St. Patrick's Day

Lukas shows off his homemade Playmobil decoy.

Lukas' most exciting holiday is now over - I swear he'll be more bummed to learn there's no leprechauns over there's no Santa. He gets soooo involved in designing and building leprechaun traps and planning the wishes he'll get when he catches one.  He has been designing his trap for weeks and tested out his assembly last night. This year the trap designs included decoys, alarms and even harmless electric shock walls to prevent escape (yes, engineer Rob was a contributor to that one!).Unfortunately (or I see it as fortunately), he had to abandon that idea since the shock proved too powerful.   Lukas said he was 99% certain that he'd catch a leprechaun this year. 

He was up at 5:30 am to check the traps.  Alas, we once again caught the leprechauns, but they once again managed to escape before we could find them.   Lukas was SERIOUSLY bummed.  We have to downplay it a lot more next year - his expectations are just getting too high.   Luckily, all the leprechaun mischief/silliness, Marieke's excitement & an all-green breakfast were able to slightly lift his spirits.

Yosemite

A great deal came across for Evergreen Lodge in Yosemite - a place that I've been wanting to check out.   Lukas had an extra day off for teacher conference so our extended wkd was booked.  Although it was only March, we totally lucked out on the weather - beautiful & warm.  And of course, no crowds at that time of year.  Perfect.

It has been years since I've been to Yosemite - before Lukas was born.  So it was fun to redo all the "main" sights & show them all to Lukas (and Marieke) as well as do the popular hike up to Bridalveil Falls. 

Lukas spent lots of time taking his own pics on our "old" camera.

And I got practice on my new camera

One day we checked out the Hetchy Hetchy Reservoir which I've never seen before. 

Rob risks our daughter's life above the dam (not really ;-)



 

 

The lodge was great - totally kid friendly.  Our cabin had baskets filled with games and kid books.  The lodge had a game room with pool table, foosball, and huge toddler play area, ping pong tables, etc.   And there were a couple cool playgrounds with climbing structures, nests, swings, and tepees made out of natural materials.  At night they had a roaring fire with all the smore fixins provided.  On another night, they had t-shirts for kids to tie-dye.  We actually spent a fair amount of our weekend just hanging out at the lodge and the rec areas.   I was a little worried since our cabin didn't have any cooking facilities - you have to eat all your meals at their cafe/restaurant.  But the food turned out to be really good (and reasonably priced) so that ended up as a hassle free bonus.

 

A lot of patience required to play ping pong with Marieke