Thursday, January 20, 2011

Flyin' solo part 3

On sunday in the afternoon we went to see Olivander, Lizard and A-Ron at Linda Vista park. It was just a cool opportunity for the kids to get nutty outside where they can't break things:






On Monday we went with the same crew down to Pinnacles to do some hiking. It was a cool little hike, we saw quite a few condors, and there was a cool section of caving in the middle. And, even better, I didn't take any pictures of the whining or crying.

By the way, Little has had seriously puffy eyes for a couple weeks, and you'll see that in the pictures here. Makes her look a bit like Willem Dafoe with ample burrito weight.










Once again, I scored some dad points and let the girls get a little wet. Who new nobody packed any dry clothes?



This is Little's definition of a little wet:

Little and Olivander can entertain each other indefinitely. Same for Lizard and Littler. They're perfect little friend-pairs.

Caves drawing near.


The cave! It was pretty cool, though it would have been nice to have one adult per kid. Instead, I valiantly went on ahead and took pictures while A-Ron got to help the kids through tight spots.




Little is, once again, without undergarments or shirt. But she rocked the climb out.




As I told Mommy when she got home, I found some remarkable tips for keeping the girls' hair nice and controlled:

The kids decided that they wanted to take some rocks home. We still had 0.6 miles left, and they refused to bring kid-sized rocks. So they carried these all the way back to the car. Little's rock was a present for Mommy when she got off the airplan; Littler wanted the rock for herself and was offended by the slightest idea of giving it to Mommy.





Then we went home and picked up Mommy. Fun day!

It was super awesome to spend those days with my girls and it was strangely liberating to get them all to myself for a couple days. But to say we all were eager for Mommy to come home would be, you know, a catastrophic understatement.

Thanks, Matt, Matt and A-Ron for helping me stay sane over the weekend!

Flyin' solo part 2

Saturday:

We went with Little's friend Tommy to Happy Hollow, a zoo/amusement-park-for-littluns. For a tiny kiddie zoo it had some cool stuff; Fennec fox! Fossa! Lemurs! Goats!

HH also has the biggest dang-busted climbing castle in the history of HISTORY, and the kids rocked it:



And then there were the rides:








This is Little's favorite. They hopped on, then it broke. I told Little to cut out the burritos; once again, I'm rocking this dad stuff:



The perfect Daddy lesson opportunity presented itself when we reached the fennec foxes. Two little cute things in there, gettin' frisky. Littler thinks they're babies and demands to know where the parents are. I told her they were indeed adults. She wanted to know how I KNEW they were adults. Not wanting to miss this crucial opportunity, I heartily pointed out that there were some squirrel monkeys over there, and aren't squirrel monkeys just awesome?

Good times Matt and Tommy!

Flyin' solo

Mommy left to go hang with some sisters in Florida so I got to be a single dad for 5 days. Armed with two girls, my camera, a wide-open schedule and the anticipation of selective editing, I set out to survive [primarily] and to document our adventures, mostly so that I could post the documentation online and make people think I'm an awesome dad with perfect and awesome kids [that's where the selective editing comes in]. So, between epic hairdo failures and mooching off of friends and neighbors, I took pictures of the other stuff we did. Here it goes, in order:

Thursday:

We went up to Kason and Maleb's house in the mountain to hang out and play. Little played her first hockey, but her Arizona roots couldn't match up to Kason and Maleb's Minnesotan heritage. Nevertheless, fun was had in abundance.


Then we went on a hike in what is essentially their backyard:


Pretty cool backyard.


The trail took us down to a spooky-awesome foggy waterfall covered in moss. Little decided to get her feet wet. I decided to let her. See how good a dad I am? She decided to throw in wet pants and shirt to go along with it.


And this being a Bay Area winter, we saw some newts:


Dude's like, "hey, hey, hey now, let's not get carried away here." I think this is when I offered Maleb a taste of fresh newt.

We slept in a cabin next to the house and went exploring some more on Friday, this time by bike [Little is now wearing Maleb's shoes and a sweater with no shirt... I won't mention what else she is missing at this point]:



The chestnut orchard and its iconic bullet-holed junker.


Downhill bike riding capped off the afternoon:







Two days down, three more to go.