Category Archive: hikes

Life with Sirena: Weeks 3 and 4

Things seemed to change dramatically after the first two weeks but thinking back on it now I think it had less to do with Sirena and more to do with me and Kevin just getting the hang of things!  Quite a few people reached out to me after reading my last post about my experience with the “baby blues” and I appreciate it so much.  Although it was hard to write and even harder to post for everyone to read, it felt really good to be so honest about it and to receive such positive feedback from moms and future mamas alike.

I wanted to share with all those future mamas out there that one of the things that helped me the most was reading the book The Happiest Baby on the Block. Although the book focuses mostly on how to calm a fussy baby and how to help relax and put a baby to sleep, what I found most helpful was reading about a newborn’s development.  I had heard before that the first three months of life are considered the “fourth trimester” but I never understood exactly what that meant and the author, Dr. Karp, explained it extremely well (and much better than I’m about to do, I guarantee that)…he says that babies younger than three months old can still be considered fetuses because they have not finished developing and still need 24/7 attention.  They were so used to living in the womb where their every need was met on demand (eating, warmth, movement, being held tightly) and after birth they’re still in need of those things all the time.  Reading this helped me understand a lot about her and her needs and it helped me to understand why my sole job right now is to take care of her.  This understanding has helped me immensely!

In other news, we had her first appointment with the pediatrician on June 18 and she weighed in at a whoppin’ 8 lbs, 14 oz and measured the same as she did at birth at 19.5 inches.  The doctor said that everything looks good and that we’ve got a healthy baby on our hands!

We continued to keep ourselves mighty busy the last half of her first month including a visit from her Grandma Dorothy and celebrating Kevin’s first Father’s Day!  Pictures of our adventures…

A hike at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve in Oakland

First time baby-wearing for me and I loved it!

Sirena’s first-ever visit to San Francisco!

Me and the little Bay Area native looking out on the bay

A not-so-happy bather

Preparing for a dip in the bathtub

Not digging this experience in the least

“Quit taking pictures and dry me off NOW!”

Tummy time!

Tummy time is a really important part of a newborn’s development to help them strengthen their neck muscles and practice keeping their heads up. She likes it for a couple of minutes but then won’t hesitate to let us know that she is very unhappy and wants to get off her tummy as soon as possible!

A hike in Glen Canyon in San Francisco (Mom and Dad’s old stompin’ grounds!)

After the hike we spent some time sitting in the grass and taking in the sunshine…

What day at the park would be complete without a showing of Kevin and Lola’s tricks?

Some more random photos from these two weeks…

A naked, sleeping baby…could life get any better than this?

Hanging out at Auntie Jessie’s apartment

Getting to know her cousin Mars

Me and my girls

Kevin and his lounging “beach bum”

Sirena and Mama

Grandma Dorothy’s visit

Grandma Dorothy came up to visit for a few days to spend some more time with her fourth grandchild (oh yeah, and us too 😉 ).

We spent one day at the Berkeley Rose Garden and Codornices Park across the street (the last time we went to these two places was back in 2010 when Kevin’s brother Thomas came to visit, see post at this link).

Notice Lola’s photo bomb? Haha, that girl is such a ham.

We also spent an afternoon at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland to hang out and play frisbee with Lola…

Ready for some sunshine!

Me and Dorothy chatting while Sirena napped the afternoon away

This girl makes sleeping look so good…

Big foot!

Kevin’s first Father’s Day was spent at the botanic gardens at Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley at Kevin’s request.  We packed a picnic lunch and enjoyed the beautiful gardens together.

Chow time!

Sirena napped in her stroller while we had our picnic lunch

Then it was time for our hike…

Kevin and Dorothy

The gardens had TONS of stairs so Kevin and I had to carry the stroller quite a bit, haha.  And we quickly realized that we definitely need an off-road stroller (which we’ve since gotten, hallelujah!)

Beautiful trees in the garden

Diaper duty for Kevin on Father’s Day!

Happy girl with a clean booty

Papahood sure looks good on Kevin, wouldn’t you say?

I have to admit, saying the words “Happy Father’s Day” to Kevin for the first time that day was the sweetest thing!

And some final random photos from Grandma’s visit…

The three of us hanging out in her room on the glider

Kisses for my Buddha baby and her giving me a goofy grin right back!

It’s so apparent that Grandma has so much love for this little lady (wearing her “Grandma gives the best hugs” onesie for the occasion!)

And finally some short videos of Sirena in action to close this post out!

Sirena making some funny faces at me here

Getting kisses from Lola during a car ride here

Me trying to wake The Grump up here

City life + swingin’ in the trees

This past weekend Kevin, Lola and I had a completely free schedule so we took full advantage of it.  We drove into the city on Saturday to enjoy what we thought was going to be a super sunny, warm day…

View of the Ferry Building from the Bay Bridge…it was such a clear day, you rarely see this view with such clarity going over the bridge!

