Eclipse!

They're not the greatest photos, but they were fun to take. The kids and Zach are down in Carmel Valley, while I'm up here taking care of Mary. But I had a nice time visiting with folks while we ooohed and ahhhed over the eclipse. And I enjoyed using their special dark glass and funky contraptions to watch the progress. But my favorite (and the simplest) way to watch it was in the shadows of the trees and the shadows of my hand (last photo).

It was also funny to see how the kids reacted - they thought all the gear was tons of fun, and kept saying "yeah, I saw the moon!". 

Some light

Last Saturday my mother & I enjoyed a mother-daughter cooking class. It was a ray of light in an otherwise dark week. 

Nona rocks!

My mom is such an inspiration. She has a vision for her container garden and keeps on powering through to make it happen. The other day I was feeling sooo tired that I lay down to rest. Next thing I knew I heard the power drill going and looked outside to see my mom working away on her wine barrels. It inspired me to get up and going.
And of course the kids enjoy "helping" her whenever they can. :)

Indy & Lulu

Enjoying some quiet on their tower.

Plates!

Enjoying our "new" plates and the lovely wark weather last weekend. (The plates are from Mary P., who got them from Mary G., aka Nona, who bought them, one at a time, when I was in high school, from the store next to the pet store that I worked at).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Sofia Zander" <szander@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 19, 2012 6:40 PM
Subject: Plates!
To: "Mary Papadopoulos" <maryalzire@gmail.com>, "Mary Gabardi" <mgabardi@gmail.com>

The beautiful plates, hard at work. Thank you!
Love s

Garden-in-a-Hand

Made at the beach...

Easter Egg Hunt

After days of the kids asking "when do we get to paint eggs?" and "can we have an easter egg hunt now?" we finally did it today! I guess the nice thing about not officially celebrating easter is that we can celebrate it when we have time! So, I found the all-natural egg-dyes that I had bought on sale last spring after easter, and we went to the corner store to get some eggs. And we made some pretty nice looking eggs, if you ask me! I even blew out the fresh eggs so that I wouldn't have to boil them. We also had a couple of our own fresh eggs already boiled that we colored and added to the mix. And a couple of neighbor kids came over and joined the fun!