Yosemite: Spring Break 2013

Yay, Spring Break!!!  And Yay for Brian having vacation to take a vacation.

We took the train/bus to Yosemite to stay in the Curry Village tent cabins. I assure you, they had 300% less contamination than last year.


Brian will have more to add. But here are the first round of pictures.

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What Is It????

We hung out for a few hours on the Monterey Beach. Lovely beach weather for any time of the year, much less November. The tide was rolling out, and each wave deposited these little jellyish things.

 

Any clue what they are? The seagulls were fascinated with them, as were we. I scoped up one in a
bucket with some seawater to see if it would do anything.

  It didn't move so either it was dead or vegetable in matter. Any ideas?

Mount Diablo Dadventure™

Two Saturdays ago the girls and I went to explore Mount Diablo.

From the top:


Spelunking:


Views east:


Playground:

Return from Yosemite!

On Sat we returned from a weeks camping at Yosemite.  Many showers and loads of laundry later there's still a faint scent of campfire on everyone.

We have many stories to share, but we'll start with this one:

Brian and the girls in the hammock for about 30 min. The girls are frequently laughing hysterically.  Brian is telling them the fable of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, with tons of silly embellishment.  

How to Get Kids to Love Nature

Rule 1: Take your kids into Nature.



Rule 2: Stop making rules.

Robin Rides, Erin Instructs

There's so much going on in this movie, I won't spend time talking about it. Just will tag it with a bunch of things and let you enjoy!

An Evening of Yes

We got home from our first swim lesson today.  Dinner already consumed, "bath" already taken, Erin asked if we could paint.  With the "big" paints (tempera).  This is an outside-only activity, and as the temperatures creeped towards 100F today, it sounded like a great idea to go outside. So, yes, we can go outside and do big paint.

I fixed each girl up with paint and paper, and let them go to work.  They worked on blobs, butterflies, etc.  Then they got into it.


Yes, you can paint with the wheels of a car.

Yes, you can paint with rocks and leaves.

Yes, you can paint with your hands, cotton swabs, and just about anything else you find outside.

The playground is a tough place

Two days ago, we were at the local school playground after dinner to get some of our wiggles out.  Normally it's pretty quite, but since it's Little League season, the playground was packed.  No matter, my girls are so familiar with the terrain they jumped right into play.

Until.

Boy 1 and Boy 2 started picking on Robin.  Robin was on the little slide, Erin was 100 yards away on the swings.  I shuffled back and forth between them. Whenever I turned my back to Robin, she started fussing. Boy 1 was always behind her, Boy 2 by Boy 1's side, grinning.  At first, I thought she was taking too long on the slide and Boy 1 was annoyed.  It happens.

Then, protest #4 from Robin had me witnessing Boy 1 kicking her.  With both feet. With a look of grim determination on his face.  The mama bear in me rose up and I demanded of him, "Where is your Mom, Where is your Dad?"  He immediately knew the game was up and slunk away as best he could.  Dad 2 saw this, raced over to intercept Boy 2 and ask what was going on.  I said, "Boy 1 (probably age 6 or so ) was kicking my 2-year-old."  Dad 1 finally clued in that something was going on and chased Boy 1.  Dad 2 apologized profusely.  Dad 1... well, he just wrangled his boy and left.  Oh, during all the bullying Dad 1 and Dad 2 were engrossed in conversation.....

Today, we were at the city park, girls brought their push cars and scooters, again, to get wiggles out.  There's a center grassy area flanked by two playgrounds, one for little 'ins, one for big 'uns.  Around it is a paved path perfect for riding.  Erin was halfway around her first lap when I heard her start crying.  I saw to older folks and a smallish white dog.  I hurried over and asked if Erin was OK ( she was) and the couple assured me she was just startled by the dog, the dog was a reduce and not very well socialized.  Erin finished her lap and collapsed next to me.

She showed me the indentation and the break in the skin on her leg where the dog bit her.

I'm fine with rescue dogs, it's a good cause, it's not the animals fault.  I'm fine with trying to socialize the animal. But at a children's playground?  Where the dog is on a leash, but given enough lead to bite a passing child?  REPEAT:  ALLOWED TO BITE A PASSING CHILD???!?!!?!!

 

This was a challenging week for the McMillers at the parks.  

Snow Bunny

Today was a perfect day to enjoy some wintertime activities.  Never mind that it's April. Erin tried out skiing.  B & I learned it's often better to leave it to non-parents to help out with such projects.  Uncle Jim had her confidently shushing down the slopes in no time.  Methinks there is another McFeely skier on our hands. 

Robin didn't get a chance to ski, but she did learn that snow is fun, and especially delicious.  She ate nearly her body weight in snow today.

