Heidi's big 40th boat bday

Oh what a lovely day. My favorite day of the year. My birthday. This year was a big one so we rented a boat through Call of the Sea and went for a sail on the bay with about 30 friends. My mom and my uncle flew out from New York for it. We boarded the 82' schooner, Seaward, at about 5:30 pm and had cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and cake on board. It was a beautiful night with sun and light wind. Plenty of memories and pictures to remember the night by. Thanks to all that helped us celebrate and thanks to those in absentia that would have liked to have made it - we missed you!

Happy Birthday to me

I love spending my birthday with my family. I woke up today with my family around me and then spend the afternoon with my mom and my daughter (Evan was napping otherwise I'm sure he would have loved to have joined us). Kiira gave me a beautiful teal clutch purse for my birthday - what good taste you (and Nanny) have Kiira! I love it!!

Yippee!!! Yippee!!!! I love my birthday!!!!!

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to Alan!

Dear Dad,

Thanks for all the batting practice and the airplane rides. Thanks for teaching us to ride a bike/tricycle/scooter and letting us run around dirty and be kids. Thanks for taking us for walks and flying kites with us. Thanks for coming to our horse events, our school concerts and our Yad b'Yad classes. Thanks for taking us for ice cream and teaching us how to ice skate. Thanks for laughing at our jokes and telling some in return. Thanks for taking us to the library, helping us read and then helping us on the inadvertent scavenger hunt to find the library book again. Thanks for our little gifts when you go away on business, it reminds us that you are here even when you are not. But most of all, thank you for your unconditional love when we are less than perfect, when we spill, when we fight, and when we try all the patience that is inside of you. We love you daddy.

Love, Kiira and Evan

Safari West

In Sonoma County, we are lucky enough to have our own Safari. No, there aren't elephants, tigers or lions but there are plenty of giraffes, water buffalo, gazelles, steer, and a bunch of other animals I am forgetting! It is great and the kids LOVE it! It is called Safari West. We went with our friend Hilary, her son Luca and her mom. Kiira, Evan, Nanny and I went to celebrate Evan's 3rd birthday. We loaded up into a big jeep and drove around, "on safari" of course.

Evan's birthday slideshow

You can see more of Evan's birthday photos here!

Safari much fun!

Today is Evan's birthday. The big 3. June is a busy month for us. First it is Alan's birthday (who likes it low key), then it is Evan's birthday (who likes to take it up a notch) and finally there is the grand poo-ba of birthdays, the let's celebrate for as long as possible birthday - my birthday.

I love to throw a party and each birthday, for each child, I pick a theme. This year for Evan it was a Safari theme. We invited about 5 of his friends over and a couple of the older siblings for Kiira and celebrated with a pinata, safari balloons and of course a safari cake!

As part of the his present from mommy and daddy - we took him on a safari in Sonoma so stay tuned for that update later in the blog!

Happy Birthday Evan - another milestone for you. At the time of your 3rd birthday you:

1. Are 36 inches tall and 38 pounds. That puts you in the 50% for height and the 75% for weight.
2. LOVE anything to do with balls. You can hit a pitch that is thrown to you. You can hit a tennis ball over the net. You can drop kick a ball. You get the idea....
3. You love to eat chicken nuggets, fish sticks, broccoli, salami, apples, edamame, turkey and roast beef. AND you have a sweet tooth.
4. You just started potty training and you are doing GREAT!
5. You are a bit cautious on a bike and scooter but LOVE to jump into the pool and try to swim.
6. You are friendly with strangers and will go up and give a wave to anyone.
7. Your curls are getting less curly but are still there.
8. Your verbal skills are much better and almost everyone can decipher what you are trying to say. Your favorite expressions are "ME TOO!!", "Evvie do it!", and "Wait for me!" Clearly you are a second child! :-)
9. You have a mind of your own and often will try to do things again after having been told not to. You average 3 time outs a day.
10. You sit for breakfast and lunch quite well but getting you to sit at the dinner table is a lost cause.
11. You love to cook dinner for us in your play kitchen while we sit at the dinner table and have the real dinner.
12. You love horses and want to "go pony camp".
13. You could spend 45 minutes playing in the sandbox.
14. You are trying to dress yourself but aren't quite there. You love to wear your shoes on the wrong feet.
15. You call me Monny instead of mommy and I love it.

Happy Birthday big boy. You make us laugh, you make us cry but in the end when you look at us with those big blue eyes and angelic golden curly hair, the world melts away and we see only your sweetness. That's what they call unconditional love.

Kiira's last day of kindergarden

I can't believe she is now officially a first grader. Her accomplishments and milestones this year from 5-6 years old:

Kiira can/has/has not:

1. CAN Tie her shoes in bows and double knots (she is very proud of this)
2. CAN Braid (very loosely)
3. CAN Write the alphabet in both capitals and lower case
4. CAN Read beginner level books
5. HAS NOT lost a tooth yet
6. HAS walked/trotted off the lunge line on her pony
7. HAS trotted a course of cavalleties all by herself on her pony
8. CAN ride her two wheeled scooter
9. CAN ice skate
10. CAN swim across our pool doing the doggie paddle
11. CAN jump into the pool and put her head under water
12. CAN get on stage in front of 3,000 people to perform a ballet performance (with no jitters)
13. CAN count to ten in three languages (English, Spanish, French) and has mastered a handful of words in Chinese
14. CAN draw amazing butterflies, hearts and horses. Drawing a family is one of her favorite things to do.
15. HAS figured out how to push her little brother's buttons
16. HAS pulled her mom and dad around her little finger
17. HAS gone through the whole school year as one of the only ones to NEVER lose her "superday"
18. HAS grown 3 inches in 9 months (I kid you not!)

