douglas's 44th birthday!

douglas (and david) returned from a visit to grandma georgia on his birthday. the kids missed him so much after the three day trip. it gave us time to make the banner and some chocolate covered bananas bites to celebrate!

project runway

mahala was thrilled to find douglas's old clothes up in her art house. "can we do ANYTHING we want with it?" she asked. they proceeded to make these awesome outfits. noble's is from a shirt and mahala's is from pants. i'd say they rival anything on the tv show 'project runway'. this photo was taken when they were supposed to be putting on their pajamas!

play ball!

kayla and david provided some much needed baseball training for mahala and noble. the video of david teaching noble is classic! even though you can't hear much, you can see how he is teaching him! and finally, the whole family watched the giants...as they lost....

easter at our home!

grandma and papa and the franks joined us for our first easter in our new house. we took advantage of the big yard to have an egg hunt. i look forward to future years when i can make it really hard for them! we had a meal of quiche, potatoes, roasted asparagus, artichoke dip, bread, salad and stuffed mushrooms and topped it off with a strawberry and cream cake. a veggie feast fit for many meat eaters!

recycling center field trip

noble and i joined the first graders for a field trip to the recycling center/dump today. marin county is nationally recognized for this place - they not only recycle but have a salvage area and a farm where the animals are fed food that grocery stores get rid of. highlight = peacocks everywhere!

mahala's first science fair

surprise surprise, mahala's science fair project had to do with salamanders! we did learn a lot about them - and we learned that the ones we find here are called 'california slender salamanders'.

easter egg time

of course we (ok, i) had to try some new dying techniques this year. oil marbelizing, rubber bands and using brown eggs to get dark colors were on the agenda. a little tricky for the kids but their real goal is to have plenty of eggs to find on easter morning.