Summertime!

Since Phoebe's birthday it does feel like things slowed down a bit and summer truly began. Our days are more leisurely... although what that really means is that I put off grocery shopping to the next day because the kids are fighting leaving the house... and I don't have the gumption to argue. They've enjoyed playing together again... so, I skip grocery shopping and do what's next on my chores list. Much of which, these days, is outside in the garden. I'll show you some of that later... in case you're interested... ;)

We've been doing some fun stuff too. I think I mentioned that we took the kids to Children's Fairyland in Oakland for Phoebe's actual birthday. It was fun... I'll just give you a few pics, although I took a bunch.
There were these boxes where you could use a key to start a fairy tale story. They were everywhere... and the kids had fun using them... although some of the speakers were so bad that you could barely understand them.

We watched a puppet show...

But my favorite... was the Alice in Wonderland stuff... you went down a slide into a tunnel...

...that had neat murals on the walls... and windows to the outside where there were scenes from the story...
...and you came out of the tunnel into a card maze!

Now, I don't know about you... maybe you didn't love Alice in Wonderland the way I did... but that was something pretty awesome! They had another tunnel, a fairy music tunnel... which was really beautiful to look at... but the percussion instruments in a concrete tunnel wasn't well thought out... ugh...

The favorite play spot was the western town...

The only thing about the place was that the people were kinda silly...

OK... that was more than a few pictures... but whatever...
We've also gone to check out some music at the park... there were a couple of bands... but this was a local kid who wrote some of his own music... he was pretty good!

Phoebe trying to clap while holding on to her drink!

Then we went to my mom's house and had a great time spying wildlife! This was a mother deer with two babies... and a bird on her head that didn't go away! It was there the whole time we watched her.
Nora trying out being a deer... although she really wanted antlers too...

And we went to this waterfall/pond...

...and Phoebe caught a frog! One of the tiniest I'd ever seen... and I was totally surprised that she was able to catch it.

But once she did... that was all she wanted... more frogs!

We also saw wild turkeys and a COYOTE!

I know... what the hell is this picture??? I took a picture of the coyote... not only on my phone, but into the setting sun. Or maybe it was just my excitement screwing with the exposure... but I had three people standing next to me saying... "oh look, it's a deer"... and I just want you to note that the animal cresting the hill and walking into the light of the apocalypse was, in fact, a COYOTE! Well, in this picture it could probably also pass as a monkey... so maybe I can't really rest my case. I should have taken video...

Of course, if this is the best photo I could take just imagine what kind of video I would have been able to present... it woulda looked like the bigfoot videos... or worse... The Blair Witch footage... sheesh...