Shira's Birthday

For Shira's birthday we changed up our park and ice cream tradition by going to Santa Cruz instead of SF

 The fun thing about this park is that it uses being on a hillside as a way to get some pretty cool slides in.

 Now that Shira has discovered how easily she can control her speed on a slide using her feet as brakes, she is much less reticent to try even the steepest slides.

 And Samuel had no second thoughts about flying down these.  This one is fast enough to shoot you off the end - hence no pic of me on the slide.  My facial expression when I came down, shall we say, not the most flattering.

 Shira got her swing on.  It is her birthday, after all.

 And it turned out to be kind of the perfect place to fly a kite

 And did I mention that it was completely gorgeous?  Can't really beat a park with a view like this.

Pics of the ice cream eating are on the phone, not the camera :(  But it was organic, artisanal, handmade, in fresh waffle cones.  Yum.  My mint tasted like an herb garden.

The Aborted Haircut

 The before pictures (Samuel egged Shira on to not let us take a picture with all of her clothes properly placed)

And there was no point in an after picture, since the second the hairdresser approached her, Shira started crying and clinging to Steve.  Steve was the only one to get a hair cut that day.  Sorry honey, your 5 millionth haircut doesn't warrant a before or after picture.

The upside to the aborted haircutting mission is that Shira is keeping her end of the deal - if she doesn't want a haircut, she has to let us brush her hair every morning and at least put it in a ponytail.  Now she only looks like a ragamuffin some days because we're lazy rather than we're too beaten down to deal with the hysterical sobbing and chasing around the house that hair brushing used to require.

Uncle Micheal comes to town

 We had the special pleasure of Uncle Micheal's company a few weeks ago.  We enjoyed a lovely couple of meals with him, and the kids had a fantastic time playing with him (and the thoughtful toys that he brought),

playing piggies,

 reading stories,

 and just generally being sillies with him

Our Tick-a-licious weekend

aka our first family backpacking trip

I had to take this picture because I loved that Steve was using his foot to help him secure the sleeping pad to my pack.  Also, shout out to Lauren for loaning us this monster of a backpacking child carrier.  Not only did it haul my 30 pound daughter, we managed to stuff two sleeping bags into it, all of Shira's clothes, and all of my water.  Yes, if you add that up, I was carrying somewhere in the vicinity of 45 lbs. 

I wanted to get a pic of Shira and Samuel before we started out.  Samuel thought it would be hilarious to stand in front of his sister.

 Shira stuck her feet on the ground and said "I can push the stroller." 

 What is Samuel sticking in his mouth?  

The group picture, minus the two families who caught up to us later.

Our second stop - the "W" tree.  We made great time, covered the first mile in about a half hour, had lunch, and made it to this rest stop in another half hour or so.  It was a kind of bummer half hour, though, with Samuel whining, "When are we going to get there?"  Not for a long while buddy.

But Samuel and Steve rested up.

Shira took a play break.  That girl can entertain herself anywhere.  And boy does she like sticks and dirt.

And we got on the trail again.  You can't tell from the pictures, but this was incredibly steep.  And yet, after we left the "W", Samuel didn't complain a single time.  He did an amazing job.  This was a really tough hike. I would never have considered doing the trip if I had realized how difficult it would be.  I was already concerned about the fact that it was 3.5-4 miles.  I didn't know it was a brutal 3.5-4 miles, almost entirely uphill, completely sun exposed, and at least a half a mile at the end that was so steep that I had to hold Samuel up from behind so that he didn't slide backward while he was trying to get up the hill.  It was a nice trick while I carried nearly half my weight on my back.

Samuel did the entire hike.  He must have gotten into the zone, because he just took it in stride and kept trucking.  There was a moment toward the end that I wasn't sure I was going to make it, I couldn't believe what a trooper he was.  Shira enjoyed being perched on my back, saying things like, "This sure is tough.  This is really hard work."  Thanks, Shira.

When we got to camp, Samuel and Max found each other right away.

There was plenty of the usual camping mischief with some more of the usual suspects.  I am pleased to say that none of the kids needed anything other than nature and themselves to keep themselves occupied.  Can't say the same of some of the other adults on the trip.  I was surprised to see some people had brought their phones with them, though most didn't use them for more than timers and watches.  There was a Googler who was checking his texts.  Ah, living in Silicon Valley.

