10 Things We Did on Memorial Day Weekend

1. Jonathan and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary, which was last Tuesday. After the boys went to bed, we went out for dinner at what is probably our favorite restaurant in town, then met some friends downtown for a treasure hunt. Yes, a treasure hunt. With clues, and a map, and counting paces, and pirates. And running. Too much running. We didn't win, but we beat a number of the whipper snapper college student teams, and then we watched Goonies, which was supposed to start at midnight but actually started later after prizes and things and OH MY GOD WE WERE SO TIRED. But good tired.

Here's Jonathan, at the theater, posing with for a quick photo with Jack Black. No action shots of the treasure hunt, because of all the running.

2. We slept in while the boys watched a movie - 3 days in a row. Usually this is a special treat reserved for Sundays, but did I mention about the movie-that-started-after-midnight? Yeah. No one got dressed before 9 all weekend, and 10 was not unusual. As a family that usually is out the door before 8, this is a big deal for us. Here they are today sometime after we clothed them:

3. We picked up half a pig worth of frozen pork from the meat locker on Saturday. We had ordered it from Windsor Family Farm a while back, and even went to visit the farm when my mom was here back in April. The boys had a blast that weekend. There were pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits... and a trampoline.
If you're in the Bay Area, I highly recommend you check it out. And if you're not, I still recommend finding a local farm to buy meat from (or vegetables, or cheese, or whatever): see what a quick search on Local Harvest shows in your neck of the woods.

Baby roosters, by the way? Hilarious. Not really big enough for either the feathers or the attitude they walk around with.

I'm not sure the boys get the connection between these pigs and the meat, but... we'll get there.

4. On Saturday, we grownups went to sleep the earliest we can remember - I think we were both in bed around 8, and frankly, I wasn't functioning all that well before that, even after napping with Graham in the afternoon. Putting recycling in the trash, trash in the recycling - it was madness. Did I mention the midnight movie?

5. We took the boys to see a movie on Sunday - Chimpanzee. It was... okay. A little more death and violence than I expected, but the boys were okay with it.

6. After nearly 2 years in our new house, we finally had a fire in the fireplace. And the living room kind of smells like wood smoke now. Yes, the flue works, but the fire didn't take on the first try and there was a lot of kindling involved.

7. We went to a baseball game. The San Jose Giants minor league team, known (at least at our house) for their giant orange gorilla mascot, Gigante. This is supposed to be the 3 guys watching the game, but Finn's cotton candy bag decided to grab a piece of the action.

And like last summer, there were plenty of inflatables.

We left early, but not before sampling some ice cream, churros, and lemonade - in addition to the cotton candy.

8. We made muffins. Finn would want me to tell you: he can crack an egg into a bowl without breaking the yolk.

9. We did yardwork. Jonathan dug up what's probably the biggest bamboo root I've ever seen. I weeded 'til I could hardly stand. The menfolk transplanted Finn's pumpkin plant from indoors to outdoors. And Finn and Graham picked our pea plants completely clean of snowpeas. And ate them all out in the yard. I think I snagged two.

10. And tonight - Mad Men!

Eclipsecation? Vaclipsetion?

Our family drove 5 hours away from our house this weekend, the better to see the solar eclipse on Sunday. That's normal, right?
We had to leave a little late on Saturday so that the grownup half of the family could go to a wedding reception first, which meant that we rolled into our destination - Redding, CA, right in the center of the next day's eclipse path, around 10:30 p.m. The boys' normal bedtime is around 7:30. Finn conked out slightly after the dinner stop, as planned, but Graham managed to stay awake until at least 9:30. ("I see a black spot, Daddy. Is that space?" "No Graham, that's a mountain. Go to sleep.")
Jonathan had selected Turtle Bay Exploration Park and the adjacent Sundial Bridge as our day's entertainment/eclipse viewing spot. He chose well. We saw a fish feeding, a wild animal show (a barn owl flew right over our heads! and a hawk! and a vulture!), and the "model river" area before heading out for lunch and a nap.

Then the boys went swimming. Bonus points for getting to wear the goggles IN THE WATER, instead of just around the house.

