Happy Holidays 2009!

Season's greetings to you! We hope you have had a wonderful year and are looking forward to an even better 2010. This year has brought many changes as many of you probably know. We finally finished remodeling our house and sold it. Fortunately the Berkeley market remained strong and it was sold quickly. We moved to Fairfax, a small town about 30 miles northwest of Berkeley. Although we were hesitant to move from Berkeley for so many reasons, we have really enjoyed settling in here.

Douglas has had the biggest adjustment since Berkeley has been his home base since 1985. But now he enjoys a slightly easier commute with no bridges. Things are well at San Quentin, relatively speaking. The mental health department just moved into a new building so now he is set up in a nice office with bay (and, of course, prison) views.

I have not managed to find a job since moving but I am enjoying a break after the big move. Noble is still at home with me most of the time so that keeps me fully entertained. I have also been spending time in Mahala's class for art and cooking. I also continue to master the art of allergen-free cooking for the sake of Noble who continues to have his many food allergies.

Mahala has started kindergarten now and, to our surprise, she immediately loved it and adjusted well. She took Bharathanatyam (Indian) dance lessons this year and hopes to do gymnastics and soccer next year. She continues to be my sous chef - cutting fruit, taking charge of the mixer and cracking eggs. She dislikes pink and princesses, enjoys playdates without mommy and her relationship with her stuffed sea otter has gone from constant physical attachment to almost total neglect, unless someone else touches Ottie, at which time we get to see jealous rage (Noble knows just how to push her buttons). Mahala got her first adult molar earlier this year and has her first wiggly tooth!

Noble has recently started preschool. He goes to two partial days each week, and is still adjusting. He is a happy kid and the family clown. He is very talkative but you need a code book to understand him. For example, the letter "s" usually comes out as "l" (he eats 'loup', wears 'lirts' and 'leeps' in his bed!). We all find it pretty amusing and that's probably why you might find Mahala sounding like a two-year-old. Noble completed potty training, loves wearing his new hand-me-down pink rain boots and eats only because he wants to grow tall enough to ride his new balance bike.

The kids share a room and a bed which seems to have worked out pretty well. Sometimes they fall asleep holding hands but then again, sometimes Mahala walks out of their room and says "he's talking too much" or "he kicked me." They have begun playing 'let's pretend' games (e.g., "we're building a boat out of pillows") which is really sweet. Mahala ususally makes up the rules and for some reason he usually follows them. From this role play they have developed two formal games: "Buckamelicuck" and "Gamaicga." Don't worry if you can't pronounce it-it's their special language.

We have had a great year with lots of time off to go to India, Las Vegas and San Diego with my family and Lake Shasta and Los Angeles with Douglas's family.

We hope to be in touch with you throughout the new year. I am always available at sheebapeter@hotmail.com and Facebook. Douglas is at douglaspfrank@hotmail.com. For live action of some crazy kids we are also on Skype. So besides this blog, there will always be a way to find us!

Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, Happy Hannakuh, Happy New Year and all the rest!

With much love,
Sheeba, Douglas, Mahala and Noble

christmas at the esparzas

we had a wonderful christmas down in newbury park with deena, gil and the boys. we arrived the day before, as did grandma and papa. by christmas dinner, gil's mom, david, karen, kayla, and david, geri, chuck, cami and colette, as well as grandma georgia, susie, bob, amber and ryan had joined us.
grandma and papa with our gracious hosts, gil and deena

cousins playing 'spoons'....kayla, kendall, david, colette, mahala, spencer, tanner and camille

always abuse for cousin tanner!

santa did well

grandpa lee

we will miss grandpa lee.

may he be at peace.

grace cathedral

this is one of douglas's favorite spots in the city: grace cathedral and the labyrinth outside of it. he could not join us since he went down to los angeles to be with his grandfather, but mahala promised to tell him all about the choir we saw and about how good they both were at following the labyrinth.

noble just watched...

the kids had their first santa experience of the year this past sunday. but, hmmmm...who's missing from this photo? poor noble was too scared of jolly ol' nick to join in the photo! mahala was beside herself-we don't usually get photos with santa so this was really special for her. she told santa that she wants a book about sea otters (wow that's easy!) and that next year when we are in a place that allows pets, that she wants a pet lizard.

new technique to make them laugh

"reading"

one of noble's favorite books "brown bear brown bear what do you see?" is very repetative and here noble is "reading" it to aunty seena on skype. it goes "purple cat purple cat what do you see? i see a white dog looking at me" and so on.

desperate

we are vowing to take our kids to the snow this year. look at how desperate they are...it's 70 degrees but they just want to wear their snow attire.

hooked on phonics

mahala's writing skills have really been improving and she loves writing which is nice to see. she has been sounding out words and writing them out phonetically-and you will see great examples of that here! she has labeled each sticker and did this as a surprise for us. "toucan" is "tocan", "seal" is "seyl" and "happy face" is "hapefas". she was really proud that she could do this-and of course, it surprised us that she could get this far.

