I hope you get to go to a parade.

We’ll be having a barbeque with some great friends, but a corner of my heart will be at the parade in Needham along with my family, watching 3,742 fire trucks wail their way along Webster Street. Wherever you are, I hope you have a terrific day, and I hope you get some pie.

We had our first play in the creek behind the library, and it’s the 21st, so summer must really be here at last. Here’s to late light and slow days!

This is what you call a soft-focus Father’s Day photo. We were walking through the outdoor mall after we saw a matinee (!) of Toy Story 3 (!!) and there was a guy handing out balloons. As we approached, he looked at Honey and said, “I’m wrapping things up here today – would you like a balloon, or all of them?” It’s like asking a kid if she’d like a puppy. Oddly appropriate, seeing as we’d just walked out of the latest Pixar wonder, to walk around under a huge bunch of balloons. Hand me my cane, Russell, we’re off to South America…

Happy Father’s Day!

to this.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but honestly, Vegemite isn’t that bad. No, it was something far more unsavory, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the good stuff. Tom turned 40 at the end of last week, and we decided to take a quick trip down to Santa Cruz for some fun on the boardwalk with Gini and Craig. It was a perfect day.

It started with a steam train – really the best start to any day for Tom. We weren’t on board, but we got to see it head out for a tour through the Santa Cruz mountains, and it was beautiful.

We checked out the boardwalk…

and had our lunch at the best taco bar. We’d stumbled upon this place the last time we were in Santa Cruz a few years back, and boy were we happy to find it again! $1.50 taco? Yes thanks.

Santa Cruz has a cool style going on – check out this mural:

How about a close-up of that awesome retro mod car? You got it.

Seriously, now – who doesn’t want one of those?

And just before we left town, we caught some surfing action along the coast. Gorgeous weather, awesome time.

Now for the opposite end of the scale. Are you sitting down? Both of our kids have whooping cough. That’s right – check your calendar, but it’s still going to say 2010, and our kids are still going to have this crazy thing I thought belonged to the history books. Here’s the story. Hot Wheels got a cough at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, and we’d just been reading in the local paper that our county is currently inundated with Whooping Cough cases. Feeling a little alarmist, we brought him to the doctor and asked if he could have pertussis. No way, the doctor said. His booster was only a year old, he didn’t have any of the right symptoms, and the cough sounded like an allergic cough. It was Memorial Day weekend, so we pressed the issue – was he safe to be around people? Absolutely.

Let’s go forward a week. He was still coughing, but no real change in symptoms. Then we heard that some friends’ kids had been quarantined with Whooping Cough. “We’ve got to bring him up again,” I said to Tom. So off he went for another check – and more assurances that he was fine, but we said we really wanted him to be tested. Two days later, Honey was coughing and I brought them both into the pediatrician’s office. She swabbed Honey and said she’d bet they both had it.

HOW? I wanted to know. How do two healthy kids with all their immunizations get Whooping Cough? You might be more up to date than me on this one but I learned for the first time that no vaccine is 100% effective, and if we have enough exposure to a disease, we can contract it even if we’ve been vaccinated. When enough people in a community are vaccinated, you develop a ‘herd immunity’ so you don’t have enough exposures to risk sickness.

I just read this morning that our county has the highest rate of families choosing personal belief exemptions for vaccinations. Ten years ago, less than 2% of kindergarteners in our county entered school without their vaccinations – in 2009 it was 7.1%. Clusters of exemptions like that in a community increases risk for all of us. I respect that lots of people were scared by the autism fear, but the science just wasn’t there to support the scare – and I didn’t fully realize until this week the danger those exemptions pose not just to the kids who aren’t immunized, but to all our kids.

Personally, I feel horrible. I know we were acting on doctor’s advice, and I know it’s all around us, but of course I get hives at the thought that we were walking around with this unknowingly. I’m also pretty angry. Our kids have been miserable and we’ve lost a week of school and work and a good chunk of change dealing with this.

Here are our takeaways. Ready?

