Month: June 2009

Photos published by Sonja, comments by Andy this time.

Finally, when everyone was feeling better and ready for a weekend hike, summer weather was over and the gray clouds stayed all weekend. But we still got in the car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to Mt. Tam (NOT visible in the distance):

It’s a curvy road, and I think I drove too fast and Leilani started getting sick. So we pulled over where there was a little stream. It turned out to be a pretty little area.

And Leilani found a redwood tree to hold up:

As we drove up, we reached the top of the clouds. At the parking lot near the peak, it was sunny and beautiful. We started by hiking a short half mile to the peak.

To the north it was all clear.

To the south, we could see nothing but clouds.

25 miles north of where we live, it is still spring and lots of flowers are blooming:

Even wild roses:

Since we didn’t want to go down into the clouds, we just hiked on the forest trails along the main ridge.

Sonja found the salamander, but we assume it’s not the one that lived at our house for a while:

When we stopped for a very late lunch, I showed Leilani how to smash acorns with a rock. After I told her that’s how the Indians made acorn flour to eat, she said she was an Indian and smashed a lot of acorns.

As you can see, lollipops are great motivators for Leilani on hikes.

In the end, it got cold in the late afternoon, Leilani got cranky and we walked back to the car.

We went to the Coyote Point Camp orientation. First Leilani went to the dead animals and correctly identified a blowfish, a snakeskin but had troubles with the fox, and got a lot of information there. Then Leilani and Mutti stayed with the teachers, Leilani drew some really nice pictures and I listened to the presentation. I really like their version of summercamp, they will try to teach the kids a lot about environmentally good choices.

Andy says: This is the first time I’ve noticed that Leilani draws full faces and figures, well legs and arms at least.

Playdough

We went back to chinatown on Tuesday the 19th

Leilani found her friends again, they were sitting on a different bench thought

Later on we took the cablecar to Fisherman’s Warf and walked over to pier 39 where we tried on the hats and bought bad chocolate. Andy came to pick us up, and ate really bad dinner, wish I could remember the restaurant, just to avoid it, but I think I’ll avoid all food items on Pier 39 in future… but the hats were awesome!

Another day, at the Coyote Point playground. Leilani invented a game: someone stands at the top, throws a little piece of wood down, and the two others have to compete to get it. Of course most the time she stood on top, but we took turns…

There is a big dragon… Leilani climbed it and held a speech up there.

I throw a lot of these photos out lately…

Pretty flowers at the playground

Playing in the small slide…

… and sliding down the big one

Best way to get Leilani to smile for the camera:

Leilani ran around barefoot, and poked a big hole into her foot. I doctored her and she got a princess band-aid and heal-vendel (heil-vendel, healing lavender) and a lot of Heile-Heile-Segen songs and felt a lot better right away…

But she insisted on getting 2 new band-aids every day for almost a week afterwards.

As I said in my previous post… photoshopped a lot… Invitation for Leilani’s Summer Party

And Leilani? Does her kind of photoshopping

Saturday was the first day Andy got up again, after this photo the hat stayed on though…

Leilani loves beaches, cold or not.:

Leilani took this photo of us.

We had some leis that we wore on our trip back from Kauai – and for us it is custom to give the dried flowers to a river or the ocean, and with every flower that we throw we send a blessing, or a good wish or gratitude. Leilani loves this, just as the rest of us, but in order to teach her, I had to speak my blessings rather than thinking them… that was a piece of work for me. But I am glad I did it…. We also hopes that the flowers (or at least the blessings) would swim all the way back to Kauai :-)

Sunday we went to Big Basin to hike and see redwoods. Actually, we went to release a salamander that we found living under a planter on our deck. How he got there, we don’t know. But he left before we could take him to his new home.

We stopped at a Hwy 1 fruit stand to buy some strawberries on the way down. Sonja carried them, but they didn’t last long.

Andy spotted a beautiful foxglove…

…and then an even prettier fairy (yesterday I decided to veg out in front of the computer for the last 2 hours of the day and do nothing… I am sick again and so is Leilani, and we had a very stressful day, so I relaxed at night and photoshopped a lot…)

The purplest iris we found in a long time… outside of Maurice’s yard that is.

Finally we got to the redwoods:

We found this lunchspot near the Alder campground, and Leilani was not inclined to eat… we had to put every bite in her mouth because she liked the water and playing so much that she would not stop. It was also pretty hard to make her leave…

Lunch desert were lolipops

Later we went to Santa Cruz, to have Dinner with Lisa, but on the way we stopped at Natural Bridges where Mutti and I took a short walk while Leilani slept in the car and Andy played on the iPhone.

What’s a Hundi? German for a little dog. But I better start at the beginning.

Andy got me a Roomba for mother’s day. Used, from Craigslist, with a dead battery, wrapped in a brown paper bag and no card attached. See this short video. (I then sent him to buy flowers but forgot to send Leilani along to help him pick out the right ones :-) I don’t want to complain. I really like it, I always wanted one, and I am geeky enough that I am fascinated with it’s navigation algorithms. And out house is a lot cleaner now. Anyway… Leilani was even more fascinated. She loves the Roomba, and she named it “Hundi”. Daily she asks “Can we let the Hundi run around a little?” Took me a while, but I finally asked why she named it Hundi: “It runs around by itself and the cats are scared of him” (followed by an evil laugh) The cats are not really scared, but they prefer not to be in the same room and stay out of it’s way.

And why Elmo? That’s unrelated, I am just too lazy to do 2 separate posts. I read her a story, and after this page

I said: “Boy, she sure talks a lot. Do you know anyone that talks that much?” Leilani thought for a moment and then her face brightened. She answered “Yes, Elmo!”