Anyone for a willy shake??

I cracked up the other day reading the local paper where I found this ad for Armadillo Willy's - Real Texas BBQ. 'Willy shakes' sounds a bit dubious to us but maybe not to the Americans - perhaps you have to be Texan to understand this??!! I checked out the menu & it is definitely not a place for vegetarians as every meal has some kind of animal BBQ'd to a crisp.

Scoring a prize!

Here's Ashwin having a go at one of the games at the Japanese festival - James is giving him a bit of a hand catching a rubber duck. Next stop was the 50 cents grab bag where you pulled a rope to a wooden animal & attached was your prize - Ashwin scored a couple of good ones there too!

Beautiful kimono

Here is one of the stalls at the Obon Festival where I saw this Japanese family out in their traditional clothing, and they were even wearing geta sandals. All the stalls had these great handwritten signs made by a signwriting legend, don't know who but they looked good!

Bonsai maple

Sunday we went to the Obon festival at a local Buddist temple. Being later in the afternoon most of the activities had finished so we ate some tempura & had a look around. On show was bingo & lots of fun side show games for all to play.

Fancy a sanitary dessert

James picked up a yummy fruit custard dessert (like a danish but in cake form) from this Sanitary bakery when he was in South San Francisco the other day doing his volunteer duties. A-ha looking for these guys on the net explains a lot about the name - they have been family owned since 1909!! No wonder the dessert was so good, the family are decendants of Italians.

A new hoodie from Ecuador

Multi cultural Ashwin modelling his new hoodie we picked up for only $20 at the festival, with pappadum in hand. It's so well made and has an embroidered felt animal scene on the front & the back. I ended up scoring a beautiful cotton embroidered top as well. Their woolen textiles were just so good to touch & the colours were so vibrant - for now my mission is to knit my own stuff, so no more purchased knits for me :( we'll see!!

Kulcha fest

Maaaaaate we went to the Culturefest in downtown Mountain View on Saturday which covered a couple of cultures here in the USA including African American & Asian. Here is Ashwin checking out NZ's contribution - Bungee jumping! My favourite stall was the clothing from Ecuador with their beautiful knitted objects made from llama fur & their hand embroidered gypsy tops.

A shopping mission...

On our weekly grocery jaunt last week we had to visit so many stores to hunt & gather our supplies. This is Ashwin at Whole Foods pilfering their olives - yum! Prior to this store we were at the Milk Pail market for the cheese & organic flour, then to Trader Joes for the groceries. Plus I had to buy work gloves for James' volunteer work. The last item was downtown to get Hokkien noodles from the Asian supermarket - whew!

It's peachy time!

Our neighbours told us about these cute little peaches called donut peaches they found at the farmers market. Two of these little sweeties are equal to one normal size peach. Thank you guys for finding them for us, mmmmm!

Nothing like home grown

These beautiful specimens are from our mates garden. As they are on holiday at the moment they said to come on over & grab some veges before they are eaten by the squirrels. We had these in a salad with some tasty lettuce from their garden - thanks guys!!

Out for a hike on a sunny day

Here we are in the shade of a Redwood - finally a pic of the 3 of us in the wild! This is on the Skyline trail in Sanborn County Park.

A tree with bricks!

We went hiking over the weekend on the Skyline trail in Saratoga, it was an easy hike checking out our new hiking boots that we scored at a REI sale. The day was breezy & for a change we experienced peace & quiet away from the urban buzz for at least 20 mins!!

I'm too sexy for my yoghurt

Mmmm mmmm nice look Mr Ashwin - yoghurt smeared all over your body. Talk about getting to know your food, it was a hot day & the yoghurt probably felt quite nice on the skin. Lucky, bath time is after dinner these days - by the end of the day Ashwin is a bit of a grub. Anyhow, there is nothing wrong with being a bit creative with your food :) Another pic to add to the yoghurt & Ashwin collection.

My first swatch...

How easy was this piece of stockinette to make on the machine! Man this isn't a really fancy stitch so it is perfect for the machine & it knits up soooo fast. I am obsessed with my machine now - only thing I need to create now is more time to play with it!!

Fun for water babies

Last week we ventured over to Rinconada Park in Palo Alto for some water fun. Man it took me back to my younger days & going to Amazons in BrisVegas. This place had a small waterslide, toadstool shower & fountains galore - cool!!

Introducing my new toy!

At long last we found a knitting machine & here it sits proudly in our room. What a dream it is to knit on & as it is a bulky machine I can use store bought yarn - still will have to get it cheap :) Anyhow my plan is to knit up some nice warm hoodies & misc knitted pieces for us all. Such a huge learning curve teaching myself & getting my head around this machine from the '80s!!

Can we fix it?? Yes we can!!

Yes some fine words from Bob the Builder. This truck is similar to one of Bobs mates 'Scoop' in the show, we have been enjoying watching DVDs of Bob lately. As this truck was on sale, I bought this to increase his collection of toys with wheels. Being a boy he just loves his cars & now he has a truck to scoop up all the Matchbox cars around the house. "Yeah mum, dream on that will never happen!!"

Water Saving strategies in da Valley

As most of the world is in drought mode conserving water - here in the U S of A, taps are flowing, creating beaches in local parks.

Here's Blackie!

We went to Washington Park in Sunnyvale the other day, it was full of fun stuff & had some massive ferns in the gardens. What's a visit to the park without an encounter with a furry friend. Ashwins lunch box dropped a few Cheerios on the ground & we had this hungry little fella waiting closeby to have a feed. He looks pretty scrawny especially in the tail area.

