Letter to Olivia
Other side of the letter: Our family portrait hung up with a rainbow string, and a shooting star, a rainbow star, Leilani and Olivia at the bottom and Jojo the cat dancing
In an old house with a rainbow roof there lived a unicorn and it had a tulip under a rainbow.
Leilani and I did a co-production. Her description. This is a princess rainbow castle. It is as big as San Bruno Avenue. See the window? The room behind it is bigger than our house. In there they are working to stop the oil companies. The symbol [on the lower left] means we are stopping the oil companies. The Shama is sitting on top of the rainbow castle.
These are the winners of a big ballerina contest. A rainbow of ballerinas.
Ohhhhh, wie herzig – Leilani’s pun doesn’t translate well. Herz is heart, and herzig is sweet.
Sonja and Andy with many flowers. A rainbow exploded and let out colors.
I’m riding on a magical unicorn. If he touches things with his horn stars fly up. I am posting [something riders do on a trotting horse].
Titanic. They are on the front of the shipp singing beautiful songs to each other.
This is a dragon named love. If people are not in love anymore his tail is pointing to a tied up heart and they fall in love again. If you feel sad because you lost your beloved wife he will also point to the heart and you will find her again and finally marry her.
Madeleine and her dog
The queen of the cats running free and bringing happiness to people, making sad people happy and ends fighting and quarrels and she has a sparkly dress when she sits on her throne.
Leilani dancing in her room and the crystals making rainbows
This one is newer… but I just stuck it in rather than find the perfect post for it. Leilani worked hard on the star and then send it to great-grandma Siggler.
Month: December 2010
Flashback to September 25: the last time we went camping in California, actually.
I think we drove up Saturday morning and got a campsite at the Pantoll campground. Then we went hiking on the Coastal View fire road, and off the main trail on a small ridge:
Then we decided to do a short loop on the Dipsea trail (except we forgot how far it really was to the Steep Ravine trail intersection, so it ended up being a long loop). This is an old spring we discovered on a previous hike, very European:
When we finally made it all the way downhill to the Steep Ravine trail, we promised Leilani a stop to play in the stream. Here she’s sitting on a redwood trunk that’s become a natural bench:
Then we had to hike all the way back uphill to our campsite, admiring the redwoods along the way:
A previous camper was nice enough to leave us some fire wood:
Just two days earlier, Leilani was running around in flip-flops at the Coyote Point Museum and tripped and hit her face on a bench. Miraculously, she didn’t break anything or need any stitches, it didn’t even hurt she said. Also, she has fallen in love with the Glow-worm baby again, treats it like one of her dolls–and for her birthday asked for the little girl Glow-worm baby.
We’ve been making campfire dinners that we call “hobo meals” ever since Lisa showed us how to. Dice some potatoes, onions, carrots and whatever else into a foil pocket, add salt and oil, and grill in the fire for 15 minutes:
Fall in the Bay Area: it’s warm and sunny, even mornings on Mt Tam.
After packing up the tent, we drove down to Highway 1 and the Muir Beach overlook. There’s a little trail to a nice lookout:
There are also some WWII bunkers. Leilani really wanted to climb in them, and she figured out how to climb down inside all by herself. We warned her she should make sure she could climb out again–I don’t think she really paid attention, but fortunately she managed to climb back out by herself.
One of the people Andy works with told us about the Owl trail to Slide Ranch, a sort of demonstration farm open to the public. The trail was very pretty:
And the ranch was a neat old hippie community, with ramshackle buildings, organic gardens, and goats for the kids to pet:
We tried to hike down to the coast for our picnic, but it was too rocky, so we ate at a table in the nice garden.
Leilani found these flowers on the ground throughout the garden, other people are so careless:
But before the sunset in the previous post, we found another trail down to the beach, at a place called Turtle Rock:
The rocks were covered in seaweed and looked like tide-pools:
Andy photographed footprints…
09/26
In the end of September we went to the Coyote Point Park and museum.
First we had fun at the beach
Then we had fun with the otters:
(actually the movie above is composed of clips from 2 different visits)
Until Leilani did a faceplant on the little bench (see the running in flip-flops in the movie?) and almost needed to go to the emergency room. And since we had the car parked at the beach I carried her 3/4 of a mile…
I didn’t take a photo right away and she healed amazingly fast, here, 4 days later you can just see a little bit left of the bruises
09/23