Ah! Christmas And Nostalgia!

So Darcy has been all about Christmas recently. Not because of all the Christmas decorations popping up, but because we borrowed Olivia Helps With Christmas from the library again and this time, she recognized that Christmas is coming (she saw the fat goose). I had to create a countdown on our calendar so she could visualize how many days until Christmas and I could stop explaining that Santa was not coming tonight.

Whenever we see Christmas decorations or Christmas stuff in stores now, she says, "I see Olivia things!" At the Family Resource Center last week, one of the employees was doing some decorating and had an extra string of lights lying on the floor. Darcy picked them up, wrapped them around herself, and said, "Look! I'm helping with Christmas! Mooommmmmyyyy!" Because that's what Olivia does. You know.

I've recently been trying to record the classic Christmas specials along with the Christmas versions of her favorite shows (I missed a Sesame Street Christmas today -- too bad). So tonight, we recreated one of my childhood memories. We watched two Christmas specials while eating popcorn, hot cocoa, peanut butter toast, and sliced apples. The fire (well, pellet stove) was roaring, we laid down a quilt, and we all had fun.

In my childhood version, my sister and I were watching The Wonderful World of Disney and we were required to be in PJs before the watching and eating started. In Darcy's version, she was naked from the time she got up from her nap until the time she got ready for bed. Why? I have no idea, but she was very, very insistent. It turns out that Darcy is also the world's biggest popcorn fan and on the second pot I popped, Michael and I were done with it and she sat on the quilt on the couch, naked, with a big mixing bowl of popcorn resting on her lap. That child had a distended belly by the end of Rudolph.

But she had a great time and so did we, so it's all good.

Cake Baking

We're heading over to our neighbors for another pizza night tonight and they again waved off our offers to bring something. We couldn't quite do that again, so Darcy and I made a very light dessert, an unfrosted pecan/cranberry cake that I had made for Thanksgiving. Darcy helped by adding the flour in batches while I added the milk and stirred.

She was very proud.

Klamath River Overlook

A couple weekends ago, we had a gorgeous sunny day and we headed south out of Crescent City for a variety of activities. The first was a hike down to the Klamath River overlook. This picture was taken from the overlook looking back up to the parking lot, at the very tippy-top of this hill. It was a steep trail, but not too long and surrounded by lupine. Not in bloom, but with the promise of quite the show when it is.

Here's Michael and Darcy hiking down to the overlook. The ocean was pretty calm and our drive out of Crescent City featured many, many whale spouts.

Darcy and I check out the rocks and surf to the north of the overlook.

The main event: the Klamath River meet the ocean.

Darcy danced around the overlook for a while before we headed back up to our car. Our wildlife spottings here included several woolly bear caterpillars and a snake. Yes, a snake. I never encountered a snake on any hike in the Mojave. Which, as you may know, is full of snakes of all different kinds. But two of our hikes have included snakes. This one was a decent size snake. On our first hike down to a beach to look for tide pools, we encountered two very small snakes. Not just two different snakes, but two different kinds of snakes. Prior to meeting these small beasts, I had been thinking that this is very un-snake-like habitat, being all wet and cold and all. How wrong I was!

The Belated Birthday Post

Oh life...it gets in the way of blogging sometimes. In this case, I've been neglecting putting up some birthday and weekend photos in favor of creating an index for a dendrochronology textbook a friend of mine wrote. But that deadline has recently become flexible due to some potential page changes, so I'm on hold. Before I recount the splendors of Darcy's birthday, I will warn you that I forgot to take pictures of her tea party and cake. Sorry!

The great day started with Darcy coming downstairs to find this lovely pink tricycle waiting for her in the living room. It was a very rainy day, so good think trikes will roll nicely on laminate floors, huh? She still has a little trouble reaching the pedals, but she likes riding it around the neighborhood. Her steering is getting better, too! Thanks, Granny Mimi and Pop-pop!

