Preschool grad

                                         

Colter spent his Tuesdays and Fridays this school year having home preschool with a couple of friends.  It was great!  He got to make better friends with Sofia and Eli and I got to have a little kid free time (when it wasn't my turn to teach).  It was mostly fun, learning how to be a good friend and a lot of mess making.  We will miss our preschool friends and teachers next year.  Eli and his family are moving to Florida this summer and Sofia and her family are moving to another city in the Bay Area.  

Big Sur

It was time for our annual pilgrimage down the coast to Big Sur.  We left early Saturday morning and headed south.  Lorien had left a day before we did (playing hookie from school) with the Wright's.  

Uncle Alan, Aunt Heather and their kids came down to camp with us.  We tried to simplify our Big Sur experience this time and were fairly successful.  We managed to whittle our camping gear down to fit into two big bins instead of one gigantic bin and two big ones.  It felt like a win for me.

Lorien pretty much becomes one of the Wright family while at Big Sur.  I took baby Willow for a walk around to find Lorien and say hi.

                                         

We all loved having baby Willow around.  She gave us something to coo at while sitting around the fire.  

                                          

We took a little hike up to some waterfalls Saturday afternoon.  There was a fire a few years ago down and Big Sur.  It is interesting to see the wild coming back after the fire.  

                                         

Last year, we bought a hammock to bring with us camping (only Big Sur).  This year it was another big hit with the kids.  They figured out how to swing each other really high!  I don't think any of the adults ever use the hammock to relax in...it is purely a toy for the kids.

                                         

Wyatt spent a lot of his time off with friends too.  It was great.  He mostly bought candy at the general store and tried to light things on fire around other family's campfires.  

                                         

It was another great Big Sur trip.  We only stayed one night and headed back home Sunday.  We left earlier than we usually do.  Other years we leave late at night, or at bedtime and have empty roads home.  This year we left after lunch and ended up sitting in traffic for most of the drive home.  It kind of stinks living in such a populated area sometimes.  

One of my friend's did send me a couple of pictures of Lorien.  I seriously do not see her over the weekend.  She is off having fun with friends and I think that is great.  It was nice to see what kinds of fun she is up to when she is away.

She has good friends and I love them.

                                         

Oh, the traffic was so bad, at one point we pulled off the road and went down to explore the seaside.  Well, Will, Colter and I went exploring...the bigger kids stayed in the car to watch the movie.  It was a cool look out spot.  Will climbed the rocks and Colter and I watched for bugs and birds.  You can see a pile of cars on the road to the left of Will's head.  Traffic.  Ugh.  

                                        

This might be the last year we do Big Sur.  The school calendar is changing and next year finals will be around Memorial Day weekend.  It will be hard to justify a weekend camping when our high schooler is supposed to be studying for finals.  Maybe we will try for a different weekend?

Open houses...

Don't tell my children...but...it is my least favorite time of the year.  Open house season.  Ugh.  Nothing like elbowing past 30 other parents to see all of your kids hard done school work...only to see the same school work come home in a big heap three days later.  Can't I just ooh and awe over the stuff on Friday, when they bring it home?  Maybe my dislike started four years ago, when I was as big as a whale, pregnant with Colter and Open House night was on my due date.  I was totally planning on getting a pass because I was in labor or had just had a baby.  Instead I waddled around room after room (we had three kids in Elementary school that year) looking at stuff I knew I was going to see again--real soon.  

Anyway,  this year, we skipped Wyatt's open house (yipee) and Lorien didn't really have one in High School.  She did have an orchestra performance and her art class had their work displayed on the same night (that worked out well).

                                        

Lorien's hand sculpture is the patched up one in the middle.  When she brought it home she went into my sewing room to get a pin and jabbed it into the finger saying "There, it is finally finished."  

Classy

                                         

Kindergarten Adell had plenty to show and tell.  She learned a lot this year and had a fantastic teacher, Mrs. Erickson.  Adell loved Mrs. Erickson and Mrs. Erickson loved Adell.  

                                         

Poor Clare had a fever.  She had missed the last two days of school and so we made her stay home from Open House.  She wasn't feeling well enough to go anyway.  We did go to her classroom and take lots of pictures so she could tell us what was what when we got home (yipee!).

                                         

And now, they are over.  Just a bunch of band performances and dance recitals to go.  

TRAMPOLINE!!!!

We wanted to get the kids a trampoline for Christmas last year.  The timing didn't work out.  So we ended up getting one around Colter's birthday.  We didn't say it was for his birthday--but it pretty much was.  The kids love it!  I love it!  They spend a lot more time outside.  Yay for dangerous yard toys!

Will spend a good hunk of his Saturday afternoon assembling the thing.  It was beautiful once it was all set up.  We got to meet our new neighbors because of the trampoline.  I think it is going to be a very good thing.  

                                         

Please bless that none of our neighbor's kids get injured on the trampoline.  

Amen.  

COA4 heart (how Colter spells his name)

          

Well, Colter has wanted to be four years old since he was 3 years and 3 months old.  For some totally unknown reason, 4 is his favorite number and has been for a while. (Actually, he will tell you that 44 is his favorite number--because it has TWO fours.)  He has been counting down the days with a paper chain for almost a month.  Finally, the big day arrived...sort of...we had to fool him on the day.  There were a couple of school events for the big kids on his actual birthday (May 19th) so we celebrated a day early.  We also decided to drive into Daddy's office and have the party there.  Will has been swamped with work and coming home early for kid events on every other day during the week.  We figured we would give him a break from the traffic and have Colter's party at the office.  Colter was totally down.                                

                                          

We loaded the car up with presents, cake, super hero plates and balloons and headed across the bay. 

                                          

We took over the conference room--like we know the CEO or something and set up shop.  

Colter was so happy to have some cake and finally open his presents.  I've had one of his presents wrapped and up in my closet for a month.  Colter has been dying to open that one in particular.  

He was delighted with every gift.  He would open it, scream out "OH I LOVE THIS SO MUCH" and run over to the gift giver to give them a big hug saying "THANK YOU, THANK YOU!"  It was adorable.

                                          

                                         

I think we could have given him a box of toothpicks and he would have been just as profuse with his thanks and love.  

                                         

After the party at Daddy's office we went out for Chinese food for dinner.  Colter and Adell love hot and sour soup.  It was a good choice.  

The next day being Colter's actual birthday, I managed to slip in a little lunch date with him before getting the kids from school.  He was happy to have more cake.  

                                         

Then on Friday we celebrated his birthday with his preschool friends (Eli and Sofia).  This guy got three birthday parties.  He is so lucky!  Happiest of Birthdays my baby Colter.  I love you and I am so happy you are four now!  

A Clark Shortcut

The first time I ever went up to the lake with Will's family (his Mother's side of the family) they all told me about the "Clark Shortcut" which is basically getting lost.  It is family lore, everyone has a story of taking getting lost, or turned around and calling it a shortcut.  We do our best to carry on family traditions and this weekend we took on the "Clark Shortcut".

We started out in the usual way.  Will planned a hike, where--if we took a small off shoot trail here and looped around there we could make the hike a loop instead of a "there and back".  For whatever reason, Will hates "there and back" hikes. We hiked up this crazy, big hill AND then started going back down again.  We should have known we were in trouble then.  

                                          

                                          

There were some spectacular views.  The hills are still pretty green and we could see a lot of the valley from various points in the hike.  

                                         

We trooped on and on and on.  We were all tired but persevered.  

                                          

At one point, we came around a corner and saw we were on a trail that we hike regularly...except this trail starts several miles south of where we started.  Oy.  

                                            

                                           

                                          

We also found some really cool rock formations to climb on.  It was one heck of a hike.  By the time all was said and done we had hiked over seven miles (our normal hikes are between 2 and 4 miles) and we all had blisters on our blisters.  I think my fitbit said we climbed the equivalent of 165 flights of stairs.  It was crazy.  Will ended up carrying 3/5ths of our family at one point or another.  He had to carry me down the very last hill (my knees were done).  Lorien carried Adell for most of the last mile.  It was such a hard hike!  The kids were amazing...tired but amazing.  I'm not sure if we will ever do the hike again...it was a doozie

Stanford, 10 years later.

Holy cow, I cannot believe it has been (almost) 10 years since Will finished graduate school at Stanford.  I guess I should believe it since Clare was born just a few months before Will graduated and she IS 10 years old now...so...the math adds up.  

Still.  Has it really been a decade?

We headed back to Palo Alto this past weekend to celebrate and reminisce.  It has been almost five years since we lived over on the Peninsula.  We miss a lot of things about the Peninsula, mostly we miss a lot of people but we are pretty happy over in the East Bay.  Anyway, Will attended a few events with classmates and our family went to the carnival.  It was great.  We saw plenty of old friends and loved walking around the Stanford campus again.  They did a big over haul of the Business School just after we left so everything was pretty new.   

The carnival is always so cool.  Fun booths, face painting, junk food, bubbles, petting zoo.  Fun!

The very best part of the carnival is seeing old friends and classmates.  Our friends, the Clarkes, came up from Columbia for the reunion.  Our kids are the same age and we love them all so dearly.

After the carnival we walked over to good old Escondido Village to remember where the kids were little.  

                                         

We have this same picture of Lorien and Clare when Clare was a little baby.  When did they grow up?

                                           

Colter and Adell got to see how luxurious life was with a gigantic sand box and play ground right out the back gate.  That place really was magical for little families.  

                                           

                                          

Of course, we had to recreate pictures and memories from yester-year.  

                                           

We got really lucky when we went over to the apartment we lived in when Clare was a baby.  The family who lives there now was out in the courtyard celebrating a birthday.  We got to meet them and they let us go back in our old house and nose around for a bit.  It was so cool to see again and remember all the amazing times we had in that little house.  

                                         

This afternoon we met up with the Clarkes again (or at least Alycia and Avery) for lunch and another quick visit.  It was a great reunion!