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....