Lorien's turn to see the poppies!

Lorien told us she had been watching all of her friend's Instagrams filling up with pictures of them in all the poppies here at home.  We thought it would be worthwhile to take her up into the hills for her turn to see all the poppies.  

Again, we had perfect weather!  Warm and sunny, blue skies forever.

Once again, the poppies didn't disappoint!

We had photoshoots galore. 

We got up on the ridgeline on the west side of Los Trampas.  Will showed us a little cut over EBMUD land to this super cool rock formation. 

The rocks were all pocked from the wind and a perfect little window was created with a bench/couch for a perfect view of San Francisco!

Something was blooming on that side of the ridgeline that really got to Colter and Will.  They were sneezing and their eyes were itching like crazy.  We hoofed it over to the other side of the ridgeline as fast as we could.  From there it was a top of the world walk over to Fort Anderson.  It was my favorite kind of ridgeline hike.  Views for days and no steep up or downhill climbs. 

Fort Anderson treated us well with cool shade and mossy seats to rest on. 

As usual, it was a lovely hike and worth every minute we got to spend as a family and out in our beautiful parks. 

Home sweet home...

This COVID 19 sure has made the world a weird place.  When everything shut down here, it shut down in LA for Lorien too.  Her school moved classes online temporarily and then permanently.  She got to keep working her brand new job at Chipotle.  She lives in an apartment with a lease instead of a dorm.  While her friends at different schools had their dorms closed, classes moved online and were forced back home with their parents, Lorien got to keep her independence.  I've been really thankful she gets to stay in LA.  Most of my friends who have their college kids home are disappointed.  The kids are not getting to have the college experience they want to have and parents are having to readjust to parenting grown children living back at home.  Having Lorien stay in LA, even with the world shutting down, has helped her keep some independence and sense of normalcy in an already weird freshman year for her.  However, Lorien did get a little homesick in the last couple of weeks so we decided to bring her home for ten days or so for a break.  We've missed her too!  

It is nice to have the whole family together again!

School at home...

A few Sunday nights ago Wyatt suggested we each take turns teaching something to everyone as part of school.  Wyatt decided he would teach us sword fighting as a useful skill in the apocalypse.  I agreed to the scheme and ordered six foam swords off amazon.  While we waited for the swords to ship, Adell taught a class on snakes, and Colter taught us about wild cats.  Aaaannnnddd we haven't had another lesson since.  The swords arrived but we are still without a fighting lesson...although plenty of play has been happening.  It will all work out, I'm sure.  

Getting Colter to write more than a few words is really hard.  We've started tying his screen time to the number of words he writes. 

Here are a couple of pictures of Colter and Adell's lessons. 

Along the ridge line...

After hiking up to Fort Anderson last week, I wanted to get up on the ridgeline this week.  Will planned out a really long hike taking the full ridge from Danville to Alamo in the east side of Los Trampas.  We headed up on a warm day after parking one car in Alamo and driving back down to Danville to start the hike.  The weather was warm but not hot.  We had a really steep ling climb to start out that got us all sweaty!  Right off the bat, we could see the whole valley.  We could see Will's office in San Ramon, our house, the kid's schools, everything!  It was beautiful  

Wyatt reprised his role as trailblazer and leader. 

The poppies were gorgeous!  We are having some kind of super bloom right now.  Will was talking to an EBMUD land management guy on our last hike.  He said he had been up in the hills for the last 30 years and not seen poppies blooming like this.  We feel pretty lucky to be seeing all these poppies so close to home. 

We went up and down the hills over the ridgeline.  The views were spectacular.  We could really see the poppies over on the other ridgeline on the west side.  Will estimated our hike would be about 8 miles from end to end.

We stopped at an old favorite snack stop.

Poor Will, hauled our snacks and water and he helped stragglers up the inclines.  We didn't bring enough water for how warm it was and he sacrificed his portion to thirsty kids.

Really it was poor Clare.  She hurt her shoulder dancing a week or so ago.  She just needs to keep it immobilized and it should heal.  But as we were hiking down a dry, loose, gravely hill Clare slipped and threw her hand out to break her fall.  She caught herself with the arm and shoulder that was injured and really hurt herself again.  We tried to comfort Clare but there wasn't a lot we could do...and we still had three more miles to hike.  Boo.

As we did the up and over another hill for a 360-degree view of the valley I realized I could use my tanktop as a sling for Clare.  I wish I could give credit to some first aid I might have learned in girls camp but I'm pretty sure they would have told me to let Clare deal with her own arm rather than have me bare my mid-drift.  No, taking off my shirt was my own original idea! 

Our last hill gave us the best views!  The poppies were as beautiful as ever and we could see the whole valley.  We were almost done with the hike and really tired. 

We missed the turnoff for the end of our hike and ended up adding on about a quarter of a mile.  Then we had to walk through a gated neighborhood and down the road about another mile to get to the car.  The whole hike ended up being nine and a half miles!  We were tired, thirsty, hungry, and triumphant.  We earned burgers and fries for sure!

Motivation...

A friend told me as a nation we weren't facing a shortage of toilet paper or bleach during the COVID 19 shut down.  The real shortage in America is motivation.  I had to agree.  For years, I've been saying I can't get to XYZ because I am too busy doing kid stuff.  Now...I have nothing but time and I am still not getting XYZ done!  Truthfully, there are lots of reasons I am not doing XYZ but I can't blame busyness anymore.  

Well, I finally found the motivation to get one big project done.  Lorien texted last week saying she wanted to come home for a little bit.  She was supposed to go to Utah for a friend's wedding for her spring break.  The wedding got canceled due to COVID 19 so she didn't have a spring break.  We figured she was more than due for a trip home.  Over Thanksgiving and Christmas, she stayed in Clare's room.  Lorien and Clare are not great roommates.  So we decided this time, Wyatt and Lorien would share a room.  I told Wyatt he'd be sharing a room but I'd help him clean up his room, organize it, and paint it before Lorien came!  He was not really interested but went along to humor me.  Really he said no at first then said OK to which I said: "Good because I was going to make you do it anyway." 

We got to work hauling every single thing out of Wyatt's room.  He has been in this room since we moved into the house in November of 2016...that's almost four years!  He had toys and school projects he hadn't touched since he moved into the house. 

With all of his treasures moved into the hall we cleaned the room, plastered any holes in the wall, tested paint colors, picked a color, and painted the room.  That was all one day!

Here is a picture of *some* of his stuff from his room now in the hall.

We painted until 10:30 at night.  Wyatt picked a cool smokey blue-gray color for his walls.  We had it lightened for three walls and did one wall the full dark color.  It turned out really well!  He has great taste in wall color (and an excellent teacher).

The next day we sorted all of his stuff, deciding what to keep, what to toss, what to donate, and what to put in storage.  We rearranged his furniture and finally put up a shelf he got for his 10th birthday to display his treasures.  Way to go, mom.  Hanging the shelf took almost as long as painting the whole room!  It was crazy, the angle needed to get the screws in was ridiculous.  We had to call it close enough until we could get a special screwdriver to finish it.

It wasn't without little adventures and hiccups but we did finish and Wyatt's room LOOKS AMAZING!  I am so glad we did the project.  Wyatt deserves a clean, cool-looking room...especially if he has to share with Lorien for a little while.

Let's just see a before and after right next to each other.  

Now, I have to take care of the last bit of crap in the hall.  Its just stuff he doesn't want and we can't donate (thanks COVID 19) yet or stuff that needs to be stored in the garage.  It is always the last little bit of stuff that takes the most motivation and time.