California “winter” continues to spoil us like crazy, and just as we did exactly a year earlier, we took advantage of the weather to take Grandpa Liggett over the mountains & to the Pacific. This time we headed to Santa Cruz’s lighthouse & nearby beach, but now with a very excited Mr. Seamus in tow (or rather, towing us!).
Check out our album from the day.
Our intrepid men of science, Drs. Henry & Esteban, unveiled their hard-won findings (about sweet candy-and-Coke explosions) last night at the WGE Science Fair. Check out a little gallery of the guys showcasing their work & touring some fun installations made by classmates.
It’s Willow Glen Elementary Science Fair time again, so you know what that means…Time to drop some science in the backyard! Henry and his friend Esteban teamed up to do some experimentation with Mentos and Diet Coke, to see if increasing the number of Mentos dropped into the Coke would make the soda geyser higher.
Here’s a little online album documenting their experimentation. We all had a ton of fun! Spoiler alert, the geysers get pretty high! We had an interesting result when we got up to 10 Mentos – the first Mento started fizzing and blew the remaining 9 Mentos completely out of the bottle!
What’s the next best thing to cuddling up to one’s best pooch all day? How about having him keep one’s toes warm all day?
Finn reports that these custom socks, which I commissioned using a pic from Seamus’s birthday, are the softest in his whole drawer. I must say, the guys make a fetching (hah) pair. 😌
Knowing how much Seamy likes to run around with pals, we loaded up the Westy yesterday & headed to the SF Doodle Romp, a gathering of—you guessed it—all kinds of ‘doodle mixes (goldendoodles, labradoodles, etc.). Our man was in heaven, to the point that he & a few new buddies decided to make a break for the seashore! After a few tense & breathless minutes of chasing, we were able to track him down—a highly emotional moment for Finn that you can see in the gallery from our day.
Following a few months of hard work at their Saturday morning art class, the guys were proud to perform with their puppet creations, complete with hand-painted moving backdrops.
Will Finn’s lions ever get a hold of some tasty gazelle meat, or will they have to subsist on nasty melons forever? Will Henry’s Midwestern boy ever find the right store? You’ll just have to check out our galley (which contains a couple of video recordings of their performances) to find out. 🦁🥰
Happy New Years, gang! I thought I’d share pics from a couple of sparkling nights out we recently enjoyed. First, as is our yearly tradition, we drove through the lights in Vasona Park in nearby Los Gatos, and a few nights later Henry & I cruised the streets of Santa Cruz in style via the New Years Lights Train. I hope you enjoy our galleries:
Hey everyone—Merry Christmas!
We had a ball celebrating our first nativity with the Sea-Moose, hanging around Chez Nack and opening a bunch of terrific gifts before wolfing down the googley-eyed cookie trees we made. Since we’re in Carmel for a couple of days, I’ll keep things brief for now & just pass along our photo gallery to check out.
All the best to your & yours from all of us!
After months of painstaking basement collaboration, the dudes were proud to unveil “Crossing the Rhine, March 1945,” their first big Lego “MoC” (“My Own Creation,” in Lego parlance). Featuring hand-decorated GI’s & Germans, Molotov cocktails, skeletons, and more, the scene is now on display alongside many others until January at the Palo Alto Museum of American Heritage. Check out this gallery to see it up close!
Awaiting Christmas Day loot is a delightful burden, but sometimes one just has to jump the gun (or is it tracks?) a bit. Mom-O found a great little HO-scale engine & cars for Henry, and we surprised him with the gift a bit early so that it could liven up our tree for the next few weeks. Check out this quick tour Hen made to celebrate its inaugural run:
Our big furry boy Seamus turned 1 year old on Friday, December 6th! We are so happy to have this fuzzy goofball in our lives. Hard to believe he’s been with us since February! We have all come to love him so much, and he is the perfect addition to our family, especially our Westy adventures.
Finn was so excited to celebrate the big day with his dog – he’d been talking about it for weeks! We found a recipe for a dog-friendly “pupcake,” complete with frosting, to make for him, and our lovely dog-walker Terry brought him a bag of treats, balloons, and party hats to help celebrate. Here is a gallery showing our buddy on his big day.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Unlike on holidays past (when we’ve ventured to Yosemite, Hearst Castle, sand dunes, and elsewhere), this year we elected to stay close to home & to Mr. Seamus. Happily, though, we were able to brush aside the constant rain & put our cabin fever at bay.
Following our feast (augmented by Finn & Hen’s cookie-making skills), my cousin Andrea & her husband and kids came down from Marin to camp near Santa Cruz. We were able to meet up on Friday for ice cream (again, rain be damned!), and on Saturday we again bundled up, this time to see the Irish whomp Stanford!
Check out some memories from the weekend:
As long as we’re reminiscing about Mr. S., let’s compare February to November. 😝🥰🐕
As we get ready to celebrate Seamus’s first birthday, Google Photos happened to whip up a fun little retrospective of some moments we’ve shared with our young employee of the month since he joined our fam back in February. I especially love that Google keeps mistaking Finn’s little stuffed buffalo Bert for a very young Seamus. 🥰 Check out the quick tour:
By comparison, here’s the wee man when first we met!
It’s such a pleasure to turn the guys on to good music, and Hen in particular loves to request tunes on our Google Home devices. He’s a fan of classic rock, and earlier this year he & I had a blast seeing Texas legends ZZ Top in concert.
For Halloween we donned their iconic beards, hats, and cheap sunglasses while Mom made us some terrific fuzzy guitars. Kids of course had no idea who we were (“Gandalf the Grey…?”), but tons of parents gave us shout-outs as we trick-or-treated with Hen’s pal Esteban. Check out a gallery of our photos covering the assembly process & the big night.
One fun detail: Henry didn’t want to wear cheap sunglasses at night: “We’re not the Blues Brothers, and it’s not 106 mi. to Chicago.” 😝
Finn’s recently come to love the comedy Superstore, and for Halloween he decided to dress up as clueless manager Glenn, with Seamus joining in as his Employee of the Month!
On Sunday we headed over to a costumed-dog parade (yes, laugh it up, Dad, this is who we are now 😜) in downtown Willow Glen. In the car on the way over, Seamus got cozy with me in the back seat. “Good thing he sat on your lap & not mine,” Finn tells me, “’cause otherwise it would’ve been a violation of company code.” 😛
Here’s our album of photos, including some Seamus-eye views.
For science class this year, Henry was charged (hah!) with creating a silicon atom to show off & describe to his class. With some able assistance from crafty Mom-O, here’s what he whipped up. Neat! ⚛️
G-Man & I recently enjoyed a double bonanza of vintage vehicles. While Mom-O, Finn, & Seamus were off exploring on-street chalk art in San Jose, Hen & I headed first to Los Altos to walk among 100+ Corvettes. After getting our fill, we cruised over to San Jose’s History Park to see a huge number of even older cars, ride the trolly, and even operate an old railroad hand car! Hen did his best to channel Uncle Ted’s bus-wrangling skills.
Check out our photos plus some videos of the action:
Having heard about it from a lady passing by with her poodles, we headed down to Carmel last weekend to check out the crazy Poodle Day parade—and to let Mr. Seamus (“See-muhs,” according to the MC 🙄😌) strut his stuff on the cat (er, dog) walk. The event drew multi-colored pups & humans from all over the country, and we were treated to a truly rich cast of characters. Check out our photo gallery plus this view of our man in motion:
