In Bloom

This year's batch of almond blossom pics:

A Taste of Six

What do you get for the friend who's had 7 babies? And when her 7th child is also her 6th girl, does she really need any more cute little girl clothes? I thought not. So when Jetta had Ellietta about a week ago, I decided my best gift would be the gift of time and service. Yesterday I got a little sample of what being a mother of 6 is like when I picked up her 4 youngest and brought them back to our house for several hours of play and lunch. It went great! These kids are all best buddies, so they took off playing right away. I had wanted to be intentional about spoiling the kids a bit and giving them extra attention, so we read stories and played games. I gave them each a little pizza dough to roll out for their own pizza and then they topped it themselves. We also decorated strawberry pink cupcakes for them to take home. The day was such a blast for all of us, I'm going to offer Jetta a morning off on a regular basis! She got a nap and a quiet lunch with her husband, but we were treated too!

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Breakfast for Dinner

Free pancakes at IHOP? Well, of course, we're there! Happy National Pancake Day, everyone!

King Tut and a Rainforest

The short story is this: Dave has always had an interest in Ancient Egyptian Archeology, so for his birthday we gave him tickets to the renowned and world-traveling Tutankhamun exhibit at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

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The long story is this: While I intended for him to escape to the city for a day of alone-time and museum-wandering, he just couldn't take a precious day off without including us. So we figured out a way to make it into yet another family outing. The neighboring California Academy of Science Museum has been totally refurbished since the last time we were there and one day a month they offer a free day. The girls and I decided to explore that while Dave checked out King Tut's tomb and artifacts. Let me just say up front that anyone planning to take advantage of the 3rd Wednesday of the month Free Day needs to have A LOT of patience. We arrived shortly after the museum opened and still waited an hour to even get in. Once inside, we definitely battled the crowds. But the museum is amazing and the $50 entrance fee is steep, so it was totally worth it.

The first thing we saw were the dinosaur bones. The girls were in awe.

This museum is expertly designed. The ground floor is Africa and Rainforest. The exhibits are incredible (more on that later). We actually started by going to the basement level-- an underground aquarium where we could view everything underwater that the people above us were viewing in atrium and pools! We walked through a whole tunnel of fish, saw an albino alligator in the swamp, touched starfish and urchins in the tide pools and felt an anaconda's squeeze in the Amazon.

I couldn't tear Ella away from the mesmerizing jellyfish display.

We watched the sharks and rays being fed. This bridge was neat because it had portholes in it. Delia was laying down watching them swim right beneath her.

We met up with Dave in the afternoon for the Rainforest exhibit. This was a 4-story, glass dome housing exotic birds and butterflies.

The butterflies were floating everywhere (I didn't post the dozen pictures I took of just butterflies...you're welcome.) and we were completely delighted when we discovered that they LOVED Dave! They kept landing on him! Well, I should clarify: I was delighted. Delia was totally freaked out and wouldn't go anywhere near Daddy once she figured this out. Ella, who spent the entire hour we were in the exhibit with her finger stretched out as a butterfly-landing perch, was heartbroken that they wouldn't land on her.

The best one-- a Blue Morpho, as big as a bird!

In the Africa exhibit, we got to see live penguins. This is Dunker, a docent told us, flirting with Delia on the other side of the glass.

So here's our review:

*The King Tut exhibit gets a big thumbs up from Dave.

*The California Academy of Science Museum gets a big, huge, giant thumbs up from all of us!

*Going on a Free Day even gets a thumbs up, though prepare those thumbs for some twiddling as you wait in lines.

Hunt for Love

Big thanks to my two friends named Amy for hooking me up with the idea and instructions for this Valentines Day Treasure Hunt! When we got home from church yesterday, the girls ran through the house figuring out the 11 clues and finding little treasures, like books, puzzles, socks and candy, along the way.

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"Roses are read. Violets are blue. Go look in the spot where we keep stinky shoes!"

"You'll now have to peek outside the front door, where the mailman delivers Valentines and more!"

"I'm steamy and hot. I bake yummy things, cupcakes and cookies...what Valentines Day brings!"

"Another fun surprise is under a thing...a table called 'coffee'. What treat will that bring?"

Slumber Party in the Silicon Valley!

A while ago, I had the foresight to know we'd need a little scheduled family time to make it through our February. After Christmas, things just always seem to get nuts and back around that time I claimed one of the only free weekends in the month for a little getaway. (Kinda nice that the weekend just happened to be Valentine's Day.) There was a state park on the coast I'd been wanting to check out and it seemed like a good excuse for a weekend away. We found a great hotel sale going on and snagged an unbelievable rate at an Embassy Suites in an area we've never really been to-- the southeast Bay Area (also known as Silicon Valley). We drove past Microsoft, IBM and NASA and while I was excited to use a day exploring a place like the Intel Museum, I knew something much more kid-friendly was in order. We found this little Junior Museum, Zoo and Park right by Stanford. The girls had a great time seeing small animals and reptiles and figuring out all the hands-on exhibits (they made wind power and all sorts of other things.) The best part was probably just climbing around at the neat park.