Then there was saucering.  I was fairly certain Erin would beg out of this, with the icy slopes and rocky landing (see below where the snow ended and the mud began).  Erin had no problem careening down as fast as she could, doing jumps, going sideways, and having a marvelous time.  I had to stop watching after awhile, as I had a hard time suppressing the nervous mother instinct, and I wanted her to have a wild, un"adult"erated time. 

Even an unfortunate collision with her cousin couldn't deter her.  

New Toy

The newest McMiller is not a person, but a very cool thing:

Our neck of the woods has very little light pollution.  No street lights.  Few neighbors.  No flood lights.  So, hopefully this summer will provide lots of night time stargazing opportunities.

New wheels

We scored ourselves new bikes.  Now, hopefully, we can make use of this fancy trailer we bought when Erin was small.  Inaugural ride to the "cocoa" store went smoothly on the way there, but Brian had to go get the car because Robin just wasn't having it on the way back.  Erin was chillin' like Bob D. Any tips for getting Robin more comfortable in the trailer? 

Big family outing......

As in big outing, with the family.

Last Saturday we had an Adventure day.  We started with a hike up Vollmer peak in Tilden Park, atop the Berkeley hills.

Then we went to the Berkeley Marina to picnic with some chums and let the kids run wild and free.  First we hit the plain playground. Then we went here.  Really, places where kids can freely wield hammers, saws, paintpots, awls, and vice grips should be the norm.

Admission to this wondrous, imaginative playground?  Free.  Well, Erin had to do some chores to earn her tools: pick up stray nails or large splinters and the like.

Even Robin agreed it was #1 cool.

Maui 2011

It's taken an entire week to blog about this.... the first week in Feb found the McMillers in Maui, HI. We had a wonderful week at this place with lots of aunts, uncles and cousins, and Grandma and Grandpa.  There were beaches, there was snorkeling, there were chi chis, there was pool time, there was whale watching, both from a boat and just from our condo, there were turtles, there were hikes, there were volcanoes, there was fun.

And there were pictures.
I still have more pictures and videos on the other camera to work through, so consider this part 1.

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Erin and Dad go Camping II

Erin and Brian went up to Upper Orinda Cousin's house for a backyard camping trip last week.  Erin learned about headlamps:



Sorry for the static-y sound: the camera is behaving strange.

This reminds me of every single developmental stage she (and now Robin) went through as a baby.  As soon as she caught onto something neato she wanted to practice and experiment and master it, night or day.  Someone wise once likened it to if we, as adults, suddenly learned how to fly wouldn't we be so jazzed about it we'd spend a few days and nights zooming around the skies, just because we could?

Yosemite!

We spent a long weekend in Yosemite with Grandma and Grandpa. The girls really liked camping: Erin liked hiking every morning and Robin liked the surreptitious fistfuls of dirt in her mouth.

Of course, there were pictures.

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Backyard Camping

We're slowly preparing for a camping trip to Yosemite at the end of this month.  Today the toddler sleeping bag arrived (Pokemon print, in case you were keeping tabs), much to the delight of the toddler.  So Erin and Brian decided to take a test run of the campout experience tonight.  On the back deck.  So right at the normal no-nap-day early bedtime, out comes the tent, sleeping pads, and accoutrements.  Another hour was dedicated to setting up the sleeping environs: bringing in stacks of books, making a snack tray, arranging the pillows/blankets/pads.  Then there was lots of rustling.  And now.... it's quiet.

So far, so good for the trial run.  I will wager, however, that they will rejoin Robin and me sometime in the middle of the night.  Or Erin will be up at crack of dawn, which in these parts means about 5 am.

Fountain Fun

Timothy Lake

We escaped the hot temperatures in Portland today to take a hike to Timothy Lake.

We had kept Erin up two hours late last night, and Ms A and I were up at 4 AM due to our kitties crying in the middle of the night due to the fan we had on ("You're fine, kitty, go to bed. Or I'm going to make a hat out of you. I'm serious. Don't make me do it."), so there was a good deal of groggy stumbling, plus napping in the car.

Anywho, we got free Smokey the Bear stuff from the ranger, saw the incredibly clear water of Little Crater Lake, picnicked in the woods, killed many, many mosquitoes, and took a swim in Timothy Lake. The water was perfect -- I haven't heard Erin laugh as hard as I did today swimming with her.

McMiller Rating: Awesome+.

Camping trip

McMillerPDX headed for the woods last weekend and took a short camping trip with some good friends. The weather was cool and moist, typical PDX early summer. But with a toasty fire, we all had a great time. Erin learned about s'mores, skipping rocks, and that when you're camping you don't have to take your bath!

Friday Evening Picnic

Last Friday we picnicked at Sellwood Park and then walked down to Oaks Bottom for some natural splendor, shenanigans, and bee-watching.



Oh, and did I mention leap-frogging?



And LOOK! It's like our first photo with the three of us in like, you know, FOREVER. Thank you for taking our picture, stranger with the goofy-looking dogs!