We spent Easter with the Hartman’s at their house in Pleasenton. The kids got to enjoy an Easter egg hunt in the back yard. Then we grilled lunch and enjoyed the afternoon (beautiful weather, by the way). Lots of playing and even some swimming.

My kids are very friendly. Maybe a little too friendly (?) Social butterflies if you will. Here is a picture of them walking off into the lawn. What the picture doesn’t show is, just to the left there are two ladies sitting in the grass enjoying the nice weather. Rhys and Myles proceeded to walk straight over to them and give them their goofy, flirty grins. Then they sit down. Just plop right down to hang out with these total strangers. These ladies thankfully think this is hilarious and are very understanding, which becomes even clearer to me as one of the ladies 8 years old daughter comes over to the group. Of course she is thrilled to have a baby sitting right there. Needless to say I cannot get my children to come back to me. I finally have to go pick Myles up so we can leave. They are like this everywhere. Whenever we go to the playground, Myles will find another mom or caregiver and go sit down with them. I guess I should be thankful they aren’t socially awkward or afraid of other people.

I wonder if children will have memories from a younger age, because we are reinforcing their recent memories with instant images.  For example if we go to the zoo one day and snap lots of pictures, we will later that day probably look at all those pictures when I down load them to the computer.  We then may look at the ones that are the favorites again if I include them on myspace page or make an album.  Months later we may look at them again.  So what for us was a day at the zoo, is for our kids a day at the zoo followed by several visual reiterates.  Will that then result in an earlier memory?  Now our kids may remember things from when they were 2.  I’ll be sure not to take any pictures of diaper changing.

The boys got to see snow for the first time (John included)! We went to North Tahoe for two nights. It was kind of a last minute trip and not an ideal situation, but still the mountains were BEAUTIFUL and we managed to find some semblance of quality family time.

Myles is so proud of his accomplishments lately. He likes to look at you with a proud smile on his face and a slight lean forward, to make sure you are proud too. The other day he was bringing me shoes out of his closet saying, “Shoe. Shoe.”. He sat down on the floor and tried to work out how to get it on his foot. He’d move his foot to the shoe, turn the shoe, slam the shoe at his foot, turn it again and again. Finally after a few minutes of trying he put the shoe down in front of him. He then grabbed another shoe and strategically stacked it on top of the first one. Very proud of his accomplishment, he made a little giggle and proceeded with the motions of self satisfaction and making sure I too thought it was the best thing in the world (for the moment; Myles has the attention span of a… what were we talking about?)

Not really. But his picture did make it onto a website for Soccer Tots. Check it out!

Rhys at the Farmer’s Market

So something awesome happened this weekend.

When I was growing up, I spent most of my time with one friend. She lived around the corner from me. We were close in junior high and high school. In college we stayed close, including a Tuesday ritual every week for a year. The closest friends all the way through. It finally came that we drifted our own ways. I was invited to her wedding 5 years ago and haven’t seen her since. That is, until last weekend. As fate would have it, her husband was transfered to CA, to a neighboring city, and we reconnected. This weekend we got our husbands and kids together (a feat we had predicted in the 8th grade!) and spent the day together. It is so easy being with her again. We picked up right where we left off, only better. It’s really great to have Andrea back in my life!!

Oh, did I mention her boys are almost the exact age as my boys!!

We went to see the U2 3d movie last night. It was a pretty neat experience. I would recommend it, especially if you did not make it to there last tour. And if you did make it, like we did, it offers you a new perspective on the concert and it still rally enjoyable!

We made a stop to feed the goats

The boys sharing the brushes

These goof balls thought they were so funny.