Earlier this month we had a great family visit from my sisters Mona and Eileen along with Eileen’s husband Abbas and their three daughters Sara, Sophie and Susan (I call them the “pink tornado”). Friday night Eileen and Abbas had a quiet evening up in San Francisco, while down in Menlo Park the five girls under ten outnumbered adults and went crazy playing in a tent in our backyard, munching pizza on our new kids’ picnic table, and gazing at a bright Jupiter and its moons through some binoculars.  Saturday morning we visited the local fire department’s annual pancake breakfast and saw lots of safety demonstration and rescue dogs.  We also checked out the neighborhood playgrounds, hosted a friend of Eileen’s and her family, picked figs from the tree in our backyard, and enjoyed Sara taking lots of pictures including some pretty art shots of trees.  Finally we had a Saturday night birthday dinner for me featuring a “train cake”, a family tradition involving individual pound cakes, chocolate frosting, and lots of decorative candy. After the Shobeiris left Sunday, Mona stayed for a relatively serene few days. Click on the picture below for a big slideshow including lots of Sara’s pictures.