New Teeth, Christmas Elf and A Video

I've been trying to blog in chronological order, but I've got so much material to work with it's been kinda overwhelming. I still have photos from the finalization and Jay & Barbara's visit to put up ... and of course all the shots of Zach opening presents that I'll be taking today!

In the mean time, here's a photo of his newest teeth - he's got 6 now!!! ... some shots of him dressed up like a Christmas Elf (I swear we didn't do this on purpose, it just happened ... really) ... and a funny video from when Jay & Barb visited. We were eating dinner and Zach was entertaining himself with one of his favorite toys, and he ended up entertaining us, too.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Joyful Solstice, Peaceful Kwanzaa and a Supercalifragilistsic 2008!!!

The Day After Thanksgiving in San Francisco

To work off some of that turkey and pumpkin pie we went for a hike with our neighbors Julie, Yann & Amyric. Amyric is a few weeks older than Zach.

We hiked along the coast from Land's End, just north of the Cliff House to the Legion of Honor, just south of China Beach.

Amy, Zach, Amyric & Julie. Taken from the lawn at the Legion
of Honor.




Our poorly-executed attempt at making Zach "fly"
over the Goldent Gate Bridge.




One of the reasons I love living in San Francisco: hikes like
this in our back yard.




Sunset at Land's End.



Hanging out on the lawn at the Legion of Honor

Thanksgiving in San Francisco

There are no shots of us actually eating, because, well, we were too busy stuffing our faces! But our first T-day as a family (and Amy and my first time cooking a turkey!) was a success. You can at least see what we ate!

the whole spread: turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, gravy,
stuffing and pun'kin' pie



plus a little salad with pomegranate - for a touch of california flava

Zach's plate - um, bowl: mashed up turkey, squash, sweet
potatoes, apple sauce (not colored, it's naturally pink!), potatoes
and peas

We certainly have a lot to be thankful for this year. We hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too, and best wishes for happy holiday season.

Pre-Thanksgiving in Phoenix

The weekend before Thanksgiving we flew down to Phoenix to visit Zach's cousins, Ian (age 3) and Connor (age 9 months). It was July the last time we saw them, when we all visited Amy's family in Miami, so we were all excited to have boys together now that they're more interactive.

Zach is just beginning to schooch/army crawl and Connor crawls, stands and practically walks. And of course Ian runs and runs and runs and jumps and turns and bounces and runs some more. It was a LOT of fun and we're all looking forward to the next time we visit, just after Christmas.

Again, I'm going to just load up the photos for now and add captions later. For the most part, they are self-explanatory, tho' ...

(Blogger just enabled a new medium-size for photos - before it was just small and large. I'm trying it out for this post. Let me know what you think. Does it slow down how fast the page loads? Do you prefer the larger size? Unless I hear negative feedback, or discover some other reason not to use the medium size photos, I'm going to use them from now on)

Jennifer's Visit, Nov. 2-4

Jen visited us in early November. She stayed with us and we had a great visit, spending time with each other, relaxing and hanging out in San Francisco. Friday night we just relaxed and cooked dinner in. Jen got to feed Zachary solid food - open wide!

On Saturday, we had brunch at Pomelo. Yummy! Zach was his usual charming and mellow self. Then we hopped on the Metro (San Francisco's light rail) and rode it to Dolores Park, where we laid down a blanket and enjoyed the warm autumn sunshine. Zach made use of the time to get some sun where it typically don't shine ... just doing his best to fit in with the locals ... well, actually, if that were the case, he would've been wearing a thong ;) On the way back, we of course stopped for Mitchell's Ice Cream and their most excellent seasonal flavor: pumpkin. mmmm, pumpkin ice cream ...

Sunday we drove down the coast about 20 minutes to Moss Beach. The resident harbor seals were lounging on the rocks just off shore, and the tide was out, so the tide-pooling was excellent. This was Zach's first (awake) time at the ocean. He loved it. Jen loved it. We all loved it. And we all had a blast exploring the tide pools. Kelp, sea stars, anemonies ... enjoy the photos!