Missing you...

Hello there Grandpa, It's me, your grownup girl.
Thinking of you as usual and missing you today.
It seems like only yesterday, you had to go away.
The leaves have turned once again, it's been seven years today.
Won't it ever get easier, missing you this way?


I think of you fondly and happily many times but on today it is always so much more painful to think of you.  How can it be 7 years and still be so hard?

I miss...your sense of humor, your outlook on life, your laughter, your teasing, and even your rare temper tantrums.  I miss riding with you, watching you work, watching you fish, even watching you play solitare with that worn out deck of cards.  Oh, how I wish I had those cards.  I miss pulling on your big ears and kissing your nose.  I miss our connection and how you got me.  I miss learning from you and being with you.  I miss our family and my childhood.  I miss you.

Wilder Ranch Hike

Today was one of those very rare and uncomfortably hot days in Northern California.  Let's be honest..California weather is so wonderful we as Californians ever rarely complain about it except when it has rained 2 days in a row or the temperature has reached into the mid 90's. As the temps neared the 100's we decided to head for the coast and visit Wilder Ranch. Ahhh...so much better with a cool breeze!  Hitting the trails today hoping to make it far enough to reach the fern grotto caves.

 

The kids did well.  There was lots of silly games and chit chat. Their own cameras came along and they took lots of shots along the way.  Their energy held out and we made it to the fern grottos today. Lots of beautiful shells were found as well.  Hikes always include a chocolate granola bar or something of the like which is a great motivator at times when the energy is running low.  Today nobody remembered it, so that's always a good sign of a fun time.

 

At the end of the hike we walked down towards the farm house.  There is a great tree in the front yard that the kids have always loved climbing from way back to their preschool days. After our hike we hit the downtown Santa Cruz for a dinner of pizza followed by ice cream at the Penny Creamery.  My most favorite ice cream place with lots of yummy homemade organic fun flavors that change daily. 

Facing the last day of 2011

Today is gorgeous.  We are at the beach, which is my very favorite place to be.  It has been a good day, good weekend.  This is the absolute perfect day to hang up 2011 on. 

As far as the year goes, it hasn't been a bad year, just a very busy one.  I haven't had as much free time as I would have liked especially with 3 kids now in elementary school. I certainly haven't spent a moment on any of those personal goals I had put forth for myself 2 years ago when I started this blog.  I'm okay with that too, as I sense that time is coming soon.  I did choose instead to give all of myself to my kids' school.  It has been a good experience and there have been plenty of rewards; being with the kids, getting to know the staff better, seeing what is up and coming and getting the opportunity to meet and know more families in the community.  Next school year I will need to find more of a balance between home, family, myself and school just so those other areas aren't entirely neglected.  Which brings me back to the present.

Standing here today, watching my family in the surf.  Feeling the sun and wind's breeze, while the water laps at my feet.  Breathing it all in and taking a respite from the busy school year and the X-mas holidays. I'm feeling calm.  And I'm thinking that just maybe, 2012 is going to be a good year, a more balanced year.

3 Things I'm Grateful for:
1) This amazing place
2) Respite
3) New Beginnings

Unplugged Sundays

What I miss most about the school year is making time on a regular basis for our family to be together for the day doing something outdoors.  It feels so good to be out there.  My mind is clear, my soul soars and I can breathe, deeply, evenly, just breathe.

I want this for beyond the summer.  But how do we hang onto this?   The weekends are so short during the school year and are filled up with just as many important activities, get togethers and daily chores.  I imagine it takes a really strong committment...an iron clad one.  It would have to be written in

stone  or for us, the family calendar. What could we committ to? Ideally Sundays would be nice but could we do every Sunday? Might need to start smaller, perhaps 2 Sundays a month?  I need to think this through some more, back to this hike.

Today was a lovely summer day. We hit Russian Ridge for a morning hike.  The kids did well.  They have endless energy but sometimes on long hikes, esp my littlest, encouragement is needed.  They carried their own backpacks, with hat, water bottle and snack. We stop often, to look at treasures found too, which helps.