The (amazing, wonderful, almost unbelievable) Family Resource Center happened to have a special event on Darcy's birthday: a visit by Buddy, the T-rex from PBS's Dinosaur Train. Buddy requires a human helper measuring no more than 5' 2", and it took a little while to find such a person, so the anxious kids listened to a story about dinosaurs and, here, pretended to be triceratops(es?). Sitting behind Darcy is one of her favored play mates at the play sessions here. She and M sit on top of a tunnel outside and take the train to the Motorcycle Zoo and the Crocodile Zoo, among many other zoos.

After Buddy finally came out to visit, Darcy would not get anywhere close by herself. You can see the doors to the kitchen behind the crowd in the photo below and she kept running in there, then out to the hall, and back into the conference room. Michael left work for an hour to join us and he tried to get her to touch Buddy, but had no luck. Buddy and ALL of the kids, however, sang Happy Birthday to Darcy. We had brought a birthday card for Buddy to give to her, so the staff knew it was her birthday. She was tickled.

Just as we were leaving, Buddy came back out for another visit and Darcy finally got up the courage to touch the very tip of his tail before we went back out into the rain.

The next day was Saturday and we had a small tea party for Darcy. Those of you who were at our wedding will perhaps remember the multiple cake trays and stands. We had tea sandwiches on one of the triple-decker ones, so it felt very proper. We had several neighbors/NPS coworkers join us. The cake was three layers of almond cake filled and frosted with a chocolate/cream cheese frosting. We were worried that the lack of kids would disappoint Darcy, but she proclaimed that "this is a good birthday".

The fun continues, of course, as she rides her trike and plays with her new doll house (thanks, Grandma and Granddad!) and enjoys all her gifts from near and far. We set up our two-foot-tall Christmas tree yesterday and she insisted that it go right next to her doll house so her newly-arrived dolls can enjoy and even climb it. (And hey! Two Feet Tall is also the name of Dan Bern's new KIDS' album!! It will start shipping in about a week, but you can pre-order it on his web site now, as we did a few days ago. This is an unpaid and unsolicited promotion.)

Thanks to all to who helped make Darcy's birthday special through calls, cards, videos, gifts, and just generally being part of her life.

Surf's Up!

Darcy's birthday celebrations are over (other than gifts that are still coming) and she had a good time. I'll post some pictures and more information over the next couple days, but right now, here are some pictures from last weekend. It was a busy one, with lots of errands, short hikes, and a trip to the interior of our neighboring Oregon.

The surf was high all last weekend and we had a lot of company taking pictures of it at one of the overlooks. This is taken from one that is just a few hundred yards down the road from where Darcy and I watched whales the week before.

On Sunday, we went further north up the coast (by about a mile and a half). There are beautiful paths along the bluffs. This rock is almost a natural arch, so the waves were coming through the center of the rock as well as smashing against the sides.

The cliff sides were covered in small plants, and I tried to get a close enough look to figure out what they were, but wasn't having luck at first. Then I got over to the edge and realized it was a cute little succulent, which I didn't expect at all. All of the light green/gray in this picture is colony after colony of these:

The plants are different and there's not quite as much variety, but the ecosystem on top of these bluffs remind me a little of the tundra. When you look from a distance, it all looks the same, but when you get right up close, there are dozens of different tiny plants.

We also drove through an old-growth redwood grove to a point with access to the Smith River. Darcy and Michael skipped rocks for quite a while, and then we walked along the river and watched the mists rise and saw perfect raccoon tracks in a mud puddle. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Whales! Sunshine! Picnic!

I know that Crescent City is supposed to be all cold and grey and foggy and wet, but there are exceptions and the last three days have been quite delicious and sunny. Today, we started out our sunshine appreciation with a trip to the playground. A family showed up about fifteen minutes later with take out sandwiches. Darcy, ever the shy girl, went up to them and announced that she wanted to have a picnic with them. I took the hint, went home and made sandwiches, and we took them to an overlook a mile or so from the house to have our picnic.