Lola anxious to get to our destination

View of the Ferry Building from Embarcadero

Our first destination was North Beach–I still have a SF library card (shh, don’t tell them we moved to Oakland) and so I reserved some pregnancy/childbirth books to pick up at the North Beach branch since it’s so close to work and they were ready for pick up so we figured we’d stop there first to check ’em out.  Then we decided to take full advantage of our location to enjoy some yummy Italian food for lunch.

Kevin enjoying some major sunshine at Caffe Delucchi

Some graffiti art around North Beach

We then decided to treat Lola to a visit to our old stomping grounds…Golden Gate Park!  To our surprise, though, by the time we got to that part of the city the weather had completely changed.  It went from sunny and warm to cold, foggy, and rainy!  Even though we lived in the city for 2 years and experienced this on a number of occasions we still couldn’t get over the fact that a 15 minute drive could get us to what seemed like a completely different part of the country.  We tried to make the best of it though to get Lola some much-needed and well-deserved exercise!

The tip top of the dome of the Conservatory of Flowers

Thar she blows!  Not too shabby of a background for our rendezvous in the park.

Lola’s newest obsession?  Frisbee!  We love the Kong frisbee, it is the absolute best for a sharp-toothed dog like Lola.

Kevin getting a good throw in

Lola being a good girl and bringing it back to us (about 85% of the time, anyways!)

The next day we made a trip to Albany Hill Park to do some exploring on this hill that we had seen numerous times driving around North Berkeley/Albany/El Cerrito/Richmond…it was about time we made a trip up the hill and we are so glad we did!

Be-a-u-tiful eucalyptus trees!

The view from the east side of the hill (I forgot to take a picture of the view of the bay from the other side of the hill)

To our delight, we found a tree swing just hanging out and begging for Kevin to give it a whirl!  He spent a good 15 minutes swinging on that thing and Lola’s reaction to him swinging was so perfect, I caught a couple of hilarious videos for your viewing pleasure!

Kevin up among the trees (and Lola below, freaking out)

Lola attempting to bite Kevin’s ankle upon landing, hahah.

Kevin about to give me a good whack in the face (and Lola trailing behind)…I love this photo.

Lola about to get smacked in the face by Kevin’s big ol’ feet!  I’m surprised she didn’t get hit the whole time they did this.

And here are the videos! Here’s the first time Kevin attempted the tree swing and Lola’s initial reaction to all the action. Here’s another video of Kevin dodging Lola’s attempts to bring him down from the rope swing.  And here’s a quick video of Lola versus the rope swing.

The result of Lola’s battle with the rope swing?…

…one very sleepy pup.

Winter weekends

We’ve been trying to maintain the “adventures” part of the blog’s name as much as possible, I’ve just been slacking on updating about it here.  Here are some fun things we did in February…

I joined Carleigh and Scott for an evening of live theater at Albany High School (just north of Berkeley) to see “The Drowsy Chaperone”, a musical comedy.  Carleigh and I were both active in theater when we were in high school and it was fun being a community member out supporting a local high school’s musical.  It sure brought back a lot of memories for us!

The lobby of the theater

The gorgeously decorated theater

Me being a dork in front of a King Kong mural inside the theater

My theater mates!

The very cute theater (soooo much smaller than our high school’s!)

The finale!

On a bright and sunny weekend Kevin, Lola and I took a long walk through our neighborhood to do some exploring.  It ended up being a 3 mile walk round trip and our final destination was the Oakland Municipal Rose Garden which all you horticulturalists out there probably already know that it wasn’t in bloom this time of year but it still made for a nice walk through the grounds.  We want to return after Mother’s Day which is when they say the roses really start popping.

One of the many neighborhood staircases we climbed to get to the park

Just about the only rose petals we saw that day

The grounds include a beautiful pool and lots of trails

Here’s a shot of the beautiful Lake Merritt which we live just a couple of blocks away from

I honestly cannot get over how gorgeous this lake is and how lucky we are to live so close to it!

See the little gnome?  These little guys have been popping up around the neighborhood for the past few months…they’re hand-painted and nailed to the bottom of telephone poles.  I don’t know who’s behind all of this nonsense but I sure am a fan!

On Superbowl Sunday, my favorite holiday of the year (can you sense the sarcasm of my typing voice here?), we made the trek across the bridge to our old stomping grounds: San Francisco!  It’s amazing how little we get out to the city now that we live in Oakland (only 20 minutes drive from SF with no traffic, though, so really not too far at all).  I’m there too often for work so when it comes to the weekend it’s the last place I want to drive to, unfortunately.  But this particular Sunday we had an excuse…a Superbowl party hosted by our friend Darinee!  We arrived pretty early so decided to spend some time reading and relaxing at Alta Plaza Park in Pacific Heights.