This preserve offers many smaller loops that are doable for younger children.  My favorite here is touring the pond and watching for frogs or bunnies in the grasses.  We decided to take another trail today that lead us away from the pond.  It was a little warmer out in the open then we were used to, but I'm happy to say my kids did great.  There were lots of finds along the way, banana slugs in the forest, lizards on the hot rocks, ground squirrels, all kinds of bugs, esp. ticks.  Many checks after our hike.  Boys especially love finding the perfect stick.  Bubba could carry back an armload if we let him as there are so many sticks he falls in love with.  There are sticks for walking, sticks that make good tools and of course, sticks that make good swords. 

It was pretty brown on our hike and we looked forward to small spots of color. This was such a happy splash of sunshine on our walk. The kids are naturally drawn to them, the state flower in California...the poppy

Big daddy on our last hike mentioned he would really like to see a snake in person. Now, I'm happy he has really gotten into our hikes and has things he wants to discover too, but I must admit I froze a bit when he threw that lovely wish out to the Universe.  Be careful what you wish for, the Universe does have a way of granting said wishes.  We naturally spotted a snake on our last hike and on this hike the little fellow below gave us quite a fright as we almost sat down on him during our snack time. There was a bend in the road with a lovely bit of shade from a lone tree. Well this guy was enjoying the shade as well and came right on out to greet us.  Amazingly, we all jumped up quite fast and moved down a ways.  Always important to look around

closely before sitting down. 

My favorite moment on this hike was Boy Wonder offering his hand to Busy Girl when she felt she was too tired to go on.

After our hike we had good intentions of heading down the road to Alice's.  There aren't many restaurants in the area but even still, this can be a fun spot with good food.  It's at the corner ot two country hwys and it's fun to people watch here. Very diverse and interesting crowd can be found here.  From mountain bike riders to motorcycles riders to sports car drivers.  It's very popular though, and the service can be a bit unhand holding when it's busy.  Unfortunately, it was too busy today and we grudgingly moved on.  We continued on Hwy 9 for quite a while and eventually found ourselves down in Felton.

I have a lot of fond memories of Felton from my childhood.  We used to camp here every summer with friends.  I'm always happy to return and look around. 

We eventually ate and walked over to the park with the historic covered bridge.  The park included a playground and it was nice to run and climb and burn off the energy gained from lunch.

Here is Felton's historic Covered Bridge.  Through it's only used for pedestrians now,  it's still considered to be the tallest covered bridge in the country.   Now that's pretty cool!                                                               The kids were pretty much beat after this. We piled back in the car and Big Daddy and I had a very enjoyable and hand holding drive back home.  The three littles were all passed out in the back. Now that is my kind of unplugged Sunday. 

Three things I'm Grateful For:

1) A free Sunday

 2) A little hand holding

3) Chocolate covered donuts on the ride home

The Great Backyard Campout

The kids have been planning a campout forever.  To celebrate the end of their week long camp and also to support The Great American Backyard Campout

 we pitched a tent in the backyard, roasted hotdogs and corn on the cobb and of course smores. 

We slept outside in the tent 2 nights in a row.  It was already up and of course the kids were so excited the first night they didn't sleep quite as well as the second night.  It was a beautiful clear night...the crickets were in full swing and of course the wild dogs in the neighborhood could be heard too.

The great thing about putting up the tent...they played and slept in it for hours.  We sure enjoyed a quite morning to ourselves both days.  We do hope to camp beyond the backyard this summer, but for now, this was nice too.

Three things I'm grateful for:
1.  Sleeping kids in the backyard
2. Warm cups of coffee
3.  The summer still far ahead of us

Disneyland

Snow Trippers

Hubby and I do not have a lot of experience with the snow but our children sure wanted the opportunity.  It was all they talked about... which became all we talked about.  Where to stay?  What to wear?  What to bring?  How long to go for?

My sister and her family of young kids enthusiastically joined us on this little snow adventure.  We chose a fairly close locale, decided to limit it to a weekend, rented everything but mittens, hats and long johns and had no expectations other than a little sledding and snow ball fights.

Our first trip was pretty successful.  The snow this year was very light and the weather over the weekend was warm which made our outings very easy and comfortable for all the littles.

The boys loved their snow ball makers and the sleds were a hit.  We had an ice picnic both days, a nice place to stay below the snow line, and an easy drive home.  I don't think hubby or I will become winter sport athletes but I can see us hitting a weekend in the snow again, perhaps next year?  What do you think sis...are you in?

3 Things I'm grateful for:

1) Warm weather for prolonged enjoyment outdoors

2) Family that is willing to join in on crazy adventures

3) Not needing to pull over and figure out how to put on snow cables

Riding the Rails

I'm a sucker for trying new things...new experiences.  When you have young children, everyday life is often ruled by the clock and by routines.  So for my sanity, I mean for my enjoyment, I'm constantly dreaming up new things for us to see or do.  My dearest hubby thinks it must be taxing for me to always be thinking of what's next to do, waiting until we can go and then once done, it's over.  I don't think this way at all.  It just gives me something to look forward to. What's wrong with a little something to look forward to in the midst of our everyday list of chores?  I can only find so much happiness in picking up and putting away after my darling family for so many hours a day.  And the trips don't have to be big places, even small trips never taken before gives me a thrill.  Today's such adventure was just that.  An hour's train ride up north, hop off for a yummy breakfast, investigate the surrounding area by foot and hit a park in the area. 

Today's adventure stop...the cute downtown area of Burlingame.  I feel you all laughing at me.  That's okay...Burlingame was new for us and a doable adventure for a Sunday.  Most importantly, the kids had a blast.  The excitement of wearing their backpacks loaded with sunhat, journal, bottle of water, and snack for this little journey was happiness enough.  Trying to buy our tickets, find out which track to head out to and what train number was ours was a fun family learning experience all worth it when we climbed aboard and found our seats.  It was fun to play games, draw and cuddle as we watched the neighboring cities pass by our windows.  Once at our destination we headed down the main street with all the cute boutique shops and restaurants until we came upon the Coppenhagen Bakery.  It was very busy but we managed to squeeze in and found a table.  We were so hungry that we devoured breakfast.  It was all delicious but the new favorite was definitely banana pancakes..yum!  After breakfast we hit the local farmer's market for some yummy grapes and dried nectarines and then headed off to the park to play.  The park was a great find and the kids had a blast trying out a new playground.  Boy wonder brought a soccer ball and had fun kicking it around with dad.  When we were sufficiently tired we headed back to the train station and caught the next train back home.  Overall it was an easy and doable outing and I saw lots of other cute little downtowns in other cities that I mentally filed away for another day.

 My oldest lost his tooth while on the train.  Here he is so proud showing off his missing tooth.

 Hitting the playground hard and stuffing face at Coppenhagen Bakery.  Aah...the Sunday life!

Waiting at the station to catch the train back home.

Busy girl singing to her daddy on the train home.

3 things I'm grateful for:

1. Having a free day for fulfilling fun adventures

2. Having a family willing to try my crazy ideas

3. Wearing the kids out so we could crash on the couch once home

Mini Trip to the City

We live so close to San Francisco yet we hardly venture there. Well, it was time we did! So, we took the kids up to San Francisco today and visted the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).  It was our first visit to a museum with our energetic bunch.  I think they did surprising well and may have even been unconsciously inspired.  The SFMOMA is a nice size and with lots of modern and colorful sculptures and paintings easily kept our troops engaged.  We brought along journals, crayons and colored pencils in case they felt the need to create a masterpiece or two of their own.  For Busy girl, who was the first to tire it gave her a chance to relax in the stroller and keep herself busy.  One of my favorites to watch was the fascination of the gold beads that covered a large entryway from top to bottom. 

After the SFMOMA, we headed to the end of the block and had lunch at

Time to burn off lunch with a romp through Yerba Buena Gardens...

 and a trip to the playground connecting the gardens.

Of course we couldn't pass up a ride on the Zeum carousel.

The weather in SF could not have been better.  It was a glorious and fun day today.  We should all sleep well tonite!