New York

We went to New York early March for my cousin Allison's wedding. Atticus was one of the two flower girls, more on that later.

We decided to go 4 days early and hang out in the city.

We stayed 2 nights at my sister's place and 2 nights at the Trump Int'l.

The first day we were there Attie wanted to go straight to American Girl Place.
She picked up a few things there and we were off.
We did a lot of fun stuff in Nyc, but mostly we had fun pretending we lived there, walking around, shopping, and hanging out with my sister Becky and her husband Danny.
They are so luxury. They have a two-bedroom in Clinton.
Attie has read about Degas, Jackson Pollack, Georgia O'Keefe so we took her to the Met and she was very excited to see them in person.

We stopped at SAB and were very lucky to see Suzy. Attie watched a variations class and told people later that the girls danced for her.

Of course, we went on a Micawber hunt (must be a John Lithgow reader for this reference.)

The carousel was closed and we figured he must be in Florida for the winter.

Attie loved staying at the one bedroom suite in Trump Tower on the 17th floor (courtesy of a friend from Terry's firm.) We had a street view and she liked to watch Daddy walk by to get Starbucks.

On our last day in the city we drove down to look at "Liberty" as Attie was calling her. It was a bit overcast and she wasn't completely satisfied with the view from the "end of the world" but next time we will go out to the island.

We did lots of other fun stuff, check out the online gallery for more pics.

We drove out to Long Island for my cousin Allison's wedding.

Attie was one of two flower girls and was so beautiful.

Here is the blushing bride as seen by Attie. Attie was completely bride crazy and took lots of pictures the day of the wedding.

Oh yeah, she danced all night with the rest of 'em and didn't miss a beat!

My little party girl!

Attie's Special Person

For Valentine's Day at Attie's school, they were allowed to invite a "Special Person" to join them. Attie chose her BFF Ayumi. She made a poster about being friends with Ayumi and shared it with the class. Notice the matching t-shirts Tomoko got for them to wear on the special day.

One activity was to decorate heart shaped cookies with icing and sprinkles and then EAT them!! They played on the playground at recess and it was as if Ayumi had been in Kindergarten all year. She was very comfortable with the kids and not at all intimidated.

Attie just adores Ayumi and it was nice that she could share her best friend with her classmates.

Hello Neighbor!

In January we had a typical Northern California rainstorm with high winds and power outages, etc. I was home puttering around and passed my sliding glass door and saw this...
Oh!! Hello neigbor. We lived like this for almost 5 weeks before we got a new fence.
In a way, we were glad it happened. All three sides were different heights and types and so now we have a uniform, new fence. I don't have any good pics of it yet.

Outstanding in the Field

In December, Terry took me to a foraging dinner in Santa Cruz hosted by Outstanding in the Field. www.outstandinginthefield.com

I took this picture because the farm, called "Pie Ranch" was a quaint little family farm beneath the hills and directly across Route 1 was the ocean. I loved the shed which stored the tractor and the surfboard.

We were asked to bring our own plates, so that the tables would be ecclectic and each diner's place would be different. We loaded them up on this trailer when we arrived and they took them down to the barn before dinner.

The wine was flowing freely, courtesy of a local winery and the farm owners were encouraging us to graze on the strawberries, which were delicious and had a faint green apple taste in them.
The dinner was built around mushrooms, of which I am not a huge fan. However, there were so many varieties, so fresh, and prepared with such great dishes, I just loved everything we ate!

After being introduced to the ranch family and learning about their farm and their lifestyle, we hiked up into the hills for a spectacular view of the Pacific.

Here we are at the top of the property with the ranch behind us.

We then hiked down to dinner in the barn. It was seasonally decorated and well heated which was good because we had been out in the cold for about 3 hours.

The dinner was several courses. There were two fish dishes and the fishermen who caught the fish, stood up and talked about where the food we were about to eat came from and how it was prepared. We also heard from the gentleman who foraged for and provided the shrooms.
After a long meal, we picked up our washed plates and were led back to our car by lantern.

It was a wonderful experience. We will definitely do it again!