Happy Birthday to Us

It's pretty clear that the children in this family are the main event.  They are in 99% of our photos, our activities revolve around them, and their birthdays are a hell of a lot more extravagant than ours (e.g., 8 layer T-rex cake).  But, enough is enough. Since Lance and I were born a mere 6 days apart, it makes sense to celebrate our birthdays together. And this year, we actually acknowledged our September birthdays by having our friends, the Goldsmith's, over on the 24th, and by taking a date day on the 27th!

RJ goes to preschool on Tuesdays, and Logan can go to our friend Erika's family day care as a drop-in when we need/want, so Lance took the day after my birthday off work (he didn't want to take off on his birthday, also a Tuesday, because he gets a box of birthday cookies at work), dropped the kids off while I was getting a much needed haircut (it's been over a year since my last!), and then we drove over to the good side of the hill (the Bay Area side).

We strolled through downtown Livermore, had coffee, ate sushi for lunch without sharing the salmon nigiri with RJ.  Don't get me wrong; I LOVE that RJ loves sushi, but it sucks when he reaches across the table and snags the last piece!

After lunch we visited two Livermore wineries (La Rochelle/Steven Kent and Murietta's Well) and treated ourselves to a couple of bottles after sampling the goods.  I have to say that although La Rochelle was recommended to us as "the only Livermore winery with drinkable wines", I actually preferred the wines we had at Murietta's Well.  Different tastes I guess!

Then we had some rare time at home without the kids before going to pick them up!  32 isn't too bad.

RJ Goes to the Ballpark

In June 2007 I bought some tickets to go to a Giants game but RJ was born so we never used the tickets. A few years later we felt it was worth another go and when Dreamworks was conveniently planning an event I picked up a couple tickets to take RJ to his first baseball game at AT&T Park.

This was just a chance for some Daddy-RJ bonding so we left Logan and Mommy at home. We drove into San Bruno where we hopped on a Caltrain into the city. I get to ride Caltrain free because of Dreamworks and RJ gets to ride for free because he's a kid. We know we had the right train because there were several groups of people with coolers drinking beer on the train.

RJ got the royal treatment at the game even though we were in literally the last row in left field. We had cotton candy, shared garlic fries and lemonade, and some ghiradelli ice cream.

The Giants beat the rival Dodgers as RJ got into the "Beat LA" chant a little bit and made it through about 4 innings before we decided to explore the park.

We played on the trolley in right field out by McCovey Cove and went into the mini-baseball field in left field where RJ got a chance to hit the ball -- and promptly ran into right field instead of first base. We'll work on that. We walked the full way around the park and checked out the game from every angle.

The CalTrain ride back to our car was interesting because both the SF Giants game and the SF 49ers games let out within 10 minutes of each other. It was quite crowded, but if you ask RJ, the train ride may have still been his favorite part (after the ice cream).

San Jose Discovery Museum

I already posted about saying good-bye to the McCauley's, but I wanted to post a few more pictures from the kids' last play date at the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.  We're members at the Bay Area Discovery Museum and through that membership, had free passes for this children's museum, which we also wanted to try out.  Overall, I think I like the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito better, but the kids had a blast here too!

The kids really enjoyed all the animal play exhibits.  There was a prehistoric animal play area set up in the Mammoth Exhibit,

the Animal Secrets room,

and the Wonder Cabinet exhibit had Animal Habitat art with lots of natural materials as well as a huge tree house play area!










More pictures of the kids playing at the museum are here.

DeLancey's go to Tilden Park

On Labor Day, I was itching to get outside and do a little hiking.  So we decided to go to Tilden Park in Berkeley and try out a new trail for us.  It was a nice trail in the woods that circled Jewel Lake.






RJ and Logan enjoyed looking at the turtles basking on logs in the lake.

The trail head was just outside Little Farm, so the kids could feed the farm animals my leftover celery afterward too.

RJ really liked the cow while Logan was fearful of it.








But Logan was mesmerized by the young piglets.  He watched them nurse  with their momma pig for a long time (in toddler time at least).

A few more pictures are here.

Color the Skies...or our street

As it turns out, we didn't have to wake up at 5 am to see a bunch of hot air balloons take off in Ripon.  One of the Balloons floated super low over our house and then landed in a field at the end of our street..at a much more reasonable 8:30am.

We're not sure if the balloon was from that launch or not (Balloons regularly joyride in the Tracy Hills airspace), but we decided that we should check out the event the next day.  They didn't launch on Sunday, but the boys did get to see the medical helicopter land (for fun, there was NOT an emergency at the event), and we drooled over some RV's.  I was not super impressed by the event.  Perhaps the balloons would've made it better, but they weren't even there and tethered or anything!

European Train Enthusiasts Exhibit

This seems like a random event, and it sort of is, but RJ met his friend Zach there and he really enjoyed asking the European Train Enthusiasts about the trains.  My favorite question that he asked was where were the trains going?  I was disappointed that their landscapes, villages, and train stations were a mix of German, Swiss, and Austrian, rather than having more distinct areas (which would've facilitated a better lesson for RJ).  But it was really neat for him even though he was bummed that the red train (which was a smaller gauge) wasn't running while we were there.

 After the train exhibit, we had lunch with Zach, Lisa, Austin, and Zach's Nonno and Nonna at my new favorite coffee shop (Barista's) which was just a few steps from this tree, which Zach previously dubbed, "Zach's Park".  The 3 walking children enjoyed the tree Zach's Park greatly as well.

Good-bye McCauley's

We had to say good-bye, albeit in a rather rushed fashion thanks to RJ spiking a fever at the start of their going away party, to our friends the McCauley's.  I feel a sense of deja-vu since we recently had to say good-bye to the Sternods in June; it's a kind of deja-vu that sucks because we will miss them.


I've known Sara for 14 years, where we met when I rushed and joined Kappa Kappa Gamma.










We fell out of touch after her graduation, but I was thrilled to reconnect on a different level, as moms, when she and her family moved down here from Oregon.

RJ and Madeline have been friends for a great majority of their lives; they met when RJ was 15 months old.  I believe, much to Simon's chagrin, that RJ gave Madeline her first kiss within their first few [play]dates!

This was one of their first dates:

I certainly think they've grown into very cute friends!

And I haven't forgotten about Logan and Dylan, who have know each other Logan's entire life!

I think that all four kids have genuinely enjoyed each other's company and I know that we will greatly miss having all the playdates, dinner get togethers, and the parties.  

On the day of their going away party, the kids had a play date at the San Jose Children's Museum and then crashed together until RJ's fever became apparent to me and we had to leave.