Papa and Karen visit (way back in July)

I've been working on the blog post since July, what is my problem? I'm having too much fun and not enough sleep! And I truly dislike sitting in front of the computer, maybe I need to work on my ergonomics.
So... here are some lovely photos of Papa, Karen (aka Aunt Cookie) Silas, and me freezing our taters off on the California coast in July. We said good bye to Kevin, Joey, Darwin and Lucy and drove out of chilly Berkeley and through San Francisco to Highway 1, which we took all the way down to Monterey Bay, stopping along the way to admire the scenery.




We finally made it to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (my birthday present from Dad Jude and Janet, thanks!) and it was wonderful. I was almost as excited as Silas was about everything, and that's saying a lot because Silas was really really excited.
Here he is demonstrating how to touch the sea star "with one or two fingers" as instructed by the aquarium guides.





A blurry photo but I couldn't resist... he's watching the sea horses. He actually squealed with delight and fell to the floor in a fit of joy when watching a video showing the male sea horses giving birth. And we were both in a state of ecstasy watching the otters, so of course I couldn't operate a camera in such a state.

We stayed at the beautiful Asilomar in Monterey. We walked to breakfast every morning at the historic dining hall (designed by Julia Morgan in the Arts and Crafts style). For Silas the morning highlights were: getting carried to breakfast when he could find a willing sucker, I mean loving relative; seeing a mama deer and a baby deer in the morning mist; and ordering as much pre-sweetened yogurt as he could eat.


And the tide pools were pretty incredible too. Did I mention Asilomar was just a stroll through the dunes away from the beach? (I mean beach in the cold California sense, not the warm Florida sense, note the hoods and jackets)

We didn't see the sun for 2 days, but that was ok.



And because I love these photos and it happened during the visit:

Here is Silas as the caterpillar getting wrapped in the cocoon of toilet paper at Aya Mei's 5th birthday party.


And here the butterfly emerges and stretches his wings.

For dessert, pluots

Here we go again, getting Silas to repeat a story for the camera. I really enjoy the elaborate scenarios that he develops, though. Amazingly, he doesn't say "like" once in this video, despite having picked up that particular tic big time in the last two days. He's, like, a total valley girl.