Celebrating Daddy-o in the Best Way

Daddy-o had a birthday this week and while his birthday was a day full of school and work, we surprised him with a pizza crawl in San Francisco scheduled for the weekend. I picked 4 places that offered pizza by the slice in 3 different neighborhoods to try and we had a fabulous day!

Besides the pizza, we also walked around a little between places (had to keep our appetites up so we weren't forcing pizza down by the end, haha.) It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we started in the neighborhood south of Golden Gate Park (Inner Sunset) and then went to the Mission District, so we walked over to Delores Park for the views. Also stopped by the Dog Eared Books for bit and picked up Amy Tan's Backyard Bird Chronicles for me (I offered to buy Daddy-o and birthday book, but he declined so I figured I should get me a book, haha.)

Exploring those two areas took all afternoon so it was basically dinner by the time we headed to North Beach for the final two spots. We had saved Tony's for this point because it gets such high ratings so I figured we shouldn't start with what was likely going to be the best pizza. And it was really good pizza.

And then we went to Golden Boy which was the most unique style of pizza of the day (more of a deep dish, where the other three were thin crust.)  We grabbed some amazing gelato to finish off the night before we headed home.

We didn't eat any bad pizza the whole day. Arizmendi Bakery only has one flavor a day, and the mushroom with ginger and sesame oil was surprisingly delicious (and the scone we got to split was delicious!) Tony's had an amazing veggie pizza with so many toppings and great, floppy, NY style crust, Golden Boy was good, but the overall winner was Hi Hat! Daddy-o loved the spicy vodka and thought the crust was the best we had all day, and their other pizzas flavors were so good, too.

The best part is that there are still so many pizza places to try so we can do this again! (And Tony is opening a new place in Livermore, so maybe we'll need to do this with a few of our local places when that happens, although I can only think of one other place that does pizza by the slice.)

Happy Birthday, Daddy-o! 

Birthday Week

Daddy-o turned 48 and celebrated with a couple of friends and lemon cake.

And then, later that week, we took our first van trip since the big one.

Just one night up near Pinecrest in the snow.

And all so we could go skiing the next day.

I'd set up a few ski days for our homeschool group at Dodge Ridge. They have such a great group rate (and we even got two free tickets because of the number of people who signed up.) Peanut took a lesson again to refresh himself and Daddy-o skied with him in the afternoon.

And while they skied, I went for a little hike down the road and into the forest.

It wasn't snowy enough to snowshoe, but icy and snowy enough to make it a bit of a challenge walking around.

I followed the same path that we often snowshoe on and found the stop sign that we have taken pictures of in the past. I always thought the snow was so deep, but turns out it's just a short sign, haha.

We finished the weekend with another birthday gift for Daddy-o: a movie at the historic Stanford Theater. This place is beautiful and such a crazy good deal--$7 tickets, $1 candy and $2 popcorn.

We saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and it felt very timely. The best part was everyone in the theater cheering after a particularly moving monologue from Jimmy Stewart's character. We'll be back for  more movies for sure!

Saturday Fun

Bean, Peanut, and I went to explore a new park on the bay in Fremont.

We "hiked" along the water,

and spent quite a bit of time trying to identify the birds we saw. (We also realized this would be a better bird spot in the morning, so the sun isn't behind them, making everything just look like dark blobs.)

And while we were hiking, Daddy-o cashed in on one of his gifts--a boy's day with Bug. They went bowling, miniature golfing, to the arcade at Dave and Buster's, and out for burgers and pie at Nation's.

 

Work with Daddy

It had been a little while since this kiddo got to go to work with Daddy. (And side note, but he looks so cute in his glasses! The optometrist hoped that having these for screens and reading might help his headaches he's been getting. I think it's working.)

He did a little work outside,

and then got some school done. It cracks me up how he choses to do his schoolwork--on the floor, crouched on a chair, hanging upside down from the couch--but this is the beauty of homeschool.)

His favorite part--the taco truck for lunch. I think this is the real reason he begs to go.