YEAH Kiira!!! We are so proud of all your accomplishments this year.

Alan's birthday

Not as much of a fan of his birthday as I am of mine, we celebrated Alan's birthday with a simple family gathering and a cake and homemade dinner of his choice. The kids couldn't resist helping him blow his candles out.

Welcome to Marin County - welcome to the 21st century - hello composter for Alan's birthday. I think he really liked it!

Bookstock

On very short notice (3 days) I was asked to stage the dugout at Giants Stadium. Gamely, I took this on. How does one make a dugout into an area fit for VIP's you ask? Well, you make it into a home away from home for them. Candles, orchids, lamps, candles and lots and lots of pillows. AND you give away alot of promo material. Jenny who is my partner in the staging business and her mom, Ann, who happened to be visiting helped Alan and me put together all the free giveaways the night before! What troupers they were staying up till midnight.

The event was called Bookstock and they were expecting about 5,000 people to come to this large marketing event for a locally produced and written movie called Touching Home. In the film, a set of twins, Logan and Noah Miller, tell their story about trying to make it in major league baseball while grappling with the debilitating effects that alcoholism can have on a family. In real life, the twins grew up in Lagunitas (which is the town next to Nicasio where I ride). They got Ed Harris to star in the movie by showing up at the San Francisco Film Festival and convincing him to read their screenplay. They later wrote a book about making the movie and the longshot they had in getting it done. The book is called Either You're In or You're In the Way.



Making the SAGE design promo materials with Alan, Jenny and Jenny's mom Ann



The dugout BEFORE



The dugout AFTER



The movie being premiered on the jumbotron at Giant Stadium

Fairy of Generosity

It is time again for the semi-annual Roco ballet performance. I missed the last one as I was in Australia trying to coo my niece to sleep. Not this one - present and accounted for. We approach this performance with both excitement and sadness. Miss Erika has been a wonderful teacher for Kiira but Kiira announced that she would like to do the Nutcracker next year. I have been researching how exactly to do this. When I told Kiira that she would have to switch ballet schools and go somewhere where her friends were not - she nodded very determinedly. I realized just how serious she was about this. So...buh-bye Roco....hello Marin Ballet.

In the meantime, for Kiira's last performance with Roco - she performed a moving piece as a Fairy of Generosity. This was Evan's first performance as a guest in the audience and he did GREAT. He was mesmerized by all the dances and clapped supportively at the end of each. He greeted Kiira at the end with a bouquet of beautiful flowers. Way to go Kiira!!!

Feeling a little WICKED

Seeing as this year is the big 4-0 for me, I wanted to have birthday month. OK - let's get serious. I want to have birthday month EVERY year!! :-) I guess I just used turning 40 as a good excuse to do that. Since my friend Mona Helen's birthday is also in June we decided to have a day just to ourselves. We arranged childcare and headed to the city. There, we proceeded to be pampered by Nordstrom Spa. After, we were spoiled with delicious food at Jardiniere, oh yum! Following, we lost our cares in a production of WICKED. It was spectacular. Not only the singing and the sets but also the story line. For those of you who don't know the story - it is the story behind the story of the Wizard of Oz. How the witches became who they were. VERY good writing. I highly recommend it. I hadn't been to the Orpheum in so long it was a challenge for me to even remember where it was. Ah the days when we had the time and resources for culture on a regular basis....

Kittens, kittens and MORE kittens

Today we became the proud parents of two little kittens. Ever since Calvin and Bullseye passed away I have been missing that certain little fuzzy presence in the house. Alan, however, was not having the same tug as I and it has taken until now to convince him on added bodies in the house. I think the final push was my begging for kittens for my 40th birthday. We had checked out kittens before but alas, these did not work out. So, I contacted Maine Coon Adoptions. Cal and Bull were part Maine Coon kitties and I like the fact that these are the dogs of the cat world. Not only are they big but they come when you call, visit when you have company and don't seem to know that a dog is bigger than they are.

Apparently we are just going into kitten "season" (who knew there was a "season"?) but all of the adoption agencie's kittens were accounted for. They recommended I go to a few shelters that they get their kittens and cats from. Long story short, I drove 1 1/2 hrs north to true country land where animals come in triplicate with no one to take care of them. The chances of all the kittens I saw being put to sleep were very high and my heart said save those that you can.

I surprised the kids with, names that would finally be settled on, Hawkeye and Lulu and we haven't looked back since. A few goopy eyes and a couple colds later (the kitties that is), they have melted our hearts and become a part of the family. Even Rennie has accepted them, despite their repeated attempts to snuggle up to his warm body and play with his tantalizing long whiskers.

Apparently they are nocturnal because often as I drift off to sleep, I hear them tearing around the living room and up and down the stairs. They come alive and explode with their abounding kitten energy. I love to sit on the couch and watch them jump and fall off of the chair, tumble over each other and run in circles around a feather on the floor. Quite simply they make me laugh in a slapstick humor only an animal can master. The unembarrassed try and miss, the fumbled attack and tumble or the spastic leap and spin only a kitten can do is something that people try to capture on film to watch and watch again. Only, we have it live. It just doesn't get much better than this!