Max's first lost tooth!

And perhaps the last of his friends, Max finally loses his first tooth!

It has only been loose for a day, but here it is:

Today's going rate? Two bucks. And that's on the cheap side!

The 4th Olin Soccer Party Trophy Bonanza

And it begins with the cake construction. Olin places every figure (well he lets Max help too)...

Olin keeps staring at the cake in the hours leading up to the party...

And then it begins! Coach Tim gathers the kids for the soccer play...

And finally: cake time.

And every friend gets a trophy!

Nothing lasts forever

Max, Olin and I were just talking.

Max: Daddy, does anything last forever?
Me: Yes.
Max: NO, DADDY. Not like words and love. I mean THINGS.

Huh.

Olin: Daddy how did the artist make this house?
Olin asks that about everything. The main "creator" is "the artist."

Now they are arguing about God (Max goes to a Catholic school) and the Artist (Olin's mind).

Our Olin turns 4...

A bit of an overdue post (forgive the back-dating), but here are some pictures from Olin's birthday. As you can see, he finally has a bike (and a couple of Giants shirts!)...

The day before he told Anna that he was about to turn special. Then he started counting, 1, 2, 3, special, 5, 6... and burst out laughing.

So he turns special, and he wakes up to a bike:

And a present or two...

Dressed for camp

And back from camp for more...

And then... waiting for the party!

my first post

today I Am Going To play Baseball. with Luke Will and Zachary!

Olin, careful with your words...

The boys got a word construction game for Christmas. Olin was excited that he wrote a 'story,' so we went to look. I think the first sentence is a bit much.

Steiner ranch and the terrifying bunny

Its the first day of our stay at the Steiner Ranch, and it has been absolutely beautiful. Here is a sequence of photos and videos we took in a walk along the grounds.

We give the kids some popsicles and head off on our walk:

And we are off on the tractor path, headed for the duck pond.

The kids are proud of their purple tongues:

When I was a kid we had purple tongue contests after eating blueberry pies. The scale went from possible purple, to partially purple, to positively purple, to preposterously purple. The kids got partially.

Olin gets tired, goes on my shoulders.

Max realizes we are close to the house, and runs down the vineyard line,

And then the funniest thing happened, the point of this post. On the way to the farm we had been telling the boys that they needed to let us know if they saw deer, since we had to get them off the farm since they would damage the grapes. Maybe we made a big deal about it. But as Max ran along, suddenly he stopped and screamed hysterically, turned back towards us, and ran for his life, shouting DEER! DEER! DEER! And the most enormous jackrabbit (think German Shepherd) bounded across the path, and hopped off into the distance over the hill. Max was shuddering. Until we told him that he had just seen the Easter Bunny.