And while he works with Daddy-o, I have a few hours to work on science, and make a huge mess of my desk. I love having uninterrupted planning time. The planning is actually really enjoyable to me--trying to find the perfect activity to go along with whatever concept we're working on at the moment.

 

Bad, Bad Day

 No pictures because I don't think anyone wants to see it. I know I don't, but this needs to be in the family history.

Daddy-o called me yesterday, from the hospital, telling me that he was going to be okay, but, and it was a big but, he'd lost part of his pinky in an accident at work. 

He was helping a customer with their trailer that had a drop-down ramp and something with the high-tension cable supporting the ramp wasn't working correctly. The customer released the ramp, without thinking about the fact that it was going to retract. Well, it did, very quickly, and Daddy-o, who was holding the cable, didn't have enough time to react. He got his right hand out of the way, but his left hand was a little slower and the bolt at the end of the cable hit his hand.

Right afterwards, he was in excruciating pain. He saw the scraped-up parts of his right hand first, and thought that explained the level of pain, and then, he took off the glove on his left hand and saw the missing finger tip--it was about 3/4 of an inch, almost down to the first joint. He was obviously horrified, and then started frantically searching for the finger when another person standing nearby suggested looking in the glove. Sure enough, the pinky was there. They packed it on ice and drove Daddy-o to the hospital, but the doctor there couldn't reattach the finger. Turns out that doesn't actually work very often.

So, Daddy-o had surgery to close up the wound, spent the night in the hospital, and is now home, heavily drugged, and in a lot of pain. The hospital only gave him a couple days of painkiller, which is seeming pretty light considering how uncomfortable he is. We'll see how the next couple days go. Right now, we're just trying to get through each day and figure out just how much missing part of a pinky is going to matter.

We Love Our Daddy-o

In our church, the kids (under 12) usually sing a special musical number for both Father's Day and Mother's Day. With church at home, we decided the should all sing for their dad. :)

It was an impromptu performance, and we all loved it.

These kids are pretty lucky to have this dad of theirs. He's willing to be silly and hug a tree. He's good at teaching how to park. He will read the books they recommend (even if he doesn't read them fast enough to satisfy these voracious readers.) He'll stay up late to watch a movie, get up with kids who have had nightmares, and buy them treats if they go to the store with him (pre-Corona-not a lot of family trips to the store anymore.)

He's game for adventures and knows tons of facts, and if he doesn't already know, he's great at doing research.

Today, for the third time, Father's Day and the birthday of the girl who made him a dad coincided, so we got to celebrate two of our favorite people. They both love pizza and lasagna, so we did lasagna today, after yesterday's pizza. (These two are getting spoiled on the food!) And Bean made chocolate covered strawberries for dessert, which was awesome (and we may have eaten birthday cake, too ;).)

Another Trip Around The Sun

Daddy-o's birthday came and went without a lot of fanfare this year. Adult birthdays sometimes get buried under the kid activities, so our Wednesday looked a lot like any other busy Wednesday, with school and work, waterpolo, errands, and a rushed dinner before we all had to get down to the church for youth activities and New Beginnings, where Bean was getting an award (more on that later.) Add in that Daddy-o, and now Bug have pretty bad colds, and even his delayed celebration was subdued by Bug having an ear ache that we needed to work with for an hour.

But in some ways, delayed birthday celebrations are nice. This year, it worked out that Daddy-o got cinnamon rolls twice, pizza (convenience when we had such a crazy afternoon/evening) on his birthday, AND got to go out for dinner at the end of the week!

We saved the actual celebrating for Friday night, so after dinner, we came home, (took care of Bug's ear,) and then opened gifts and had cake and ice cream. And the celebrating will continue because his gifts included tickets to Les Misérables when they are in Fresno this spring!

Happy Birthday, Daddy-o. We love you!

(note for future: Lemon Cake from American Test Kitchen cookbook--such good cake recipe!)