Cherry blossoms in full bloom!  So, so pretty.

We saw this mirror in the park that was installed by The SF Mirrors Project (a really cool public art project, check out the website for more info) and Kevin wanted to take a picture of me in front of it (with a wee little baby bump!)

Views from the top of the park…

And last but not least, this past weekend we spent a glorious Sunday morning hiking in Tilden Park in Berkeley with our friends Terri and Scott and their pups Madeira and Ihna.  The only other time we had been to Tilden was our first weekend in the East Bay for 4th of July weekend when we went swimming in Lake Anza with Carleigh and Scott so we were overdue for a trip back there!

The windy drive to Inspiration Point where we were meeting the gang…Lola enjoying the ride sniffing out the window!

The group making our way up…

…and up and up…

To be rewarded with a beautiful 360 view of the SF Bay and surrounding areas!

We took a little break at the top of the peak to let the dogs rest (oh who am I kidding…it was to let the humans rest!)

Madeira, Terri, Ihna and Lola

Doggies and humans

Kevin getting smothered with Ihna kisses (I swear those two were married in a past life)

Teri and Scott keeping me entertained!

The whole gang!

Lola’s obligatory leaping shot

Madeira looking all majestic at the top of the peak

Lola, looking like she’s in on some inside joke (photo courtesy of Scott)

For some reason I thought these towers looked really neat on the way back down the hill…don’t ask.

Big Sur camping weekend!

Kevin, Lola and I took a marvelous four day weekend to go camping in Big Sur!  We met up with our good friends Brian and Brianne from Long Beach and we had a blast!

Friday, September 30

We left at 6am on Friday morning in hopes of beating the traffic and of getting into the Big Sur area early enough to find a camping site.  Yes, we were those people that didn’t make reservations.

We are in desperate need of a bigger car…Lola could barely fit in the backseat with all our camping junk!  And the other sleeping bag may or may not have fallen on top of her during the ride a couple of times, haha.

Any gloomy morning can be brightened up with a dozen cupcakes!  Kevin baked those for Brianne since her birthday was just after our camping trip.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing dogs hanging their heads outside of car windows.

We made a few stops along the way, taking in the amazing views of the California coast.

I truly love this state.

“Hello!

We drove up and down the coast trying to find the perfect camping spot.  After a few sites told us there were 1-2 spots left but either the campground was too expensive ($65 a night?!) or there were too many bugs or it just didn’t feel right it was approaching 12noon and we were starting to get nervous.  One campground (Kirk Creek) we had passed previously we had heard some good things about but after seeing the sign “Campground full” we didn’t think much of it.  On our way back up the coast in hopes that we could snag one of those spots that we had previously passed up on Kevin said we should just drive through the Kirk Creek campground to see if we might get lucky…and we did!  We actually got the last spot in the entire campground.  And the campground was amazing to boot!

We set up our tent, took a little nap in the sunshine, and while patiently awaited the arrival of Brian and Brianne we decided to start cooking dinner before the sun started to set.

On the menu Friday evening?  Sweet potato chili (recipe here) and cornbread cooked in the dutch oven (recipe here).

Pouring the batter into the dutch oven

Letting the magic happen

We had never cooked anything other than a cobbler in the dutch oven before so we weren’t sure how it was going to turn out.  We had to let it sit for 45 minutes to cook so we decided to enjoy some beverages and watch the sun start to set.

Classy boxed wine from Target

Wine in hand, sun shining

Brian and Brianne pulled up just as the cornbread was finishing up so we could dig in!

It turned out perfect!!

We set our chairs out overlooking the ocean and the sunset, eating our giant bowls of chili and fresh cornbread. Not too shabby!

Enjoying the view

For dessert we surprised Brianne with the cupcakes that Kevin had made…yum!  We played a game of Rummikub and tried to keep warm by the light of the lantern (we forgot to buy firewood that first night, d’oh!)  Kevin, Lola and I hit the hay a little early because of our early morning and because it was so dang cold outside with that ocean breeze.  But it was a great first day nonetheless!

Brianne’s birthday cupcakes

Saturday, October 1

We woke up bright and early and got started on breakfast…breakfast burritos with soyrizo!

Kevin cooking up some breakfast!  Our campsite only had shade in the late afternoon so at just about 8:30am the sun would rise above the hills and we’d get an early start on our suntans for the day.

We left mid-day to drive up to Monterey to pick up a few things (air pump for the air mattress [kind of important] and firewood) and we had lunch out that way as well.  I gotta say, it was a little strange being at a Target in the middle of our camping trip.

We got back to the campsite mid-afternoon and took a short hike down a trail that leads straight from the campground down to the beach.

Beautiful!

Lola is so at home at the beach

B & B climbing the rocks

Brian surrounded by water

Pretty seaweed!

