Family Fun!

The passed few weeks have been filled with family, sun and the big city. My parents were in Berkeley for 2 weeks with my grandmother while my aunt and uncle (My grandma lives with them and is 96) were on vacation, so we went to visit. This is us, above... 4 generations!

Here's a tender moment between grandparents and Elliot... ahhh...

More family! My grandpa lives up in Santa Rosa, so along the way, we stopped in to introduce the now toddling Elliot. Grandpa Harry now lives in a beautiful retirement home with plentiful tomato plants growing on his little deck. He showed us off--ok, he showed Elliot off with much pride!
Elliot and Joel. Joel is my cousin, so that makes Elliot his first cousin once removed. Yes. Really.

Just a few cute pics of the darling boy.

Below are some of the many pictures taken at the million playground visits. The first is Totland; this was awesome! As you can see in the pics below, it was a sand pit with a little bit of grass, a slide and a few swings and HUNDREDS of plastic toys! Honestly, I was quite horrified at the well used, sun faded, half broken plastic toys spread all over the yard. But then to see how much fun Elliot was having driving around in the cars, I soon forgot my germophobia and had fun too!

Grandma and Elliot at a very normal playground.

Another crazy playground in Berkeley is called the Adventure Playground. There are only 3 left in the country now, but in the '70's there were many scattered all over the country. This is a place where kids can go wild... hammering, sawing, painting, running rampant... I was reminded of Mad Max: the sand, the sun, the haphazard structures. See the link to the left for more info.

Before we left the Bay Area, we had a delightful visit with our dear friends Hannah, Mike and Linus who were visiting family in SF. Linus is 8 months old and just a dream. We moved away from them just one month before his birth... tragic!! So, anyway, the timing was great to see them. Here's Linus and his dad, Mike. Thanks to Hannah, I now have a great pic of them.

When we had our fill of Berkeley, we came back up to Northern Northern Cal and rode on the train. It's an old steam train that does a little tour of the old logging communities. It's slow, loud and rickety but so much fun.

Next stop was the beach. Grandma bought Elliot a kite. And a dump truck. We had a great time flying the kite. Sadie barked and tried to catch the kite and was successful a few times. Elliot loaded and unloaded rocks all afternoon.

Below is us and a pear tree after a fabulous vegetarian meal by the sea.

And for something completely different.... Elliot with the world's biggest zucchini. (It is now chopped up and tasting very lovely in a sweet zucchini bread.)