Gillian and Maureen's Visit

Rachel's sister Gillian and her daughter, Maureen, were visiting from out of town and joined us for a fun morning at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. (Click here for the full slideshow.)



Spencer did a lot of his old favorite activities (playing with the dump trucks on the miniature Golden Gate Bridge and clamoring around in the ship-themed playground), but was also inspired by Maureen to try his hand at some window painting art.



Spencer hopes cousin Maureen will come back to visit soon!

Hanging out with the Hills

We spent a rainy Saturday afternoon catching up with the Hills in Oakland. It cleared up enough for Spencer to take Cleo out for a walk to the playground.



The Hill's boys are so grown up now. Something tells us it won't seem like long before Spencer and Tyler are as big as Eddie and Nate! From left to right: Nate, Bob, Ryan, Kathy, Spencer, Eddie, and Eunice.

New Camera!

Well, the upside of losing our trusty old camera in the snowbanks of Tahoe is that it gave us an opportunity to upgrade! We took the plunge and bought the Canon Rebel digital SLR, and boy does it make a difference! Here are some practice shots we took around the house. (For a full slideshow, click here.)



We also got a tiny Canon PowerShot Digital Elph for when we don't want to lug the larger Rebel around. See below for some fun footage of Spencer building castles, singing songs, and joking around.

Building castles for his friends and family...


Singing "Wheels on the Bus"...


Singing Jingle Bells, This Old Man, and several renditions of Happy Birthday (with Tyler adding backup vocals)...


Singing a Chinese song, "Liang Zhi Lao Hu" (the last part is a little bit off, but it's a good effort!)


After Eunice does some coaching of Spencer's Chinese, he gives the song another try but ends up cracking himself up instead. There's nothing quite like Spencer's belly laugh!

A Tea Party & the Donkey

Spencer and Gaby have been having ever more imaginative play together, which has been really neat to see. They've progressed from simple tea and coffee-making to full blown tea parties. The interesting twist? Their parties are constantly interrupted. They run from the room screaming "Donkey Coming, Donkey Coming!", which we eventually figured out was an odd reference to one of their favorite books Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, where (spoiler alert) a rock being used as a picnic table turns into a donkey in the final scene.


PS. Happy Birthday, Gaby!