Shannon Phillips

At the preschool, each kid has a cubby for their backpacks and jackets. The cubbies are labeled both with the kid’s name and with a photo, so that even the youngest children can easily identify their own cubbies.

Here’s the photos I sent in this year for Robin and Davy:

School starts next week!

We flew to St. Louis last week to visit Nanita and Markie, and had a great time doing all the tourist stuff: eating toasted ravioli, going to the Arch, visiting Grant’s Farm, touring the zoo… The weather was great for our trip, too. It’s been unbearably hot, but the heat broke just as we touched down, and we enjoyed balmy 80-degree days during our stay. It was just hot enough to cool down with a sno-cone:

Robin rode the carousel, and Davy was intimidated by goats:

“Pick me up, Mommy! Goats will eat me!”

We left impressed again with St. Louis’ livability and affordability: we saw charming four-bedroom homes, in walkable neighborhoods with shops and parks, selling for $200K. We love our own bungalow, but it’s likely that we’ll be outgrowing our sweet little two-bedroom home soon—and the shops near us are mostly boarded up, and the crime is a constant low-level worry, and…what with one thing and another, the whole “maybe we should move to St. Louis” conversation has been resurrected. It’s a question we’ll probably reconsider seriously at the end of this year.

“Pool party!” Robin screamed. “Pool party! Pool party!” And intermittently, the other kids would pick up the chant: pool party! pool party!

It was, as you can see, the teeniest of pools, but it seemed to suffice:

It was sunny, and there was a hose, so that the water could be replenished as it was enthusiastically splashed away. And the important thing, the really crucial thing, was that four of Robin’s friends from school came over and splashed around with him, and agreed that it was indeed a pool party. With their agreement they made it true.

And we all ate cupcakes:

And watermelon:

And there was a piñata:

And we had balloons, and beach balls, and some of those balsa-wood gliders that break if you look if them too hard but are fun to throw around the yard a few times. And Nonna and Pappy came too, and helped with the party. So even though it was a dead-simple backyard hangout, just a couple of hours of splashing around in the sun, it still felt like a super special day: a birthday.

Another picture from the trip: Davy pulling a silly face on the zoo train.

We drove up to Portland last week for a mini Cochran family reunion—we got to see my sister and brothers as well as Pops and Mo. We drove through a lot of neat little historic towns on the way (we stayed the night in Jacksonville) and spent several days in Portland eating well, enjoying the parks, seeing waterfalls, riding the trains at the zoo, walking through the rose gardens, and generally having a great time.

Here’s a few of my pictures from the trip: I have more up on my Flickr account.

Choo choo!

My pullets are getting big and sleek:

We had to put chicken wire around the garden because they were eating my cherry tomato plant, and my parsley. It was odd: the other two tomato plants they didn’t touch at all. They’re very specific in their tastes, I guess.

The exciting news around here is that we will soon be adding another girl to the family. We’ve been on the waiting list for almost two years for an American Mastiff puppy, and that wait will shortly be coming to an end. We get to bring home our new puppy next Monday. She’ll be seven weeks old, and Robin has decided, sight unseen, that her name is Mona. I was lobbying for Lucy or Alma, but I have to admit that Mona is a pretty good mastiff name. But I insist on seeing her before I decide for sure! We are all a-twitter, getting the house ready for our newest “baby.”

Bonus picture, for gender balance: a little boy.

We went camping this weekend! We went with a group of other families from Robin’s school, so our whole section of the campground was like a single neighborhood, with kids running around freely among the sites. Here’s Robin and Davy with Robin’s “kitty friend” Evie:

The trip was fantastic. I was a little shocked when Sam came back from REI with an eight-man tent—all the tents I camped in as a kid were probably a third of the size—but it wasn’t too much of a bear to set up, and I have to admit that it was nice having a tent with an air mattress and room to walk around in.

This apple was Davy’s comfort apple. He toddled around clutching it all Friday evening—occasionally, but not often, taking a nibble—and when he climbed into his sleeping bag he was still cradling it to his chest. We eventually divested him of it on Saturday morning.

