Fall in California 2024

Saturday October 26

We flew here today. Nice weather, easy flight. It was chilly in Minnesota when we left; 30’s to 50’s. It’s a little warmer here, 40’s to 70’s. We arrived here around 2. Dan picked us up in their new car, a Mercedes hybrid/electric plugin SUV. It’s very nice! Roomie, all kinds of new bells and whistles. They say it will park itself if you want it to, but I haven’t seen that yet.

On the way here there was a perfect circular rainbow around the sun. I got some pictures. I looked it up; it’s called a solar halo and it’s pretty uncommon, only happens a few times a year at most.

Solar Halo

Once here we ate a late lunch and then played with Emi and talked to Dan and Kelsey for most of the rest of the afternoon. Emi has changed a bunch since August! She’s less chill, more opinionated, more insistent on what she wants. She crawls fast, with ease. She cruises around tables and loves her walker toy. She’ll walk holding on to Daniel’s fingers but not anyone else’s! (actually by the end of the week she was walking with my fingers, and Lee's too!)  We all thought she’d be walking by now because she stood so early but no. She’s very talkative, and will babble conversationally. She’s also hungry! She’s very into solid food and eager to try new things. We did go on a walk around the neighborhood and threw a ball for Rossi in the school yard.

For dinner we went to a Pakistani restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. It wasn’t fancy, you stood in line to order, chose a table outside and displayed your number and they brought your food to you. It was very similar to Indian food. It was very good, especially their naan. Emi mostly ate baby food but she did try naan, and a little bit of Lee’s dahl. She made a funny face at the dahl, and then wanted more!

Monday October 28

Today we’ll start babysitting Emi. Yesterday morning I woke up around 4:15. I went ahead and got up instead of trying to go back to sleep because I had a long run to do (8 miles). I ran to the Byxbee Trails park, a wetlands with lots of trails. Its about 3 miles there and the one other time I’ve run there I was only doing 6 miles so I turned around right after I got there, but this time I was able to run a couple miles into the park. It’s really beautiful, all these rolling hills of grassland, and so many birds! I saw a heron but couldn’t get close enough to get a picture.

Byxbee Trails

When I got back the others were just leaving to go for a walk and to get coffee and sweet rolls. They brought me back some, so I had a second breakfast. 

We mostly hung out all day. We went into Palo Alto for lunch at a diner, and then later we went to San Jose, hoping to eat at Din Tai Fung but apparently half of the Bay Area had the same idea. We got there at around 5:15 and the wait time for a table was over 3 hours!. We put our name on the list but we ended up eating at a french restaurant nearby named Left Bank instead. We hoped that some people in front of us would have given up but our wait time never really changed. 

The restaurant we ate at was ok. Lee got a salad lyonnnaise and french onion soup. Daniel and Kelsey got steak frites. I got a beet salad and mussels. The mussels were inedible, fishy and tough. I sent them back and Dan and Kelsey gave me bites of their steak instead. I was fine! There was plenty of food.

They had profiteroles and I thought I would get one for dessert but the waitress took so long to come back and get our dessert order that I changed my mind. We went to an ice cream place called Summit instead, where they make your ice cream order on the spot with dry ice. I got roasted banana with chocolate sauce. It was good, but I think I might like Sugar and Salt better. I’ll have to do a taste comparison to be sure!

Emi was very busy yesterday, exploring all sorts of things she shouldn’t. Periodically we’d have to trap her in the play room where there isn’t anything off limits, except that she’s starting to try to figure out how to climb up on things, such as her cookstove! She also fought her naps tooth and nail, and ended up taking both of them in the car. I think she might still be dealing with a little jet lag from their trip to Japan.

Emi Showing Rossi What's What

Tuesday October 29

Monday was a day off from running. I went on a morning walk to park with Lee, Rossi and Emi.  Emi took her nap in  the stroller, which was fine with us. We put Emi on one of the little rocking animals in the park. They are in a sand pit and Rossi thought the sand was lots of fun, tossing it up in the air with her nose and running around madly. 

For lunch I got a Bahn Mi from LeQuy, a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. In the afternoon we took a walk to get coffee at Covour and Emi took another stroller nap. In the evening we met Craig and Jean at a northern Italian restaurant, Che Fi. There were lots of small plates and antipasti. It was all very good, and we shared everything so we got to taste a variety of food.

This morning I had a good run. I mostly ran around Mitchell Park to stay close to known bathrooms because my stomach was a little upset, but I was ok. Then we took Emi to story time at the library. She was mostly interested in the other kids, sitting quietly with her thumb in her mouth, observing. There were a lot of out of control toddlers. The story teller was very patient with them! She did a combination of singing and stories. I thought that the caregivers of the misbehaving toddlers were sort of negligent but Dan pointed out later that they were probably nannies and didn't feel like they had the authority to discipline their charges, at least not in public. 

