For those of you who miss my littles (thinking of you Amy, and Alex in particular)

We had a full and fun week. After meeting friends at the park in La Honda Friday morning, C and K asked me if we could go hiking. It was lunchtime, naptime, and I had just a few nuts with me, but it was a beautiful and warm day and so I obliged. This picture says it all. Kate tripped on some roots, and Charlie comes to life in a deep dark forrest. He kept looking up and around and saying, These trees are so beautiful, I could never leave these trees. It made me so proud.

When I agreed to go hiking and to the creek Charlie gasped and said, "Without Daddy?" And then spent a lot of the hour we were there strutting around saying, "We can find mushrooms even without daddy" But we didn't.

However, we did find lots of banana slugs.....

Life is so simple when you are a kid. Just splash, throw rocks, eat and sleep....wish it was simple for us adults.

Charlie spent his week two ways: Sweet as ever like in this picture, or hard as hell driving me to drink and hit my parenting books up again. Thankfully, the past few days he is back to his normal sweet, helpful, and thoughtful self.

Kate spends her time making me laugh. I walked over to her at the park the other day and said, "Kate, what are you doing?" "I pushing my breakfast burrito on the swing. weee" She is often found giggling, singing, dancing, or trying to snuggle in as close as possible. She is precious and if I could keep her this age forever, I would.

Wednesday we had an amazing time at Discovery Museum. We ran around and played for hours......

And with the weather so gorgeous and it staying light later, we have been playing at Hatch school after 5. Charlie learned to ride his 2-wheeler this past week. He can start, stop, go fast, slow, turn, and go over bumps. It was so fun to ride around with him.....

And of course there are evenings where we play tennis too. Even Kate is getting the hanging of it....well kinda. she can hold the racket....

Meanwhile if you haven't seen Charlie play tennis, you are truly missing out. Forehands, backhands, running around, smashing top spin balls over the net. It is pure joy to watch him....but you have to pay close attention, he looses interest in 8 minutes or so.

As you can see we spend most of our day outside. The kids love to take nature walks with lily, play in the backyard, go to the park....but I am trying to encourage some inside activities too, to help with our breathe in breathe out rhythm to our days. This art project was great, both kids enjoyed it.

This is Kate playing hide and go seek, another thing we do daily.....she thought she was well-hidden.

So while this week was full of fun, friends, and sun...by Friday evening I was exhausted and in desperate need of a break. Too bad Adam had an all day class in SJ Saturday, but we powered through, and Sunday was a fun family day. Staying home with the kids is amazing and I would never trade it for anything...but once in a while......I would like some solitude, silence, and space......