Whispers and Shouts: Finding Cotton Candy in Richmond, and other Shenanigans

Friday, August 29, 2014

Finding Cotton Candy in Richmond, and other Shenanigans

My aunt and uncle live in Richmond, and this past weekend we payed them a little visit.

The boys were especially looking forward to spending time with Uncle Pierre, because, well, his nickname is Uncle Party, so you know he likes a good time. He and Brian took them golfing on their first ever real golf course. They wore their "golf clothes," which Clark made sure were carefully folded in their suitcase for the trip down. We enjoyed delicious food and drink with them, as always, including peach cobbler and potato salad made the way that only my mom and Aunt Anne can make it.

Uncle Party bought them all kinds of glow things for the first night we were there: hats, bracelets, necklaces, sticks. They went on a glow stick parade down the street. Anne and Pierre also got them silly putty and sidewalk chalk, which got a lot of mileage over the weekend, and Anne wore her celebration pants for our arrival. There are glow stick hats in my freezer right now.

For Teddy there were the dogs and the stairs. He thinks dogs are hilarious and always wants to be in their faces. Blackberry and Izzy showed great patience this weekend and let him do a lot of stepping on tails and feet. Teddy is also obsessed with stairs and Anne and Pierre were creative with gate-making on their deck, which involved bungee cords and various household items and freakishly tall tomato plants.

Once when the boys were two years old and we were down in Richmond, during the pinnacle of their ceiling fan obsession, and Pierre made a "ceiling fan" out of painters' tape on their deck. Well, it is still there. It is nearly all peeled away and very faded, but you can still see it. Well, this time they went over the tape lines with sidewalk chalk and then proceeded to draw ceiling fans all over the rest of the deck as well. They've actually digressed in their ceiling fan art. They used to draw better ones.

2011- Uncle Pierre makes the fans with tape when the boys were two.

It is very exciting!

We love Uncle Pierre!

Fast forward three years and sidewalk chalk is on the tape.

And fans that look like turtles are everywhere.

And Teddy is kissing the dogs.

We went to a Richmond Flying Squirrels baseball game-- I know! The Flying Squirrels are a real baseball team! Pretty great. They are a minor league team in the San Francisco Giants organization. Teddy is a fan (not the ceiling kind). Not necessarily of baseball, but of being around a crowd. When people cheer he either claps his hands with them or throws both arms straight in the air. He enjoyed his first cotton candy, courtesy of Uncle Party. He's quite fond of it. During a rain delay we found out, thanks to an official Flying Squirrels radar gun, that both Cal and Clark can throw 31 miles per hour. The Squirrels won and then we had peach cobbler.

We also went to an awesome park in their neighborhood that the kids loved. Good weekend.

And now on to the weekend before the boys begin kindergarten... breathe, breathe...