Quick Fix

It doesn't take a genius to see I haven't posted in more than six months now. There are myriad reasons for that. Maybe I'll get to those, but there's a lot to catch up on, so maybe not. Besides, the pictures are fun and life has been not-so-fun, so let's get on with the fun stuff...

Things happened after Halloween last year. For instance, Aunt Karen and her family (Spencer! and Lucas!) came to visit for Thanksgiving. Then I took our traditional Christmas Card photos.

Apparently, this tradition is somewhat fun, even if it involves getting dressed up and then being photographed for half an hour or so.

We got up at some ungodly crazy hour to see a lunar eclipse that went down behind the clouds before the moon began to peak out again.

There were truffles made for teachers...

and cookies made for neighbors.

The day itself didn't disappoint, apparently.

There was a monumental haircut.

Who would have known I would like the short hair so much better? The long hair was awfully pretty...for the 30 seconds after it was brushed, anyway.

There was a momentous trip to the tide pools on a beautiful day in January...

where we got to see our first octopus, scurrying for the water in its native habitat.

Later that month, the braces?

They came off. They're still off. Now if only I could remember to remind him about that darned retainer thingy!

Smunch once again tried out for his baseball league's "club team", the Mavericks.

For the first time, he didn't make it. He's now playing on a travel team called The Blues. He really enjoys it. I'm sure he'd enjoy it more if they had enough boys to actually field a team for tournaments! He's played in a single tournament so far and the team lost every game...just like the Mavericks did last year.

Mam, once again showed her skills in basketball, playing YBL with a team of girls very similar to the one she played with each of the previous two years. They called themselves "The Party Rockers" (Ick!!!) and won every game (or at least the vast majority of them.)

It's impossible to take good pictures of action in a gymnasium, it turns out.

In mid-February, Smunch turned 10. He had a laser tag party and I did my best impression of a laser-tag cake.

Since his party was before his actual birthday, we also indulged in our tradition of Sprinkles cupcakes on his actual birthday.

Later that month, Aunt Karen came for a visit with Spencer! and Lucas! We took the kids to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where they had a grand ol' time.

Then, in early March, Mam turned 8..with more cupcakes.

And she become a Fuchsia Firework.

She also learned the ins and outs (well, a few of them) of fastpitch softball pitching.

I'm still managing her team, and working on my posture.

Some time after her actual birthday, she had her first sleepover birthday party...with funny hats (oh yeah, it was on March 17th!)

She insisted she wanted to have make-your-own sundaes instead of a fancy cake. So, I was denied another crazy-making cake extravaganza and treated to the easy purchase of ice cream, fudge sauce, caramel sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped cream, sprinkles and, of course, maraschino cherries.

The girls had a blast. Fortunately (for me), only two girls spent the night. They were treated to homemade buttermilk pancakes the next morning.

Meanwhile, Smunch became an Angel.

About time.

Easter came...

and went in a blur of plastic candy-filled eggs, cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs.

The day after Easter, I took the kids to Uvas Canyon County Park for a two-day camping trip. I was joined by another mom...and her FOUR kids. The creek was fun.

The rain was less fun.

But the waterfalls were lovely if you were up for a hike in the rain.

We left a night early, filled the garage with dripping camping gear and had our spaghetti and s'mores camp dinner right in the living room...complete with "campfire".

There has been, and continues to be much baseball playing.

And much softball playing. Two games a week for each of them this year, with a practice for good measure.

This picture was taken during tryouts for the league's Nova team. It's a summer travel team. She was awesome and did all kinds of things I didn't know she could do, including hitting every ball pitched to her from a pitching machine. I was told later, after Mam didn't make the team, that the team selection strongly favors third graders.(Mam is still in second grade.) More than 20 girls tried out for the team. Only 12 girls made it. I imagine most of them are third graders. Since the tryouts, one of the girls on the Nova team has broken her wrist and Mam has been asked to play with them. She is over the moon. My summer calendar weeps at the prospect of five softball tournaments before the end of June.

And there we are. Mam just made the Nova team earlier this week. There are three more baseball games and two more softball games in the regular season. There are camps and trips planned for the summer...including a weeklong trip just for Mommy...to Wyoming.

