The Brookston Family Blog
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After the Bay Area Discovery Museum, we headed home and cooled off in our swimming pool.

Christi snuggles with Porter and Alice in the pool.

While Pat splashed Henry and John.

This weekend was Sarah’s family’s annual river trip that they’ve been taking literally for decades with a couple of other neighborhood families. We were ging to spend one night camping there but we’ve been so swamped lately plus there’s this whole heatwave thing so decided instead to just join them at the campsite for the day on Saturday. We arrived while almost everyone was still on the river canoeing. While we waited, we went down to the river with Dave, Cyndi and their kids.

Julien and Porter in their life vests that the camp nazis insisted all the kids had to wear.

Alice was none to happy about having to wear a life vest and resisted it.

Instead, she and Sarah played on the bank of the Russian River.

But Porter and Jukes seemed okay with their vests abd had a great time.

They waded all through the shallow river.

Meanwhile, ALice found some mud to play with.

She kept transporting mud back to the river.

Jules and Porter with Julien’s super soaker.

Porter demonstrating the super soaker.

Cyndi and Lily, who was no more excited about the vest than Alice.

Dave takes Porter and Julie for a ride.

Riding Uncle Dave.

While Alice got muddier and muddier.

But the boys stayed in the water the whole time we were there.

Porter trying to splash me with water so I’d stop taking pictures.

When we reached Kipu Falls, there were a couple of dozen people there, mostly locals from what we could tell. There were some people in the water below, some were off to our right by a large rope swing and the rest were standing at the edge of the falls with us.

People in the water below, waiting and watching.

Then suddenly, without warning — at least to us — a woman leapt over the side of the falls to the water below. Then two men stepped up and casually did back flips off the edge.

We hadn’t noticed it before but there was a large metal ladder to the right where people could climb back up to the top.

Then we saw our first Tarzan swing out on the rope swing as high as he could go before letting go and dropping to the water below with a loud thud and a big splash.

Tarzan groupies stood in the water below snapping pictures.

The next thing I know Sarah has stripped down to her bathing suit and is asking me if I dare her to jump.

I don’t think she needed much encouragement as she inched closer to the edge, fighting her extreme fear of heights.

Then with a quick look back she was in the air plummeting down the side of the falls.

Triumphant!

Swimming in the deep water below, watching those who her followed her down before climbing back up the ladder.

As the Tarzans continued putting on their impressive display.

During aircraft manuevers — see previous post — Alice wanted to snuggle with me in the hot tub.

Alice and I snuggling as she eyes her brother waiting for an opening.

Then launches a splash attack.

Alice, me and my rapidly diminishing hair.

Daddy’s little girl.

And not just me, Alice was perfectly content snuggling with Mommy, too.

When I was in Seattle this week, I got to see a lot of shows that John and Henry liked but I hadn’t seen before. So this morning, I was searching our cable’s On Demand for some of those shows to see if Porter might like them, too. One in particular was a huge hit with him: The Wonder Pets. The Wonder Pets consist of three animals who live in a pre-school and when the phone — a tin can actually — rings, it’s usually an animal in trouble. When that happens, the Wonder Pets spring into action to save them. The show is done as a musical opera or operetta style where most of the dialogue is sung. It’s pretty funny and Porter is clearly smitten. There are only two episodes he’s seen, one about rescuing a dolphin in Hawaii and the other rescuing a chimp in space! But we’ve seen them about half a dozen times so far this morning.

Turtle Tuck, Linny the Guinea-Pig and Ming-Ming Duckling.
And yes, you read that right. The turtle’s name is Tuck!
I may have to change his icon.

When we got home after picking up Porter from his Montessori on Friday, Alice discovered a small puddle just outside the garage door. Before I could say “boo” she was in the puddle and splashing.

Splashing in the puddle.

Which inspired her to work on some dance steps.

Here’s two Quicktime movies of Alice splishing and splashing in the little puddle and obviously working out her dance moves. You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

While Porter jumped and ran at O.T. yesterday, Alice and I took our regular walk to the library. Unfortunately, Alice got sidetracked when she happened upon a deep puddle that had collected in the parking lot after our recent record-breaking rainfall. By the time I’d caught up to her, the damage had been done and her feet and legs were already wet. So i let her splash around in the puddle for a while, bu even that was too short and getting her to leave was something of a trial.

“hey, look, a puddle!”

