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.

Thanksgiving weekend

We spent Thanksgiving weekend here with friends. On Friday we went on a friend-suggested hike in Mt. Tamalpais State Park. It was 4-ish miles downhill from altitude to the coast and was very cool. We went with the Barches; Canyon, Tarlissimo, et al.

Ballyhoo stayed on Mommy's back mostly for time considerations. She might actually be completely capable of the distance but extrapolating past hiking experiences with her to 4 miles we projected it would take 4.39 times the age of the universe to get to our destination.




Dem Barches.




This is what happened when Little attempted to give Canyon a hug. It was explosive coodiness.






Little and Canyon pretty much didn't notice the 4 miles. They probably logged an extra 2 miles just crazying around.




Little decided that these rocks just had to come with us, and insisted that we hold them for her when she became too tired. Hasn't every kid who has ever hiked done that? So cliche.


Daddy may or may not have confidently led everybody down a steep hill on the wrong path.






We got to Stinson Beach at sunset.






We sat around well into the dark waiting for a shuttle to take us back to our cars... apparently there was a holiday schedule? Meh. Anyway, it turned into a fun little adventure and made a weirdly satisfying end to a fun day.


On Saturday we watched Stanford smother some Beavers with friends.






And that's it. Maybe we'll get around to posting the Hawai'i pictures soon?

Littlest aka The Dude

A couple days ago Littlest said "boop" to Mommy. When Mommy repeated the sound to him he giggled and recognized it as his little word. So now we can say "boop" to him at any time and it instantly makes him thrilled. He even joins in and tries to say it back to us. It's so fun to be able to "talk" with him!



Also, about 4 days ago he just started sitting up. It's a cool new trick Daddy's been demonstrating to anybody and everybody. Go Dude!

Skyline-to-the-Sea with the chillunz

Little and Daddy went on a short litle backpacking trip up Skyline-to-the-Sea trail yesterday with A-Ron and Olivander. We camped at twin redwoods trail camp for the night.  A radicool old dude hiked in with us and told us everything there is to know about the plants we saw. A gorgeous San Francisco garter snake slithered right between Little's feet. Great-horned owls called all night from across Waddell creek. We heard Pacific tree fogs along the creek.  We interrupted a swarm of flying ants out looking for a queen. A bunch of deer and some raccoons raided us throughout the night. And we pretty much chilled and enjoyed the pleasantness.

MAndrew and Kason and Maleb rode in on bikes and visited us at dusk, paying special attention to wearing Olivander right out.



Little yesterday with a big-leaf maple leaf:


Strangely similar to January 2009 in Costa Rica:



A madrone stick became the coolest toy/weapon.








A-Ron spent much of the trip being a superhero/monster. It's what he does:




Olivander likes the leaf too:




Next time: Daddy, A-Ron, Lizard and Littler!