Pictures!

I’ve been meaning to post pictures for a while now, so here goes. Many of these were taken this past June when we were visiting my parents in my home town of Fort Bragg, CA.

Here’s Katie with the kids in a field in Fort Bragg at the annual Kite Flying Festival. She looks cranky because it was one of those summer days on the coast when the foggy sky is blazing white hot and she was getting blinded from squinting up at all the kites. Rio was flying a paper kite that he had just made. It was so amazingly windy that day and all these kids were flying these flimsy paper kites incredibly high and far. I tried to take a picture of some of the kites but they just looked like tiny dots against the gray sky.

This is a picture of Rory and I at Big River Beach in Mendocino. It was Rio’s 5th birthday, and we had all just gone out to eat ice cream. The wind was incredibly forceful and kept blowing sand all over the healthy snacks we packed to make up for the ice cream (gritty hummus, anyone?). This picture was taken shortly before Rory became completely encrusted with sand and tried to crawl into the incoming tide.

And here she is looking very grumpy about being removed from the riverbank. She didn’t seem to realize how utterly frigid the water was and really wanted to crawl into it and swim away. She was also mad that I wouldn’t let her fill her mouth with fistfuls of mud.

I’m not sure how I managed to take this picture of Rio making this amazing expression. All I can say is that he was at the beach doing one of his usual moves where he makes a rhythmic yowling/screeching sound while jumping and spinning in a circle at warp speed. It sounds kind of like lilting and looks a little like capoeira, but more desperate and feral. You just have to see it to believe it.

Here’s Rio riding a horse at “The Big Fun Fair” in Mendocino. He’s such a natural. The Big Fun Fair was awesome. I ran into the woman who ran the alternative school that I went to from the time that I was 6 until 11 years old. She was the main teacher there and I felt really close to her when I was a kid. It was neat to introduce her to my family and to talk to her about alternative education and homeschooling. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of her.

Snack time. I was planning to start weaning her this summer, but I don’t think she’s ready quite yet.

Ahh, a rare moment of complete quiet while Katie takes the kids to get bagels. 20 minutes of complete, uninterupted silence! What is the best thing I can think of to do with myself while home alone? Take a sleepy looking self-portrait while chillin’ on the couch to document the experience.

This one’s a little older, I think it was back in May or April, but it’s the best one I have of my dad with both my kids.

Hit it, Rio! In the background Susan is holding back Sophia, who is eager to give the alligator pinata a brutal beating as well. Of course, this pinata must have been made of steel-reinforced cardboard, because even after all the kids in the homeschooling group each took a dozen swings on it the poor thing was only missing a few green tissue paper scales and had no visible dents. I eventually had to rip it open and toss the baggies of dried apricots into the air, shouting  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Strawberries ripening in the sunshine on our porch. Yay for summer! Yum!