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It may sound like we're hard-up for entertainment, but we were all really excited about the treat that was a nice hotel room for the night! We checked in early and immediately headed down to the indoor pool. Good thing we had the place to ourselves, because our laughter and screams filled the place! Delia was swimming on her own! She kept her life jacket on, but, for the first time ever, told us to let go and doggie paddled across the pool! Ella even tried swimming without her life jacket on for a while. This time to swim together was Dave's favorite part of the whole weekend.



We had a dinner reservation at one of our favorite restaurants that we just don't have by us-- Buca di Beppo. The girls got a kick out of the tour of the kitchen and all the crazy decorations. We ate an amazing Italian feast and left stuffed. But not so full that we couldn't pull out the cookies and caramel corn when we all piled into the king bed for some Olympic Opening Ceremonies viewing in our jammies. Honestly, the best things in life are the little things!

...Evidenced by Ella's tears at our check-out this morning. She wants to live at the Embassy Suites! In one short night, she fell completely in love with beds that come out of couches, glass elevators, koi ponds and waterfalls and more breakfast choices than she ever even knew existed. What we learned is the value of just one night of getaway in a hotel! We'll have to make a regular space for this on our calendar.

Natural Bridges

Saturday's destination was The Migration Festival at Natural Bridges State Park. Natural Bridges is right on the coast in Santa Cruz and besides a lovely beach, also boasts a hiking-pathed grove where Monarch butterflies migrate to from Mexico for a few months each year. The park throws them a going away party as they get ready to fly south again at the beginning of March. We wandered around the festival making butterfly crafts, getting butterflies painted on our face and learning about the other local migrating wildlife. We petted newts and salamanders and seal pelts and learned about birds and whales in interactive booths.
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We hiked the easy loop around the grove and did spot a number of the vibrant Monarchs fluttering around. The girls were on a hunt and were delighted to catch sight of them! We also enjoyed the sights and smells of old pine and cypress trees and the sounds of various birds.

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After we hit the festival and hiked around the grove, we drove back through Santa Cruz to our lunch destination. This drive wound along the coast and we watched hundreds of surfers in the bay just waiting for their perfect wave. Since Santa Cruz is a beachin' and surfin' town, we were excited to try the popular Pizza My Heart restaurant. Their gimmick is "No shirt? No problem!" When you order a slice of pizza you get a Pizza My Heart surf-board logo T-shirt to go with it!

Driving back to Natural Bridges, we quick parked and hopped out to watch the surfers and pelicans for a while.

Ella borrowed the camera and took a series of pictures of the salt-air flowers. Not bad, huh?

Back at Natural Bridges we finished up the afternoon with some play on the beach. Delia declared this to be her favorite part of the whole weekend.

Though, after we shook off the sand and peeled off the wet outer layers, we all left for home feeling like this after our much needed getaway (drawing by Ella):

Nothin' Better!

What better time than Valentines Day (Week) to indulge in my girls' two most favoritist things in the whole wide word: pink frosting and sprinkles?!

Six Days of Valentines

There's something about having kids and celebrating holidays. I've been noticing that, for their benefit, we stretch each holiday-- Christmas, Easter, Valentines, Thanksgiving, etc.-- into a week (or month!) long affair. This year's Day of Love is no exception. We started making Valentines days ago and have something festive lined up every day this week. We'll decorate cookies, Ella will have her school party, I have a scavenger hunt and a weekend getaway to the coast planned. And yesterday we got THE BOX from Grandpa. Grandpa is very good at spoiling all the girls in his life on Valentines Day. Ella, Delia and I got cards, chocolates, stickers and stuffed animals. It's always a treat to get a package in the mail and opening our goodies gave us yet another day of celebration! Thanks, Grandpa!

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Snow Run!

It was a rare Wednesday off for Dave. What better way to make the most of it than a little family outing? Today we tossed all the hats, gloves, snow pants and boots in a bag and drove to higher elevations for some fun in the snow.

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Once again, I just have to brag about the awesome area we live in. We don't deal with daily snow or freezing temperatures, but with a less than 2 hour drive we can enjoy beautiful snow in a Redwood forest for just the day. As we crept higher and higher and saw the snow banks getting bigger and bigger, Ella exclaimed, "It's becoming winter!" We pulled off the side of the road at one recreation area and played for a couple hours.

We threw snowballs.

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We ran around yelling and sank in the sometimes knee-deep snow.

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We added to this snowman we found.

And we went sledding down a perfect hill. Ella took a couple runs with each of us...

And then insisted she go on her own. Dave and I were so amused watching her little self happily fly down the hill, bumps and all.