Just Cute

Nothing better than some time to cuddle with Daddy and eat my feet.

Filoli vs. Hearst Castle

We visited another old mansion turned over to the public last week. This one was not nearly as eccentric as Hearst Castle (where he imported exotic animals and Mexican enchiladas), but very unique and beautiful in its own way.

A little history...for anyone interested.
Filoli is a 654 acre estate located on the eastern slope of the Coast Range mountains about 30 miles south of San Francisco. The Filoli estate was built by William Bowers Bourn II to resemble his Muckross estate in Ireland. The name Filoli comes from a credo Bourn admired: Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life. The Bourn family lived there from 1917-1937. The Roth family moved there in 1937 and took great care of the immense garden for which Filoli is now most famous for. In 1975 Filoli was gifted to the National Trust for Historic Preservation so all of us can enjoy it. I almost feel like I'm back to writing reports in 4th grade now.

On to the pictures.

Here's the sunken gardens with the pools.

This corridor of Irish Yew trees stretch out as far as the eye can see.

This is the knot garden. Impressive eh?!

Here we are admiring the little purple pansies (dressed in yellow gold). Anyone remember that Primary song?

Will only lasted in the stroller for the first half of the trip. Out of the stroller he got much more attention from the old ladies.

Here's some of the flowers that were blooming.

Lilacs are my favorite, but I want to go back to Filoli in time to see the HUNDREDS of different types of roses blooming. Let me know if you're interested in joining me!

Another random thought. What presently lived in mansions will be available for us to tour in the future? I'm hoping that the "Flinstone House" (seen northbound on 280 south of San Francisco) will eventually be open to the public. It was built in the 70s, and was recently painted terra cotta. What will their movie sound like? "When I saw this house I just shouted 'yabba dabba doo!' and I knew it was the one for me."


My guess for the next estate to be open to the public is MJ's Neverland Ranch. Sounds like he has a lot of debt, and it looks like the place is getting overgrown. I think this is in southern California. His place is more on the eccentric side like Hearst Castle. He also imported exotic animals. I'm sure they will somehow avoid controversy in the movie they show about the history of Neverland, and make it sound like such a noble place. The Hearst Castle movie was called "Building the Dream."

Anyone have any ricidulous mansions you'd like to tour? Or live in or whatever...

Easters

Every time someone mentions Easter Britton replies with this...



We had a great Easter at the Olson homestead. The Conti-Browns also joined us so we got some sweet Gabe/Will pictures too.
Apparently this was the year for the husbands to treat the wives because Britton and Peter got nothing... I know, boo on the wives. But our first Easter together I made Britton a great Easter basket, and he did nothing. So it evens out. We haven't had many Easters together yet.


Will also qualified for an Easter present. He has graduated to a sippy cup and LOVES it!

I got a lot of...guess what...CHOCOLATE! Growing up my mom never got her own Easter basket so she claimed the ears on our chocolate bunnies. Too bad she was too far away to stake her claim on this one!

The Pants Dance

I better just post this because I'm probably not going to do any more work on it. It's been in video limbo for about a month now. Ideally the music would be his own Willy Pants song, and then the video would be more interesting.

Trip to Washington

Good deal on plane ticket + upcoming birthday = good excuse for a vacation!
I don't visit my parents very often, and when I do it's usually a big family get-together. So it was nice this time to be the only ones visiting and be able to just bum around the house with them. We didn't go sightseeing. We didn't stuff a bunch of activities into the day. We just played with babies and kids, made some food together, and watched movies. (We watched the whole Cranford series.)
My mom watches my sister's youngest girl everyday so we got to see a lot of Natalie during our visit. Will just adores her! He was always trying to eat her arm, or make squawking noises like her. Too bad he can't follow her around yet. I'm surprised he didn't start crawling just for her:)

Here they are playing ponies together. Those were my little ponies once...

Here's some shots from my mom's birthday party. I made this strawberry cake from scratch! It was surprisingly very filling.

Proof that my dad did hold Will during our visit. He even volunteered to entertain Will during his first sleepless night there. I guess it was a sleepless night for all of us. Luckily after that he slept better than he usually does at home.

I might have to post a group photo later since my camera missed Hailey and Chris this time.