Amazing how they had this much energy after the long climb up here.

Dinner.  I made quite the gourmet couscous meal with dried mushrooms, spices, freeze dried pees and dehydrated kale.  Steve is one lucky guy.  Samuel of course opted for the extra PB&J sandwich, Shira announced she wasn't eating dinner.  All as predicted.

Filtering our water was a big hit, not surprisingly.

 Breakfast

 Shira and Samuel were both taken with Steve's hiking poles.  Shira hiked a good half mile on the way back to the car the next day, as long as she was allowed to use the hiking pole.

Samuel reached his breaking point about a mile and a half before we got back to the parking lot.  It was a tough last bit, but we made it, and everyone wants to do it again.

As a side note, you might be wondering what the title regarding ticks was about.  We saw a few signs on our way up to camp regarding watching out for ticks.  When we told Andrew that we weren't going to bring a tent for ourselves (to lighten the load - and because I like it - Steve and I brought a 2 man tent for Samuel and Shira and we slept outside) he kind of freaked out and told us that we would have ticks crawling over us all night long.  When we got to camp, Andrew found a tick, showed it to us, promptly dropped it in our gear (he did find it); Debbie started doing tick checks on her kids, and everyone started obsessing about it.  You can imagine that everyone started feeling things crawling on them constantly and there was a lot of, "Can you look on my back and see if a tick is there?"  Fun times.  Good memories.  I'll let you know if any of us get lyme disease.

Birthday #5 and #3 Party Extravaganza

It has finally come to pass that Samuel and Shira are able to ask for their own cakes.  My days of convincing them that their favorite cake is cream scones with whipped cream and fruit on top are over.  Samuel requested vanilla with vanilla frosting, Shira wanted chocolate and more chocolate, of course.

That doesn't mean that I didn't make the cakes my own way, though.  Still whole wheat flour for Samuel's cake using maple syrup for sweetener and halving what the recipe called for. Whipped cream for frosting - I was going to make a real frosting, but was horrified when I discovered that every frosting recipe on the planet starts with 4 cups of powdered sugar.  I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Instead I stabilized the whipped cream, a process that horrified me just as much as the 4 cups of sugar I was avoiding.  I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

 We went to Diddam's for cake toppers, and though Shira initially requested puppies, she decided she preferred babies.  She quite enjoyed decorating the cake all by herself.  I thought I would be helping, but all I did was turn around for 30 seconds and when I turned back, she had managed to shove almost every baby into the cake.  Let me tell you, babies in diapers on a brown cake.... well, you can imagine how appetizing that was.  Hilarious, though.

 Since Shira has proven herself to have adult tastes in her chocolate consumption (what 3 year old eats 85% dark chocolate?), I made a flourless chocolate espresso cake for me her.

 Samuel requested a baseball cake.  Steve thought I was crazy for agreeing, but I had a plan.

 I think it turned out pretty awesome.  Blueberries for the baseline, bananas for bases (Steve did the cutting on those; I realized I have no clue what the shape of bases are, I figured they were just squares) and thank you to Diddams for the baseball players.

 Then there was the puppet show

 Dinosaur Cowboys with some Three Little Pigs thrown in.  It wasn't really to my taste, but it wasn't my birthday party, and I'm pretty sure having a real puppet show at their birthday party was kind of a dream come true for Samuel and Shira.  Also made my life so much easier.  No party activities to plan or prep or clean up after.

 It was cool to see the Puppeteer show us how he does the show.

 And the pinata smack down has become a must have tradition.  I no longer make the pinata with the kids in a weekend, though.  Bubbie worked on Samuel's rocket and Shira's little girl for months.

 And the blowing out of candles

 I love this one of Shira watching Samuel blowing his out.

 Shira gets a little help and encouragement from Daddy.

I did warn everyone that I thought the cake probably wasn't that good, but it couldn't have been too bad since we managed to polish off both of them at the party and I didn't see a bunch of half eaten pieces on plates.  I suppose people could have surreptitiously thrown theirs out, but plenty of people had seconds.  Samuel and Shira announced them delectable, and that's all that really matters.

Wow, our kids are so big!