Saturday, November 25, 2017

Chillin by the pool

Zach and Molly are in Nicaragua getting ready to head to a small village to install cookstoves (as part of a volunteer group). Until tomorrow, they are in Managua. Here's what Zach wrote:

Had a lovely morning going to the museum, with the heat and humidity we are going to swim and rest by the pool this afternoon. Group dinner tonight to kick off the formal trip. 

Friday, November 24, 2017

Thanksgiving 2017

A misch-mash of funny photos from Thanksgiving, hosted this year at Seth & Kristen's. Some of the funny photos were taken as Molly, Clara, and I experimented with my camera's remote control shutter feature (connect to a smart phone, use the phone to take pictures). 












Monday, November 13, 2017

Fall School Photos

Finally scanned the fall school photos. Clara's school does photos from the standard-issue school photo company in the fall, and the local photographer in the spring. Molly's school just does the local photographer. Ah, these kids! 



Sunday, November 05, 2017

Ridge Trail Volunteering

Saturday morning we volunteered with the Bay Area Ridge Trail to do some cleanup work in the Presidio. Clara even charmed her way into pulling names for the raffle:







Amtrak to GIFF 2017

Molly inspired us to go to GIFF 2017 (Geocaching International Film Festival) on Friday. I inspired us to take Amtrak there (it was in Martinez). 








Halloween kids

a bunch of kids, ready for trick-or-treating:


More Happy Birthday Clara


More pictures found! I think this is the last set of "missing" pictures. Huge thank you to Zach for figuring out how to recover these. : ) 

These are from the evening of Clara's birthday. Molly and I snuck out to the store and bought her a cake. Yum!










Rock N Jump again

found another picture from Clara's birthday trip to Rock N Jump. Couldn't let this one pass:


Saturday, November 04, 2017

Spider

Just a cool photo of a spider that set up shop across our front steps (and Molly in the background).


Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Halloween Costumes



Another fun Halloween - as usual, we projected cartoons on our neighbor's garage for everyone to enjoy. Clara and Daisy (another kid from the neighborhood) went off on their own, Molly and I did a short round of trick or treating together, then settled in to watch the cartoons, give out candy, and chat with neighbors. 

The kids were unusually decisive in their Halloween costumes this year. Well, Molly is sometimes pretty decisive, and Clara much less so. But Molly decided in September that she would dress as Rosie the Riveter, and by October 1st she had gathered her materials. The last piece was figuring out how to do her hair. After watching a Youtube video, we practiced once, then did it three times: once for the Saturday night party, once for Halloween day at school, and a third time for the evening. I did a pretty durn good job with her hair, if I do say so myself! Just a lot of product, the use of Nona's hair dryer, and elbow grease. 

Clara's hair was also complicated, although it's hard to see in this picture. She went as Clara Barton, and wanted to get as close to authentic Clara Barton hair as possible. Again, the internet came to our rescue - we found a blog from a family that does historical reenactments and had pretty good instructions on doing Clara Barton hair. The rest of her costume she pulled together herself - including the first aid kit/candy bag, which she put together just an hour before going out trick or treating!