marathon day, cont’d

so after the pumpkin patch, i figured we’d grab something quick for lunch then call it a day and head home.  turns out phil was in more of a daring mood.  i say ‘daring’ because we threw caution to the wind, skipped all naps, and stayed out all day and into the night, even!  we ended up eating lunch at lee’s sandwiches in irvine (the pumpkin farm was in irvine) and moseyed on over the bridge to the campus at uci just to do a little walking around, visiting the bookstore (see, what’d i tell ya about phil and stores?), playing in the grass, and letting me get a chance to take even more pictures.  cuz i certainly didn’t get enough at the pumpkin patch!  

we found ourselves in the huge park in the middle of the campus and the kids had a blast playing with anything and everything they could find there.  that’s one thing i totally appreciate about my kids– they manage to have a grand ol’ time no matter where we are or what toys i might or might not have brought along for them.  they do a great job finding things to play with, making up games or imaginary scenarios or reenactments, and are pretty good about playing well with each other.  knock on wood…

first order of business was to climb on the huge (i mean, HUGE!) roots of this big tree.

my super-cautious son…

caught the girl being still for just a moment before she scampered off again.

lauren doesn’t walk yet (we’re not big on encouraging early walking around here, heh heh), but she’s no longer content just being held all the time either.  yay, me.  she was pretty fascinated with the big, crunchy, brown leaves and mikey plopped down to give her a little lovin’.

before he popped back up and did this…

my girl brought me a present.  grubby hands and all.

then the kids (and phil) found these very green fruits and started gathering them up for lauren.

which she promptly tried to sample.

what is this?  a grapefruit?  orange?  we had no idea.

like i said, lauren doesn’t walk yet (though she DID take her very first step this morning!), but she looooves to stand any chance she gets.  i love her tubby little body here.

not sure what she was looking at, but she sure seemed concerned!

phil’s t-shirt cracks me up.  phil wearing the t-shirt on a college campus cracks me up even more.  phil wearing the t-shirt and doing the two-tongue-click-complete-with-finger-guns is what adds to my premature facial wrinkles.

mikey was a great sport and was a very patient subject while mommy experimented with the camera just as the light was getting really nice.

then daddy jumped in on the fun…

“hey!  what are you doing here?”

sitting in the middle of the bike path.  when i first asked mikey to sit there, he was kinda worried and said, “but mommy, what if a bike comes and runs me over?”  i assured him that i’d take the picture very quickly and we could run out of the way.  i figured we could take our chances since we didn’t see hardly anyone on campus while we were there.

backlighting…

and then he wanted to climb a tree…

peek-a-boo!

reading up on the latest uci happenings…

and then we headed back over the bridge to finally call it a day.  mikey found a spot he could step up on and see over the wall…

and she wanted to try it too.

but i’m not sure she actually saw anything anyway.

all in all, a GREAT tsai family day of fun!