Memorial Day & Rob's Birthday!

Rob is lucky. This year the entire U.S. celebrates his birthday ;-) At least he was off work today.
After few tiring days at the shopping malls and flea markets we spent a relaxing day at the Del Valle Lake. We’ve found out that the local campground has beautiful sites next to the Arroyo del Valle, the feeder stream of the reservoir. While Maarten was amusing himself by throwing stones and sticks into the water and chasing the birds and squirrels we enjoyed our lunch at the shady creek bank.
I would prefer to stay at the trail away from the weekend crowds at the beaches but for Maarten there is nothing better than a refreshing splash into the water.

Anyway I believe that Rob had a nice birthday despite the failed dinner. Oops!

Tomatoes

I love tomatoes. Unfortunately those you buy in the supermarket never taste like they used to from our garden when I was a child.
Our yesterday talk with a friend of mine encouraged me to grow my own tomatoes in the backyard. As a Greek from origin she loves tomatoes too and last year she was growing tomatoes in her backyard very successfully.
I’ve decided to give it a try too. At the garden center I chose some (hopefully) good kind for the containers. Floating in the tomato dream and looking for a suitable soil I was surprised Maarten is singing so lovely and is not bored in the shopping cart as usually.
Now I had to wake up! Maarten was plucking the leaves of the poor tomato plants and throwing them everywhere around…
I hope he will not repeat this in our backyard since I’ve already planted them with a lot of love even putting an egg in the planting hole for extra calcium and sulfur ;-)

Del Valle - East Shore/Heron Bay Trail

There is something we should have known before our furnishings were moved here from Europe. We should take more ‘brocante’ stuff with us to the U.S. I haven’t thought about the opportunity not having here much choice to get old gear or better said to get any at all.
And indeed it does happen here of course: I’ve decided to get ‘new’ patio furniture in ‘brocante’ style.

I have to mention it even...I'd like to forget it as soon as possible. On Saturday driving back from another unsuccessful furniture hunt we ended up in an awful traffic jam by Emeryville. This wouldn’t be that special but the only possibility for us was to take the Bay Bridge to the City! So our trip home turned to be 3 in stead of 1 hour drive.

Relaxing in the backyard afterwards Rob came up with the idea of making a wooden table himself. And believe me I have nothing against that!

Especially because of me NO shopping on Sunday but early in the morning we headed in the middle of nowhere...
Actually by accident we drove to the northern shore of Del Valle Reservoir. It was very windy up the hills but the view of the lake that fills the canyon was worth the climb. Here you can even feel a sense of solitude yet just around the corner live seven million people!
We couldn’t wish a better comfort after the bad luck on Saturday.

Nice and quiet

This is how it looks like after Maarten was playing nicely and quietely by himself...

'Learn to swim'

I’m worried. Maarten has another huge bump at his head. Unfortunately he wants to catch up with the older children in the playground by climbing very high…
As usually he wasn’t crying at all so I don’t know how bad it really is. But it doesn’t look painless to me.

Finally the swimming classes have started today. It’s already 8 months ago since Maarten was swimming and jumping in the pool in Walnut Creek fearlessly. 8 months at his age is a pretty long time that’s why I wasn’t expecting much from the first lesson. But he hasn’t forgotten anything at all. He was just very enthusiast, kicking and screaming out very loud from joy. And even (again?) being the youngest one he was afraid of nothing jumping with the oldest boy.
The less nice part was the moment when we’ve supposed to leave the pool. Knowing he is not allowed to go to this particular pool anymore Maarten decided to take a running jump to the 6 ½ feet pool (some 189 cm). I should have already known that he always comes up with a solution ;-)

I’m definitely glad I’ve enrolled him for the summer swimming classes as well.

Mother's Day/...filling out forms...

Today for the very first time I’ve received a Mother’s Day surprise from Maarten: the most beautiful drawing I’ve ever seen!

Well, we are busy to do al the paperwork for the preschool.
A large package of forms like the ‘Financial agreement’:
$ 421 a month is the tuition for 9 am – 12 pm for 2 day’s a week. (now I understand what our local childfree friends meant by ‘having children is too pricy…’)
I never thought I should think about the cost of the preschool being too high …till we were asked about the usual cost in our home country. Oops! Which home country, huh?
O.K. it would be Belgium in this case => the answer is ‘no cost for preschool in Belgium’!?!
Anyway…The ‘Earthquake card’ reminds me our family is still not earthquake proof the way it should be in this area. Even the ground is shaking with us on a regular basis likely we still don’t take it serious enough. A shame!
Another interesting form is the ‘Four Step Hurtful Behavior Policy’. If a child bites or hurts someone for the 3rd time he will be removed from the school for good. I hope we will never get that far ;-)

