Mmm, I wonder what this means.

Stern Grove

On July 5th, we had first a picnic with Marco, who has a low key birthday celebration in Dolores Park.

Then we headed out to Stern Grove, for a concert by the SF Symphony, playing the Tchaikovsky 1st piano concerto with Inon Barnatan. After the performance, we walked to the other side of the grove, where we discovered a pretty little lake.

We went shopping at the Trader Joe's by the grove, in the galleria shopping plaza, where they have little carts for Eustache to smash into my ankles.

Finally, we caught dinner at S&T Hong-Kong Seafood on Noriega.

4th of July: Traditional Half-Moon Bay visit.

We start the day by riding ponies at Lemos Farm. Augustin was crying so hard, we figured he wanted to try it out. He loved it.

Also: riding the choo-choo train.

Then we catch the parade on main street.

We decided this time around to go have lunch at the main street grill. In the future: don't bother. The places we had visited in the past were better.

Then we walked down main street to get coffee at the Half Moon Bay Coffee and Cafe.

It's our 4th consecutive year going down to Half-Moon Bay. The kids like it, what can we say. Click on the previous years to see how fast they grow.

David & Olga's Party.

The bart ride to Berkeley, 7/3/09. We were on our way to a party for Katia's friends.

Lunching at David and Olga's:

Tennessee Valley in Marin.

The horse ranch by the Tennessee Valley trail head (all pics 6/28/09)

The beach.

Eating grape in the car.

David & Olga's

On 6/27/09.

Trip Return

I come back from Rome only to discover that my son enrolled in the Marines and my daughter is pregnant. 6/26/09.

Rome [Cedric Only]

Attending a conference around 6/25/09

Petting Zoo

Taiko at Chibichan's Graduation Party.

What I'll be when I grow up.

4/8/2009.

Exercising in Nancy

You gotta work hard to stay fit.



3/21/2009.

Augustin's First Steps

In Nancy, at Mamoune's:


In Paris:

Lion's Dance.

Augustin Pilots His Plane

At the Hiller Museum

Aema Turns Three [video]

Eustache Turns Five [video]

Eustache Skis [video]

The video corresponding to this post

Augustin Plays the Piano

January 10, 2009.

Augustin Turns One

Here's the video corresponding to this post

Chibichan Christmas Party

Aema is being shy:


Eustache sings:

Pop!

September 28, 2008.

Sliding down.

Aema goes down the big slide at Ethan's birthday party.

Seattle Museum of Flight

We went to the Seattle Museum of flight (click the link for the pictures) and here are the movies.

Yoriko flying her hang glider:


Aema flying her blue angel plane:

Growing Up

The two movies below were made over a period of about two years. During that time, Eustache grew from 3 to 5 yo, and Aema from a bit over 1 to 3. I took a picture of them every time we went to the North Beach pool. The pool closed for renovation, and the alternate pool does not have the measuring wall, so I stopped taking the pictures in the fall of 2008.

In both movies, there is one picture in a different setting: Yerba Buena Gardens for Eustache, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum for Aeme. But the measuring scale is always there.

Eustache:


Aema:

Tilden Park.

Eustache plays frisbee with his daddy.

The little farm.





The play structure.

The steam train.


Tilden Park on 6/20/2009.

Sebastian's Birthday Party.

Sebastian, Eustache's friend from KMS, had his birthday party at a baseball diamond, right near the SF Giants' PacBell park (where we saw the opera a couple posts below). June 20th. It was a fun b-day party, and Augustin liked the frosting of his cupcake very much.

Dresden (Cedric Only)

Went to ICC conference in Dresden, took these pictures between 6/15 and 6/16/2009.

Asian Art Museum

The Asian Art museum opened its Samurai exhibit this month, and we went to visit it with the kids on 6/13/2009.

We had lunch at the cafeteria, and they took off the Thai chicken soup off the menu. Tragedy!

Building Legos.

Eustache, Aema and Augustin constructed some fantastic lego structures. Eustache did a full fledge rocket airport, with 3 different rockets and control towers; Aema did a bus for the rubber duckies, with 4 levels. And Augustin just built stuff upwards.

June 13th, 2009.

Clear Lake Camping.

