Sunset at Half Moon Bay

Sigrid and Anders are the third and fourth from the left.

Love me that velcro pizza

Open face sandwich

The cool kids are taking their PB&Js open-faced these days.

Rainbow playdough

This is Anders's "I love rainbow playdough" dance.

Teaching little brother the ropes

Monday mornings used to be the most important mornings every week for Anders, because that's when the garbage trucks come.

He doesn't get so excited about them anymore, but lately he's gotten more interested in them again. Maybe he's just excited to be able to show them to Soren.

Race car walker

Found this toy at the Upper Noe Rec Center.

Playdate with Audrey

We met Audrey for a playdate at the Conservatory of Flowers. Or that's what we meant to do, but we ended up hanging out with this fairy.


The theme for this year's train exhibit was Playland.


I liked this use of a Technics SL-1200 turntable.


Soren and I tried out the funhouse mirrors.  Here we are very short...

...and very tall.


I don't think this is a genuine Louis Vuitton product.


Soren liked the bumper car.



(So did Audrey.)

A-n-d-e-r-s

Anders wrote his name!

Couch!

I bought this couch in Fall 1998, right after I moved down to Los Angeles. By now, I think it might be the oldest piece of furniture I own. But as you can see, it's not doing so hot anymore.


The middle cushion is cracked and torn.


This end of the couch isn't looking so good, either.


The left armrest used to be where I rested my head, sometimes even falling asleep on the couch, as a bachelor.


This leg no longer even screws into the couch properly.


Sigrid and I made efforts to keep the couch going a while longer—until the boys got a bit older—including buying a slipcover (the red bits in some of the photos above are from the slipcover). But really it was getting tiresome.

We sat on a really wonderful couch at Noriega Furniture a couple of years ago, while waiting for someone to fill out an invoice for some other piece of furniture we were buying there. We weren't looking for a new couch back then, but we kept a catalog page with the information on the couch.

Last month, on a bit of a whim, I emailed the salesperson we've worked with at Noriega Furniture. And our couch was on sale! So we bought it. It's a Hancock & Moore City Sofa (the 83 inch version, not the 93 inch version). Very comfy, and very purty.



Let's hope the boys don't destroy it.

Brother helping brother

Anders wanted to give Soren his bottle.

Microsaurus Rex?

Hey, you know those dinosaur fossils Anders dug up in our backyard?

Well, I glued them together for him.





I told Anders it looked like a T-Rex to me. He pointed out that T-Rex is much bigger. I suggested that perhaps he had discovered a heretofore unknown cousin of T-Rex. Anders didn't seem to buy that, but neither was he terribly worried about the diminutive size of his dino skeleton.

Belated New Year's Day photos

Haraboji and Soren.




Dan is reading to Anders from his new Dinopedia.


Caden and Cara helped Anders hunt for dinos in the back yard.

The Return of the Family Hikes

We took a 2-1/2 hour hike in the Presidio today.

The goal was to hike the Ecology Trail, starting at Inspiration Point.


Armed with espresso drinks and children, off we went.



We walked down to the trail.


It started off in fairly open space...

...but shifted into the woods fairly quickly.


Someone had propped up a bunch of sticks that I thought looked like a stegosaurus skeleton, but Anders wasn't so sure.


Our plan was thwarted when we ran into this detour.


(art shot interlude)


Our detour lacked sufficient signs telling us where to go. We took a wrong turn somewhere, and never found our way back to the Ecology Trail. That's ok, though, because we found out about this historical building that is being turned into an inn, which will open sometime in 2012.



We also found this cool display, showing where the foundation was in the old days versus today.


Even if we weren't on the Ecology Trail anymore, we still had cool things to see. See the Golden Gate Bridge there?


We ended up on Lovers' Lane. We're flexible, so we rolled with it.


We stopped for a snack.



Here's a view of Lovers' Lane from our snacking spot.


Here's a picture showing Sigrid's careful parenting technique.


More Lovers' Lane.


Another great stick structure!


And another great view.


After finishing Lovers' Lane, we walked back to the car.


It was a great hike!