Davy seemed to have a really great time from beginning to end. He got in his sleeping bag so happily that we’re thinking of letting him use one at home, as a way of transitioning into his own bed. He ran all around the campground—this was a little wearying, actually, because one of us had to be constantly chasing after him. I’d say my most common sight over the weekend was Davy, rapidly retreating into the horizon.

Robin was a little more anxious about the whole thing. When we first got there on Friday afternoon he was excited, but as the sun set he started asking to go home. “It’s late,” he said. “We need to go home.” He elaborated on this theme at great length. “Sorry mommy, but the fire needs to stay here. We need to get in the car and Daddy could drive home.” I explained over and over that we were all going to sleep in the tent, that all of his friends were sleeping in their own tents nearby, that he would not be alone, that our house was still there and that we would return to it in due course, that camping was fun and it was all a grand adventure. His response to this line of argument was to tell me that I could stay, but he and Daddy and Davy needed to go home.

Interestingly, when it was fully dark and we all got in the tent, Robin put up no protest whatsoever about climbing into his sleeping bag and going to bed. I think he was just super exhausted at that point. The next day, though, he started to talk about going home again. So we decided that we’d stay for the day, but pack up after dinner.

The campground (Del Valle, down near Livermore) was a really beautiful example of California wilderness. I remember when I first moved here, being a little taken aback by the “golden hills of California”: they’re not really golden, you know. They’re brown. A tannish kind of brown, but still. The trees grow thinly, following the waterways: even the wooded areas are much less dense than the Ozark forests I grew up in, and all of the colors are dustier.

Anyway, in Del Valle I decided that I must have finally acclimatized fully to California, because I was just delighted with the landscapes. The tawny hills and the dusty oaks looked beautiful to me. Here’s some views from the campground:

On Saturday morning we went for a hike. Davy was a game little hiker:

We saw a lizard:

And vultures, and deer, and (on our way back to the camp) a family of ground squirrels:

And ferns:

And lots of wildflowers. Again, California wildflowers are sort of strikingly different from what I grew up with in the Ozarks: I remember tiger lillies, goldenrod, wild roses, Queen Anne’s Lace—big splashes of color. That’s not what you find in these dry hills. It’s more an exercise in keeping your eyes open, looking very carefully for tiny flashes of color, and then being rewarded with these exquisite little flowers in striking, almost orchid-like shapes:

I think those are California native bees nestled into the flowers. There are 1,600 species of native bees in California, most of which are solitary and live in burrows in the ground rather than making hives. They tend to be smaller than the familiar honeybee, and these as you can see are super iridescent, almost metallic-looking. The native bees don’t make honey, but they are critical to our ecosystems, and they’re under pressure for a variety of reasons (including mulch! Mulch is terrible for native bees!). My goal is to slowly replace our front lawn with flowering native and drought-tolerant plants that will provide a habitat for our indigenous bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. My mountain lilac just mysteriously died, but I have coyote mint, gooseberry bushes, and a manzanita that are all thriving. I also have a couple of pots of California poppies that gamely put out a few blooms every summer despite lacking proper drainage, and I planted some native irises by our drainspout that are kind of grimly hanging on. (I also planted lavender and rosemary, though they aren’t native species. They’re doing fantastic and they attract clouds of honeybees. Something for everybody!)

There were lots of birds around our campsite too. I got all excited by the scrub jays even though we have tons of them in our backyard. The woodpeckers were a treat too:

Also there were a flock of little grey tufted guys that I called tufted titmice even though they weren’t (I don’t think California has the true tufted titmouse). But “tufted titmouse” is incredibly fun to say, so that’s what I called them. Anyway, they probably were some kind of tit.

Sam and the boys saw quail, and wild turkeys, but I didn’t.

There was a lake at the campground:

Robin splashed about a bit in the shallow water. We have vague plans to enroll him in swim lessons this summer, so I guess that’s something we really need to get the ball rolling on.

I was worried about my chickens, but the girls were fine when we got home—just ready to get out of the coop for a bit. They’re doing great; I’ll try to get some pictures of them up soon, but I think this is enough photos for one post!