Labor Day Swim and BBQ

This Labor Day it was HOT! Beautiful weather for swimming! We swam at my mom's house and had a yummy steak BBQ dinner and had a good time together.

Kayaking with Friends

We have discovered Lake Solano and have had a wonderful time kayaking there. Our friends, the Olsens, joined us over the weekend and we had a great time on a beautiful day!

We represent the lollipop guild...

Lea is such a nice big sister! She got this awesome lollipop from a birthday party she went to and she so lovingly shared with Micah and let him hold it. She also has a Build-A-Bear Bunny that she LOVES and she is always so good to share with Micah and lets him hold it whenever he wants to. What a sweetheart!

Watch out flies!

Jonah and Daniel kayaking caper

This wasn't the first time I have made this trip, having done so earlier this summer, Jonah and I were definitely better prepared, or so we thought... As you can see above, early on we ran into a couple of Jellies, no cause for alarm, and very fun to see and examine, "I like to think about jumping on their heads," Jonah said referring to a scene from "Finding Nemo". I love my little Jonah, he is his own little person for sure, often surprising me with his insight and understanding of life. At five and a half years old, he has plenty of good old fashioned immaturity and truly no understanding of tact. As we were paddling across he crossed his eye brows, and said, matter-of-factly, "Dad, I don't really like being with you, well not that much", I smiled and told him I loved being him and hoped he would have fun. As a Father, it is pretty darn disheartening hear your child say this, but, what he really was saying, (I hope, as I otherwise may have to cry myself to sleep (: ), was he missed his Mom, whom he idolizes and his best friend and sister, Lea, and he said as much later.







Having arrived at our base camp, we found that is was quite literally swarming with Jelly Fish, in the water and beached.













































The mist attacked the beach quickly and settled around us. Jonah decided that we ought to go hiking so we ventured out to look for Mountain Lion tracks. Other campers had seen on approaching the beach, a large female sunning in the sand. She was very quick to run off, so we were confident that we weren't dealing with a rabid cat. I shared with Joe Joe that he needed to stay close to me, "Why, dad?"

"There's a mama mountain lion hanging around here"

"So then that means that she will eat me if I'm not with you?

"Yep, lunch"

He was very aware of the distance between us, often reminding me to catch up or slow down to maintain about a 6 foot radius. This was a wonderful blessing in disguise as it really helped to keep him interested in staying near me rather than running off and doing his own thing as he tends to do when I am "single parenting" it for one reason or another.


















































He is such a handsome little kid, his smile and curiosity is engaging. After we had our chow, M. R. E.'S, camping is a great way to rotate some of our more time-hearty sundries, I gave Jonah a few choices of things to do, he bypassed them all and asked if we could start a fire. My last trip the Tamales with Lea, they hadn't offered permits, but the weather was such that we were able to get one. So that's really what we did for the rest of the evening. It is not often that a kid gets to play with a stick in fire and actually pull it out and wave it around, but as there weren't any other eyes to get burned out, I monitored his impression of "Lord of the Flies" for about four hours, and he asked me all about how to kill mountain lions, if we had to.

The picture to the left is of our camp, taken from where the lion was hanging out.


















































































Let me see if I can burn myself... :)







































I would like to say this dew-dobbled spider web was naturally draped amongst some trees we happened upon-- nope, it was across the exit of the an outhouse. But it was fun none the less.

This is Jonah's " I need to pee" saunter.











Some time while we were crossing the bay, I playfully mocked some low flying birds as they cruised past us, "This is red five, flying low on approach, we have the target in sight and are beginning out weapons delivery run," oblivious to the "Star Wars" reference, Jonah, latched on the the practice and I had to pretend radio calls for any birds flying by, which, really was a lot, but he couldn't get enough of it. I started to loose some of my edge after an hour of this and suggested he make the next few calls, "Bombing mission coming at the humans, let's get em' boys!" He was quite good.

It was a wonderful trip with a ton of fun and hopefully some long lasting memories for my little Super Joe Joe, I love you Buddy. I have a few more videos I will add later, but I need to post this now as Leens wants to post some stuff.