Year: 2010

We visited Kelby and Belen at their beautiful house in Marin county. The kids got to play a little…

…and then we went on a very foggy hike…

…found cool plants: native Pacific Stonecrop between moss and lichens…

and a buried treasure (which we carefully reburied and left since we suspected some treasure hunt or geo caching game)

We finished the visit with a nice lunch.

09/19/2010

In a different post I described a day with Rosemary in SF, when Leilani was sworn in as a Junior Ranger. Seeing how much it means to her and how much she treasures her badge I thought it deserved its own post.

In the SF Maritime museum were beautiful murals and they had a treasure hunt on for children.

Leilani loved it and found most of the items.

Since she did so well the friendly ranger gave her another booklet to her to find more things, and to note sounds and try things. These are the cover and a few pages from the activity booklet.

(unfortunately all the nice ocean sounds were overpowered by construction noises)

…and there was a big reward at the end. Leilani was sworn in as a junior ranger, to protect the parks and the environment and received a ranger badge. She repeated the long and complicated oath…

… and talked for hours about busting flower pickers and people who feed squirrels in the parks.

Leilani and I were making a list of people to write Christmas cards to.

L: “Oh, the nice man… Inge’s husband… but he died… that’s too bad. I wonder if he has a new life by now. Maybe he is already celebrating his first birthday.”
S: “I don’t think so. That wouldn’t work out… 9 months pregnancy plus a year… but then of course we don’t know at what point the soul comes to the body. Maybe at the beginning of the pregnancy, maybe towards the end, I don’t know.”
L (obviously trying to answer my question, but getting sidetracked): “…You know when people die they go to heaven. Then they sit in a big chair and talk to god and tell him about the good and the bad things they did, and then they get wishes. If they were good they can pick whether they want to be an angel in heaven or they want a new life. If they were really good they get a lot of wishes, and they can pick their parents, which part of the island they want to live on, or if they want to be an animal, they can pick their brothers and sisters and their hair color.”
S (after digesting the monologue): “And what happens to the really bad ones?”
L: “They have to stay in heaven. There is a special cage, like a house with many rooms and it has many computers and they have to stay there until they thought a lot about why they were bad and want to be better and then god comes by, and lets the ones out who are better now and the others need to stay. The ones that come out get one wish then.”
S: “Do you remember any of this or do you just think that’s the way it is?”
L: “I remember a little bit. I was sitting in the big chair and talking to god and I got 5 wishes. I don’t remember anything about the life before.”

Of course her views reflect a lot of believes of people close to her, and a bit picked up from a website that I made for a client on the life after death and from the Egyptian Rosicrucian museum. That cage-like house sounds a lot like a timeout place too. I think it is interesting how she combines all of it and puts it into a system where all can be true and that suits her well.

All that talking about death reminded her about the mummies at the Rosicrucian Museum and how it gave her nightmares. She proceeded to tell me about them – now 4 months later. For someone who never saw horror movies they were pretty creative, and very scary, mummies getting up, walking, trying to grab her, coming out of trees…

Andy adds: The part about picking and getting wishes sounds like a children’s book we have. A Himalayan woodcutter dies and as he reincarnates, he gets to choose from all the galaxies, suns, planets, peoples, etc. and ends up in the same village, but this time he chooses to be a girl. Also, it sounds a lot like visiting Santa just before Christmas (hmmm). The bad people place sounds a lot like tech-job cubicles, (Sonja adds: Dilbert’s Hell, but Leilani doesn’t really read Dilbert yet) which Leilani has seen at my work–but she usually loves to see my office. Also, maybe I should spend less time in front of the computer after Leilani goes to bed.

Speaking of scary things, Leilani wanted the Rudolph animated TV special on DVD but when she got it she was still very scared of the Abominable Snow Man in it. That night she came into our bed in the middle of the night (not just in the early morning like she sometimes does), so she must’ve been having really bad dreams of the ‘Bominable.

I got a box from the garage and put Leilani’s old artwork in. The papers had been sitting in an untidy stack on an unstable shelf and had grown to the point that not a single sheet would fit.

I remembered all the times I had bargained with her in vain about throwing out this or that. Leilani is very attached to her art. When I told her this morning, I was going to put it away, she was fine with it. L: “… but I can open the box later again?” S: “Yes, it will always belong to you and we’ll keep it safe.” L: “Maybe when I’m a teenager… but then I’ll be in school so much…” I thought it was so strange to hear that from a 5 year old.

It took me almost an hour to sort it and put it in the box. I though about the chances that someone else would see this or that piece again. Will Leilani open this box, ever? Or will I? Other than to hastily stuff in more before the move?

Even for me there were lots of memories attached to the colorful drawings and paintings and crafts. I pulled out way too many for her portfolio, and a few for gift-wrap – of course I’ll need to ask her permission first, but she usually allows it to be used for wrap and greeting cards.

I’m sad to close the box. Good thing there is plenty of art on the fridge to cheer me up.

While Grandma was visiting, we parents snuck out for a weekend alone. Actually, we told Leilani about it ahead of time. She didn’t really have a problem with the idea, but I could tell from her questions that she kinda wondered why she couldn’t come along. So we set off on Friday after work.

We always used to stop for sunsets when traveling together. Now we stop when we can, but more often than not, we can’t because of dinner or getting somewhere not too late. So this time, we just pulled over on Hwy 1 and hiked a short ways to the ocean:

We found our little B&B, the Jewel Box, in Capitola. We got lucky getting a room (reserved just the day before) because it just happened to be the wine and art festival weekend. Nothing fancy, but a nice little suite in a little house. One great thing about was being right next to the organic vegetarian restaurant in town.

The next day, we just went walking to coast, down to the pier and beach:

They were renting little fishing boats on the pier, so we just decided to go on a whim. Ahhh, unplanned, unpredictable exploring on our own.

We puttered around, avoiding the kelp (because it gets caught in the propeller, and it hurts the kelp), and eventually saw the dolphins they told us were around:

We also saw this colony of sea-birds, I don’t know what they are nor why they are just floating here. It was rather incredible to see thousands of them just bobbing and squawking:

Two hours later, we were back on land, exploring some more. Right by the beach are some colorful bungalows, the one on the end had a colorful garden. How colorful was it? It was so colorful that Sonja didn’t even need to photoshop this picture:

We finally made it to the wine and art festival. We skipped the wine drinking because of all the lines, and just walked around looking at art. This one was made from maps:

And this one is made from fruit. It’s traditional Thai fruit carving:

Nature’s art (fortunately for me that Sonja found this flower prettier than anything we saw):

Dinner at the vegetarian restaurant again:

Inside the B&B. One of the best parts for us was finding some interesting books about the area and looking through all the DVDs to watch one (Fried Green Tomatoes). Ahh, the luxury of time:

The next day we walked around town again. We found a few garage sales to rummage at, we went back to the art festival for another quick look, but we mostly strolled on the streets of the little town down by the river. This little house reminded me of one on Kaua’i:

I talked Sonja into crossing the abandoned railroad bridge:

And more time to do more hiking: we stopped to see Lisa in Santa Cruz and go for a long walk in the Pogonip forest to the old Lime Kilns:

And then a Falafel dinner before heading back home after dark. In the meantime, Leilani had a fun weekend with Grandma, got to ride the train, go to the park, and do crafts. She was happy to see us again, but I don’t think she really missed us. Thanks Rosemary!