1. Don’t assume that your kids are protected by their immunizations.

2. Even if your kids aren’t presenting the traditional whooping cough symptoms – runny nose, slight fever, cough that ‘whoops’ – they might still have it. One friend of ours tested positive with no cough at all.

3. Tom figured the last one out – if your child develops a cough, call Wildcare. Tell them you found a baby bird and it’s coughing. They’ll have you tested and treated by mid morning.

Our town doesn’t have a 4th of July parade. We have a somewhat ramshackle Memorial Day Parade, without a single veteran in it. How is that right? How can you have a Memorial Day Parade with tons of activists and preschools and swim teams and dogs, and no veterans? (Yes, you heard me right. There’s a whole section of dogs.)

Every year I’m tempted to put together a precision team for this parade. Since we’re obviously not going the Memorial route, I figure if you just got a few folks together with decent rhythm and matching outfits, you could totally own this event. I’d prefer veterans, but it would be better than nothing.

This is all sounding like I disapprove of the parade, which I do not. I disapprove of calling it a Memorial Day parade, but other than that, it’s a great time all around. The town jokes that there are more people in the parade each year than watching it, which makes it a whole lot of fun, since you know tons of people walking by. Our particular cheering section would clap for anyone (in the parade or not) who walked past us, much to the delight of some of the kids, and even the reactions of the adults convinced me that perhaps we should all have the chance to be on the receiving end of some good-hearted applause. “Woohoo, coffee guy!” We cheered, and the guy with a coffe gave us a big grin and a wave. “Terrific hats!!” we clapped for a cool behatted couple, and they gave us a bow and a laugh. I’m telling you – it’s not a bad setup.

Here are some shots from all the fun:

The day started bright and early at the volunteer firefighters’ pancake breakfast downtown. There’s something thrilling about sitting down to a great breakfast at long tables set out on one of the usually busy downtown streets. Our office is right behind the building on the right with the blue awning, so this feels like home to us.

The parade began with plenty of fire trucks, of course. This one was particularly cool.

There may not have been veterans, but there were lots of scouts, boy and girl. Always good to see.

And a good old fashioned band – classic.

Of course no parade is complete without motorized bathtubs.

Oh yeth it could be… thomething thpethial…. jutht for me!

I have a major weakness for cool old cars, though, and this is my favorite image from the whole thing. Ahhh.

Hope you had a fun weekend!

Yee haw! What an awesome house. It was beautiful, laid back and cozy all at the same time. Here’s something else we found:

Snow! I guess nobody told the Sierras that Memorial Day is only a weekend away. It sure was beautiful though.

We took some nice long walks and appreciated the landscape around us.

It kept alternating between grey skies with snow blowing horizontally by, and bright spots with long views.

Here are the friends contemplating Donner Lake. They’re probably also contemplating their numb toes, but it still felt wonderful to be hiking around. It was simply amazing  - no agenda, no worries. We did some of this:

And some of this:

(That’s homemade tortillas – yum.) And some of this:

And, frankly, some of this:

Although not all at the same time, mind you. We were simply well prepared.

When I got home Honey asked me, “So what did you do? Did you go anywhere?”

I replied, “Well, ahh, let’s see – we went hiking, and we cooked, and we worked on a puzzle, and we talked…” She gave me a concerned look and said, “I’m sorry. It sounds like you didn’t have very much fun.”

Little does she realize. I keep replaying moments in my mind – doubling over with laughter, fresh cold air, delicious flavors, DJing for each other from our iPhones, swapping ideas and stories. It was rejuvenating. We stretched time together and still got home in time to enjoy Sunday with our families. What a gift.

We canceled our annual egg and beer hunt this Easter, due to rain and Tom’s impending 40th birthday party in a couple of months. (There are going to be two bouncy castles, people – we need to stay focused.) It ended up being a lovely, quiet, rainy day and we had a lovely brunch with our neighbors. We actually hit the jackpot there, because Joan and Hank had us over at the beginning of the week to celebrate their Passover Seder with them, and then at the end of the week to celebrate Easter. Perfect bookend events.

