long weekend fun

Grandad Joe came down to celebrate his 60th year with us this weekend and we thought it was a perfect excuse to get out on the water! It had been a little while since our last trip out to the islands. After the Saturday farmer's market, uber-touriste surrey bicycles along the Ventura waterfront, yummy fish tacos, and a night of babysitting to enable A&Z to attend a lovely wedding for my colleague and her betrothed from the cast of Workaholics* in Malibu, we got up wicked early and headed to Island Packers at the Channel Islands harbor on Sunday. It was a little brutal after dancing up a storm** the night before, but in the end well worth it!

The sun came out to greet us on the boat as we neared the islands:
After a foggy morning start:
And which Island you ask?


This is actually the best shot if each of us in one frame:The birthday boy and his grandson hamming it up:
Micah took this shot of us:
We easily hiked around the small eastern island:
The iconic arch, frequently sighted from Ventura on a clear morning:
On the boat ride back Levi would not stay still for a single minute. He particularly delighted in hurling himself to the edge of the boat rail with the keel of the boat.
It was real fun.
These guys also played along the side of the boat too:
Sadly this was the first ride out and back to the islands that I did not see any dolphins...

Skipper Levi:
One of the great things about visitors who are into photography is we get some great shots of the boys:
All in all a great (exhausting) weekend.
*shameless promotion. You should watch it, but don't expect to get it unless you are in the prime demographic of males 18-24; Zack and I are apparently 19 year old males because we laugh our asses off.
**Actually I am not a 19 year old male. I'm old. I do not remember hurting myself, but I awoke to a partially immobilized left knee from some imperceptible dance injury. Sigh. This does not bode well for the palm springs girls' weekend later this month.

Montessori: the next episode

Just as we ushered in our youngest, it was time for our eldest to leave. Back in June Levi turned two and he started his tenure at Montessori Learning Center. Pretty nice to have your older brother around to show you the ropes...at least for a couple of weeks before the end of year picnic and his "graduation".
Here Micah says good-bye to his loving pre-school teacher Ms. Malika and the school's head, Ms. Anusha. These women are saints and have prepared our baby so well for kindergarten it is amazing.
Thankfully they have their next kid of ours to wrangle and help nurture into boyhood:

Have I mentioned that I love this face?

never-nude

You have excellent taste in television if you can appreciate this image. Zack claims he was not going for a Tobias look, "it just happened!" That's what you get for making cut offs while they are on a moving, rotating 5 year old.
And not to be out done by his brother in the "silly shot" category:

(I think he is picking a spidey wedgie)

Summer: In review

A recap on our busy lives the past few months. Hopefully anyone close to us will understand the frenetic pace we have been operating under and the extenuating circumstances life has presented that has made blogging, well pretty darn unimportant. That being said we would be remiss in not getting to at least 20 posts for the year of 2011!

We all aged a year older on June 1, 3, 5 & 9:

(licking birthday cake batter)
(licking birthday cake frosting)

And hair grew inches longer:

There were gross motor skills developed:

And speech development:

A running bug took hold of us:

There were even adult-only events at the Getty and the Ventura Theater:


There were good times at county fairs:

And sad/scary times:

Picnics on the beach:

Candy-plied road trips to camping amongst the big trees again:
(why yes, those are 5 life saver gummies on one thumb)


And fires to fight:

It was exhausting:
(asleep on bus route 18 in Berkeley)

Resurrected for the first day of kindergarten!

Hmmm...I guess it has been a while. So long in fact that our baby has matured to academic standing. Our first born had his first day of kindergarten today and it went just lovely. I am one proud mama, and even prouder that I did not shed a tear (there was never any concern that Micah would). Micah has been super excited about his school for months, approaching the whole affair with absolute conviction that he was going to love it.

Here he strikes a pose with his new robot backpack before we headed to (late) kindergarten.

Note to the State: could you please allow children to stay in school longer than 3 hours and 20 minutes right in the smack middle of the work day, please? Thanks, working mothers everywhere.

Waiting to go inside with his buddy Sawyer:

Despite his eagerness and excitement at home, I'd characterize his attitude as cool on the actual day. Just taking it all in with calm interest.
I watched (painfully) as his brunette table-mate vocalized her every thought and showcased her self-portrait publicly (she reminded me of a certain bossy brunette kindergartener 29 years ago). I predict she will suck him in and it will not be an auspicious seating arrangement. I always did get in trouble for talking in class.

The assignment was to draw your first day of school self-portrait:
Micah was apparently a green lego alien on his first day of school:

Now I also watched as the pretty blue eyed Russian girl sat next to him (the one in the adorable school-girl outfit I admired earlier) primly(and quietly) doing her drawing. Score Micah! She is pretty darn cute.
Micah also reports that they did not have to write any numbers or letters, contrary to his expectations.

Best part of the day: celebratory smoothie after-school:

Memorable quote of the day recorded for posterity to be thrown back in his face some day soon: "I wanted homework!"

A little spring yoga on the deck

A "little" being the operative word. All attempts to exercise, re-focus, de-stress or center ones' chakras are ultimately interrupted by some squabble over a hot wheel (why when there are so many damn cars must the argue over the same one?) or accident (you don't need THAT much toilet paper!) or a request ("May I have some water....what?"--will Please ever come out unprompted?)

But here we were at least peaceful for a few minutes:



And only because the hair is so awesome here in this action shot coming out of the pose...one more:

March in like a lion

I know exactly what day these photos were taken because it seems that the passage of time these days is not marked in Levi's developmental milestones, or Micah's progress in school or the simplicity of shared time together. Rather it is the next deadline at work, the next paper or proposal submission or experiment to run. I was on the phone minutes before these photos were taken negotiating details of a proposal budget. I was that mom on the phone--distracted. Serious.

I'm glad I finished the call and just lived the moment. Enjoyed my kids. De-stressed for 15 minutes before the tide came in and soaked Levi and my next duty called...