Summer End Game

Random pictures from the last 8 days' fun.

Here's Littlest and his friend/neighbor/near-twin 'Enri. 'Enri was born less than 12 hours after Littlest. They are exactly the same: they both poop a lot and sleep a bunch.


Kason and Maleb's parents moved up into the mountains and we've spent some time enjoying the trails up there. Last saturday Daddy and Olivander's daddy rode from Cupertino up Montebello Rd. to Montebello OSP and met Kason and Maleb's daddy up there. They rode up to the top of Black Mountain and took a picture of themselves, trying to look as rad as they can.  Daddy stood on a very tall rock so he wouldn't look like a midget.



On Labor Day we went with Olivander's family to Portola Redwoods State Park. We had a fair amount of fun playing in the water...






...and lying in the grass...




...until the stinging nettle ambushed us and made Littler a sad little monster.


Little and Olivander did this for quite a long time:






Then we all drove down to Pescadero State Beach and hung out there until sunset.
















Even the late-sunset light wasn't enough to make Daddy's midsection anything but blindingly white.


We found all kinds of cool things on the beach, like severed fish heads and a ray skeleton. We even saw a [live] sea otter, which was pretty cool. Somehow we took 800 pictures that day and none were of the awesome people we were there with. Nothing personal, we swear.

On Tuesday Mommy had her first game for her soccer league. She was a bit rusty to start with but warmed up and kicked some tushy.


The ball was heading over Mommy's head and, without thinking about it, she reached up to grab it. Thankfully it was too high, but she grinned a sheepish grin and kept on playing:


Here's Littlest just yesterday with Canyon's little sister Mandolin. He's staking claim to his territory as early as he can.

Tucson 2010 | Caca de vaca

Mommy's brother and the kids' cousin [from Daddy's side] were nice enough to get married only a week apart in the same city.  So we packed up and drove to Tucson for just over a week. First off, Mesa for Mommy's brother K-Dog's wedding. Mommy and her blood-related womenfolk:



The reception was in Tucson. By that point Littler was about toast. She's watching the sunset with her uncle Airic:



For the next few days we drove this way and that, sweated a whole bunch, and spent most of our time getting in and out of the car. Our planned trip to Mexico didn't pan out but we made it to one of Mommy and Daddy's old favorite places, the San Pedro river. Gra'ma and aunt Chisnap came too. We arrived too late for the unparalleled San Pedro birds but Daddy did get a look at a yellow-billed cuckoo and there were lots of frogs. Chesters do what Chesters do, so we got wet. Little and Littler didn't seem to mind the flood-browned water or even the thought that it flowed straight from Mexico:



Mommy and Daddy spent many, many days hiking up and down the San Pedro back in the day. It's a great place for gray hawks, illegal immigrants, botanists, frogs, summer tanagers, drug smugglers, nudists, snakes and green kingfishers. The Littles aspired to nudity but we managed to avoid most of the rest.



Little discovered a thick, gooey, brown substance all around the river. She dubbed it "mudsprake." She and Littler spent a lot of time decorating themselves with mudsprake.













Little likes to get right up to her nozzle in water:



Littler is monstering Chisnap. Whenever she tries to explicitly monster she puts her hands up by her eyes like this and growls/shrieks while wiggling her fingers like a star-nosed mole's snout:





Littler floating away:



Mudsprake may or may not contain a fair amount of caca de vaca.









Little finally got her shirt off and became a river monster.



"I have a shirt made out of mudsprake!"





Little liked jumping into "a river of chocolate milk!"







Little's totally got Lewis hops:









Gra'ma and Littlest chilling out of the water.



Back in Tucson, Daddy thought it would be a flawless idea to get together "Uncle" Pickle, K-Dog, Kiffer, Gobot, Ga-brul and K'naan in a city park at noon and play basketball. It was monsoonly humid and Tucsonly hot. It was somewhat shy of an all-star event. The smart ones then jumped in a pool and spent the rest of the day cooling down. Little, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice the heat at all:
 










We all went to the second wedding, for the Littles' cousin from Daddy's side, Narpete. It was superfun and packed with 24 cousins, 8 uncles and aunts plus Grammy and Grampy. There was a fair amount of bonkers dancing at the reception and Daddy was using aunt Megret's camera so we don't have any pictures. Anyway, it was fun and we gained another rocking member of the family for the second time in a week.

