she was an american girl

i feel like my posts are getting less frequent but the length of them. oh they go on. i'm predicting a lot of pictures here.

my favorite salad ever from intermezzo in berkeley

i feel like most of the time when i post on this it's hey here is this thing i did! i did another thing too, let me show you. which i guess is useful and serves a purpose. i just want everyone to know though, we do a lot of being straight homebodies too. like this.

i guess what i mean by that is i cook a lot and miri hangs out in her diapers a lot and jeremy is the best dad ever. and that my camera is super yellow indoors and i don't have photoshop. huzzah.

the only thing we do more than hang out at home is hang out in parks and playgrounds. in the past week, miri and i have been to playgrounds all around the bay area, from dennis the menace playground in monterey to totland in berkeley. dennis the menace was one of my absolute favorite playgrounds as a kid. it is located right in between the manmade lake el estero and cemetary el encinal. dennis the menace was pretty renowned for it's dangerous play structures when i was a kid and it's sortof sad that they've been taken out. i don't think i would let miri play on the old helicopter ride that used to be near the locomotive. i have good childhood memories of probably nearly breaking my neck as well teenage ones of sneaking in on new years to drink vodka out of plastic water bottles in the tunnels.

we were down in monterey hanging out with my dad and his dogs for a few days this weekend. the highlight of the trip was probably hiking at garland park in carmel valley. it's one of my favorite places to hike of all time. i've been going there since i was probably seven or so. we went on a long and meandering hike up through the waterfall, cliff, vasquez and mesa trails. it was perfect weather; warm and sunny with a nice breeze, which was welcome after a chilly week or two in the bay area lately. get ready for probably way too many pictures but i really loved this hike that much. this was the longest and steepest hike we've ever taken miri on and she did great. i'm excited to take her hiking more often.

my parents dogs: homer


and baxter

too many photos? you tell me. anyway it was just a perfect hike. perfect length, elevation, weather, kid to dog ratio, everything. next time i want to take them out on a trail at the ranger station in big sur. maybe someday miri will be old enough/ready to hike out to sykes hot springs in big sur, out farther on that trail. these day hikes are good practice for a bigger one like that. maybe by next summer.

other than that, we've been hanging out at playgrounds with our friends freya, hunter, lydia and tristan. i guess some adults too. i finally got to meet lydia! i held her for like over an hour. it was the best.

and because i started this post out with food with a face, here is an eggplant with a nose.

birthdays were the worst days now we sip champagne when we're thirstay

this post today is being written while i listen to the new san francisco water cooler album. finally out on vinyl! it's so funny to me when albums are released in late july of 2010 but they've been in the works so long that they have 2009 on the artwork. anyway it's great and it's my friend david's band. this past weekend we spent a bunch of time with him when we were down in santa cruz.

but anyway, let me start from the beginning of the weekend. it was miri's birthday on friday! she is now three! we drove down to the monterey peninsula on friday night and spent a long weekend hanging out at my parents house.

for her birthday, my mom got her a bunch of books and jeremy and i got her a balance bike and a helmet. a pretty nice haul.

it was also my dad's birthday! presents for everyone!

meanwhile, ethel and my dad's dog homer played tug of war all weekend. they have another dog named baxter but he's kind of a grump and doesn't like to play so much. ethel and homer don't mind. when they get around each other they are in their own little world. btw homer weighs around 130 lbs and ethel weighs about 14.

while in monterey we also found a petting zoo for miri and took her bowling. growing up in that town, the bowling alley was called 'lincoln lanes' but now it's 'monterey lanes' and it's also kind of a rip off. charging for shoes for every game, not just the first one? sucks. whatever though because miri looked great in bowling shoes.

so after a few days in monterey we drove 45 min north to housesit for my uncle in the santa cruz mountains. his house is my favorite place in the world, with seriously no hyperbole at all. he grows pipen apples in the orchard in front of his house and it's super private and beautiful and just the most relaxing place ever. this is the view off of the main deck:

i took way more pictures with my actual camera and after they get developed i'll probably post some. when i was a kid, my mom and i lived in santa cruz and my uncle was a great father figure for me after my biological dad left. we are very close and have probably the most similar aesthetics out of everyone in our family. he was so, so nice to let us housesit for him and take care of his cat/plants/bird feeders. i <3 my uncle to pieces.

after coming down the mountain we hung out with david in the beach flats, ate a snack at falafel hut and napped/chilled out for a while. miri thoroughly enjoyed her apple from martinelli's. santa cruz!

we also hung out in watsonville and ate fish tacos with a bunch of friends but were too lame to take pictures. which is a total bummer because we got to hang with the cutest baby ever. oh well. next time.