Two Weeks in California, part 2

Happy New Year! We enjoyed spending New Year's Day with JamNelSo eating sushi and mochi and other traditional Japanese New Year's foods, though I don't have any photos of that lovely dinner. The next morning found us at Beard Papa enjoying a cream puff to start the day before meeting Julie, Adam, Margot and Simon at the Children's Creativity Museum in SF where the children sang karaoke, created things out of odds and ends in a tool box and all manner of other creative tasks. Other fun things that we did with them that we remembered to take pictures of were climbing trees, playing dress-up and going ice skating. Not pictured are an epic picnic on the Embarcadero and a delicious sausage and kale salad dinner.

From there we went to Healdsburg where we only took one picture: the boys celebrating after completing a puzzle that pictures ten cats. There was also wine tasting, playing with dogs, eating delicious foods and eating more delicious foods. Yum. Oh wait - just found two pictures of us eating! One features Ethan and me at Bear Republic, a favorite brewpub, and the other is the kids and me at Scopa, a fabulous Italian restaurant. 

And finally - I told you this was a long vacation! - we headed to Lake Tahoe where the boys skied for the first time and we got to spend time with Rob, Sarah and Scout. Skiing was a big hit (in spite of the first lesson being a bit of a disaster, with an instructor teaching 3 and 4 year olds who somehow didn't get the memo that they need snacks and potty breaks during three hours of skiing) and the kids all had a great time playing together though it did involve a fair amount of mischief (eg putting out a 'fire' by drinking water and spitting it all over the hotel room while their parents were distracted by cheese and sparkling wine). The culmination of the Tahoe trip was Rob's birthday dinner on Saturday night. Again here, I took only one photo and it was of the somewhat random moment when Scout and Emerson modeled the wikistix glasses they had (remarkably quietly) made for themselves while the adults feasted on outrageously good sweet potato fries and, um, duck. I think it is safe to say that a good time was had by all.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.