Kevin and Lola always have to climb to the highest point and look down at me for the obligatory photo.  This trip to the beach was no exception.

Lola’s paw prints, the ocean, and the sun setting

We found this cool damned-up area that had a small wading pool and a small waterfall that was just Lola’s size.

She spent a good while “fetching” for rocks (they all sank to the bottom but she never stopped trying to look for them!)

Me and Lola

Lola wading in the pool and me in the background

Brian’s dangerous leap-from-one-rock-to-another-over-a-wading-pool stunt.

I love this photo of Lola.

We headed back up to camp to get started on dinner while the sun was still out.  On the menu Saturday evening?  Cheese enchiladas, cilantro lime rice, and avocado/tomato salad (courtesy of B & B).

Brianne cooking the enchiladas in the dutch oven!  We weren’t sure how it would turn out so we kept our fingers crossed.

While B & B were cooking, Kevin and I decided to go sit and watch the sun set (something, we realized, we haven’t done much together surprisingly!)

Those clouds were amazing!

After the sun set we were happy to find out that the dutch oven is the perfect place to cook enchiladas!

Cooked to perfection

Eating by moonlight

Dig in!

That night for dessert we had the ultimate camping treat…s’mores!

Sunday, October 2

We woke up bright and early to find little muddy paw prints on our storage bins and even on the side of our car…crazy raccoons!  Luckily they didn’t get anything (that we know of).

After a yummy breakfast of pancakes and bacon (or fake sausage for the veg-head over here), we left mid-morning down the road to Sand Dollar beach and picnic grounds.  It was pretty overcast and chilly that morning but luckily the clouds burned off and we had a good dose of sun for the majority of our time there!

View of Sand Dollar beach from the top of the stairs

Stairs down to the beach

Brianne, Brian, Lola and Kevin testing out the water

Brianne at first thought those were bear paw prints until she realized that Lola made them, haha!

I took a few portrait photos, the only one I was missing was Brian!

Brianne

Lola

Kevin

Kevin and Brian braved the coooooold waters and went swimming for about 30 minutes.

Lola watching Kevin and Brian in the water

Eventually Kevin and Brian made their way out and Kevin immediately made a new friend (some other dog, I swear that guy is the Dog Whisperer!)

We made our way back up to the picnic area for some lunch.  After eating, Brian and Kevin decided to attempt to hop over a 4.5 foot tall fence.  Surprisingly, they both did it (after many attempts, I might add).

Alley-oop!

I don’t think so, sir.

Me taking a self-portrait in between their attempts to jump over the fence.

Success!

Kisses from Lola over the fence

A view from below

B & B!

Back at the campsite we sat and tried to soak in the final rays of the sun.

Looks like I got a bit of a tan from the beach, hallelujah!

On the menu for Sunday night?  Burritos with Spanish rice and more of that amazing avocado/tomato salad (courtesy of B & B).  And for dessert?

PEACH AND BLUEBERRY COBBLER straight from the dutch oven!! (recipe here)

That crust was so good!  Next time we just gotta let it cook a little longer but otherwise it was amazing.

I thought I’d take a picture of our dish-washing station…Brianne, Kevin and Brian hard at work!

Group photo by campfire!

We had such a fantastic time…not only did we score an awesome campsite, the weather was lovely, and the company was superb!  I think we should probably put in our reservation now for this time next year at Kirk Creek, what do you say B & B?  🙂

Moaning Cavern adventures

On Saturday, Sept 9 we left at the crack of dawn (5:30am)  to meet Brianne, Brian, Judy and Lisa near Sonora for some cave spelunking and exploring!  Brian and Lisa were planning on doing an adventure tour of the Moaning Cavern and invited Kevin along (which was perfect timing since Kevin’s birthday had just passed so it was his birthday present!) and Judy, Brianne and I settled for the walking tour (which was about as adventurous as we were ready for).

It’s not often we see the sunrise!

Moaning Cavern Park

We had anticipated a 3 hour drive but it only took us 2 hours (I was driving, go figure 😉 ) so we got there before the park even opened.  We entertained ourselves with a furry little critter that became a close friend for a half hour or so…Smokey the cat.

Yawn! It was early for Smokey too.

The gang met up with us not too long after the park opened and we made our way to our respective tours.

Judy took this photo of the group before we went underground: Brianne, me, Brian, Kevin and Lisa

Damn, I forgot to buy my commemorative Moaning Cavern hard hat.

We asked if it’d be possible for our walking tour to start earlier than their adventure tour so that we could meet them at the bottom of the cave after they repelled down and luckily that worked out!  So Judy, Brianne and I followed our tour guide while K, B and L anxiously waited for their tour to start.

