Katherine’s family has been going to the YMCA of the Rockies family camp in Estes Park Colorado since before she was born. We’ve carried on the tradition, getting up there once every year or two and even extending the tradition to some of Stu’s family. Here are highlights including another birthday party for Claire, visiting our old standby the Bald Pate Inn, cooking around the cabin including Persian food, fun with bubbles on the deck, lots of hiking, and a group selfie.
We’ve fallen behind posting pictures here. Thanks to Katherine’s photo organizing skills, we’ll be posting a half dozen catch ups over the next week or so.
Christmas 2013 took us to both Houston and Oklahoma City to see family. In Houston, we visited the Johnson Space Center with the girls’ cousin Will and had a fun Christmas morning (new pajamas!). We also got to visit Katherine’s old friends the Taylors and see their girls. Then it was off to Oklahoma City for much fun with the family there involving another Christmas morning, bowling, baths, and of course cheerio covered waffles.
We caught a quick Southwest flight from Houston for part 2 of our Christmas with my family in Oklahoma. Imagine five girls 12-years old and younger under one roof, running around non-stop, making lots of noise, and generally having a ball with each other. Highlights included lots and lots of cooking and eating, opening presents, playing with the new Kinect they received, going out to a fondue restaurant for a fun family dinner, volunteering for a second year at the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, and ice skating in the sun. Click on the family picture for a slideshow of pictures from both us and Abbas.
We spent Thanksgiving with my family in Dallas this year. Highlights included staying at Mike and Lou’s new house, Claire and Juliet enjoying time with their cousins Sophie, Susan and Sara including singing along to the Sound of Music for the first time, and seeing Katherine’s cousin Tom and Aunt Betty (one of Claire Elizabeth’s namesakes). The visit wrapped up with two fun days at a local indoor waterpark, where the girls played in pools, rode down waterslides, gorged on cheese curds, and helped Susan celebrate her birthday at Scooops, the ice-cream themed “no parent zone” spa.
Here’s a kid quote from the visit, something Claire said to me after spending a few days hanging out mostly with her Sara, Sophie and Susan. I tried to take her to the bathroom and she told me:
Daddy, only my cousins can take me to the potty!
For a slideshow of picture from Abbas and me, click on Abbas’s great picture of Claire and her three cousins with my parents’ dog Jeffrey.
Our Christmas adventure this year began in Oklahoma City, where we visited my sister Eileen’s family. The week started off with a Christmas Eve record snowfall of over 12″ that triggered an Oklahoma state of emergency, an unplanned overnight stay for my Uncle Mike and Aunt Lou Ann, and lots of fun snowplay for the five girls under 11 in the house. Other highlights include cooking, presents, movie nights, volunteering at the local Food Bank where we packed bags and bags of frozen cauliflower, and Santa’s unexpected gift of Christmas the cat. Click on the family group shot below for a slideshow. My sister Eileen did a cool video of the week as well.
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.
We had a great Thanksgiving in Dallas this year. Katherine’s pregnancy made travel at Christmas iffy so we were lucky to combine two originally separate holiday plans (Thanksgiving with Katherine’s family, Christmas with mine) into one week-long trip to Dallas. Highlights include endless laps up and down the stairs with Claire, visiting Katherine’s Great Aunt Betty (one of the inspirations for Claire’s middle name Elizabeth), Claire’s cousin Susan in a leopard costume, playing with presents under the tree, and a piano duet from Claire and her cousin Will. Click on the picture below for a slideshow.
May 30th was the 77th birthday for my dad Peter (who Claire knows as “Poppa”). To celebrate, all of us in his family headed to Oklahoma City to spend four fun days together at the beautiful home Eileen and Abbas recently built. We had a big birthday party, and lots of play time for Claire with her three cousins Sara, Sophie and Susan. Click on the photo below for a slideshow of photos by my Dad and us.
We just returned from a five-day Thanksgiving trip to Oklahoma, where we visited my sister Eileen, her husband Abbas, their daughters Sara, Sophie and Susan, Abbas’s sister Hediyeh, my sister Mona, and my Uncle Mike and Aunt Lou Ann. We enjoyed exploring the new house Eileen and Abbas just built, cooked a lot of food in their deluxe kitchen, watched a few movies, ate dinner out at a great steakhouse, and even visited a fascinating exhibit called Our Body: The Universe Within. We missed my parents, who couldn’t join us at the last minute, but thought of them often. Click on the photo below for a slideshow of pictures from Abbas and us.
Also, here’s a 90-second video of Claire in Oklahoma practicing her conversation skills, including gurgling, finger-chewing, and laughter-induced hiccups. Click on the triangle “Play” button in the image below to start the video.