We got to finally meet Pickle's bride-to-be, which was awesome. At various moments in the week we got to see virtually everybody [sans the V's!] in our extended family, which was cool too: Littles-monster Gran'pa, Baffling-but-generous Gra'ma, Incorrect-on-this-one-particular-issue Grammy, Sleepy-and-not-at-all-interested-in-this-one-particular-issue Grampy, Exhausting Megret, Long-lost NoMan, Cowardly-shins Pickle, Undissuadable Kelce, What-am-I-getting-myself-into Petty, What-am-I-getting-him-into Narpete, Perpetually-sleepy Bronkney, Barbet-haired Cam, Not-nearly-as-surly-as-he-seems-on-Facebook Stoney, Will-certainly-be-able-to-crush-us-all-very-soon Chan, Started-out-pretty-huge-at-least Bwenners, Little's-perfect-idol Laney, Angelic Grace, "When-I-gave-a-lecture-at-Harvard"-anecdote-spewing G-Lens, Disturbingly-Mommy-like Barbarian, Random-often-accurate-fact-spouting Abel, Infinitely-nongullible Chameleon, Snake-activist Mawky, Constantly-somersaulting Lenny, Not-blindingly-white-at-least-on-the-back-of-his-neck Christofferson, The-major-grooving-influence-in-the-entire-Lewis-family AD, Snap-happy Ambrosia, Impossible-I-know-but-still-growing Wire-D, Best-moves-on-the-dance-floor YahnBahn, Everybody-wants-one X-Baby, Sweetest-cousin-ever Clavinator, .44 Maggum, Sweet-talking Lydenheimer, Kerpow-eyed Liesiepie, Song-writing D'Bora, Covenant-demolishing Jaded, All-hair-and-freckles Chaste, Village-shaman Pookie, The-village-shaman's-pants Anjee, Indefatigable Kal-N, Really-wish-we-knew-better Livie, Daddy-totally-forgot-he-existed-but-he's-pretty-cool-anyway Jax, Best-welcome-room-book-owner Bobert, Domesticator-extraordinaire EyeLien, Supreme-rockness KatieOGreatie, Contributes-like-90%-of-the-genes-his-kids-have Ty, Always-goofy-and-fun Magda, Doesn't-want-to-be-the-kid-you-just-have-to-cheek-pinch-but-totally-is SamWise, 100%-no-holds-barred-all-boy BeenJammin, Hair-of-a-future-glam-rock-idol Dzhaymz, Water-bottle-slayer Bonk, Sacrifices-his-body-for-the-team Kibbo, Adorably-nerdy IckleFat, Tactical-nuke Noer, I-am-a-beautiful-butterfly Kyysyn, Favorite-child Chisnap, Aptly-named Gordita, Dude-spent-like-forever-in-Afghanistan-and-isn't-even-weird Ereeek, Resembles-a-bitter-vegetable-but-way-cuter Kale-y, Totally-needs-to-get-into-audio-engineering Yoshe, Girlie-legged K-Dog, Bowls-worse-than-Littler-but-totally-tolerates-the-girlie-man-thing Aerial, Thinks-he-can-grab-the-rim-but-really-only-touches-it Gilbot, Kanye-glasses Josie, No-longer-at-all-rotund Gabrul, Kids'-favorite Airic and Shoots-way-too-many-3s K'naan, hailing from Arizona, California, Utah, Montana, Washington, Colorado and South Dakota. Daddy even got to make his own mother vanish in a puff of pure logic, which he thought was pretty fun.  We have to thank D'Bora and Gra'ma, and Bonk and Kibbles for L'Hospital-ity.

Not exactly a vacation but a very worthwhile trip!