Havi mailing her first letter to a boy... stinkin' cute as can be!

Gaige checking out the trippy sucker fish and eel

Ellery, ever the poser, waiting to board the boat

I just like this pic.

Woohoo!!

Ellery petting her batray buddy

Havi getting in there, too.  They were soaked by the time I dragged them out of there.

Gaige and Steve at Bubba Gump's...a favorite of the kids

More tricks for the Stewart Family Vault... Look out Coleman!

Tiersy smiling at her auntie

Checking out the...

elephant seals and some seriously naughty behavior :)

Tiersy and Ellery

These make me laugh so hard... Erika and I decided to scare Gaige on the path.
I told him just to keep walking, I was taking a pic of him and Mama.  Then...
Erika jumped out with a "RRaarr!"

It was perfect timing because it turns out that the poor kid had
just been thinking about an elephant seal popping out of the bushes.

He always can get me, but getting him is rare and oh, so SWEET!!

Beautiful kids and beautiful scenery

Gaige is running through the flowers, and I say, "Leap!"

And this is what we get :)

Leaping lessons to follow...

"How to Frolic with Stephanie Stewart"

Mom and Dad with their grandkids

I love this.  Gaige took it in the back seat, and it does a great job of showing
what he deals with every day.

The Birthday Girl and Tiersy

Cleaning up the sidewalk

Before

After

Proud team

Aerial view of our neighborhood.  We're just one block back
from the green park by the water.

Ellery checking out the Academy of Science from the
Observation Deck at DeYoung

Steve and Steph

Monkeying around

Frisbee at the beach

Gaige looking very grown up

Why we make so many trips to Prompt Care

Havi takes a flying leap

"That is such a cool picture." -Ellery
The little samurai is at the bottom of the pic.

Ellery and Havi on Haight with their new shades

Wow, it's hard to keep up with this thing.  Our days are going by so quickly we can hardly believe it. 

So, here's a quick summary of our last several days.

Steve was still in Sonora working all day Tuesday.  He didn't end up back here until pushing midnight, so the kids and I had another day on our own.  We did school, of course, but then we headed out for some exercise and fun.  We did our standard jaunt out to Fort Mason,  but on our way back, we continued on looking for homeless people to feed.  When we were in Sonora, I told the kids that whenever we were going to be out and about, we'd bring sandwiches or homemade breakfast burritos to give to people in need.  Between getting the groceries and making the time to cook burritos, this day was our first attempt to go for it. 

I had spent part of the morning cooking up burritos, we had re-heated them, wrapped them up, and were off.  You'd be amazed at the difficulty of finding a homeless person here when you're looking for one.  Seriously! We couldn't believe it.  Even the guy who's always a couple blocks down in his same old spot wasn't there that day.  We ended up passed Fisherman's Wharf, just prior to Pier 39 before we found someone who clearly needed assistance.  We were SO excited when we spotted him.    As we came walking up, he held out his cup and asked, "Money for food, money for food?"  We stopped and I explained to him that we didn't have any money, but we had made yummy burritos especially to deliver to people in need today... He said "no."  Maybe it was actually, "No, thank you."  I can't remember the details because we were all so blown away that we stood there with our saucer eyes, and I explained how we made them especially for him and how they're super good, etc. but he was completely against it.  BUMMER! 

The kids especially could not believe it.  They kept saying, "Mom, he was asking for money for food, but wouldn't take food??!!"  It certainly deflated us a bit, but since we were so far down to Pier 39 anyway, we continued and shared a sourdough bowl of chowder (maybe the guy would have eaten that?).  That got us pumped up enough to go for it again.  We ended up seeing another guy who was asking for money.  I did the same drill with him, and he was a little hesitant, but decided to go for it and was extremely happy in the end.  We were so happy that he accepted that we gave him some for later, too.  We saw one more woman sitting right on our block which is unusual.  She was hesitant, too, when I offerred her the food, but she decided to go for it at the last minute and was glad that she did.  She was so happy to find that they were warm still. 