The first stop was in a little back room which had the above map posted on the wall.  If you click it to enlarge the image you can see blue arrows and green arrows–the blue ones were where K, B and L went repelling down the 165-foot drop through the earth and the green arrows were where Judy, Brianne and I went walking down the stairs (like sane people) to meet them in the middle of the cavern.  After we met up, K, B and L continued their tour farther down the cave and came back up a couple hours later.

The hole through the ground that K, B and L were going to be dropping down into.  Crazy!!

The narrow and steep staircase that J, B and I went down.

Spooky.

We stopped for a bit after the narrow staircase to talk about the cave and the different formations found there and about all of the people who, over thousands of years, had fallen to their death and whose bones were discovered recently (creepy!)  This is the platform we stood on and the 234-stair spiral staircase you see to the right is the one that Judy and I went down later to meet K, B and L after their repelling adventure.

Can you spot Brianne?

Judy braving the staircase!  It was really creepy, I was gripping the handrails like nobody’s business.

Kevin was the first to volunteer to go down, he made it look so easy!

Kevin, aka “Cliff”

Then I decided to go back up the staircase so that I could take photos of Lisa and Brian as they repelled down.  This photo was taken mid-way up the stairs looking down at Judy and Kevin.

Lisa making her way down, she looked like a pro!

Brianne and I holding down the fort

The view from the very top of the staircase.  You can see my shoes in the bottom part of this photo and the two orange blips are Kevin and Lisa, the white/green blip is Judy.  I’m getting spooked just looking at this photo.

Brian making his way down

Judy took this photo of the three of them finished rappelling.

After the three of them got untied from the rappelling ropes, they continued even farther down below the cave through crawl spaces.  Kevin said that they had funny names of some of the crawl spaces: Godzilla’s Nostril, Pancake Room, Meat Grinder, Black Hole and, my personal favorite, the Birthing Canal.  He said that there was one point where you had to lie on your back and pull yourself through this extremely narrow space, it was so narrow that the tip of his hardhat was hitting the top of the space at times.

While they were crawling through the earth, Judy, Brianne and I made our way back out into the open air to do a little bit of exploring but mostly just chatting and waiting for our adventure trio to return.

The Moaning Cavern Park has quite a few activities including panning for gold and a zip line.

The park even had a cockatoo named Cuddles!  He was super friendly and he entertained Brianne and I for a good half hour or so.

Pretty bird.

One other park visitor encouraged me to pet him (even though the signs said “DON’T PUT YOUR FINGERS IN CAGE”).  It was a little freaky at first but you could tell he was totally in love with being pet on his neck.

Me and Cuddles sharing a moment.

After 1.5 hours or so the adventure trio made their escape and met up with us.

The tired, but happy, adventurers!

They weren’t kidding about wearing old clothes.

We were all starving afterwards and took up the suggestion of one of our tour guides to check out The Pickle Barrel for lunch in Angel’s Camp.  My favorite food in the whole entire world is sandwiches and after going vegetarian I felt like I haven’t been as excited to eat at delis because generally the only veg option is Subway-esque (yuck).  But The Pickle Barrel actually had two delicious options and I was as happy as a clam getting my sandwich fix.  And I don’t think the meat eaters of the group were disappointed either.  🙂

The little downtown area of Angel’s Camp was pretty cute so we spent a little time exploring.

I think Kevin might have a chance to get into the “Independent Order of Odd Fellows”, what do you think?

Creepy statue in one of the antique stores.


Photo of the sidewalk tile commemorating the 1983 frog-hoppin’ winner “Johnny Jumper” (that’s the year me and K were born so I thought it appropriate to take a photo of this one).

After getting cleaned up at the motel we stayed out (thanks for letting us crash with you guys!) we went out to try the “best pizza in Sonora” at Mountain Mike’s.  Not too shabby!  We spent the night playing Phase 10 (an awesome card game) and then before saying our goodbyes the next morning ate at the “best breakfast joint in Sonora” at Woods Creek Cafe (super cute place covered in cow memorabilia and pretty good food to boot!)

It was so great seeing the gang for the weekend and I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift for Kevin to land in my lap!  🙂

Edmonds family camping trip!

The Edmonds gang spent months in anticipation for our camping trip to Taylor Creek and the time had finally arrived!  Kevin’s family has been camping at this spot for nearly 30 years (!) and this was my third trip to TC.  The last time the whole gang went camping together was at Granite Creek in 2009 (just a couple of months after moving to SF and a few weeks after adopting Lola, see the post here) and the last time we as a family were at TC was in 2007 so it was definitely time for another camping trip!

This campsite is about as rustic as you can get: no running water (except for the spring up the road), no cell phone service, and no toilets (not even an outhouse).  But it’s got everything else that other campsites are missing: it’s quiet (rarely do we spot other campers when we’re there), there are unobstructed starry nights, we’ve got a private creek and private hiking trails.  And that’s why the family keeps coming back after all these years.

