Tim and I have a bad case of poison oak/ivy that we picked up from our weekend get-away at Steep Ravine. We are both very itchy although Tim seems to have it worse than I do. I just hope Aoife doesn't get it.

I took Aoife to her favorite park today which is Willard park. She thoroughly enjoyed every moment. It's one of my favorite parks too because it is clean, safe, and not full of junk toys. Aoife ran around laughing, playing on push toys, swinging, sliding and climbing on the play structures. At one point a crazed little curly red head boy roared at her which scared her. She ran over with that-I'm gonna burst into tears face- and then cried. She is at an age right now where she gets scared very easy by things. I comforted her and she was okay after drinking some water. Off she went again and ran around. She likes to know explanations to things such as how she hurt herself, or why the boy scared her. Once I explain things that happened to her she seems fine. We had lunch at the park and then I went to my old place of employment to turn in my key and pick up some books and my triangle. It was strange to be back. Steve had a lot of fun with her playing peek-a-boo and feeding each other fish. He was really great with her. My teacher-friends were having a teachers meeting so I decided to leave. I took Aoife home and she took a nap.

Aoife woke up in a great mood, so we went outside on our "balcony" and I filled a tub of water for her to play in. She took a lot of the soil from my garden and dumped it in their. She got very messy, but enjoyed the fact that I was letting her get dirty. I had to give her a bath to clean her up. She loved to take a bath and can spend up to half and hour in it. I needed to get some fruit, so we went off to Berkley bowl. Aoife has a push cart that she like to pretend play with. She often goes off to Berkeley bowl in it. Aoife loves being in Berkeley bowl, but unfortunately for me she loves grabbing things off the shelves. In Berkeley Bowl, Aoife was singing twinkle twinkle at the top of her lung-so cute! People laughed at her.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

This morning there were snails all over our back yard. I thought Aoife would get a kick out of them, so I brought one in for her to play with. She was very very excited and wanted to crush it, so I had to show her how to touch it gently. She watched for a very long time and then got brave enough to touch him. She laughed hysterically when she touched the snails eyes-they popped right in. I used to love snails as a young kid, but on closer inspection they are really quite creepy. We eventually put him outside again. Later that day I let Aoife play with a ceramic snail I bought years ago, and she dressed it up in bright pink play dough clothes.

That morning Aoife and I went to Totland which is a playground dedicated to toddlers. There are tons of toys, space, and equipment to play with. Again, Aoife was overwhelmed by all the people, but she eventually settled in. One of her favorite things to do was climb a spiderweb roped play structure. She's really good at carrying her own weight. I think she's going to be a great climber when she's older. After totland, we went to Solano and had lunch at a fancy vegan fast food place-which for some reason was having a special corned beef sandwich made of what?I have no idea because it sounded discusting. We went into my favorite book chain Pendragon and Pegasus, and I found a book that I had been looking for for ages on sale. I bought Aoife a book too about two farmers. Aoife took a nap in the car and then I bought her a bunch of stuff to keep her occupied on our journey to Wisconsin.

Later that night, we went to a St. Paddy's day party at James and Maggies house. Aoife had a lot of fun playing with the plastic green hats and everyone enjoyed being around her. It was fun but we stayed alittle too late. Aoife fell asleep in the car on the ride home.

I woke up excited this morning knowing that Aoife and I would once again go to Toddler time at the library. I really missed doing these things with her. Aoife seemed a little bit overwhelmed since she had not been their in a while and there were a lot more people then I had remembered from before. She still enjoyed it though and had more fun at the end when people were finally starting to leave. We went home, had lunch, and Aoife took a nap. Another thing that I missed was going to the farmers market every Tuesday to pick up our CSA. We went to the park first and then went to the farmers market. Aoife had fun watching and listening to the musicians. I wanted to buy some duck eggs from the egg man, but he said that a restaurant came buy and bought them out. Oh, well, I'll try again on Saturday to get some duck eggs! I stopped at the Full Belly farm stand and bought the largest carrots I'd ever seen in my life. I also bought some chard and garlic greens. My garlic at home is starting to become infested with little black bugs. It's pretty sad because I planted those cloves from the last of my amazingly tasty full belly farm bulbs. I also bought a nutternut squash at a different farm stand. Aoife was hungry so I bought her a little pear tart that she fully enjoyed. I grabbed a Thai iced-tea and sat down with Aoife while we watched another musician playing Irish folk music. It was a beautiful day. Later that night I made Butter nut squash with parmesan risotto...it was delicious; the squash just melted perfectly.

Slide ranch and Steep ravine

Tim decided last minute to reserve a cabin at Steep ravine. This is sort of our last goodbye to north bay and we had a great time. We left Oakland around mid-day and got the slide ranch after lunch. My friend, Kate, worked at slide ranch and recommended it to us. It was an awesome little farm. Aoife had fun looking at the goats and sheep. The goats had just had babies about 5 days earlier. They were adorable. Aoife couldn't see them very well, but she could hear them. We continued to walk around the farm and ran into chickens and roosters. Aoife spent a long time following them; she really wanted to hold one. She wasn't able to catch one but was happy enough to touch the tail feathers. It was pretty hard to get her off the farm. We made our way over to the Steep ravine cabins and just gasped at the beauty of the place. It is one of the most beautiful places we've ever visited. The cabin was quite big, but didn't have much in it. For some reason we thought that there would be mattresses and blankets, but this experience is camping without the tent. So, we didn't have electricity or anything. This was fine; we've gone camping many times before, but we were unprepared this time. So, I went and bought some blankets and chocolate at Stinston beach which is the closest town. After I got back, we took a walk down to the beach and Aoife played with rocks while I drew shapes in the sand. We spent the night starting a fire, eating our dinner, and watching the gorgeous sunset over the ocean. It was truly paradise. The next morning we woke up to the sunrise which was also very beautiful, made some hot tea and went for a walk along the cliffs. We spent the morning relaxing and finally packed up and headed up to Mount Tamalpais. The view of San Francisco was breathtaking sadly I wasn't able to capture it on my camera. We had brought a kite with us and decided to fly it since there was very windy. Aoife enjoyed it but was a little bit scared. I think I was the one who enjoyed it the most! We headed back to the Bay area and ate at an awesome gourmet delicatessen on the way.

In the afternoon, Aoife and I, went up to Dorries house to visit her. Dorrie was leaving the next day to go to Illinois, and it was the last day that Dorrie would see Aoife before we move away. Aoife had a lot of fun playing in Dorries garden and Dorrie picked some peas for Aoife to eat. I know that Aoife is going to miss Dorrie dearly so we'll have to come back for frequent vacations and visit Dorrie each time she goes to Illinois.