And to prove that I really am nuts, here's a nice little photo I took while I was out hiking last weekend...

Please pray for my sanity.

Free Time at Low Tide

For years now, I've been wanting to visit Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at low tide and check out all the critters there. But tides are quirky things. When we had free time, the tide wasn't sufficiently low, or it was super low, but only at 4 a.m. More often than not, I just didn't think to look.

But on Monday evening, I happened to check a blog I sometimes frequent and there was an invitation to go tidepooling...for earlier that day. Of course, I'd missed that opportunity, but it just so happened that the kids had Tuesday off for a teacher in service. Not only were the tides nice and low, but they were even lower than they'd been on Monday. And what a fabulous place this is!It was a beautiful day. It's January, so it wasn't exactly balmy, but beaches in Northern California are rarely balmy, so it was lovely. My mom joined us. Admittedly, I was a lousy caretaker, often forgetting that she's not so stable on the slippery rocks...getting far ahead of her and then going back to get her. Each time, she seemed pretty happy with whatever tidepool she was looking at...only reinforcing my lousy daughterness.There were all kinds of critters to see...and parts of critters. This must've been one mighty crab before it became someone's meal.And it's always exciting to find an intact sea urchin shell or two.I got to watch for a few minutes while this great blue heron fished in the shallow water. He was pretty successful!And then there was this thing:It's not one of my prettiest pictures, but I'm glad I managed to capture it. It looked like a long, pink centipede with a pointy head and when I touched it, it disappeared in the blink of an eye. I asked the ranger about it and her best guess (not having seen it herself) was that it was a clam's feeding tube. If anyone out there has better information, I'd be curious to know!

We ended up running into some good friends from school...a big surprise since I didn't think tidepooling would be on their list of family activities. And you know what they say about assuming. Yup. That's me. I'd even thought about asking them to go earlier, but decided that a quiet afternoon with the four of us would be nice. It ended up being the seven of us having a lovely time in the late afternoon sunshine and thankfully, my friend did a better job of helping my mom out than my mom's own daughter was doing.Mam had basketball practice at 5 and it was getting chilly, so we forced ourselves out of the tidepools and trudged back up to the mommymobile to dry off and eat some cookies. I really need to make a bigger point of doing these things more often. I'm still not convinced that tidepooling is my friend's bag, but getting wet and looking at cool critters? I'll take a whole suitcase of that, please!

Winter Beach

We really weren't sure what to do with ourselves yesterday, but the kids made it abundantly clear that we had to get out of the house and do something. Daddy and I had come up with a couple of ideas the night before, but neither of them really appealed. It took too long to get there or might be boring for one or more of us. So, I came up with something else on the spur of the moment and we headed over the hill to the beach.

This idea took care of a number of needs. It got the kids out of the house to a place they're always game to go (the beach) and it meant I'd have some use for my new camera lens. The latest is a killer telephoto and this state beach features over-wintering monarch butterflies at this time of year, so it seemed like a good choice.

Of course, there were so few butterflies that I didn't get any photos of them. I guess we should've gone during ski week instead. And despite a weather forecast that wasn't promising, it turned out to be a beautiful morning and early afternoon at the coast. So, in the end, all our objectives were met.The new lens is great. I took this photo of wading birds from really far away. That's probably why it's a little too dark too, but whatever.

I decided to do a little study on different textures at the beach and that was fun. This is one of my favorites:Yeah, I know. You don't need a telephoto for that. It was one of the last telephoto pictures I took, opting instead for my relatively new macro lens to take close-ups for the rest of our little walk.Oh, whoops. No children. Mommy must've been off in her own little photo world. Where are the photos of the children? Well, they're not quite as cooperative or photogenic as rocks, you know. So, here they are.Does Daddy look like he's messing around with his iPhone? I think he does, but we're out on this beautiful beach. He would never, ever...oh...well. Nevermind.

We took a quick trip by the visitor's center before heading back to town to grab some lunch. We found ourselves a fun little spot called Emily's Bakery where we got some yummy sandwiches and couldn't leave without picking up some awesome-looking pastries for New Year's. Can't wait to try them!

It was such a fun day. I wish we felt free to just go take off and find something like that to do more often! Clearly Daddy and I need to do some research and cabin/campsite booking!