Wednesday 7/27

Kevin, Lola and I woke up earlyearlyearly and got on the road at 7:30am.

Lots of fog over the Oakland Hills to greet us

Beautiful views of countryside and clear skies (somewhere off of Hot Springs Road)

Kevin and Lola in the car

We passed a ton of cows on the drive up the mountain…

Mama cows and their babies

Moo.

Lots of meadows–I think this one was aptly named “Big Meadow” (so creative, I know)

Pancake rock!

We arrived (9 hours later!) and were sad to find out that the family’s favorite spot was already taken.  🙁

We drove up the road a bit and found another spot that wasn’t as good but we were pleasantly surprised that it worked out as well as it did.  Kevin, Lola and I held down the fort for a couple of hours before the next group arrived.

We read a couple of short stories to each other with Lola listening in

Beautiful day!

The swimming hole right next to our campsite…perfection!

The next group to arrive was George, Dorothy, Judith, Joshua and Katelyn and it was just us until the third group arrived on Friday.  Our first evening was mostly just setting up camp, eating hamburgers and hot dogs (and veggie burgers/veggie skewers for the vegetarian in the group!) and hanging out around the campfire.

Kevin and George with the bonfire

Thursday 7/28

The group woke up bright and early for another fun day of camping.  Except for this little girl who did not want to get up…

Lola, snuggled up

We were finally able to encourage the tired pup to get up and get the day started!

First thing on the to-do list?  Gather fire wood.  George, Kevin, Joshua and Lola were in charge of that item (thank you guys!)

Alley oop Lola!

While the muchachos and Lola went to get fire wood, the rest of us muchachas got dressed for some creek time…

Katelyn and her genius innertube

Dorothy and Judith hanging out by the creek

After the guys got back with the firewood it was creek time for them too!

Lola’s favorite thing to do was hop/jump/leap across the creek to fetch her ball (oh yeah, and shake and get all of us sitting on the bank wet too)

Kevin, George and Katelyn (the brave ones) in for a dip

After some time by the creek it was time for lunch and time to put up the hammocks!  Kevin and I purchased these hammocks in Nicaragua in 2004 and had yet to use them so it was about time!

Can’t get much more relaxing than this

Bliss.

Kevin squished into the seat hammock (and his butt was about 1.5 inches above the ground, haha)

Dorothy and Kevin relaxing in the shade

Lola couldn’t wait to test out the hammock either, haha

Lola guarding our campsite (her favorite place to be: the kitchen)

Katelyn keeping cool in the shade

Friday 7/29

Another bright and early morning!  After breakfast (breakfast burritos, mmm!) we went for a short hike to another swimming hole down the creek.

Pine cones covering the ground

George, Kevin and Lola trying to find us a nice spot to sit and relax

Lola again loved jumping over the creek to catch her ball.  We got her in the creek for a bit too, here she is jumping to catch a ball.

Beautiful skies!

Can’t get enough of these rock formations, trees and sky views

Lola looking back at Joshua and Kevin

My favorite photo of the camping trip!  Lola in the foreground, Joshua and Kevin in the background.

Can you spot Lola?

Back to the campsite to wait for our third group to arrive (Sarah and Rob!)  We spent the time eating lunch and putting reading glasses on Lola (just what any normal family would do, right? You can blame Katelyn for this one, haha)

Lola, the librarian

We were expecting them mid-day so when they hadn’t arrived by mid-afternoon we started getting worried and sent out a search party.  Ten minutes later the search party spotted their car and back to the campsite they went.

Just a little after they arrived the group got dressed and took a 20 minute hike to what the family calls “Flat Rock”–a really awesome spot where the creek has a waterfall and it flows down huge, flat rocks making great spots for sitting and relaxing.

Flat Rock

The girls: Katelyn, Sarah, Judith, Dorothy and me

Tall rocks and bright blue skies

Sarah and Rob

Lola biting the mini rapids

Katelyn and Josh building a damn, Lola biting the rapids

Kevin, George and Joshua decided to hike up the mountain a bit while the rest of our group made our way back to the campsite.  Here are some photos that Kevin took on the hike…

The view of Church Dome (where we’d be hiking to the following day, yikes!)

I love this miniaturized (is that a word?) photo that Kevin took

Lola with her hiking backpack

After the two hikes and three swimming holes that day Lola was pooped!

Proof of above statement

What makes a good evening while camping? Talking around the campfire of course…

George and Sarah

Dorothy and Kevin

Sunset

Saturday 7/30

Another early morning camping (our last full day, waah!)

Kevin putting on his shoes, enjoying the view out our tent

After breakfast the group packed into two of the cars and made our way upupup the road to the trail head for our hike to Church Dome.