The first tentative step. “What happens if I do this?”

“Sploosh!”

“Hey, that’s pretty deep, my whole shoe disappeared!”

“Splish!”

“Splash!”

“This is more fun than taking a bath!”

“Splish!”

“Splash!”

“This will cure my diaper rash!”

“Uh-oh. I’m getting pretty soaked, aren’t I?”

“Uh, hi Daddy. I think my feet are wet.“

Last night’s bath was very wet. There was a whole lotta splashing going on.

Splish splash splat, can you guess where we’re at?

Splish splash spray, get out of my way.

Splish splash splace, I shoot you in the face.

Spish splash splaff, we laughed and laughed and laughed.

With the switch in beds (see post from January 29), Porter has had a renewed interest in spaceships because of his new bedspread, which has a cosmos motiff with stars and planets in space. So it came as no surprise that Porter wanted to take his inflatable Apollo rocket with him in the bathtub last night.

The Apollo rocket splashed down in the water.

Trying to take off again as Alice and Mommy look on eagerly.

Alice and Porter spent yesterday afternoon at their grandparents. They figured on a relaxing day inside but when Alice saw the puddles in the front yard, wild horses couldn’t have kept her away.

“Look! Water, must reach waater!”

“My new shoes are great for splashing!”

“This is fun!”

“I’m a water baby.”

She would have kept splashing until the sun went down, and almost did.

But she found more water in the fountain.

Relaxing out of her wet shoes inside.

After Porter was done playing in the playground area, he went running around the rest of the park searching for more mischief. He didn’t have to look very long.

After playing in the mud, Porter ran around trying to find a place to wash his hands. If Sarah hadn’t have stopped him, he wold have cleaned them in the pond.

When he saw a good sized puddle he took off running for it.

Splashing down for a landing smack dab in the middle of it.

Then stomped some more.

Needless to say, he soaked himself pretty thoroughly.

Sarah stripped him from the waist down before letting him back in the car. But he was a very happy boy!

After a quick trip north to take a picture for my scavenger hunt, I stopped by Lagunitas Brewing to say hello to some friends. I knew they were closed for the month, installing a new bottling line. I also posted about it on my beer blog. While owner Tony McGee was showing me the new bottling line being installed, Alice discovered that you can splash in puddles. She started out tentatively just putting her shoe on the water puddle. But once she saw what would happen if you stomped your foot, that was all she wrote. She discovered yet another way to play with water, easily her favorite element.

“What happens if I put my foot here?”

“This is fun!”

“Splash, splash, splash.”

“Look at those ripples.”

Last night’s bath devolved into a giant splashing party. Porter started by splashing with his feet but Alice jumped right in and splashed him back. There was water everywhere but there were only winners in this game.

If you look closely, you can see beads of splashed water suspended in the air.

For reasons I’ll spare the squeamish, Porter needed a bath this morning and he was quite happy about it. So he was very clean today for his bus ride to school.

Making a morning layout with wet hair.

Watching Kipper.

After I dressed Alice, she decided it would be great fun to splash around with the bath water, thus soaking her shirt. So she watched TV topless this morning while her shirt was in the dryer.

Here are quite a few friends that I got to see Wednesday night at the two events that evening; the first was at Wynkoop and the second at Falling Rock.

My former boss Tom with Jim Cline, GM at Rogue, and John Bryant, from O’Dells.

Garrett Oliver, brewer at Brooklyn Brewing Co., and Vinnue Cilurzo, brewer at Russian River Brewing Co.

Arne Johnson, brewer from our own Marin Brewing Co., and me.

Joanne Carilli, from White Labs, and me.

Ed and Carol Stoudt, from Stoudt’s Brewing Co. in Pennsylvania (near where I grew up) and Brian Dunn of Great Divide Brewing Co. in Denver.

The New Belgium Brewing Co. team; owners Jeff and Kim Jordan and brewer Peter Bouckaert.

Me and Pat Hagerman, co-owner of Realbeer.com and the gracious host of the Brookston Family Blog.

Nancy Johnson, director of the festival, and Chris Black, owner of Falling Rock.

Jeremy Cowan, owner of He’Brew the Chosen Beer, and yours truly.

Don Younger, publican extraordinaire and owner of the Horse Brass in Portland, Oregon, and Mark Silva, co-owner of realbeer.com and realbranding.com.

Niki Way, the entertainment for the evening at Falling Rock.