Christmas in California

We spend a glorious 2 1/2 weeks in California for the winter break. We spent lots of time with our family and friends, saw the Pacific Ocean, celebrated Dempsey's birthday early with some friends and had a great New Year's Eve.

4 of the 6 cousins

New Year's Eve dinner

Dempsey's "not-birthday" party at Expedition Island

Mary's Pizza after the climbing, zipping and swinging.

Thanks to all our friends and family who helped make an awesome break!  Can't wait to see you all next summer!

Sebastopol seen throughout the eyes of a NY Times journalist...

A friend here in Bogota forwarded this article to me about our home town, Sebastopol.  Fun to see some our favorite places...

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/travel/food-and-art-in-sebastopol-california.html?nl=travel&emc=

Our Town

Our town of Sebastopol is sometimes called quirky, eclectic or "out there". But we feel very at home here.  A nice little place to see the creativity of Sebastopol is on Florence Avenue.  There, an artist by the name of Patrick Amiot and his family have helped transform a normal city street into an art exhibition.  Here are some of our favorite sculptures on what our kids call "Sculpture Street".  Some are small (like the campers below) and some are as big as a car.  Enjoy!

Batman and Bat Man...                                                                     

Still Here (where ever here is)!

In our final weeks in Honduras, packing up and saying goodbye caused the priority of the blog to slip way down on the totem pole.  In short, we got rid of a bunch of stuff, said goodbye to school friends and city friends, gave a tearful goodbye to Yuliza and packed 10 suitcases/boxes and flew back to Northern California on June 4.

We bid a farewell to Honduras and all the amazing places we visited while in that part of the world.  We tip our hats to that country for being our jumping off point for overseas living, and what a jumping off point it was.  For anyone who has followed the news over the past couple of years, Honduras has not been the easiest place to live.  But we didn't move there for an easy life, we moved there for adventure!  On the 4 wheels of our trusty 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe, we traveled the country and beyond, racking up experiences that we will never forget.

Our awesome view on a cloudy morning.  Tegucigalpa was at its best at night with the twinkling lights down low in the city and making their way up the green mountains.

Dempsey's artwork was chosen for the end of the year art show.

Linnea with some kindergarten friends.

Now we bask in the glow of a beautiful California summer.  Bike riding, camping, a Music Festival, farmer's market, small town living and family and friends have filled us up.  

Dempsey went to "College for Kids" at the SRJC and built cool mechanical stuff out of Legos.

We went by ferry to the Colombian Consulate in San Francisco to get our visas sorted out before heading out for Bogotá.

We spent several days in MacKerricher State Park near Fort Bragg.  Here is Lake Cleone with the Pacific Ocean behind.

Glass booty at Glass Beach.

Bike riding in the campground.

We rode the Skunk Train to Northspur for a picnic lunch.

Our niece Katy brought her Notebook of Fun which provided activities for all the cousins.  This included  scavenger hunts, making peanut butter and seed bird feeders, reading stories, countless miles around the campground on bicycles, sand art, and making ice cream.  Above you see her ice cream ingredients and the kids with their bags of vanilla ice cream.  

We have two more weeks in Sebastopol until we fly out to Bogotá.  We will be living and working in the capital at a school.  Stay tuned if you're interested to see what life is like in Colombia!

Final Days

How does a person convey the experiences and happenings of the last days of summer vacation?  With words, it's a bit hard.  Of course you can imagine the tearful goodbyes.  There was laughter, reminiscence and hopeful talk of visits to Honduras.  But one of the really cool and surprising things took place in our final hours in Sebastopol.

We arrived in California 7 weeks ago with 4 suitcases.  We were trying to stuff our newly acquired treasures into 7 suitcases AND do a nice clean-up job at the last house that we were house-sitting at.  As the minutes and moments ticked away, we grew increasingly testy and frustrated by how the last 10% of stuff was taking 90% of our time to figure out what to do with it.  Then a cleaning sprite showed up at the house.  Not a Mary Poppins, not a professional, not a certified organizer.  Rather, a New Yorker in a brown Volvo with a can-do attitude who took charge and took a lot of stuff off of our hands.  She even brought her 2 kids to entertain ours while we hurried about.  Kim arrived and started sweeping,  recycling and generally keeping us focused so that we'd get out of the house by our 6 pm deadline. 

We made it out by 6 and then I think Kim's true motivation started shining through as she gleefully announced that we were going with her to Aubergine for a celebratory shot of tequila and beer.

So, after the whirlwind packing session, we got to slow way down and kick it at Aubergine, then make our way into San Francicso for a great dinner with Bruce, then off to the airport for our 1:30 am flight.  The flight went off without a hitch and we arrived in Tegucigalpa this morning just after 9am.  As we approached the city and the airplane made its signature hard bank to position itself towards the runway, we looked out the window and could see our house, the school, El Picacho, people!!  What a great bienvenidos to the city.

Here's a little of what we did during our last weeks on California...