It was a very beautiful spot with great views of the ocean and the "sea stacks", small rocky outcrops just off shore. There are quite a few flowers blooming and lots of birds flitting about, so it was a great place for a picnic. But it had another draw for us: Whales!

Whales migrate past Crescent City every year and Michael's boss reported that he'd seen some on Sunday. Darcy and I tried to find some yesterday, but had no luck. Today, however, we (or at least I; I'm not entirely sure Darcy really saw the spouts) saw several or many whales, depending on how many spouts belonged to individual whales. (You might want to click on this picture to really see the two water spouts in the center of the photo.)

Many thanks go to our friend Missy in King Salmon for sending our girl the most girly thing she owns. Yesterday, we got a package that had this be-flowered tutu and wings outfit. Darcy enjoyed dancing around in it and then stripped down to just the leotard until bed time.

"I Don't Want The Candy To Go Away!!"

Despite being alive through three Halloweens now, this was Darcy's first real experience with all that goes with Halloween. Her first one was spent in King Salmon and we sort of trick-or-treated to two of our neighbors. Last year, we were in Cima and we did take her into Las Vegas to a Halloween event, but she didn't actually go trick-or-treating and, of course, nobody came to us to trick-or-treat. She's been very excited about the whole concept and was thrilled when the first trick-or-treaters knocked on our door while she was still getting into her costume. She helped put candy in their bags and then was even more motivated about finishing getting dressed herself.

Darcy inspects our candy stash before going trick-or-treating.

A couple months ago, she had decided she wanted to be a box kite for Halloween. It's the Wright Brothers' influence, of course, because they made (and sold) box kites when they were kids and some of their first model gliders were nothing but oversized box kites. She has cloth boxes for toy organization and she's fond of putting one over her head, running around, and yelling, "I'm a box kite! I'm a box kite!" But as the great day grew closer, she announced that she wanted to be a bat. Still not entirely sure why, but she was firm in her choice and so she was a bat. She also firmly decided that I was not to make bat ears for her, but that she would wear a headband with a bat on it. And so she did.

That was pretty much ok with me. I had already had my costume-making adventures with the wings. I'm not much of a seamstress. I like the idea of being a good seamstress. I have hopes of being a seamstress. But the sad reality is that I have owned a very nice sewing machine for five or six years now (a Christmas gift at my request) and yesterday when I took it out of its box (which I've done before), it still had it's test bobbin and test-sewing strip in it. Just sad. But I managed to thread it, change the bobbin, and sew the wings. I figure that puts me well on the way to master seamstress status, right?

So off went our little bat for some early-evening trick-or-treating with Michael/Orv/Daddy while I stayed home to give out the early rounds of the TEN POUNDS of candy we gave away last night. We had been warned that we'd get lots of kids and it was true. I had the best parental intentions of getting Darcy well-snacked before she left, but she was chomping at the bit, so no snack. We paid for that when they got back with a bag full of treats and a bat full of the hunger-grouchies. While I scrambled to get dinner finished and in her belly, she cried about giving out candy to the trick-or-treaters. At one point, she sobbed in the hallway near the kitchen, saying, "I don't want the candy to go away!" A big plateful of mac and cheese (with our local award-winning aged jack in the mix of cheeses) later and all that was forgotten. I took her out for another short round of trick-or-treating, stopping the first time she asked to ride rather than walk.

When we got home, we gave her a bowl for her candy and she was content for a very long time to just move the candy from bag to bowl to other bowl back to bag in an endless loop. Just like at Easter, the candy is just as much a toy to her as something to eat. She was whining for her candy this morning and stopped when Michael took the more securely packaged and unbreakable candies from hiding and put them in her basket. She added some of her wooden cookies to the mix and then made her dinosaurs play the role of trick-or-treaters.

All in all, a very successful Halloween!