Biking over the Golden Gate Bridge

   Last weekend we took the kids to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransisco! We had such a great time and recommend it to anyone who is up for an adventure!
  Usually the bridge is foggy and you can't see much, but Saturday was so beautiful there were tons of people out on the bridge and down at Chrissy fields where we biked to.  Adam got to pull the bike trailer, which was fine over the bridge and to the park, but coming back was a steep hill and with an extra 70 lbs it can be tough!
  This picture was taken by a Civil War re-enactor who was all dressed up and doing a reenactment at the Fort Point under the bridge.  He was so nice, in his full grey beard and uniform, and he invited Adam to come and PARTICIPATE in the reenactment in May down in Santa Cruz!  He said he would send Adam a DVD that would teach him what to do.  I totally want to.  He also thought it was quite scandalous that I was from South Carolina!

 The kiddos.  I can't believe we got a shot of Joseph not crying.  He was so cranky from no nap.  But we kept calm and carried on.

 Cute butt.

 We let the kids out for a break, and looked out over the bridge.  There were hundreds of sailboats in the bay.  It was beautiful!  And I was surprised there was no net or anything to keep one from jumping/falling off the side of the bridge.  And that's when two frantic people  came over asking if we knew whose bike the blue beach cruiser was! They were the suicide watch and were afraid someone had jumped!  We told them it was my bike that I left it to tend the kids for a minute.  I guess people jump off the bridge all the time, so they have volunteers who walk up and down the bridge to try and help talk people out of committing suicide.  Crazy.

 Madeline wore her Rapunzel dress the entire day.  So cute!  I love this girl.

 MJ making some international friends on the Pier.  We rode down to Chrissy Fields and played.

Finally asleep.  

Madeline was a great big sister and sung Joseph's favorite song to him every time he started crying.

Then... as if we weren't tired enough... 

The best dad ever wanted to take his princess to Chuckee Cheese because she had been such a good girl that day.  P.S.  I was there too, I promise, I just take the pictures.  And although these pictures don't give me any credit, when I wasn't snapping pictures, Adam was playing Sudoku on his phone and I was playing with MJ.  So now imagine one of these collages with Madeline and me!

Christmas 2011

Better late than never, here are some pics from Christmas 2011.

 MJ skating with Dad on fake ice. 

Three beauties!

Mom and Nana came out to visit for a pre-Christmas treat!  We spent the day going to Sausalito Island.  Walking, shopping, dinner (I discovered a love for raw oysters) and we even caught the boat light parade on our way back!

 The cousins stopped by to spend the night on their way to the Heder family Christmas!

Christmas Morning:

   We love big family Christmases!  Every year we debate whether traveling is worth it.  But we always end up going, and we always end up loving it.  You just can't beat spending the holiday we love the most with people we love the most.  The faces in these pictures says it all.  I don't know when and if we'll stop, but I'm sure if we do, I will cry a little bit come Christmas morning.
   Thank you Shorts for hosting us all!

Geeky Awesome

Did anyone see Nova last night?
  Dude... it was awesome.  I'm not talking about sit-com-y awesome, I"m talking about completely changing the way you think about the world awesome.  At the end of their amazing episode--which by the way, it really seems like all we have done since Einstein lived is try to flush out his ideas, how could one person be so smart?-- They said that our world might only be a 2D Hologram of our real world which is encased inside a black hole!
  So, the episode talked about how space is not just a void, but is really dark energy.  Always pushing and pulling mass, and one big culprit of that is the black hole.  Here's where it gets fun.  He said, if he were to throw his wallet (a 3D object) into a black hole, as it enters the hole, all of the information that makes up the wallet is copied and then projected onto the space surrounding the black hole in 2D.  So everything that the black hole has swallowed is projected on the outside of the black hole.  So then he said, what if that applies to all of space?  Our planet, and solar system for that matter is just a 2D projection of the nearest black hole?
  This is a really new theory, but I'm going to read up more about it, because that is just plain cool.  AHAHAH it makes me so giddy just to think about it.  I am such a geek, but seriously I think I will be talking about this for the next 2 weeks...!