At our camp in Lassen Nat'l Park

A boy and fire

A beautiful afternoon rain shower near Drakesbad Lodge.

A hike to a lake near Plumas Eureka State Park.

Drawing time during an afternoon rain shower.

July 29th came a little early as we celebrated

Linnea's 5th birthday with her friends at a park.

Some of the sweet friends who could come!

Father's Day and a Festival

We celebrated a 2nd Father's Day on June 20.  The first was Honduran Father's Day, back in March.  This time we got to celebrate Eric, Bruce and Jim.  Although dads are supposed to relax on their special day,  was too excited to make pizza and ribs.  What more could a dad ask for that pizza and ribs?  Oh yeah, beer.

Eric and Linnea taking his new hammock for a test drive.  

It's a winner... they were both asleep within 15 minutes. 

Then we were off the to Kate Wolf Festival.  The music was great.  Seeing old friends was great.  Watching Linnea paint Eric's toenails was great.

Game of Blink in the music meadow near the Main Stage.

Beauty Shop

Learning how to spin a plate.

Kate Wolf Music Festival and Other Happenings in Northern California

                                                                                                                        We're heading off to the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival in a couple of days.  I grew up listening to my parents play her songs on the record player while the late afternoon sun would filter through the wooden shutters of our west-facing windows.  The sunlight would hit the dark green shag carpet and the tiny bits of dust flying around in the air would be transformed into glinting bits of gold.  The festival started in 1996 to commemorate the life of a singer/song writer who died of Leukemia in 1986.  Some of the first songs that I learned to play on the guitar were "Give Yourself to Love" and "Across the Great Divide".  I'll learn "Green Eyes" someday, but it's always been a bit melancholic for me and I haven't made the space to learn it yet.

The line-up at this year's festival is amazing.  We're looking forward to hearing/seeing The Waifs, Hot Buttered Rum,  David Grisman, Ani Di Franco, Po' Girl, Greg Brown, Poor Man's Whisky, Little Feat and a whole bunch of other great musicians playing under the magical oak trees near Laytonville.  Of course, there is also Kidlandia for the kids and lots o' good food and drink for the adults.  Ben and Jerry's ice cream bars, too.  But they always melt too quickly in the heat, and they're poorly frozen to begin with...

I think this will be our 4th or 5th year going, the first being in oh-three when D was just 6 months old.  In between music performances, we'll swim in the river, hang out at camp with friends and catch up with the great northern California vibe that we miss so much.

E took the van up to the festival today to start working for our tickets.  He's worked the back-stage kitchen for several years now, earning a free ticket for his work.  I am supposing that the van is now parked under a shady shelter and he is busy setting up the portable kitchen or cooking some delicious concoction and meeting interesting people.  He met Pepe Lobo, for God's sake.  If you can meet the president of Honduras, you're bound to meet anyone.  So, I will travel north tomorrow with kids and my parents in their camper and we'll camp somewhere along the way.  Then we will go to the festival Friday morning.

So what's been going on in Sebastopol?  Meeting up with friends, seeing great live music right downtown, riding our bikes to swim lessons, to My Friend Joe's, and to Farmer's Market.  Last week at Farmer's Market we had the most delicious huevos rancheros.  While we were eating our meal, met up with Danielle, who grows the greens that the whole meal was bedded on.  Gotta love Sebastopol and its locavore priorities.

Selena and I went to San Francisco yesterday, visiting the de Young Museum to see the Impressionist exhibition.  We ate at a great pan-asian restaurant, walked through great neighborhoods while I froze my ass off in the typical breezy, foggy SF summer night.  Despite the cold, I was struck by the heart-breaking beauty of the fog, the ocean and the romance of the city.  We were able to sleep-in in our cute, cheap, windowless North Beach hotel room this morning until 10:00 where we then walked out our hotel, down an alley, and around a corner to "Pat's" for breakfast.

Friday June 18

                                       

1 part Mother Hips

+

    1 part Hopmonk

= a really good time

Translation:

Mother Hips tonight at Hopmonk!

Back in California

Our first week back has flown by in the blink of an eye.  We were greeted last Friday night with a great party in the old neighborhood.  We have already taken our first road trip to see Gail, Mimi and Grantpa.  The trip was great and spending time with Gail was long overdue.  We had fun playing with her wigs.

Blond and Brunette? or Brunette and Blond?

We also saw Kevin play a game in his baseball tournament.  Here he's playing catcher, but he also plays 1st and 3rd and sometimes pitches.

                                           

Cousins...

At Mimi's house.

Playing at Oso de Oro Park with Reed.

We're looking forward to Farmer's Market tomorrow morning and the kids will start swim lessons on Monday.  It's like we never left!  We've had some great IPA's, eaten a lot of fresh strawberries and picked up our bikes today from Jessie's basement.  Linnea is riding Dempsey's first two-wheeler (with training wheels).  We're also looking forward to the Honduras vs Chile game on Wednesday.