Old roll of film

When we went on our little day trips last week, I unearthed our APS camera because I was hoping for some cool panoramic picture opportunities. We did have some of those :) There was a roll of film in the camera and 3 pictures had been taken on it. But the batteries were dead in the camera. Fortunately, we had an extra battery in our battery stash (which in and of itself is bizarre because we never buy that kind of battery). So, until I picked up the photos at Walmart last week, I had no idea what was on the camera. The last time I really remember using it was when we went to Hawaii in 2004. I remember telling Brian that I wanted to take some panoramic pictures of Nathaniel when he was a baby because we'd taken some of Joshua (really showed his length!) But I didn't remember if we'd ever done that. Well, we didn't but these are the pictures I found in the stack...

Nathaniel on October 22, 2006 - just 5 days shy of 2 months old

Joshua - exactly 2 years ago - July 20, 2006 - playing with his Star Wars guys in his room

Silly Putty

Well, it doesn't matter where I hide it or how many times I say no, somehow Nathaniel keeps finding that stuff. This time it will all go in the garbage. When I put him down for his nap this afternoon, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with his sheet...it seemed like it was stuck together. Surprise - it was - with Silly Putty. Lovely. So I just did some research for how to remove it from fabric and found that Crayola has a site that lists how to remove stains from their various products all kinds of things. Now that is a very useful website for any mother, is it not?

http://www.crayola.com/canwehelp/staintips/index.cfm?n_id=32

I hope we still have WD-40 in the garage.

Of course, I don't have time to do this now...we have to leave in about 20 minutes to go pick up Brian's great-nephew from daycare. Today is Brian's oldest brother, Terry's, 50th birthday. They (the 3 brothers plus Terry's son-in-law) started the morning with some golf. Then lunch and then they all (including Terry & Eric's wives and the 2 sisters that came and Eric's 2 girls) went to see the new Batman movie. Joshua had swimming lessons and Batman isn't exactly a movie I'd want to take the boys to without having seen it first. So we get to pick up Zack and wait for them to get back from the movie...it's 2.5 hours long! Nathaniel will not be happy because he's not going to get to go swimming because he has a cold.

Today is also my sister's anniversary - happy 11th Carol & Scott!

Stinson Beach

Picked up our pictures from Walmart the other day, so I have our pictures from the beach - well, our pictures of us and the boys since that's the camera we took them with. This is the first time I've had film developed since we went to Hawaii...which will be 4 years in September. I got the pictures put on a CD as well as getting them developed since my scanner isn't hooked up right now. I am very disappointed in the quality of the CD. I don't know if they scan the pictures or how they do it, but they look awful. And the panoramic pictures all look like they've been shortened on the CD...which kind of defeats the point of a panoramic picture! At least the two of us and the boys turned out okay and I could tweak them enough so that you could see who is in the pictures.

After we finished at Muir Woods, we had a picnic lunch in the car and then drove to Stinson Beach. Windy windy windy roads everywhere. Sadly, Joshua has inherited my stomach...happily, neither of us were actually sick, though Joshua about lost it on the last couple of turns! Once we found parking and got to the beach, we did a little wading. The water was cold, but the weather was nice - so much better than when we went to the beach last year.

Joshua got pretty wet...and so did Nathaniel...and so did Brian. Brian ended up swimming some. Joshua was a little disappointed that we wouldn't let him swim out in the ocean too, but he's just not a strong enough swimmer to do that.

Before he decided to swim and before they all got really wet, they played in the sand. I sat and read. Once the tide began to encroach upon their castles, they brought me the sand toys and played in the water. It was a nice way to end our afternoon.

This is how the boys spent the trip home...

We stopped in Vacaville to get a few necessities at Walmart. Since it was almost 7 o'clock, we decided to feed the boys Happy Meals. Good choice because even with having dinner out of the way, we still had to bathe them and get them to sleep. It was after 9 by the time Joshua was in bed...and after 10 for Nathaniel. So that was our summer vacation :) Sometimes I think day trips are just as exhausting as long trips!

