Chloe is starting to rock that baby mullet!! Luckily, she can get away with it!!!
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another geocaching excursion
Last weekend, we not only found a geocache, we hid one, too!!! The previous night, we’d had a babysitter come to watch all of the kids so we could watch Shakespeare Santa Cruz; we got back after the kids had been put to bed, so we offered to babysit the girls the next day.
After the kids started showing a lot of antsy-ness, I decided we needed to get the heck out of the house, so I proposed another geocaching excursion. The kids were excited!
Here are the girls waiting patiently to head out for the search!
Dylan finally joined the girls after some initial reluctance to get his picture taken.
Discussions here had as to which direction we should go…
…Cameron had to put in her 2 cents, too.
We didn’t have much luck finding the cache we were looking for…at first, that is.
At one point, the kids saw something nestled inside a tree trunk at a location marked by my phone GPS as being within range of the geocache, but it turned out to be just a can someone left behind!
We looked for about 20 minutes before deciding we should find a good spot for our cache.
When we found a good spot, Taliana hid it for us!
Once we were back at the trailhead, we had a renewed interest in finding the cache we were hunting for…and while brushing stuff away from around the suspected area, we happened upon it!!
p>We were all very excited!!
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9 days shy of 5 months
Sorry these pictures and posts are all a-jumble!! This one jumps back in time a few weeks. I love how jolly this little girl is!!
And, I love how the adoration between Chloe and the big kids is totally mutual!
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frog hoppin’ in happy hollow
My last two days of maternity leave were spent maximizing my time with Cameron (Dylan was at camp) so we headed to Happy Hollow for the day.
Before heading back to Santa Cruz to get Dylan from camp, we were able to squeeze in all of her favorite rides (Frog Hopper, Danny the Dragon, the white swings, the carousel, Granny Bugs, Mini Putt Putt, and Team Kids, and we caught another showing of the Three Little Pigs puppet show).
Here are a few more pictures!
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our vamp geocaching in the cemetery
The theme of this session’s summer camp is Vampires, Fairies and Werewolves, so the counselors thought it might be fun if they had a day where the kids dressed up as one of the theme characters.
Dylan wanted to be a vampire. He only told us about it on Monday morning, right before we headed out to drop him off! Luckily, we had some liquid blood gel in our house and he had a cape he could use…AND the party store was open and had some 29 cent fangs available!
It was a scramble, but we succeeded in getting him suited up for the day!!
At the end of the day, we attempted to find a geocache with the girls. Dylan looked at “home” as the vampire int the cemetery! Too bad we didn’t find the geocache that day (we went back to look for it a few days later, armed with an additional hint on its location, and were successful)!!
We did learn a bit more about the cemetery, though. It’s the oldest one in Santa Cruz and has graves of some of the prominent locals. There are some sad tales, for sure. One headstone read, “Drowned” and was for a 10-year old boy; another was for a “lady of the night”, Marie Holmes, who died of “quaffing carbolic acid.”
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boardwalk temp buddy
The last time Cameron and I went to the boardwalk (on my last day of maternity leave), she latched on to some other little girl who was getting off the Bulgy ride at the same time as she was!
I’m not sure if she thought I was friends with the mom and grandma and that she was supposed to ride with this older child, or if she just wanted company! Whatever the reason, they ended up riding 6 rides together!
In the meanwhile, I was sort of forced into conversing with the girl’s mom and grandma. It turned out to be interesting…the grandpa in the family is a farmer who produces raisins! So, while the girls enjoyed their fleeting friendship, I learned a little about raisin production.
Not a bad way to pass the time before going to get Dylan from camp!
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sittin’ pretty
This girl is definitely getting ready to eat some solid chow! She’s beginning to sit up all on her own and she’s really beginning to show strong interest in whatever is going into my mouth!! Soon enough…soon enough!
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Festival of the Book
Every year, our public library sponsors a Summer Reading Program where kids earn “dollars” for reading. This year was the first year that Dylan read for points (in conjunction with listening to stories)! And, he earned all of them!
It wasn’t necessarily easy. He still gets pretty tired reading through entire books and, of course, he still needs help reading some words, but the great thing is, he’s really getting it and the summer reading program really inspired him to read more!
At the end of the program, the kids get to collect their summer reading dollars (and redeem them at participating stores) and, if they go to the Festival, they get a free book, a free lunch, and they can do a bunch of different craft activities.
This year, the kids painted rocks (Cameron’s fingernail is still purple!!)…
…and they made caterpillars out of egg cartons, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes.
We encouraged Dylan to read to a doggy (their tales to tails program), but only Taliana agreed to and even she almost backed out! The kids can still be so shy!
Chloe and I had to take a little nursing break. After her snack, she was as happy as could be!! In the meantime, I’m perfecting my ability to take a picture of her with my camera while she’s on my lap! Not bad, eh??
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Uncle Jed
Who’s Uncle Jed? Jed is my younger half-brother from my dad’s second marriage. The last time Dylan saw him, Jed was getting married 5.5 years ago! He’s since been divorced and relocated to the Philippines. He was working in Singapore for a spell and now he’s apparently back in Manila, living with my dad.
Anyway, he came for an 11-day visit to the United States and we got a chance to catch up a little. And, of course, the kids got to see their cousins.
This was the first time that both Jed and Ieanna met Chloe (Jed and Ieanna are full sibs)!
After dinner, we took all of the kids to the playground so they could burn off a little more energy! Chloe, however, socialized in the arms of her aunties.
It will probably be a long while before the next visit! It was nice to hear how my dad is doing and Jed shared an iPhone video of my dad saying hello to each of us….Maybe someday we will make it to the Philippines…!
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