pool at Grammy's.

He loved his swimming lessons as long as the pool was warm enough. It was generally daddy's job to go in the water with him and it was a really nice bonding time for the two of them. Once E was old enough to go in on his own he very much enjoyed his first round of lessons with the coach he had but after we had to change his time-slot and got a new instructor his enthusiasm quickly fizzled to nothing. We couldn't even get him in the water anymore and it had nothing to do with his joy for swimming - it was something about the new setup that bothered him. So instead of fighting him every weekend we pulled him out of the lessons and coached him on our own.

Now that it's been a nice break from any extra curricular activities (don't even get me started on soccer :/) we're thinking of signing him up for swimming again at a new location. He's got his afternoons off now as he only attends preschool in the mornings so we need something a little more structured than just winging around next door at the park or going on random sight-seeing tours of museums.

3 years old in our hot tub.

I've also been considering enrolling him for weekly gymnastics, sports, art classes or any of the other myriad of options here in San Carlos or Belmont. The problem is that these things are not cheap! Not that we wouldn't pay for any number of them IF HE WOULD GO EVERY TIME! I'm frustrated with the lack of drop-in activities out there. I don't want to pay ~$150 for a three month weekly class that he is going to hate after two visits. He's fickle like his momma even though he is a trusty Leo and I'm a flighty Gemini. (NOTE: You can blame a LOT of shit on being a Gemini. I highly recommend being one and advocate against giving birth to one).

So what to do? Anyone have any recommendations for classes in the Bay Area that your preschoolers love that aren't a three month commitment? Please comment here or send me an email or tweet with your ideas. Thanks :)

Hot Tubbing in the Rain

Oh.My.Gosh.


The three of us (Rich, Ender and I) just went outside in the pitch dark for a hot tub in the pouring rain. SO AWESOME!

There is nothing quite like sinking into a nice pool of warm water while the wind and rain fly around overhead. We got to watch the droplets spring up as the rain hit the surface of the tub and laugh at how silly daddy looks with the light reflecting on him from underwater.

Ender thinks it was the most special thing he's done in his whole life and Kyssa thinks we've completely lost our minds. Kyssa loves swimming in water; hates baths. To her the hot tub is a giant tub of sadness. She woofed and beat at the patio doors the whole time we were out there.

Unfortunately no run for me today - allergies were kicking my butt. I didn't want to go careening down the street with vertigo and then puke on someone's lawn. Or maybe I did but Rich wouldn't let me. I guess we'll never know...

Anyways, that's all I've got - I just wanted to try and drag you into my warm, happy little place this evening, I hope you got a little bit of 'ahhh' out of it. And if that didn't work, maybe this pic of my dad's puppy will make you feel all fuzzy and shit.

Baby Rocky

Family Activity - Stanford Dish

My husband and I have always enjoyed getting outside in the fresh air, especially in the sunshine. We used to live in an area that allowed us to park the car at home and walk pretty much anywhere we needed to go - that's the great thing about living in downtown Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia. Restaurants, doctor, dentist, groceries, work, shopping - everything within blocks of each other. But it rained a lot and it's not always so fun going hiking with umbrellas and rain boots. Summer time in Van is an amazing opportunity to take advantage of all the outdoor activities that the area has to offer so if you have never visited I strongly urge you to do so.  Don't just go for the skiing in winter (which is also world class), make sure you check it out in the hot months as well.
Since we've moved to California we still feel very fortunate to be able to spend a massive part of the year doing things outside.  Even when it does rain it's not that heavy and doesn't last long so we're working our way through a hiking bucket list.

Prairie Dog hole, or E burying his poop?  U decide.

This past Saturday we decided to finally check out the Stanford Dish hiking trail. It was a nice balmy 77F/22C in Palo Alto, probably a bit hotter out on the trail.  The trail itself is hilly with some pretty steep sections and runs at about a 4 mile loop.  You can't go off of the now paved trail as there is a restoration project ongoing. All extra trails are closed, probably permanently in order to restore the habitat.  That also means no bikes and no dogs allowed.


It was busy in the sense that there were lots of people out enjoying the scenery but you could definitely wander along by yourself. It took about 2 hours to do the whole loop since Ender was working on finding things for his Science Journal. He was particularly enthralled with the mounds left by the prairie dog holes and needed to inspect the ones beside the trail regularly. We saw prairie dogs, hawks, squirrels and other birds.
The trees are super cool, all gnarly and huge.

The Dish.  It's frickin' HUGE.

Ender did very well especially going uphill but he did take breaks in the jogging stroller and while he rode we jogged. The Dish itself is uber impressive. The thing is H-U-G-E. I need to find out if they ever do tours there since E was very disappointed that he couldn't get closer.

After posing for many doofy photos near the Dish we carried on with snacks, had some more water and were looking forward to some more downhill stretches. It wasn't long until we rounded a corner and spotted this!!

Reservoir 2.  6 million gallon water tank equipped with solar panels.

Another H-U-G-E structure. As we came closer Rich was talking about how much he loves exploring and the outdoors and how it's sort of magical to see what is out there and wonder whether there are underground secret alien labs and military installations. We saw this round thing with white bumps sticking up and he said 'See!  Like that! I wonder what it is, it could be blah blah or blah blah....'. I squealed 'PEGGLE! It's a giant Peggle board!! So astronauts can play Peggle from space!'

Turns out it's a reservoir. So they say.

A little further on there are some probably pretty expensive homes with gardens that back up close to the trail. I would think that they could afford to fix up their fences but whateves.

E concentrating on doing up the
harness strap himself.
Me being an idiot.

There were quite a few runners there, sweating their tushies off which is to be expected considering the heat and hills but there was one guy that we passed twice. He was my kind of runner. He was obviously winded, hot and having the time of his life. Both times we passed him he was heading uphill and had the biggest smile on his face, just in his own world, runnin'. I heart him.



All in all it was a pretty fantastic experience. Be warned that if you decide to go check it out, parking can be a problem. We lucked out and got a spot on Stanford just a few minutes walk away from the gate but I've read that it can be a bit of a nightmare. There are different ways to enter so check out a couple of guides like Bay Area Hiker.

Prairie Dog Bill. I'm not entirely sure that's
his name but I thought it fit.

You can never go wrong with getting your family out for some fresh air and letting your child explore the outdoors and his surroundings. Try to get out in nature as often as you can, you'll never regret it once you're there and it will help to instill a sense of an active lifestyle into the kid(s). We were really proud of how much walking Ender did and it was great to see his sense of wonder with even the smallest things.



Plus - he napped really well in the car afterwards.  Yippee!

Night night.