10.0 from all of the judges

we just discovered "kids choice" time at a gym nearby, kids get to play on all of the gymnastics apparatus for an hour on saturday mornings. now guess who wants to take lessons?

mahala is 5!

proud grandparents

lion fun

since we stayed at the MGM in vegas, lions were the theme. mahala and noble were able to get this photo of them petting a lion cub and we got to watch the lion feeding-only glass separating the kids faces from the hungry lions. the kids were very excited about all of this needless to say!

museum hopping

since we are members of the children's museum here in the bay area, it allowed us to get into childrens museums down on san diego so we went to three-yes, three. all were very different but great in their own way.

the skirball with it's huge noah's ark exhibit with animals made from found objects

the san diego children's museum-hip and modern-with messy painting, rock climbing and cool hand-powered chariots to ride around on

and finally mr pennypickle's museum with various kooky inventions like this piano that plays sounds of other instruments

vegas baby!

aaaah, the strip. we finally made it to vegas of all places! we met my parents there as well as seena, eric and quinn. we stayed at the MGM Grand and took illegal pictures of our kids at the slot machines. we saw cirque du soleil and the hoover dam as well. it was a fun trip but it was much better hanging out in san diego after our two days in vegas. at least now say that we have been there...

manor harvest festival

halloween at manor school was simplified for the kindergarteners...they were woodland creatures and made their own costumes complete with wings. the whole schol got together for performances by each class and for a parade.

hallween 09

this year mahala wanted to be a dinosaur. THEN i realized my sewing machine was buried somewhere in storage. not to worry though-i had my glue gun! and i thought noble could be a caveboy since that was a REALLY easy costume to make! mahala picked her fabrics (insisting that the dino have stripes, not dots like i suggested, in sparklely felt). we took part in the fairax town parade which was along the downtown route and involved trick or treating at the local businesses. it ended at the park in a grove of redwoods lit up and decorated for the event. the we went trick or treating for a short time on the official trick or treating street-complete with lot of decorations and lights, drumming paraders and some pyrotechnics even!

downpours = puddle jumping!

after school today i decided to let the kids go for it in the puddles. it was a crazy rainy day-maybe 8 or 9 hours straight of pouring rain. this made for some great puddles. noble did not want to take off his boots at all today (although i made him!) so it was a fun 30-40 minutes of puddle jumping. when daddy came home noble yelled "puddle jumping! puddle jumping!"

gospel flats farm fieldtrip

manor school kindergarten class #2 visited gospel flats farm in bolinas today and had a wonderful time with farmer mickey, a fourth generation farmer. they have a mostly fruit and vegetable farm (but they do have some animals), an educational mobile boat-on-wheels that teaches everyone to eat local and a farm stand. the kids got to "harvest" sunflower seeds, chard and zucchini (the latter to feed the pigs and rabbits). noble even got to come as an honorary kindergartener. we bought some produce and flowers to take home with us. the kids ate fresh apples on the way home. i chauferred 4 girls, noble and one other mom. good thing for the extra mom!

cousin abuse

i was too busy videotaping to stop this abuse of the youngest cousins on the oldest one :)

sports bar

after kendall's race we (the franks, the esparzas and the peter-franks) went to a sports bar in palo alto. you'll see in the photos that noble enjoyed the pool table, mahala was the last of all the cousins to finish her "bar" food, and douglas was none too happy-he had to sit through a painful cal game on the big screen!

time-out nap

his time-outs are only 2 minutes long but he was so tired (and cranky) that he managed to fall asleep after one minute of his time-out in his room!

skype fun

auntie seena and noble have a special singing event when they are on skype together. (notice seena is video taping as well!) they take turns singing into their "microphones" and noble of course likes to do it "lowly" a.k.a. "loudly"

fairfax fair

today we went to the fairfax fair int he fairfax ballfield EVEN THOUGH IT WAS HOT! fortunately, we stayed under tents doing art projects, etc. good music and so many activities for the kids. in the photos, the kids are making wood mosaics and then all of us painted banners which they put up every year (accumulating more and more each year i assume). douglas really got into his-he finished last out of all of us :)

and hours later, we headed out to buy and air conditioner for our apartment for the warm week ahead....

cal? vt? cal? vt?

noble is has not yet been crowned a "hokie" but maybe this year i will have to splurge on some virginia tech gear! but for now, noble will be wearing this shirt every saturday for the rest of the year!!

sleeping never gets old!

now you'll know what we all do around here. in some combination or another, we are always sleeping!

"our" magazine spread

so to be totally goofy, as our house was in "pending" status (see photo) we decided to take family photos that would of course be used in any great home design magazine...you know the ones....the family sits happily in their beautiful flawless house! well, we gave it our best shot. (no real photographer-just me running back and forth using the camera timer)