Another Wandering Heart

I'm so thrilled to find out another submission of my wandering heart is featured on Pia's blog. Thank you Pia for the wonderful encouragement. I cannot wait to see more of other works.

Puppy Love (continued...)

Yesterday, I was at Ryan's school early to pick him up and saw him and little M having Waltz over Nutcracker music. The teacher told me they had been dancing together all day. It was the most adorabl thing I saw - two little kids trying to dance Waltz. Although they didn't have the steps right, the postures were certainly there. M was leading the dance. As we all thought it was way too cute, all of a sudden Ryan seriously yelled " Mommy, I have to stop now. I'm afraid if I continue dancing, I'll have a baby"

We all burst into laugh. I really don't know where that came from.....

Images from Flickr

Collage

I came across Ophilia Chong's work through Creature Comfort. I have to say this is one of the best collage works I've seen in a long time. I can see them framed and hung in my empty hallway.





Images from creature comfort

Mother's Day Weekend

Grandma visited us in May and we took her and Ryan's cousin Tony up to Mendocino and Anderson Valley to celebrate Mother's Day and to tour annual Anderson Valley Garden Show. We visited six private gardens that participated this year. Most of them were nestled on the ridge of the hills overlooking the valley. The view was spectacular and the gardens were serene without much human intervention to their natural beauties. The boys had the greatest time searching for lizzards, and garden snakes and exploring the open space.








This time, we stayed at a vacation rental - Glendeven Inn in Mendocino so that we could all hang out in the common areas in the evening. Tony even got a lovely kiss from a llama from the property and he claimed that the llama had a crush on him! Across the street from our lodging, there were two trails leading to the beach. Af first, I was hesitant to take Ryan along but to my surprise, Ryan was able to walk with us on the narrow path with bushes and flowers brushing against us for quite some time. I think the amount of tricycling at school is paying off. Without doubt, Mendocino is Ryan's favorite vacation spot. He constantly asks me when we will visit it again. I'm sure it'll be some time soon!

Puppy Love

These photos were taken at Ryan's birthday party at school. The girl in the top picture is M, totally adorned by Ryan. What caught my attention was the fact that Ryan didn't show much interest in girls before. He has always been more fond of boys. But M is the first girl he wants to talk to and many times asks about both at home and school. I saw the way he is following her around or trying to catch her attention. It was so adorable! So while I was jokingly telling grandma about this, Ryan's cousin Tony approached Ryan to tease him. Here is their childlike but adorable conversation:

Tony: I heard you have crush on two girls at school?

Ryan: No, just one. ( ;0 I thought he would deny it or have no clue what his cousin was referring to.)

Tony: Who is she?

Ryan: silence....

Tony: Is it S, T, E or....

Ryan: No, it's M. (To my total surprise, I didn't think he would say it out loud. We never commented on this subject to him before.)

Mother: Why did you like her? (I had to step in....)

Ryan: She is so cute.

Mother: What is cute about her? (Envy..)

Ryan: Everything.





JR is Ryan's best buddy at school. They started on the same date and bonded closely by crying together through the initial transitional period.

Pescadero

We heard about Duarte's, a dining tavern at Pescadero for a while and finally drove down the coast to give it a try. After a 45 min-wait for the seating, the food after all was not as good as expected. At least it was not as memorable as what other Pescadero has to offer.





After the meal, we were recommended by the local to visit Harley' Cheese Farm. Ryan was excited to pet the two-week-old baby goats and to feed them. They also offer cheese tasting in the nicely restored barn house with variety of beautifully handmade cheese, decorated with edible flowers and dried fruits.


A highlight of this trip was Ryan surprisingly being pecked by a chick in the berry farm in town. Despite our warning, he insisted poking his finger through the chicken wire to provoke the ducks. He thought he could retrieve his finger fast enough if the duck was going to peck him. Unfortunately, he didn't realize the little chicks were waiting low by the side....All I can say is another painful but precious lesson learned by him.

Capitola

Even since the north coast trip, we seemed to catch the travel bug. This past weekend, we visited Capitola, a small beach town south of Santa Cruz. The downtown is full of beach front cafes and restaurants. I can imagine how relaxing it would be just to sip through the drinks at one of those lovely decks in the summer evening. Some of the images here are a compound of 1920s colorful stucco apartments, situated on the waterfront like a movie stage set.