And the birthday cycle begins again...

January!...and the cycle of nieces and nephews birthday parties wastes no time in repeating itself.  Here we have the first of the year, a newly crowned nine year old! He invited all of us to party at his new home across the Bay!  Here is the prince in all his glory:

 Take one party with awesome treats such as these...

 Add in a motley assortment of cousins of various ages and sizes...

 And THIS is the result:

The party guests chilled out while awaiting such activities as "tearing into gifts" and "diving into cake":

 After enduring about an hour of such silliness, the party boy demanded we get this show on the road:

 The sacred "present circle":

 He dove right into the gifts, revealing such gems as a new DS something or another game:

 ...some talking pear stuffed thing (note to self, do not photograph in front of the fireplace screen next year)

 ...some kind of angry snuggie towel kinda bird beaked thing:

...and the BIG gift - the traditional offering of a brand new bike for a boy on the cusp of independence!

 After the display of gifts had been torn down and appreciated, we had some time to hang out in the sunshine - here you see some of the family dogs getting a chance to meet and greet:

 Release the hounds!

 Assorted cousins kept auntie happy by posing for poolside shots:

 While inside, the birthday boy attacked his DS game, completely oblivious to the cuteness going on right next to him:

Then it was time for the kids to rip into the Mario and Luigi style cake (some people, I WON'T SAY WHO, were trying to get their finger into the frosting a little early!)

The sad remains of the cake...

 More family chill time:

 An unscheduled appearance by the cover band "Toddlers and Tantrums":

 A short dance recital.  And I do mean short.  As in, after this photo was snapped, they immediately escaped into another area of the house.

 This was the last sight I saw of the birthday boy - he had already gotten to some insanely high level in this game and was almost done with it already.  Why in MY day (insert cranky old lady voice), we played Pong for days!  And we liked it!

Day Trippin' in Caverns

The first three day weekend of 2012 sparked a need in me to get outdoors (farther than the backyard, that is), and do something "outdoorsy" (other than weeding, feeding squirrels or sweeping leaves, that is).

A quick summation of cost, distance and time led us to visit the "Black Chasm" Caverns out in Volcano.  Which is close to Jackson.  Which is close to...uh...Lodi..which is...you get the picture - we were out where the cows roam and the GPS signal does as well.

Of course, DP came along for the adventure:

 The Black Chasm Caverns boasted tours leaving on the hour, every hour - so of course we had time to do a little mining of our own.  This activity was pretty awesome:

First Step: Purchase Bag of Mining Sand ($7-9 dollars)

Second Step: Take bag outside to mining area to"ore" it:

Third Step: Reveal about $7 worth of gemstones:

 This activity was so much fun that DP insisted we purchase another bag of sand (this would be the fourth step).  After mining another $7 worth of gemstones, DP could not understand how not all the real miners were able to make a living at mining.  I mean, look at all we found in just two bags of mining sand!

 We were about to purchase more of this awesome mining sand when we realized it was time for the tour to begin (thank god- this was supposed to be a cheap trip!)

 Here is part of the tour group following our guide Jordan into the cave:

 Suffice it to say, the cavern was incredibly cool - very beautiful as the photos will attest:

 Some people, I WON'T SAY WHO, were a little winded after all the stairs:

 I cannot tell you how difficult it was to get a good photo in these caverns.  I tried using no flash, low light flash, slow aperture, everything!  And was rewarded with blurry images like below.  I finally had to settle for flash photography:

 It was very difficult to get DP to stand still long enough to get a good shot.  Must be all the caffeine:

The following photo shows why the caverns are protected.  There are these little things called helictites that grow off the sides of the walls straight out instead of upwards or downwards, which apparently is unusual. Jordan, our tour guide, asked if we could guess why they do this.  After several other people guessed incorrectly, I smart mouthed with "Because they were bored of simply growing up or down?"  I, too, was wrong.  At least I got a laugh though.

This formation is the famous "dragon" formation, which explained why there was so much Dragon themed crap in the gift shop:

One last photo of the cavern floor:

After about an hour, it was time to ascend to the gift shop level:

 After restraining ourselves from purchasing more mining sand, we left for home.  Stopping off in Jackson (which apparently closes down about 5pm, holiday or no holiday) we found this really big, really well stocked used bookstore that was still open.  This was better treasure than the $7 worth of gemstones!

We spent the remainder of daylight perusing shelves containing such gems as below:

 What's an old bookstore without a few cats hanging out?  This one clearly approves of my purchases - I found a few old books containing photos from the silent movie adaptations! Score!!

 a last glance at some true treasures:

Then it was off for home!  I highly recommend a day trip out to these caverns - It took us about 2 1/2 hours from SF to get there, and it was cheap, relatively local and lots of fun!

Here's the link!
http://www.caverntours.com/BlackRt.htm