We went camping to Clear lake on 6/6/09. David, Olga and Katia joined us. Yoriko was in Portland for the week-end. Clear lake was a bit further than I remembered, more like 2h30 away from the house. It was quite pretty nonetheless, and there was a little lovely beach were you could swim. We grilled food on the wood fire, which was tasty.

Graduation.

Eustache had a graduation ceremony, since he's leaving Chibichan to go to kindergarten.
He wore a cap-and-gown outfit, and there was some movies made that I'll have to upload later. June 6th, 2009.

San Francisco Unified School District.

On June 1st, the school district let parents choose any available spot without losing their waiting list preference. So here I was, at 4:30am, joining the line to get a better school (our assignment had been crappy, and we had not improved in the subsequent rounds of lottery). I was #6 in the line, which grew as the morning advanced, to about a 100 people at 8am when the doors opened. I actually swapped counselor with the couple #1 in line due to language issues (they wanted a Chinese speaker), so at least I got their spot in the line without sleeping over on the sidewalk like the husband in that couple did. In terms of school selection, it was all crappy, and the least worst choice was Rosa Parks Bicultural Japanese program, but Eustache most likely will go to a French private school.

Berry Picking.

We went strawberry picking just north of Santa Cruz on 5/31. We were meeting Gillou and we decide to synchronize at the Santa Cruz Pier. Where we had some fried calamari and fish and chips (forgettable) at some counter on the pier, and horchata ice cream at Marini's.

Then we picked strawberries at Swanton Berry Farm. It's very cute, you go grab baskets, you feel them up (except Aema, who just ate the strawberries) and weigh them yourself, and you pay $2.50 per pound for organic strawberries.

The farm is right across the highway from Davenport Landing's beach, where Gillou used to windsurf, and were it was nice to dip some toes in the water.

Trip to LA

I had decided to take the kids to Disneyland. We drove down there on Friday, 5/22/09, after work. We left at 4:30pm, and we still hit some traffic in Gilroy. We stopped for dinner at In'n'Out. Augustin discovered he loved ketchup.

We arrived at like 2am in our beds. The next morning, we purchased two-day park hopper tickets in the hotel lobby, before walking across to the resort.

We were there at 8am, which you have to do if you want to do a few rides. We arrived a bit earlier, and waited by the Magic Morning gate (the early gate for the VIPs) which turns into a regular gate at 8am. So we did not have to line up like the people waiting for the regular gates to open. We did a boat ride in the jungle, then pirate of the Caribbeans, in the New-Orleans corner of the park.

Eustache did Splash Mountain, and loved it. Aema was too short for it.

We did a few more rides: Toy Story, Star Wars, and here, pictures of Autopia and of riding the horse pulled car.

Then we left the park for a lunch at Millies...

...and for fun play in the hotel pool. We stayed at the Howard Johnson across the park, mostly because we wanted to be walking distance so we could go in and out. But the hotel turned out great, because: 1) they comped us a night because they canceled our reservation due to our late arrival; 2) they had this pirate pool play area that the kids loved.

We went back to the park for "It's a Small World" ride and fireworks. We tried to go back to Fantasyland, but it was too seriously backed up with crowds of people, it was not fun at all.

The next morning, bright and early again, we went to Fantasyland so we could fly on Dumbo the Flying Elephant (just a short ride on a merry-go-round) and then we went to Toon's Town. The Roger Rabbit ride was a hit, the kids did it 3 times. They met Mickey and Minnie.

There is a petting zoo, where they are obsessive about picking up the poop. Don't even think about changing a diaper in plain sight at Disney.

Eustache climbed up Tarzan's tree house as we walked back.

We had a mediocre lunch at Denny's, and after a nap (in the car, we had checked out) and some swimming in the other HoJo pool (a deep pool where Aema figured out it was fun to jump. She used to be scared of it, but no more! She jumped maybe a hundred times), we went to the other park next door, California Adventure. It was much less crowded, much more relaxing, with plenty of fun rides to do. That's where we should have gone in the afternoon the day before as well.

We drove up to LA, where I had reserved a room at the Marriott. We arrived there at 11pm, the kids pretty much had some McDonald's fries for dinner, Yoriko and I ordered some Thai noodles for the hotel room. I had picked the hotel because it was a block off the starting line of the LA marathon.

The hotel also was walking distance from the LA Modern Art Museum and Disney Hall.

We drove back at around 7pm, and were home by 12:30am. The kids had a blast, and I ran my race, so everyone was super happy.