Muir Woods

On Saturday we did our 2nd day trip/summer vacation activity. We took the boys over to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach. We started at Muir Woods and did the short 1 mile hike. Nathaniel was fascinated with the size of the trees. Joshua liked looking for the "caves" in the trees where some have been burned out, etc. We saw wildlife - a banana slug, a chipmunk and 3 deer...and a lot of people. My favorite thing was our little monkey-see monkey-do Nathaniel. Brian found a couple of activities for kids to do at Muir Woods online. One was a quest - follow the clues and in the end get a prize (it was just a sticker, but Joshua didn't care, he had funny doing the quest). One thing that you found was a tree with a hole in it...it was actually a fallen tree that was hollowed out...well, Joshua walks up to it, bends over and looks in and then hollers, "Hello!" He'd passed a clue and went back with Brian to find what he needed to there...and Nathaniel walked over to the log, looked in and said, "Hello!" Of course, he wouldn't get very close to it because it looked kind of dark at first, but it was too funny.

Joshua taking a peak

Nathaniel rode most of the hike in his stroller, but did get to walk part of the way. He enjoyed getting out and walking, but found that the path was a bit rough for running.

We all got to stand inside of a redwood, which was cool. Nathaniel wasn't too sure about that at first.

Here are some other pictures from Muir Woods...

I really should probably go fix dinner now for the boys, so the beach will have to wait until another day.

Pictures from last week...

Here are the pictures that I couldn't get to upload last week from our trip to San Francisco. The top picture is the boys in front of the Coast Guard panel at the statue of the Lone Sailor. The others are pretty self-explanatory :)

San Francisco Treat

Yesterday we took a little day trip to San Francisco (I hate driving to San Francisco...I hate the traffic!) We took the boys to the Exploratorium...something we've wanted to do for a couple of years, but we had to wait until Nathaniel was old enough to have some fun. And did we ever...I think their favorite parts were the tornado room (you ran around in this little cubicle type thing and made the vapors coming out of the floor twist into a tornado)

And the huge bubbles. Nathaniel wasn't too sure about it at first, but Joshua could've stayed there all day!

When we got to the Exploratorium that morning, we'd noticed that a bus from the company that my uncle drives for was parked in the lot. We highly doubted that it would be him - come on, what are the chances? And my phone was dead, so I couldn't call him. Well, when we were leaving there was another bus from his company parked there. As we pulled out, Brian said, "That sure looks like your Uncle Brian in that bus." So, we drove over by it and sure enough, that's who it was! He was rather surprised to look out his window and see us pulled up along side of him. We visited for a few minutes and then headed out (he still had an hour or so to wait for the group he'd brought down). We drove over the Golden Gate bridge and pulled off at the vista point on the north side to walk around and take a few pictures.

**blogger won't let me upload the rest of the pictures...stay tuned for them later on!

Here are picture of the boys by the Coast Guard panel at the statue of the Lone Sailor.

Happy July 5th!!

We started our July 4th with a ward breakfast out at the Baker/Morgan ranch. Brian had to go early to help cook (High Priests were in charge...last year they were too, but Brian still cooked and he was an Elder still last year). Nathaniel and I followed. Before we left I took a few pictures of him by the flag that a realtor put in our yard (and all the others in town, it looked like).
After the breakfast and program, we headed home to get the house ready and the lawn mowed...Joshua was coming home today!! He arrived, with Grandma and Grandpa of course, a little before 1 pm. It was so good to give and get hugs from our big kid again! Aunt Carrie arrived shortly thereafter. Brian got out the slip & slide and he, the boys and Carrie played on that a bit. I continued trying to clean the computer room/scrapbook room/everything else room so Carrie would have some space to sleep in that night. Eventually that got done, we had BBQ'd hamburgers for dinner (and cake & homemade ice cream for dessert...not birthday cake...4th of July cake. Joshua & Grandma are making my birthday cake today). We didn't buy any fireworks this year - a first! Between the cost and the dryness of California right now, we figured we'd do our part to prevent fires :) Brian and Joshua went up on the roof to watch the show from the high school. We sat in the backyard this year to watch...usually we sit in the front yard, but in the past 8 years our tree has gotten pretty tall and blocks a lot...as does the neighbor's tree. We had a great view from the back. Joshua wasn't overly thrilled up on the roof, but he stayed up there. This was Nathaniel's preferred way of viewing the show...
He didn't last long though...this is how he watched the remaining 20 minutes of 25 minute show.
He did wake up when we got inside and took another 20 minutes or so to get back to sleep due to all the bangs from the illegal fireworks in town (hello, obey the law folks! I guess they figure with only 3 police officers in town, they're pretty safe).

So, a day late, but it was late last night by the time I would've had time to post, so I waited until this morning. And for me, the big holiday of the month isn't until tomorrow anyway :)

Our little town does a pretty decent fireworks show...just too bad my camera won't zoom anymore!