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:

Spider

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

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!