We visited Hayden's sister in Santa Fe, NM for Christmas in 2013. Here are Evan and Alex getting ready to go sledding one day:
From there we drove to Denver, CO to see Steph's sister for New Years. Here are the boys with Aunt Kim, Uncle Bill and cousin Lola at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science:
In April Steph started renting a studio at a new arts space in downtown San Jose called the School of Visual Philosophy. Here are the boys helping her move in:
And here's Steph showing some friends her new space:
Steph was also invited to show people her work as part of the opening of the new Skulls exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. Here she is manning (womening?) at Night Life at the Academy:
In May Hayden turned 40(!), and Steph and Hayden went to Monterey for the weekend and then did a ropes course in the Santa Cruz mountains on the way home:
In June first Alex graduated from preschool:
Then Evan finished 1st grade (this picture was taken at his end-of-the-year dance event, where the 1st graders performed a dance to "In Summer" from Frozen):
In July the boys learned to play the train game (I swear it was their idea once I described how you play the game):
We visited Steph's parents at Lake of the Pines just after the 4th of July:
It was a particularly dry summer in Northern California on top of a run of dry years. The percolation ponds close to our house where we used to take Peekay most days are almost completely dry, so Steph took the boys on a walk where they did some nature drawing of the exposed pond beds:
In August we visited Steph's oldest sister in Newport Beach for a long weekend. While we were there we went to Legoland with cousins Delaney, Riley and Paige:
Later in the month Hayden and Steph ran the Ridiculous Obstacle Challenge 5k race at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds (this picture was taken after the race next to the bubble machine):
And, of course, the end of August brought the first day of school, Evan in 2nd grade and Alex in transitional kindergarten (he missed the cutoff for kindergarten by 1 month):
In September Hayden and Steph went on a 14-day cruise through the Panama Canal for our 12th anniversary (Hayden's parents came to stay with the boys while we were away). We started in Los Angeles, CA:
Then went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where we did some snorkeling at Las Islas Marietas, a marine national park a half hour or so outside the city:
Next we went to Puntarenas, Costa Rica, where we went ziplining in the forest canopy outside town:
After Costa Rica our ship went through the Panama Canal, although we didn't actually set foot in Panama:
The day after the canal we spent in Cartagena, Columbia walking around the old part of town:
And then the day after that we were in Aruba, where we went snorkeling off a pirate ship:
The pirate ship included a rope swing (as pirate ships are wont to do), and after our 3 different snorkeling stops we got to jump off the swing a few times:
Aruba was our last stop before the end of the cruise in Fort Lauderdale, FL, but we had a lot of fun on board, winning scrapheap boat building competitions:
and going to nice dinners (Hayden is eating escargot here), among other things:
After the cruise we spent a few days in the Florida Keys, going snorkeling in Key Largo and spending the day in Key West before flying home:
I put pretty much all the pictures we took (a few hundred altogether) online on Flickr, if you're interested in investing some browsing time.
As soon as we returned we had to put the finishing touches on Alex's 5th birthday party (his actual birthday happened while we were in Aruba):
A week later one of Hayden's indoor soccer teams won their league championship and one of Steph's roller hockey teams (we play at the same facility where the boys also play soccer) did the same:
For Halloween we first had to get our pumpkins:
before our bat and robot went trick-or-treating:
We went to Newport Beach again for Thanksgiving, and took the opportunity to take our family picture for our Christmas cards:
And that's pretty much it. We had a nice 2014, and we hope you all did too. Happy Holidays!
