Little girls in the big city

The morning of the 5th we were all sufficiently recharged to tackle San Francisco. Woohoo, gentlemen start your engines! (The boys drove.)

First stop (after whole bunch of holiday traffic – gah!) was food. (Isn’t it always about food?) Then we headed for the Exploratorium (which is now located on the wharf, for anyone who used to visit the dome as a kiddo).

Beautiful day – spectacularly un-hot, maybe 45 degrees cooler than it had been at our house this week. Ahhhh. Here’s a shot of my new purse, uh I mean a shot of Catherine and I:

Party aftermath

Oh it was such a slow day. The little party girls (and their parents) took it easy the day after the party. There was a lot of sitting, a lot of reading, not a lot of blogging (oops), and a little swimming.

Pre-fourth fun

The 4th of July was fun, fun, fun this year. (Of course it was, as always in our neighborhood, celebrated on the 3rd.) But before donning our red white and blue, Catherine and I had a critical mission – I needed a new purse and she (foolishly? bravely?) agreed to help me find it. We loaded up the portable electronics and called the girls downstairs to hop in the van. Hm, seems their idea of regular shopping clothes didn’t quite match ours.

A new world record!!

Fourteen eyes and seven smiles looking right at the camera!  Woohoo.

Happy Canada Day!

We packed up the pooch and headed to the airport yesterday to pick up Catherine and Hannah (Catherine’s Chatter), our BFFs from Canada. Not sure if Catherine was more surprised to see a dog at the airport or the two tall big girls who were waiting to greet her.

Swapped big hugs, then started playing immediately. Well, immediately after a few emergency nuggets to stave off starvation:

The house is too quiet now (even with the twinados)

Everyone has hopped on planes (even TubaDad) and the girls and I think it’s just too dang quiet around here.

We made the most of our last bit of time with visitors. The H Family had already gone home (boo!), and we knew that Catherine and Hannah were soon to follow. So we showed them our favorite hike and park and visited a Children’s Museum.

These poses that the three girls struck on our hike just KILL me!:

Ree and Ro swing so high and fast that this is how my camera sees them. Come to think of it, it’s how I see them most of the time too:

Hm, Hannah, do you think this water fountain might need a bit of adjusting?:

Look closely in this one and you’ll see that Hannah was never far from the big girls. See the extra pair of legs thrown over Ree’s belly while she’s playing the Calabash?:

All three girls love noodles and “noodle hair” – our household tradition that looks so cute and keeps hair and soup from mixing. We also do “syrup hair”:

We whiled away a few hours at the Children’s Museum. Had a ball and were the last ones to leave. Hannah burst into tears when we said we had to go (kinda how we all felt, I guess):

It was so fun to see Hannah enjoying this exact museum sand table that our girls spent so much time at when they were little:

Speaking of way-back: does anyone remember seeing the girls in this little museum kitchen? I dug up a comparison photo (taken in Jan 2007!!). Ro is left in the top photo and right in the bottom one:

And another comparison photo, also at the museum, this one from Feb 2007. In the first photo, Ro is on the left, then Ree, and does anyone also recognize the two in pink pants in the middle? That’s S2 and H2!:

Hannah was pretty enamored of PanPan. Dare I say there might be a Canadian hamster in her house someday? (Funny quote of the day goes to Ree -- Hannah was making happy noises at the hamster and Ree said “Hannah, PanPan doesn’t speak bird!”):

Goodbye to all of our visitors, we miss you already -- thanks for spending the 4th with us and sharing so many smiles!

Well you know we still had some fireworks on the 4th

We do most of our celebrating on the 3rd – it’s the day of our party and it’s also the day of our neighborhood fireworks – but we still have to squeeze in a little more fun on the 4th. Of course.

Good-friend Maggie always reserves us seats at a local parade, so the girls were front and center – dressed in their WelaWear again, with candy bags in hand, ready to wave engagingly and fill those bags to the brims.
(L to R: Hannah, S2, H2, Ro, Ree)

Well the candy was a little slow to come this year... but all of the girls still got more than they could eat (funny how they’re supremely interested in the candy during the parade and then forget about it immediately and never touch it again).

It always makes me grin when our favorite Canadian goes all out for our celebration – this year she had a U.S. shirt and visor. Go Catherine! (By the way, when I was commenting on all of our pictures to her, I said “Wow, that is a whole lot of red, white, and blue!” And Catherine replied “Oh I know, eh?!” Hee!!!)

Dinner that night was at a fave Chinese restaurant and I think the waiter was amused when we (or more specifically the five girls) ordered and ate SIX plates of dumplings. Mmmm mmmm.

We rushed home from dinner for a special Wela and BobBob fireworks display that they procured somewhere while they were on their recent month-long antique auto trip. They started with poppers (immensely popular with the seven-and-under crowd):

Then proceeded to a variety of sparking, flaming, whistling, crackling jobs. I think the girls were equal parts impressed, exhilarated, and terrified.

It was a good show. And in the end, I looked around and saw five happy, tired kids, one lone toy flag still in the backyard, and some scorched patio. I’m calling that a successful 4th of July.

The party pics

Ok, so our 3rd of July party was funfunfun. D2 graciously agreed to be our party photographer – thanks for all of these pics D2!

Before the party there was a tiny incident: I was making pineapple bacon baked beans, well actually I was starting to make them and opened a can. After getting the lid most of the way open (it’s one of those “safe” can openers that doesn’t leave any sharp edges) I saw what I thought was a teeny ribbon of label sticking out. And without thinking about it (I was talking and laughing with K2 and Catherine) I reached down to rip that piece of label off. Only it wasn’t label, it was a piece of wire the can opener had somehow sheared off and instead of pulling off, the thing sliced through my finger. !!!!! The dang thing wouldn’t stop bleeding. And I DID NOT HAVE TIME to go to Urgent Care because 60 or so people were coming to our house in a few hours and THINGS HAD TO BE DONE. So D2 ran to the drugstore and came back with supplies and K2 butterflied me together, then put a finger wrap on, then I wore what basically looked like a finger condom (did I seriously just use that word on my blog????) and kept the whole thing dry while I finished prepping for the party. Ugh. It’s ok now, although it looks kind of nasty and bled through the bandage during the fireworks. Ugh again.

Alrighty then, on to the party. Fun people came:

The kids all enjoyed the heck out of pink car and the backyard:

There was a whole lotta eating:

And then we all got festooned in glowsticks and walked outside to lie down on the grass and watch the fantastic neighborhood fireworks show:

Yay! Hope everyone had a fab Fourth of July (or even Third of July). Cheers!