Following

Over the weekend, we saw our kids from Palo Alto.  Sunday morning was one of those perfect times, when everything seemed to just flow from one wonderful experience to another.  First, our son made crepes for breakfast.  They were wonderful, no matter how they were eaten.  Liam filled his with sugar, then carefully folded it over in half, adding more sugar, then in quarters, adding even more sugar.  I filled mine with fresh fruit and yogurt.  Then Liam and Grandpa worked in the shop (their favorite thing) fixing up the water bottle rockets for launching.  There were so many adjustments made so carefully and Liam can talk about each new change.  He’s really into explaining the recently added parachutes.  That flowed right into shooting off the rockets from our patio.  It’s fun to see Liam be such an expert with such a technical looking apparatus.  He totally owns it and still gets great joy out of every part of the experience.  As the clouds parted, we left to go explore the nearby Botanical Garden and have a picnic there.  At the Garden, I followed Liam around.  The Garden is at its best, if you’re a kid, just as a place to explore.  There are lots of hidden paths, secluded by lush vegetation’s and bright flowers.  The paths go up and down the hills, with many steps and a creek that meanders through.  Liam looked at the newts, ran down the path into the redwoods, walked over the bridge twice and generally followed his father’s mantra of “exploring new areas.”  I followed.  It

gave me great pleasure to do so, gently guiding him back to where Grandpa and Arne were waiting for us to eat the picnic lunch in the Bamboo forest.  He’d never eaten a picnic lunch in a Bamboo forest before.  When you’re six, lots of things are new.