I’ve never shown you this unbelievable bowl that Joan gave me (ok, us) for Christmas. It’s simple and delicate and perfect. Filled with Cadbury eggs, this one goes to eleven.

This photo actually cracks me up, because the eggs are these gorgeous pale blue eggs from Finn and Susie’s chickens, and the nest was abandoned in our back yard – I like them together, even though the nest is woefully small for the eggs. What would happen if they were real? It would be like swaddling a baby in a washcloth. I still love looking at them together though.

Love is

Valentines on the fridge, and talking to Nana in the driveway

Tulips from friends

Treats from neighbors

New lavendar

A sunny day bike ride to the beach with best friends.

Honey’s best friend gave her a valentine poem yesterday afternoon. The last line of the poem is:

“We have power, that power is love.”

What a score in the best friend department. We all rode together to Sausalito to the best little cafe you can imagine. We bought root beers and sat outside for a bit. As we crossed the street to the cafe, our friend Amy asked Hot Wheels if he’d be her valentine. He paused and answered, “Wellll, I’m not sure if I can live with you…” She had to explain that living together wasn’t necessarily in the valentine contract.

Then we hit this tiny scrap of beach where the kayakers go out into the bay. There was a sea lion lolling around in the shallow water checking out all the boats and even one crazy swimmer. What a day.

We love all the holiday cards and photos that we get from our family and our friends, and they usually end up stuck all over the house in a happy jumble. This year I decided that I wanted to have that happy jumble right where I’d see it all the time, so as the cards arrived we popped them up on the fridge. Of course, we still ended up with other cards on our bulletin board and on the desk, but I just love seeing as many as possible all grouped together. It reminds me of the wall of photos that Mum always kept over the desk in our kitchen. It was a magnet and a talking point. It’s wonderful to have all these friends looking out at us as we go about the day.

Here’s something else I’m excited about. I finally got a new beater for my trusty kitchenaid mixer! The original one was just a bit tired.

I haven’t put the new one to work yet, but it won’t be long. In other cooking news, I tried out a new method for baking dinner rolls.

This one’s from the King Arthur cookbook – it’s the basic hearth bread (although I made a honey wheat version for a bit more nutritional punch), which you let rise a couple of times and then bake in muffin tins. I used a tray of ice cubes on the bottom oven rack for steam to give a nice crunchy shell to the rolls. Everybody liked them, but I still think I like the traditional roll shape more – I think I’ll go back to that next time. I also tried a cheese cracker recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Are you reading that blog? If not, just go – get out of here! Terrific writing, beautiful recipes, and gorgeous photos. What are you still doing here?

Now I’m embarrassed to even show you this photo of my crackers, because just wait till you see the ones over at Smitten Kitchen. Well, you might laugh at these just a little bit, then. It’s ok, I’m laughing too. I’m laughing with my mouth full of these amazing, insanely delicious crackers. You should make them too.

Christmas Eve gingerbread house construction at Sherri and Rik’s house

There’s something about all those small bowls filled with twisted red vines, ruby red hots, sparkling sugar gumdrops… it’s a story, a fairy tale. We had such a beautiful Christmas Eve, warm and bright, with amazing friends.

Holiday boats

Every December, we make sure we take a night drive to look at the holiday lights. It’s particularly fun when you live near water.

Marshmallows

Don’t believe me?

Yup, homemade! Right until about a month ago, I never even imagined that you could just up and make marshmallows. Here’s a confession – I don’t even like marshmallows all that much. The taste, that is. I’m nuts about their shape and powdery softness – they’re gorgeous. But the only way I can eat them is perfectly toasted and squashed between graham crackers and chocolate. (You could probably make just about anything taste good with that method.) These were really fun to make, though, and the kids ate them for me so that was a win-win.

Santa Bags

It wouldn’t be a proper Christmas without one crazy 11th hour project on my part. This year, it was making bags to leave out for Santa (we’re all about saving Santa some time on a busy night). So there I was, two nights before Christmas, whipping up random bags out of old shirts, pajamas, dresses, you name it. The good news? They’re super fast to make, they work, and Christmas morning cleanup is a snap!