Scroll

My grandfather was a skilled calligrapher. He made me a beautiful scroll when I was in middle school or high school. I've been meaning to get it framed for a long time, because the scroll no longer would lie flat (the sides were curling in). I finally got it done, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

(The red stuff in the bottom-right is not on the scroll; it's a reflection in the glass. Oh, and if you'd like to see the whole scroll at once, click on the picture and your browser should scale the picture to fit in your window.)

Tennessee Valley hike

It was a beautiful day, and we decided to go for a hike on Tennessee Valley Trail in Mill Valley. It's about a 1-1/2 mile hike, and last time we did it Sigrid was pregnant with Anders. So I suppose you could say this was Anders's second time on this hike, but it was his first time under his own power.

Yes, he walked it.

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Bees!

Our neighbor keeps bees. Sigrid buys honey from him sometimes.

Yesterday, the bees swarmed. This means the bees had reached capacity in their hive, and were looking to form a new hive. The way this works, as I understand it, is that the queen lays eggs that are destined to become queens (potentially, anyway). The queen and most of the workers then leave the hive in a swarm, and upon finding a good location for a new hive, they set about to build that new hive. Meanwhile, back at the old hive, the first new queen to hatch goes around and kills the other queens before they hatch, and that's how the old hive gets a new queen.

Well, the swarming was pretty spectacular. After a while, they seemed to calm down. Today, we realized that they hadn't left, though. They had clustered on one of our trees, which I guess is the base of operations they were going to use while seeking out a location for the new hive. Sigrid let our neighbor know what was going on, and he came over and collected the cluster.

I like blackberries

Bouncy house

On our way in to Kipper Swimming at the Stonestown YMCA, we noticed that they were setting up a street fair, which we checked out after class.

Anders and Agreen really loved the bouncy house, though they had slightly different approaches to bouncing.


Once the kids were through bouncing, they exited via a bouncy slide. You'll see that Anders was a bit tentative about the slide, but Agreen had no such concerns.

Tai chi

Anders and Grandpa practice tai chi.<sup>*



*</sup>May not actually be tai chi. No warranties, expressed or implied. Please consult your doctor before imitating.

Anders is (almost) 2!

We celebrated a couple of days early, on the weekend.







And as it happens, I ran across a little promotional tool Google made that lets you create your own Google Search Story commercials, so I made one that Anders might enjoy...

Funny hats!

Anders and Agreen yuck it up at the end of another Champagne Friday.

remember when....

"Hey, Agreen, remember when we used to play in exersaucers?"

"Yeah, those were the days, Anders."

Darien, meanwhile, just wishes someone would show him how to work this thing.