Wednesday October 30

We took another walk to get coffee yesterday afternoon, then Lee made dinner, chicken ala becca. Kelsey, Dan and Emi went to get their covid and flu shots yesterday afternoon. After dinner Daniel, Kelsey, Emi and I went to get gelato at the gelateria run by the same Italian restaurant we went to last night (Dan wanted to go yesterday but we were too full!). We all got small cups and none of us could finish it. I don’t know why places give people so much ice cream. We all would have gotten kiddie cones if they had had them.

I did a 4 mile easy run this am, then went on a walk with Lee, Emi and Rossi, to Mitchell Park and back. Lee made tostadas for lunch. I was starving and afraid I would get cranky waiting, but I made it. Even after 2 tostadas and a big cookie I was still kind of hungry, but I’ll live. In a little while we’ll go on our afternoon coffee walk. Maybe I’ll get a snack too. I wonder what we’ll do for dinner?

Thursday October 31

I tried the Honey Financier at Covour; it was yummy and filling. I wasn’t hungry any more after that! Our afternoon walk was a little early and Emi didn’t fall asleep so we put her down for a nap in her crib around 3. Boyoboy did she fight it! They let her fuss for 15 minutes and she used every single minute before she gave up. I watched her on the baby monitor. She would stand in her crib, crying, sit down for a second, stand back up, over and over. Gradually the sit downs got a little longer and she started laying her head down too, until finally down she stayed. Whew!

We hadn’t seen Kelsey all day and it turns out she had a reaction to her shot and had been sick all day. We decided to get pho delivered for dinner. It was very good and hit the spot. Even Emi liked the meat.

Then they decided they had better carve their pumpkins. They had a pumpkin carving kit from last year but we couldn’t find it so Dan and Lee winged it. I thought they came out pretty good considering. 

Pumpkins

Friday November 1

Thursday morning I slept in a little bit (5:45 AM lol) and procrastinated so by the time I got started I needed to abbreviate my run a little so that I would be available to babysit Emi by 9. I did a 1 mile warmup, then about 3.40 miles at half marathon pace and didn’t do a cooldown. Better than nothing!

We did our morning walk with Emi and timed it right so she fell asleep right away. She slept the whole walk and another hour at least once we got back to the house, close to 2 hours! That’s a very long nap for her! Lee went and got us InandOut burgers for lunch and Emi had some too, torn up hamburger mostly, although Lee gave her some of a french fry and she really liked them! She wanted them instead of the hamburger but we held tough and told her no more french fries!

Then in the afternoon we did another coffee walk. She fell asleep for that one too. We went there a different way that was slightly longer so we ended up walking closer to 2.2 miles. I have good intentions to continue with these walks in Minnesota, but we’ll see. I tried a pumpkin creme latte in honor of Halloween. It was delicious!

Craig came over for dinner, with pizza, salad, and halloween cupcakes. Jean couldn’t come because she wasn’t feeling well. After dinner Kelsey, Dan and Emi put on their costumes. Kelsey was Sully, Daniel was Mike Wazowski, and Emi was Boo, from the movie Monsters, Inc. Emi's costume consisted of a long t-shirt (a 2T that almost fit her!) and pink pom poms on her little pony tails! Rossi was very tolerant of her little monster costume. They left to go trick or treating with some friends and we stayed behind to give out candy. 

Happy Halloween From Monster's Inc!

At first there were hardly any kids, but then more and more started showing up. Their front door is in a courtyard, so we opened the gate and I sat in the gateway with the candy so they could see me! There were a lot of cute costumes but my favorite was a girl that was dressed as a jellyfish. She had a transparent umbrella and had strung twinkly lights from it to look like a jellyfish’s tentacles. It looked great and she was very easy to see.

We were down to just a few pieces of candy when a very large group of kids started coming down the street. We didn’t have enough candy left for all of them so I quickly closed the gate and we turned off the lights and went inside. Whew!

It was lots of fun doing halloween. We never get trick or treaters at our house so I was happy to get to hand out candy for the first time since we lived in Waconia. Back in Minnesota they had snow for halloween, something of a tradition. Leo was Darth Vader, Kirby was a storm trooper, Sarah was princess Leia and Erik was Luke. The boys are very into Star Wars right now, thanks to Erik. The pictures were pretty awesome!

Herberg Star Wars

Now we’re back in Minnesota where it’s cold but not too bad. Someone tore up my homemade Harris/Walz sign but a neighbor left us another and the one I ordered came, so now we have 2 nice signs. I hope they last til election day.