5/6/07 A day of visits

This turned into one of the fullest, busiest days we've had in a long time! And it was great!

The morning started with a visit from longtime friend Jim Franklin, this year's Sheepranch Pooh-bah. Jim flew in from Boston to preside over the couch-sitting, tale-telling, song-warbling and, oh yeah, motorcycle-riding event, and since I'm not going, I wanted to see him. So he joined us for our usual Sunday morning breakfast shindig, which got even shindiggier when I had someone else to bake for and cut fresh fruit for.

Next stop: Gina's birthday party. Gina takes the candle-blowing birthday-song-singing very, very seriously. I barely saw the boys; Gabriel was off playing in the jump house and Julian mostly hung around the sand and fountain area. (Note that sand and fountains, when combined, make for "volcanos" and very wet very sandy children.) I like park parties -- I'm sure they're a lot of work, but I always enjoy them. (And Betsy always has the yummiest cake!)


Back at home, Laura and Ryan came by for the afternoon!! Ryan's doing a photo shoot in Sonoma, so Laura joined him for the weekend, and unbelievably lucky for us, they managed to squeeze in a visit. Yay!

The boys were beside themselves, but of course, Katrina hasn't met her aunt and uncle since she was a brand-new newborn. She's got stranger anxiety now; you can't just hand her to a new person anymore (I'm certain I still could with Gabriel at this age), but it took only a few minutes for her to be smiling and making her signature "euh!" sound to them.


Ryan is a professional photographer who not only likes to apply his profession to fun, but is also really, really good at it. Even at photographing babies and little kids, not something he (or most non-parents) do on a regular basis.



He got lots of great pictures, but this one is my favorite.


It's so, so fun when they're here. Not just for the kids, but for us too. (Note to self: stop taking closeups with someone so photogenic as Laura!)

For the record, we did not deliberately match our shirts. Maybe because it was a nice warm day, we were both in a watermelon-shade mood. I can't think of a better color for such a nice Sunday.

5/6/07