Ski Trip 2019

With all the snow that California has gotten this year, the kids have been begging to go skiing again. Well, some of the kids. Peanut is still very anti-cold. I had hoped this would be the year that we could all go up to the snow together, but after he had a freak out a couple weeks ago on a chilly morning down here in the Bay Area, Daddy-o and I decided that it wasn't worth it to try taking him.

And that is how these three ended up getting to enjoy one of the most awesome powder days at Dodge Ridge, while I hung out at home with the little guy (and powder days are a little lost on these guys because they are still beginners--Bug came home and complained about how the deep snow was really annoying and made it hard to ski. If he only knew. . .) 

From all reports, they had an amazing day. Our church had organized this trip on the kids' day off after the trimester ended, so there were a bunch of friends up there to ski with, and not a whole lot of other people. Our kids were very happy to not have any lines to wait in at the lifts.

And it sounds like everyone did well--I'm glad that our kids feel comfortable on skis now. Bean even said she thinks she's ready to try snowboarding :)

There has been SO much snow the last couple months. And it snowed the whole week before they went up. As sad as I was to miss out on the powder, I did get to be cozy and warm in our house, while I watched an online homeschool conference I'd signed up for. And Peanut got to have a 4 hour playdate with a fellow Wild Kratts lover, so we didn't have a bad day.

After the skiing, Bean caught a ride home with friends, and Daddy-o and Bug stayed in this cabin with the Scouts from church. They had decided to tack on a little overnighter, and I think they all had a good time playing in the snow, watching a movie, and just being together.

On the way home, they stopped by Columbia, the old Gold Rush town, for a little while. It's nice that Daddy-o, who misses out on so many of our field trips, was able to do this whole trip.

By Saturday afternoon, when everyone was back home, we had a bunch of tired, very sore, very happy people. (That soreness was another thing I was happy to miss out on, even if it meant I had to miss out on the happy part. Snowboarding hurts so much more these days than I remember--I'm getting old!)  

Birthday Boy

Someone had a birthday this week! This last year has been a huge one for achieving life goals, taking on new challenges, and working at creating the life he wants to be living. We're all so proud of him.

He branched out this year. Instead of something lemon or the peanut butter chocolate cake, Daddy-o requested America's Test Kitchen's carrot cake, and it was INCREDIBLE. I like carrot cake, but I don't think I've made one before, and we really don't come across them often. This one is making me wonder why this isn't a staple in our house.

It's a good thing it was good because pretty much everything else didn't work out as planned. We'd wanted to go try the deep dish pizza place downtown and then go bowling, but mid-week birthdays are hard. Bean started swim practice this week, so we had to wait for her to get home and shower, so we got a late start. Then, the pizza place was apparently understaffed, and busy, so after waiting for 20 minutes or so, with no eye contact from a server or anyone else, we gave up. It was 7 p.m., so too late for bowling and too late to eat out. We grabbed Little Caesars and went home for presents and cake and ice cream. Maybe we can celebrate better on the weekend. 

Monterey Bay Birthday Fun

Homeschooling has some fun perks, like free admission to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Mondays if you are lucky enough to get some of the much sought after tickets. We lucked out this year and got to spend Daddy-o's birthday at the aquarium.

It had been years since either of us had been there, and this was the kids' first visit.

We all had so much fun.

It's am amazing place, with great indoor and outdoor spots. We even found some sea otters out in the ocean.

And there's Hopkins Marine Station, with the little beach that I used to  watch the seals from and occasionally nap on at lunch time,

We drove down the afternoon before

and had time to play at the Dennis the Menace playground for a little while before we went over to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. We sampled so many different clam chowders while trying to pick a restaurant that we probably didn't actually need dinner. But food always plays a prominent role in our travels, and celebrations. Waterfront dinner, amazing breakfast at Rosine's Restaurant, and clam chowder from The Fish Hopper, followed up by a sundae at the Ghiradelli Ice Cream Shop. Good eating!

We had a great, quick trip, celebrating the birthday boy.