We joked how the Stewart Family is making their mark with the homeless community.... "This weird lady and her little kids trying to push her burritos on us..."

Wednesday we took a Bay Cruise under the Golden Gate and went to the Aquarium by the Bay.  We had purchased City Passes to get the best value on transportation and admission to several locations.  These two were probably not things we would have done on our own, but they were in our booklet, so we decided to give it a go.  Steve can hardly stand being on a tourist "cruise."  He so wants to be sailing under the Bridge on a sailboat, but he managed.  The little aquarium at Pier 39 is cute, too.  Small, but still fun. Ellery nearly got her hand bitten by a little shark in the petting area.  She snatched it out of there just in time.  That shark was not in the mood to be touched.  The rays and skates were so curious to see the people around the edge of their pool that they would pop their heads up in a vertical position to get a better look.  It was pretty cute.  Ellery made sure that the "biologists" that worked there knew that she had swam with sharks and rays before and even hand fed them.  She 's pretty proud of that.

We ended up having a late lunch/early dinner on the Pier.  Then we headed back for work/school. 

Yesterday was my mom's birthday, and although it seems rather odd to go see the elephant seals on your birthday, my mom wanted all of her kids together, and she wanted to do the Ano Neuvo hike.  So, we all gathered at the State Reserve there to observe the elephant seals.  It was a beautiful drive for us, and I didn't even get sick!  Ano Nuevo is south of Half Moon Bay, and I don't have fond memories of previous expeditions to Half Moon Bay, so this was much better.  It was another gorgeous day, and observing the seals and learning more about them from our docent was fun.  The kids were really excited by what they learned...budding biologists ;)

We celebrated with an early birthday dinner at Cameron's English Pub in HMB. Super good fish and chips, pear cider, ribs, you name it!  We'll have to head down that way again.  It's probably less than an hour from the City.

Today, we took care of some business at home, and Steve had the kids do a little "community service" project.  He brought some gardening tools and bark here from Sonora, and they made one little patch in front of our place look loads better just by getting rid of the weeds and putting bark down.  They've got one more spot to work on in the next couple of days.  They were pretty proud of their work.

After lunch, we headed over to the DeYoung Museum.  They don't have a special exhibit at this time.  They're getting ready to open the Olmec exhibit of BIG ancient artifacts from Mexico, which will be super cool, but for today, it was just art.  Some of it is seriously cool, and some of it is seriously not, but all of it gets an opinion from us one way or the other, and I suppose that's the beauty of art.  I have a hard time though with the "stretched, running panty hose over wood chunks with dangling panty hose hacky sacks" exhibit... SERIOUSLY!!  Anyway... It was neat for the kids to see paintings of places around the world that they have seen in person.  There was even a painting of Mont Saint Michel in France.

When we left DeYoung, we drove through Golden Gate Park just to check it out a bit.  We so want to bring Piper here to run along with us while we ride bikes. It really is a great place.  Did you know that they have a field of bison? Truly! In the middle of San Francisco, there are American Bison.  Odd, but cool.  The park dead ends at the beach, so we (really "they") headed out to play in the sand.  I parked myself and my cute shoes on the wall and took pics of them instead. ;)

When we left, we headed over to the Haight again for some super good Thai food.  One of our all time favorite restaurants was The Siam Lotus Room in Miami.  We were so sad when we learned that they just closed down after many, many years.   Well today we found another Thai place called Siam Lotus.  They didn't have all of our favorites, but what they did have was super tasty and a great deal, too.  Steve and I are wondering if we're going to like REAL Thai food, or if it will turn out that we're just fans of Thai food in the States.  We'll soon find out...booked our hotel in Patong Beach today!!

After dinner, we headed down to see D and work some magic with the melted glass again, but he had already left for the day.  We'll try again next time.  It's hard to leave that area empty handed though.  The girls and I got some sweet deals on sunglasses. Gaige got a hip hat, and Steve got a smoking deal on some awesome leather dress boot/shoes at a used clothing store.  Good times :) 

Off to soccer in Merced in six hours!

Adieu for now.