Joshua, Sarah, Kevin, Rob and Lola sizing up Church Dome

Lots and lots of water breaks…

My cute little hiking husband

Sarah and Rob

Family photo!  Me, Kevin and Lola

What a view!

Beautiful flowers in between rocks

Kevin and Lola looking out onto the meadows and forest

After hours of hiking upupup we finally made it!  Time for lunch.

Group shot at lunch (thanks Sarah!)

While half of the group was satisfied with the hike and ready to make our way back down, the other half didn’t get quite enough and wanted to push on a little farther.  Can you guess what group I was in?  😉

While Judith, Dorothy, Katelyn, Lola and I stayed back to take a short nap, the rest of the group made their way up to the top of Church Dome.

Lola digging a hole (first time I’d ever seen her do that!)

She was trying to get to the cooler soil for her nap, so adorable.

From our spot down below we could see a few ants walking at the top of Church Dome–they looked a lot like the rest of our family (click the photo to zoom in; Sarah, Rob and George on the left, Kevin and Josh on the right).

Once the other part of the group met up with us it was time to make our descent off the mountain.  But first…a group photo!

Beautiful.

Although the hike down was much faster, it wasn’t necessarily any easier (let’s just say that a few butts slid down the rocks).

Lola was pretty exhausted too.  I had never seen her so tired before!  Every few hundred feet she’d make her way to a shady spot and lay down.  Poor girl!

Lola’s 198th break

So Kevin, being the great dog dad that he is, decided to help our little girl out by giving her a piggy back ride!

She only stayed on for about 10 minutes but I think it helped the tired pup out a lot

View of Church Dome…I can’t believe that just a couple of hours before we were on that peak!

Happy (and tired and sore) hiker Lisa

Not five minutes after backing George’s truck up on the road his back tires got stuck in the soft dirt.  D’oh!

The group trying to get the truck out by digging holes and putting in big rocks behind the tires.

When that didn’t work, George had the whole group (minus me and Lola) pile in the back of the truck to weigh it down and hopefully get the tires to grip the dirt to move on out.  That didn’t work either!  So the last resort was hooking Rob’s Ford Escape SUV up to the front of George’s truck and with luck we were able to pull the truck out of the dirt!  None of us could believe that the little Escape could pull out such a huge truck but hallelujah it worked!

No one can say that we didn’t deserve a nice dip in the creek by the time we got back to the campsite and that’s exactly what we did.  We can’t say that the creek wasn’t any cleaner after we got out, but at least we were.  🙂

Dinner was massive burritos and dessert was peach/blueberry cobbler (well-deserved after our long day of hiking!)

Judith serving up the cobbler…yum!!

Our last sunset

And we spent our last evening around the campfire enjoying each other’s company…

Joshua, Katelyn and Judith

Joshua, bright fire, and grey skies

Writing with light in the dark–that’s me writing out “Taylor Creek” using a flashlight (I was writing in cursive backwards while Kevin took the photo, see our “Earth Hour” post with other photos like this here)

Sunday 7/31

The rain finally decided to make its full appearance on Sunday morning as we were packing all our stuff up.  Although it didn’t make for a very pleasant last morning (especially since we were trying to keep all our junk dry while packing it up) I’m just happy it otherwise stayed dry the whole week!

On the drive home…until next time Taylor Creek!

Lake Merced & Earth Hour 2011

Mar 26–Lake Merced

Kevin and I spent an afternoon walking around part of the huge Lake Merced in the southern part of the city.  I discovered it with a friend when we decided to do a 3 mile loop run a few weeks prior and wanted to take Kevin and Lola there.

I know, we’re terrible doggy parents, always making Lola pose in front of the weirdest statues (this one, if you can’t tell, is of three penguins).

Kevin & Lola at the end of the path surrounded by strawberry bushes.

I know my hair looks terrible.  Unfortunately, Kevin didn’t think to tell me before he snapped this photo!  Hahah.

Mar 26–Earth Hour 2011

The first time I heard about Earth Hour was when we were in Australia in 2008 and although I had never participated in it I thought it might be fun to do it this year.  So at 8pm on the 26th we shut off the lights and hung out by candlelight.

But of course we couldn’t just sit there and stare at each other in the dim light.  We had to do something.  And do something we did!  We spent a couple of hours messing around with flashlights, lasers and the camera to take some cool photos.  Kevin was the genius photographer behind all this and I “wrote” in the air with the light.

The first one was written with me facing the camera so I had to write backwards and in cursive–not the easiest thing, let me tell you!  But I think it turned out pretty good.

This second one we used a laser pointer and I wrote Lola’s name facing her.  The hard part was getting Lola’s body to be lit up so after I finished writing her name, Kevin flashed a flashlight on her for just a second so that her body could be captured in light (otherwise she would’ve been too dark to see).