Picture of the Day

  Words cannot express how much I love this little guy.  And that's exactly what we call him, this little guy.  Madeline says "Mom, can you help me when you're done feeding that little guy?"  ha! I didn't realize how much I called him that until she started to.  Joseph is such a happy and mellow baby.  I luuuuuuuuv it!  He has allowed our live in California to be crazy because he just lays back and is happy.  If he's hungry, he doesn't start to cry until I am sitting him down to feed him, like he forgot that he was hungry, and when we get to the high chair, he suddenly remembers,'oh yeah, I'm STARVING!'
  This little guy LOVES bathtime, especially with his big sister.  Last night Madeline was spitting water on him in the bath--and he thought it was the greatest thing.  Mind you, that the dad here taught Madeline how to spit water in the shower and SHE also thinks it's the greatest thing.  Of course.
  Last night, I tried again to let him cry it out.  I mean, he's 9 months old he doesn't need to nurse twice during the night, but after about 15 minutes of him screaming to me "Why aren't you helping me!!  I ask so little of you, and you can't just nurse me for 5 minutes!" I broke down.  I brought him out to watch a little of The Holiday with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz (you gotta kick off Holiday season right!)  with me to calm down and sit on the couch while I folded laundry, and then, you got it, I nursed him back to sleep!  Oh well, there are worse things in this world than cuddling and comforting your baby!
  If anyone has any ideas of getting your baby to sleep through the night that is not crying it out, please tell me!  Because I just can't do it for this one.  He is just my little guy.

Happy Halloween 2011!

We definitely went all out this year!....NOT!  (I had to put that in there for Adam.  'Not' and 'Psych' jokes are my two most favorite out-of-fashion, lame jokes.  I was so happy when they used it in Arrested Development)  Anyway, Happy Halloween!  More pics to come after tonight, if I can find my camera battery charger that is...better start looking there's only 10 hrs. left...

This is what awaited us...

  at "the Dish" this morning!!!!!!  Ah!!!!!  Instead of running, we watched this tarantula walk with us on our path for a good 10-15 minutes.  (The Dish is a popular place to walk in Palo Alto.  We drive down there and meet up with friends about once a week.  It is an open space preserve, which means, "walk at your own risk"  they have signs warning you of coyotes and mountain lions, and thankfully we have never seen any of those, but this is coming a little too close for comfort. )  Madeline was both scared and intrigued at the same time, but she ended up showing the spider her teddy bear, so I guess the coin landed on the "this is a good spider" side. Go figure.  I was fine to walk beside it, it was actually really interesting; the way two legs were synchronized at a time.  And we just finished reading Charlotte's Web!  So it was perfect!  And that's one of the things I love the most about being a stay at home mom is that we can sit as long as we want and watch spiders, or construction trucks, or whatever we want.  I always seem to digress to why I love being a stay at home mom.  Start talking about spiders, of course I end up talking about being a stay at home mom!  Duh!  Anyway, our list of wild animals we've seen at the dish includes: deer, ground squirrels, a blue heron,  Adam has seen a rattlesnake, lizards, and now a tarantula.  We talked about bringing it home to play a trick on daddy, but we decided not to when neither one of us wanted to pick it up!

Preschool!

   And she's off!!!  This IS the beginning of the end...once she's in school, she will never not be in school again! AGAIN!  Am I being a bit dramatic?  Well, need I remind you of the swimming lessons where I cried? ... mmm hmmm... and of the time I heard Butterfly Kisses on the radio and bawled my eyes out, on my way to the OB--BEFORE--Madeline was even BORN!  Now you know who you're dealing with, I am totally sentimental.  But I was very proud of myself, I did not even bat an eye today.  Well, Madeline did help a little.  She was sitting and playing with Moon Sand before I even said goodbye.  I had to call her over to give me a hug!  What was she thinking?!  I guess she is not much like me, and to second that, Adam said he was the exact same way when he went to school, didn't look back.  Unlike my horror story about Mrs. Tyzinski (my first grade teacher who was really a witch) told me on my first day of school "Only BABIES cry!!" Which of course made me cry harder and made me feel like a LOSER...on to the pictures??

Funny that my first picture of a post about Madeline is of Joseph.  Oh well, here he is happy as a lark in his PJ's ready to go where-ever the wind takes him!  I couldn't ask for a better baby!

Here is Madeline who was not happy as a lark, in fact we had to threaten her with NOT going to school that day she was acting so badly... yes, I know, don't give your kids empty threats, we'll work on that one later when she's behaving!

Walking to school with Daddy.  Such a Daddy's girl.

Smile!

Cute picture, huh?  Even if she's not looking at me or the camera.

Moon sand!!!!  Where have you been all my life?

  So just one more funny story.  This one is actually about Madeline.  When I picked her up, I got the same cold reaction as when she left.  She just hopped in the double stroller like she had gone to Pre-school a million times.  "How was your day?"  I asked "what did you do?"  All she said was "Mom, I just played with a black baby."  hahaha!  What the heck? That's what I'm paying the big bucks for, inter-racial skills at this preschool! I knew there was a reason it was so pricey! What she really meant was she played  with baby dolls and one of them had darker skin.  It wasn't even black, I saw it, it was latino or something. Hopefully she can squeeze it and it'll teach her some spanish!