Fuh-flies

Rich has the week off and we've done a whole lot of nothing till today. We headed to Santa Cruz to see the monarch butterflies that hibernate there during the winter. Macie calls them fuh-flies.
Here's the crew on a perfect climbing tree.

After a brief walk we found the butterflies. There's an unusually low number of butterflies there right now but it was still fun seeing some.


Here's a tree someone decorated with Christmas ornaments. The monarchs looked like little decorations, too.


Butterflies were darting all around above our heads. Ryan pointed out every single solitary butterfly he saw. Every single one. All of them. He couldn't stop.


Here's how the monarchs look when they're hibernating. See those clumps of what appears to be dead leaves? Those are monarchs all huddling together. In years past I've seen them in huge strings of clumps that were several feet long.

We stumbled upon lots of other flora and fauna while there:

Like this cute ground squirrel, cleaning out its hole.


And this mushroom, which I believe, is the CUTEST mushroom I've ever seen.

Ok, then we headed across the street to watch surfers and visit the surfing museum, which is inside of a lighthouse.

Here's Ryan in front of the lighthouse. Nice floods and pajama shirt, kid.Who let you out of the house wearing that? :) The museum was interesting and the kids had a blast watching the surfers fall off their surfboards.

And finally, my favorite picture from the whole outing--the rail alongside the beach. I love the rust.

P Town

For Thanksgiving we headed to Portland. We have a bunch of kids now and a minivan so it felt like our first "real" family roadtrip. All of you people who are contemplating getting a family car any time soon--GET THE DVD PLAYER. Best decision we ever made. Well, one of the best. Here are some highlights from the trip:


This is Annette's (Rich's sister) backyard. The kids loved it. There's even a little creek at the bottom of the hill.


Ryan spotted this deer in their yard. So cool. All we spot in our "yard" is dirty squirrels and feral cats.


Rich was SO one with nature.


We took the kids to the Portland zoo. Very fun. Macie found her window friend, Marcie.


I've seen sea lions a hundred times but I never realized how big they were until I took this picture of Ryan standing in front of one. Huge!


I love feeding lorakeets and I dragged everyone to the lorakeet exhibit. The $1 for Rich's cup of sugar water was the best buck we spent that day. First, there were 2 lorakeets on him.


Then three.


Number four came along.


Number five couldn't resist.


This one wanted to be closer to his charming smile.


This one loved Rich's magnetic personality.


This one gave him a special gift.

Seriously, the birds were freakishly attracted to him. Call him The Lorakeet Whisperer. People were even trying to lure the birds away from him but it wouldn't work. He has a gift people.


Juliet was a trooper in the cold. She had about 5 layers of clothing on.


Rich's brother in law got fancy suite tickets to the Trailblazers game. Ryan had so much fun but was disappointed that he couldn't play in the game.


Juliet got lots of attention from people in the suite.


On to the Portland Children's Museum. Here's Macie working on some clay.


In case you didn't get a look at her lovely locks, here's a close up. Please don't call CPS on me.


Here's Rich's piece of art. He's so practical.


Here's Ryan and his Uncle Keith (yep, he's single and available ladies!!) with their creations. Ryan luuuuuuuuuvs his Uncle Keith. He drove all the way from SLC to hang out with the rest of us.


Here's Rich, Keith and Annette. Her family was so sweet to host us.

Awesome trip.

You gotta love preschool art projects. . .

and band-aids in strange places.