I’ve determined that we should honor Earth Hour more often so that it will get us off our rears and do something fun like this!  🙂

Hike in Almaden Quicksilver Park

So far we’re 2-for-2 with our goal to hike as many Saturdays as possible!  We went down to San Jose on Sat. 3/5 to meet up with Jessie to explore Almaden Quicksilver Park which isn’t too far from her place.  The total hike was 3 miles and although we could have kept going we had to leave it at 3 miles because Jess had to work that afternoon. We all really enjoyed exploring the small corner of the park we saw and are definitely excited about returning to check out more.

And we’re off! Me, Jess and Lola hitting the trail

Jess and Lola checking out the creek

Kevin got this great shot of the creek

Me and Lola hanging out

The Buena Vista Trail

Jess, Kevin and Lola on the Buena Vista Trail

This led us to the end of our hike: The Buena Vista mining site. We had a good time exploring the remains of this mining site.

Some of the remains of the site, old concrete structures with massive bolts left behind

Creepy look at the long way down the brick wall

Kevin went exploring a little farther as me and Jess took a break and he got this shot of us from the hill across the valley

Then I got this shot of Kevin as he was jumping off the 8 foot brick wall.  Pretty cool!

Here is it zoomed in

Pretty manzanita trees

Berries and blue sky

Hike in the Presidio

Kevin and I made a goal to go on a hike as many Saturdays as possible.  So on Saturday 2/26 we went on a 5 mile hike through the Presidio in San Francisco.  The Presidio is a 1,500-acre urban national park at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and although we had driven through it many times when we had visitors in town, we hadn’t explored much of it on foot.  We followed the map in a book we checked out at the library and, although there was a bit of a detour due to construction, we followed it pretty close.

There was rumor that it might snow in San Francisco the day of our hike but, as you can see, it was a super clear day over the Golden Gate Bridge!  We couldn’t have asked for better weather.

There were lots of old canons and army memorabilia out for people to see.  We thought this beautifully decorated canon was quite the sight:

Then we came upon an old army hospital:

Lola went galloping up the stairs…and ended up on the balcony, looking down at us:


So I ran up to join her for a photo opp on the balcony of the old army hospital. 🙂

Around the back of the hospital we found these two cottages which were built after the 1906 earthquake for refugees:

Nice little set up they had there!

I took a photo of Lola from the inside of the cottage and it wasn’t until later that I realized what she was doing at the time.  Nice way to show your respect for a piece of history, Lola!

Lola on the back steps of the hospital

Officer’s Row

Then we got stuck for a few minutes due to construction.  We were going to try to bypass the construction by zipping through the national cemetery but because dogs aren’t allowed we had to come up with another plan.  We decided to hike through the forest behind the cemetery to try to meet up with the path again (instead of taking the 2 mile detour back the way we just came!)  Luckily, it worked out perfectly and we saw some cool sights along the way.

Me and Lola hiking through the forest

We saw a couple of cool churches:

And here’s part of the national cemetery with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background:

Then we happened upon this weird pile of wood.  After contemplating what its purpose was and after Lola climbed on top of it (typical), we finally saw a sign describing it.  Turns out it’s a gray fox habitat!

Then we saw these huge block letters on poles out in the middle of a field.  One line we were able to make out said “resolve conflict with song” and we had no idea what the heck the purpose of it was.

Then we saw another sign which said that it’s a habitat for a bird.  Here’s a close-up of some of the letters, they were filled with straw.

I guess there are a ton of these artistic habitat displays that people can check out and they’re part of the Presidio Habitats Exhibition.  They’ll only be up through May 15th of this year so we gotta check out the rest!

Beautiful old brick building

“I live on the corner of Upton and Upton”–good lord.

A lone crane out in the field

Fallout shelter: Cool, now we know where to go.

Lola found this random mini castle out in the middle of the Presidio. So I had her pose in front of it since she’s like our little princess.  🙂

At the base of Golden Gate Bridge

View of the coast

The last third of the hike was along the Bay Trail which took us through Crissy Fields and along the beach.

Kevin made me and Lola go through this 4 foot tunnel that was filled with about an inch of water instead of taking the long way around. Crazy guy.

I can’t get enough of this view! And the bridge looked even more amazing on such a gorgeous day.

Monterey continued…

So I realized that I didn’t upload any of Kevin’s photos from our trip to Monterey (and there were some good ones!) so I thought I’d dedicate a short post to some of his photos.  🙂  Enjoy!

At the beach in Carmel…

On the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail…

Okay, it’s official: this is where we’re retiring.


Amazingly clear blue ocean

Waves crashing.

Kevin’s friend the squirrel

This photo cracks me up, the squirrel looks like he’s spying on someone.


My wind-blown look.

One of my favorites that he took, gorgeous rocks, ocean and sky.

My second favorite of his, the seagull is perfect in this photo!

Seagull in flight

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