We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Jory and Daddy went up to Merced to see Uncle Ajay, Auntie Sai, and Jory's favorite person in the world: Anika.

We took a trip to the Fremont Zoo, which was much bigger than I expected. One of the first things Jory did there was to feed the giraffes:

... which he did not find to be as interesting as the yellow bulldozer nearby.

Here's Jory brandishing a weapon:

and he managed to find an animal in the petting area calm enough to sit through his attack:

He also wanted to sit on a lot of the animals (we vetoed the alligator):

and even in California there are snowmen! Hope everyone had a happy holidays!

Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Jory

The Stanford Theater was doing a special Marx Brothers festival, so I took Tiffany to see Animal Crackers ("... I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How that elephant got into my pyjamas I don't know.") and Monkey Business ("If a nightingale could sing like you...")

On Boxing Day, we didn't have a babysitter, so we decided to see if Jory could do a good Harpo impersonation and sit quietly through a whole movie. In case you're wondering the answer is no, but we did get some good photos before the movie started.

and he did enjoy the popcorn!

Where's Jory? San Diego!

Happy New Year!

As you may have guessed, we've found ourselves distracted from blogging for the last few months. So as not to have it seem like Jory was in suspended animation for this period when we look back on his blog, I've made it my New Year's resolution to work backwards through my photos and actually post all the pics that I took with the intention of posting them.

So, for those of you who are still reading, I promise that I will make one post a day, for at least the next 2 weeks. However, they will be going backward in time, in an attempt to not skip over anything.

Here goes...

We just got back from our annual post Christmas trip; this year we flew to San Diego. This is Jory trying to figure out the buckle on his very own airplane seat. By far the most exciting thing about this plane trip was that he saw a digger from the plane as we were landing in San Diego - the entire plane now knows how excited he gets about diggers!

We stayed with Aunt Virginia and Uncle Chris (below), who was happy that the Ducks won their bowl game.

We also saw Uncle Toby, who made Jory's 2013 by giving him a slew of Thomas the Tank engine gifts!

Jory loved the beach, where his most exciting sighting was a helicopter flying overhead.

We managed to go to Hash House-a-Go-Go, Daddy's favorite restaurant in San Diego, where he had a crabcake-stuffed burger, mmm mmm!

But mostly we stayed at home, building towers...

talking on the phone...

or wearing Christmas undies... sort of.

Somewhere along the way we managed to take a bath:

And after that exhausting vacation, Jory needed a cuddle from Mommy:

Capitola

A few weekends ago we traveled to Santa Cruz for KC's departmental retreat. Since Jory wasn't exactly suited to the poster sessions or the talks, I decided to drive him down to Capitola beach. When I told Jory that maybe he would see a whale, he responded, "I want to see a dolphin. Two dolphins. Two dolphins and two sharks." I told him ok, Mommy would conjure the sea creatures for him. [ahem]

We didn't see any sharks or whales, but we did see lots of seals and seal lions, as well as a dolphin - a big cartoon dolphin on one of the signs on the beach. Good enough!

We also got to enjoy the cute pastel houses on the beach in Capitola:

And Jory got to chase after an enormous flock of seagulls and ducks on the sand!

C is for cookie

Last night Jory expanded his culinary skills to baking. He wasn't interested in cutting the cookies out from the dough, but he sure enjoyed decorating them!




 

When he wanted an extra cookie before bedtime, we sang the Cookie Monster song instead. We'll see how long that satisfies him!

Trick or treat!

Jory's school has been preparing for Halloween for a week or so, including a "guess the weight" pumpkin game: (I can tell you that it is definitely harder to lift than Jory is)

On the big day, Amanda lent Jory her panda hat, which I coordinated with one of his Chinese outfits to make ... Kung Fu Panda!

At daycare, they took the kids on a parade around the city administration buildings, where Jory was overwhelmed by all the costumes and candy. As you can see, he had a good time:

More Paris photos!

Since our camera met an untimely death under the Zodiac Ceiling in the Louvre, it's been slow going getting together our vacation photos.

Here are a few more great pictures from our Paris trip! The bottom two photos are from the Chateau de Vincennes.