Then it was back to the park/bridge for parrot feeding and the eclipse. I was impressed with how well Finn did with the parrots - two decided to land on him at once, when I was maybe 8 feet from him, and he kept his cool. But I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a fan.
By the time the eclipse started, we were all pretty hot and tired - it was around 90 in Redding that day. And since it was about an hour from the beginning of the eclipse to the peak, the boys were bored with it long before we were. They liked to put on their cardboard glasses now and again, and told us what they saw, and they humored us with the pinhole viewer, but... yeah.

Not everyone is able to dress for an eclipse. My husband? Heck, yeah.

We didn't have a camera with us that was fancy enough to figure out what it was looking at, even through the eclipse glasses. But the lens flares showing the progress of the eclipse were pretty cool. (See the teeny bright circles/crescents?)

It was a large and fun crowd at the bridge. It was definitely an eclipse viewing destination - lots of people were from out of town, and one family we sat next to for a while was on a day trip... from Seattle. Today I found out that I guy I work with was there on the same bridge - we just didn't see each other. It was awesome time, and totally worth both the drive and the whining of our children. I'm sure some day they'll agree with us.

The next day we decided to check out Shasta Caverns before heading home. Silly us, we thought they would like it. Not so much, even though we did see the bats Finn had been so excited about. Basically, they would have been more than happy to leave just about right after we went in - apparently they found it scary (not the bats, just the empty cave). But we cajoled and bribed them through their doubts, and it was SO worth it. Neither photo nor video quite captures the size and awesomeness of the last chamber, but I tried.

The boys mostly liked the boat ride.

And the miners' helmets we got them as souvenirs. (I mean really, how do you NOT buy those helmets?!)
And then we went home. Five-ish hours, only two stops. 1.5 movies. A new and miraculous record for our boys.
So Tuesday morning we walked into our child care center, after missing a day of school, and no matter how much Finn whined *in* the caverns, he had brought the brochure to show off to all his friends. Jonathan hears him lecturing about stalactites, "See these? These are actually ALIVE." So at least the first half of the whole "living cave" thing stuck. Just not the whole "but not like a plant or animal" part.
And then one of Graham's teachers asked him "where were you yesterday?" And he replied "In a cage!!" Cave, Graham. A CAVE.

P.S. Hotel rooms with sliding doors between the kids and us? Awesome. But next time, can they have the DVD player, and can we have the fridge?

Skinned Knees

The weather has been quite pleasant here lately (well, I guess that isn't such a surprise, sorry) and the boys have been wearing a fair amount of shorts and t-shirts. Scrapes and scabs aplenty! This is actually less "costly" for Finn than wearing pants, since he tends to rip holes in the knees with regularity, which costs us money and time for patches or new pants. That or he can look like a little hobo who wears rags for clothes. It happens. Finn is now 4 1/2 years old, as of the 13th. We're now getting him a little involved in organized activities, which has its pluses and minuses. The minuses are that things cost money and we have to drive him there! But so far he's done a version of soccer with strong parent participation, and tonight was his first swimming lesson in a long time. (We'd done some water-babies type stuff in the past, but it had been a LONG time.) He did great! The only problem from his perspective was that it was only 30 minutes.
He's very proud of his new swimsuit that says "Totally Jawsome" with a shark's mouth. Graham and Finn are really getting along pretty well these days, and while they do play pretty rough, they make each other laugh a lot. Graham can apparently laugh even while getting manhandled as I tell Finn to leave his brother alone. At some point the laughter turns to tears, of course! In this orange (the official color of Fortney Boys, LLC) photo, I think they are both being mice. Graham is "Super Mouse" while Finn is "Flash Mouse."

Obviously here they are "Batman" and "Tiny Batman."  The warm weather has brought out the backyard hammock as well. While last year they were good about not playing on it, this year, not so much. If you turn the volume up to 11 you can hear them giggling. I took the movie from our bedroom window.

Why is this here? We have a lot of snails and slugs in our yard. This one is only about 2 inches. The much rarer banana slugs (never seen in our yard, yet) are more like 6-8 inches.