Garden Farm Tour

Today we enjoyed the "Bay-Friendly Gardening Tour". We made it to just three of the many gardens that were open for the tour, and only one of those three was a residential garden. But there's another tour next week, so we should have plenty of time to get our fill of residential gardens. Today, we focused on the "farming" end of gardening, hitting a 1-acre "family farm" out in the very hot Pleasanton, a 5,000sf community garden in Oakland, and a crazy Berkeley yard with goats, bees, chickens, rabbits, and somehow there was room for vegetables & fruits.

Below: "did you get my smile?" says Molly; Molly and Zach watch a baby goat invade a compost pile; Zach gets up close with a mama goat; Sofia shows off her dress (the girls all wore dresses for the day); a baby goat investigates Sofia & Clara; Sofia & Clara investigate a baby goat; Zach and Molly watch something interesting (another baby goat, perhaps?); Molly is enchanted by the baby goat.

sleep tricks

Clara's latest trick (besides sitting up, staring in awe, eating foods, and having rock star hair) has been to fall asleep in the car seat/stroller. I must say that I appreciate this trick that much more because of her, um, lack of enthusiasm for the car seat/stroller in the past. She even slept almost the entire drive down to visit Nana and Pa last weekend. (the drive back wasn't exactly as smooth, but that's okay).

[Clara sleeps on a long walk through town (4/17/08); same walk; another walk (Tilden 3/12/08); Berkeley walk again (4/17/08); in the Maryland Minivan (3/30/08); and in the rear view rear view mirror (4/16/08).]

Duck Soup

A big thank-you to Uncle Seth for providing the pictures from our fun outting down to the river this weekend at Nana & Pa's house.

One of my favorite moments was helping Molly make "duck soup" with Nana (picture on the left is Molly stirring the "soup"). No ducks were harmed in the production of this soup, turns out she was making soup for the ducks. :)

Later we tromped through the floodplain, followed a dragonfly, and removed some french broom.

glider-licious

Thanks Nana & Pa for the lovely glider. Now we can keep a good eye on the neighborhood.

Lake Temescal

It's a hot hot weekend, so we invited the neighborhood kids for a dip in Lake Temescal. Here's some pictures of Zach acting as their fearless leader:

Don Castro Regional Preserve

OK, so I couldn't decide which pictures to post from our hike this morning...

(if you'd rather see all pictures as a slideshow, try http://picasaweb.google.com/szander/Tuchus02 )

Half a Year

Happy Six Months Birthday Clara!
You're doing just great. You drool like crazy, almost sit up, roll all over the place, and generally have a grand old time. And you've developed a nice mellow attitude most of the day, which is just wonderful.

Thanks Opa!

Thanks for the lovely visit Opa. The floor grate looks great, and the garage is grand! We're glad you're feeling better and we'll start thinking of the next project to get you to come out here.

April Showers

Molly took her first shower with Zach tonight. Until today she's professed fear and distrust of such things. Apparently, she had a change of heart since I hear she requested the shower on her own. I don't know the whole story, but I do know that they were getting ready for bed and the next thing I knew they were coming out of the shower and Molly was very very excited and happy. She even washed her hair!