Big Sur (weekend 4 - 7 May)

May 4th
Pfeiffer Big Sur SP
After a heavy rainfall during the night we woke up in a gray foggy Friday morning. Not very much what we’ve hoped for our first weekend camping trip. However the weather forecast was very promising so there was still a hope.
After an hour and something we’ve finally got a view of the sea and even still in the morning fog the rocky shore was beautiful as always.
By the time we arrived to the campground of the Pfeiffer Big Sur SP the fog was completely gone and it was nice dry and warm. No reason to be worried about setting the tent in the rain anymore. We loved the campground and we were really surprised about the size of our tent site. A huge spacious site next to a dry arm of the Big Sur River. We still had an easy access to the river but considering Maarten’s age we were lucky our site were not directly adjoining it. Maarten loved to watch the squirrels, crows and Steller’s jays coming very close to us. But you had to be very careful with all your food! In the evening a deer came very close to our tent. We should be aware since we were the intruders into their territory. I just wonder how will be my feelings to camp in the bear country. In Pfeiffer BS SP ‘only’ the mountain lion is already a good reason to beware.
I should have known that to go camping with a toddler would be a challenge. That Maarten was like a ball of dust and was hard to keep him away from the water faucet was not a big deal at all. Another issue was the abundance of the poison oak and the art to explain why he should stay away just from this particular shrub.
It seemed Maarten enjoyed himself very much till he had to go to sleep in the tent. The first night he would just continue to ask about us. The whole night! And all the time his little hands would search for me which I would consider very sweat during the day... All of us were freezing during the first night since the tent we’ve bought is ‘only’ three season tent which means very much open! We learned a lesson from this again. Maybe it’s the age already? All the tents in the campground seemed to be just 'three season' so what’s wrong with us?! It’s already years ago I’ve been camping and our tent used to be ‘just a tent’ for any season. Anyway we’ve already found a solution for that.

May 5th
Julia Pfeiffer Burns SP/Pfeiffer Beach
Fortunately the weather on Saturday was so nice so we could warm up after the cold night.
We took a half mile trail with breathtaking views of the McWay Falls which descents some 24 meter (80 feet) onto a beautiful sandy beach.
Afterwards a short trail along the McWay Creek took us to an another high waterfall at the end of the redwood-forested canyon.
We had to drive carefully not to miss the exit for the famous Pfeiffer beach with its huge rock monolith. You have to cross a small lagoon to get to the beach. This lagoon was probably utmost attractive for Maarten. Even it cost us a huge effort to keep him away of the water he managed to jump there twice. It meant I run out of all his spare clothing for the day. So he end up in Rob’s T-shirt. Even it was extremely windy there it couldn’t spoil the enjoyment of this beautiful spot.
The return to our tent was less romantic. It doesn’t matter whose fault this was or how they did get in but our tent was attacked! Remains of our foods together with the squirrel excrements. What a dirty mess!


May 6th
Pfeiffer Big Sur SP
On the hot Sunday we decided to stay in the shade of the redwoods and we did the popular hike to the Pfeiffer Falls together with the Valley View Trail Loop. Maarten doesn’t want to sit in the back carrier anymore but sometimes it is necessary when we need to get somewhere since his biggest hobby on the trails is to collect stones to chase the potential puma away. ;-)
And on Sunday was it for the first time he would take his afternoon nap in the tent!


May 7th
Andrew Molera SP
Another hot day and our last day at the camp. :-( I didn’t want to leave at all. I just wonder why we haven’t done this before...
On our way home we made a stop at the Andrew Molera SP and we took a wonderful one mile hike through some beautiful coastal terrain. We had to wade the Big Sur River to continue through some lovely secluded coastal area with an abundance of wildflowers.
This trail leads to a beautiful beach. A stunning place to end up our wonderful weekend at the Big Sur coast.
PS: The temperature in San Ramon when we arrived home at 6 p.m.: 92 ºF (some 34 ºC)!

Preschool

The Californian school system is another issue we have to learn a lot about. Maarten enjoys other children around and he should be even more exposed to the English language. That’s why we’ve decided he should start a preschool at least in the fall. I know it’s even not the summer yet but you have to be very quick to register your child. Being busy with researching and considering all the local preschools we finally made a decision. Today I've enrolled Maarten to a prep class at Fountainhead Montessori in Dublin. I’ve got some very positive recommendations about this school so I hope I did the right thing. This morning I and Maarten went there together to observe the classes and it was difficult to decide which Miss we should choose. But Maarten decided obviously himself. He didn’t want to leave the class of Miss Robin so I enrolled him for her class. He is going to start in October as soon as we are back from our vacation.