Havi in Stockton Saturday afternoon



Getting work done Sunday before heading out to the beach



Gaige taking a breather

They all got completely into that 55 F water!

Pure joy!

I thought it was silly as I was packing swimsuits to bring... Who knew?!

Ellery works on burying herself.  Give that girl some sand and sea water,
and she's good to go for a couple or hours.

Ta-da!

Havi playing catch with Gaige

All done after some illegal feeding, chasing, and all around bird harassing...
Super fun stuff!

I love this picture.  It's no wonder strangers take her picture.

Red Light, Green Light in the park with new friends

Ellery showing her jujitsu/samurai moves to a captive audience

If only everyone in the world could be such fast friends...



We've been here almost a week now, and I think we're finding a bit of a groove... "jog" the same path (I put that in quotes because it's really more like a "barely jog, walk fast, and pant a lot path" for all of us except Gaige), take care of school, see a new place, head to the same grocery store, find a new, fun dinner restaurant, party it up a little more, then go do bed and start over again.  Life's good!
Saturday morning, Havi, Ellery, and I had to get up and head to Stockton for a couple of soccer games.  Havi's team won one and lost one.  They're good, fun games, but honestly, it's a bit of a bummer for us to miss out on the fun in SF while we're gone basically the whole day for two forty-minute games.  This will only last through February though, so we'll keep it up.  It's certainly good to see Havi getting such a good work out and really increasing her skill and soccer knowledge.

While we were gone, Steve and Gaige lived it up.  They spent several hours out running and even swimming in this freezing water.  Apparently, it's somewhat tolerable after your chest relaxes a bit and you can get a breath. Then they came back home for work and school business. When we girls got home that night and wanted to walk to dinner, Steve wasn't too keen on the idea.  He managed though, and we headed to North Beach for some spaghetti alla carbonara.  I think we passed three other Italian restaurants before we found one with carbonara on the menu.  It was a super cute and authentic Italian cafe.. "Michelangelo's Caffe."  They had friendly and attentive service and yummy bruschetta, but the carbonara wasn't all we were hoping for.  It was good, but we've set the bar pretty high. We're spoiled from the carbonara in Sicily, Paris, and even Cabo.  Hopefully, we'll find a restaurant here that does it as well.

Sunday morning, Gaige and I went on our little jog/walk.  Steve and the girls were headed to the beach as we were coming home, so we grabbed our suits and all headed down.  It was really a beautiful day.  It must have been at least 70 F.  The kids all got in the water and then dealt with sharing one towel after they got out.  Steve is going to bring some beach towels back from home on his next trip.  I don't think I've ever been on a trip where I needed my parka and a suit and beach towel on the same day.

We completely forgot that it was Super Bowl Sunday (which Steve is rather proud of).  We didn't realize it until we heard the reports on the television at a little Irish pub where we were having dinner.  The way this side of the City was hopping all day, you'd never have known that people were inside somewhere watching football. 

Steve had to head home to Sonora for some work this (Monday) morning, so the kids and I have used the day mainly as a school day.  Both of the kids need my help with actually "teaching" them their math/algebra lessons, and that is a bit time consuming.  We did get a break in to go to the park.  Then we got back at it for bit, had dinner, and watched Apollo 13 together with some popcorn.  Our first fun night in!