Boogie All Day Long

We're in Santa Cruz visiting our good friends Kristin, Eric and Zoe.  

Naomi and Simone headed down to the beach with a boogie board. 

Learning the game.

Dolphins swam right behind Naomi and Simone and I caught one of their playful leaps.

As the Dolphins made their way up and down the shoreline, they stopped by again to visit.

Simone is on a sand crab search!  Success!

Naomi getting the hang of it!

Uh oh!  Buried by a wave.  

A mouthful of sand too!  This was the second time on this vacation that Naomi found herself chopping on grit.  About a week before, when leaping off the monstrous dunes on the Oregon Coast and rolling down the giant shifting hills, she bit the dust. 

Simone deep into the work of creating a sand castle city.  Each day we dressed the tops of our castles with sand crabs and then added seaweed to protect them from the hot sun.

Telling the ocean where to go with a tunnel system.

End of the day...

Back to the car.

Looking down at the sand castle city!

Another day lunching at Kelly's French Bakery, one of our favorite spots, with Eric, Kristen and Zoe.

Stopping by the great whale skeleton!

What a great vacation!

Monica, David, Sophie & Annabel come over.

Naomi is thrilled to see Annabel and Sophie!  

Monica and David arrive!  

Check out how we redid our room. -Simone to Sophie

Monica and I decide to take in the sunset from the globe. 

Even after twelve years, I experience a tummy flip when I look down the dizzy slope of the pyramid.  Are we spinning?

As we share our ambitions for Mad Cap, we enjoy the Puget Sound.   

Mad Cap is the name we've given the new house Monica has rented and sublet to Debbie, Catherine and I.  We are all Evergreen moms working on Internet projects and the house is a block from the school enabling us to work nearby, walk over at pick-up and then let the kids hang-out at the house while we cram in another hour or so of computer time.   The name Mad Cap came from our initials.   

The city is inspiring.  

Sweet Annabel 

The salad was particularly good. It was a mix of argula, mash and baby greens. Threw in some raspberries, spicy-sweet pecans, goat cheese and a splash of raspberry wasabi dressing.  

Even the kids liked it.

It was juicy.

Seattle Center ...our extended yard...

We love playing in the fountain! Simone in blue, me in red.

On a hot day, this fountain is our favorite.  We yell our hearts out at first trying not to get wet and then once drenched, we squeal with delight as we up the ante and try to tag the dome.  Afterwards we enjoy the hot stone benches and summer sun.  

More water to play with at the Science Museum.  

Every now and then we have waited outside for the Science Museum to open and then found ourselves some of the last folks to be ushered out at the end of the day. We actually find that much to do there.  (Of course we also clock hours at the Children's Museum, EMP and the two fountains.)  

There is a proposal for a Chihuly Museum at Seattle Center and we would LOVE that!

There are a lot of buttons to push and just like the amazing guides at the Seattle Aquarium, there are these great scientists who hang out at the Science Museum and tell stories to Naomi (and everyone else) about the exhibits.

Kinesthetic fun.

It is easy to enter but tricky to leave the hay-bale maze outside the fun house.

Naomi, "Mom, I'm a bad guy with a shooter thing charging through the forest on my super big horse." 

Where does she get this stuff?  This is at the Bamboo forest near EMP.

If you look closely you will see Naomi and her new friend on the far right hanging out talking and to the left of them is Simone directing an ad hoc performance on the great whale outside of Key Arena. 

Baby Pia

Enjoy

wing span

Lorraine Monick invited Naomi and I over to her house for a fun blue angels party.  

The show was impressive.  

They felt close. 

Naomi is checking out the toy planes as much as the real ones.

Naomi playing with Logan. 

Defense spending for the year of 2010 is between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion and as I enjoy the powerful planes cavorting skillfully over head, I make a mental list of the achievements we would accomplish if we diverted those dollars.  ALL of them!  Cancer and every other major disease would be cured, education would be reining (and raining) down in every conceivable form as surely it would be free.  PhDs would be commonplace.  Energy would not be an issue and the abundance of inexpensive power would surely make a massive dent in global poverty and health.  Climate change would be faced properly.  The arts would florish.  We'd switch the recession for a boom overnight.  I'm not nervous about America being vulnerable.  The thing I am nervous about is the massive waste of this capital.  Look at the size of these numbers.  In 2011 the budget will be between $1.003 and $1.223 trillion. Our defense spending is almost as much as the rest of the world combined and more than nine times greater than the military budget of China.  Of course I know that this isn't going to happen, but the war sounds varoom-ing above me took me down this dreamy hopeful path with such an intensity. 

Then the stunt plane arrived and delivered heart stopping death defying downward spirals.  Each time I was sure the pilot was going to crash.  I imagined a poof of smoke and big flame of fire.  

The stunt plane somehow made it.  I am less sure that our nation will.  

rock n roll camp

Naomi and I logged serious hours at Seattle Center this week as Simone was in rock n roll camp at the Pacific Science Center and Experience Music Project.

Naomi running through the spears of bamboo.  (I like how this picture makes me lean right just a bit.)

Naomi laid on the lobby floor and looked up at the ceiling of EMP at one point.  

She was hitting a boneless kind of tired only 3 years old get, 

BUT... she also liked the view.   Me too.

The museum is visually bombarding.  Massive multi-media screens floating high and low,
tucked unexpectedly in a cornice or filling a massive wall.  It is exciting.  The Rec
Room (above) had a band practicing in it.  Naomi and I watched for a bit and then
stepped outside into the hot blazing sun which suddenly felt very still.

The fuchsia surface rolling into the cerulean blue folds is something!

Earlier today we saw the blue angels and here Naomi is being a plane.

 Naomi running and dancing as she waits for Simone to come out of camp.  

Simone is here!  She looks so grown up to me.  Do anything new today?  

"Yes!  My group made a you tube video!  Wait till you see it!"  

Deluged in Seattle

The fountain delivering its cold deluge on a sweltering day.

Look how empty the dome park is today.  Naomi nearly has the place to herself!

Just a few takers at first.  Many sitting on the ledge enjoying the fabulous Seattle Symphony music.

But not for long. The scene ramped up.  Naomi is on the left with the big pink ball. 

We've been coming here nearly every day this week. It starts like this. We pretend we just need to quickly clean the peanut butter off our fingers and then get utterly caught up in the exhilarating game of running back and forth to touch the cold wet metal of the giant dome and then backing away from the spray.  One never knows when the giant fountain will amp up.  Getting soaked by it is such a thrill.