Yogurt art!

"Hey Mum & Dad check out my new hat!". Dessert time was time for some creative vibes with the yummy yoghurt that was on offer. The whole container went all over his face first & then on his head - "nice hat Mr Ashwin". Maybe we could have ongoing yoghurt art pics posted on da peaches blog. At least we know that dinner time is always fun & happenin' with Mr Ashwin!

Now that's dodgy!

Check these pieces of marketing expertise :) Whoops they ran out of blu tack & invisible tape.

The buzz of 'extreme marketing'

With the exciting buildup of The Simpsons movie in the U S of A on the 27th July - whoo hoo! There are only eleven 7 Elevens that are turned into Kwik E Marts in the whole country & we have scored one near our cinema complex at Shoreline. Here is a snapshot of what we had to check out - Marge was there too but she was stuck in the window with the afternoon sun reflecting on her.

Look out for the fireworks!

We waited at the Spectacular down at Shoreline to see the fireworks only to realise that Ashwin is not too fond of fireworks. So we saw about two & then he started crying. Next he was waving bye to the fireworks for the fireworks to disappear - which didn't work. So we high tailed it back to the car - here he is with is favourite, chips from Trader Joes!!

Spectacular spectacular!

Look how excited James & Ashwin are outside the sign down at the Amphitheatre. All ready to get symphonic with the Broadway tunes - yeah! Really it wasn't that thrilling, so we sat on our picnic blanket & ate snacks while checking out the yankie garb, dubious!

Hiking on the 4th July!

As James had the day off for the yankie holiday of Independence day we enjoyed the hot day & went for a small hike up at Saratoga. Ashwin wasn't in a great mood that morning due to some eye teeth slowly appearing... here he is in grizzly mode next to the Grizzly Trail sign. Eventually we put him in the baby backpack, we went wandering & he went off into the land of zzzzzz's.

Stuff on MY cat...

Celebrating the discovery of stuff on my cat website, we created our own stuff on Mack. He was in this spacecat lounging zone when we put one of Ashwins cars on his body. Maybe we'll have to pile more stuff on him & submit a pic one day!

Get ready to slide...

Through the tunnel is James & Ashwin about to take a slide down the twin slides at the park. There are some fun slides around the place but most of the time they aren't that long so you can't get up the speed & feel the wind in your hair.

Clover & redwoods

From the angle of something really small we see some clover & on the horizon some redwoods. It was very nice to lay in the grass on a sunny Sunday afternoon & get some rays. Yes I can definitely say that the weather here is just the best!

Gumnut grove

As part of a relaxing end to the weekend we went for a wander down the Stevens Creek (no creek at the moment!) trail to see what we could find. After wandering the paths we discovered a school & a playground for Ashwin to play in. It was quite a hot afternoon so I found a grove of old gum trees to photograph & nearby were some lovely old redwoods - aaaah the shade of trees.

Hoo hoo riding the Caltrain!

Walking downtown the other day some dude gave away these FREE Caltrain hats. Looks like they were made in the days when Caltrain launched it's service - back in 1987!! These are just like the hats you used to get at Hungry Jack's (Burger King) parties when u were little & ate that crap every week??!! Still I think that they look like they would go with the uniform from Krispy Kreme the donut store.

Clover everywhere...

Sat arvo we visited San Veron Park - quite small but it had some very interesting play equipment. I was trying to capture a shot of Ashwin on this hill with the blue sky backgroud. While waiting on the lush green grass, this is what I found...

Strike a pose there's nothing to it...

Come on, vogue
Let your body move to the music (move to the music)
Hey, hey, hey
Come on, vogue
Let your body go with the flow (go with the flow)
You know you can do it
Ladies with an attitude
Fellows that were in the mood
Don't just stand there, let's get to it
Strike a pose, there's nothing to it
We love u Mads :)

What's under the hood?

Ashwin has car envy this time... a few weeks ago it was trike envy but now he has one of his own he isn't too interested. At the park this belonged to a little girl who was happy to share a ride with Ashwin - talk about starting young. He isn't even 2 yet!!

Hawaii Five O

We went out for a photo shoot the other day as we received a wonderful package from Australia. This outfit is from Uncle Lukey & Aunty Taryn (thanks a million!) all the way from Maui, Hawaii - so we had to go & take pics of it.

Walking in someone else's shoes

This is a spanky looking swimming costume Ashwin is wearing to his class. He found James' shoes and decided to try them on, they are slightly too big! These would not be too good in the pool being so heavy & would make it much harder to move him through the water. And don't look too close at the feral carpet - it is horrible cheap stuff that loves the dirt, when we leave it'll just be replaced.

The first cubby house

Ashwin found this huge box & decided to turn it into his first cubby. So to pass away the afternoons we started to decorate it. Here he is in his new art smock & paint in hand ready to go. He did a bit of freestyle painting here & over the rest of the week we did collage for wallpaper (that wasn't too successful as Ashwin likes to pull the collage off). Anyhow by the end of the week, he scored a window as well.

The Puzzle Master

Here we are celebrating Matts birthday / housewarming / summer solstice the other week & during dinner courses there was this puzzle by Mr Puzzle which was entertaining the guys. Andy was having a go & then James got hold of it & put it together - here he is holding the completed cube!

Blondie water baby

Finally after a small amount of coaxing on a hot, sunny day Ashwin made the leap into the water fountains! At this stage he wasn't too wet but by the time we left he was drenched. This week we have been going to swim class every morning.