Happy birthday at Stinson

Our friends Vicky and Jon have 4 children, two boys and a set of girl twins. Today was Roxanne's and Eliza's birthday, so they had a birthday party at Vicky's mom's place at Stinson Beach. Walt and I drove up with Devon this morning and really had a fabulous time. [Note to trivia fans: Vicky's mom is married to Arno Penzias, who won a Nobel Prize in 1978. I was once at their place in San Francisco several years ago and saw the certificate for it on a wall -- not surprisingly, it was lovely and ornate.]

Stinson Beach is about 45 minutes north of San Francisco on Highway 1. It's a very small beach town (although the population swells on the summer weekends), popular with beach-goers and surfers. It's also in the "Bermuda triangle," the area on the northern California coast that's home to a regular series of great white shark attacks (although keep in mind that only 11 people have been killed by sharks on this coast since 1952, so it's all relative). Sherry and Arno have a truly lovely place that's right on the Bolinas Lagoon; the houses across the street front the ocean but you can walk right to it within a minute from their house. The house has a shortened U shape: a very long guest wing with room for lots of people, a courtyard with a patio and then and a shorter wing down the other side. One of the great things about the place from an adult perspective is the second patio with an outside fireplace that faces the lagoon. The lagoon is full of wildlife, and I'm sure it would be a fabulous place to relax on a cool evening.

The house is also kiddie nirvana and is set up with just about every imaginable plaything: a trampoline; a kiddie slide; tons of tricycles, cars and wagons and loads of toys. Not surprisingly, when we got there the place was already swarming with kids and Devon was in heaven. We spent a lot of time riding the various tricycles and cars, and then had lunch (where she got her hands on some Cheetos and snarfed them like she was starving -- I'm convinced that junk food contains chemicals that are just irrestible, she couldn't keep herself away from them).

Not too long after lunch, they brought out the birthday cake (or in this case, birthday cupcakes). I felt like a scrooge to not let Devon have one, so we decided to brave the ensuing sugar high. She immediately dove into the icing (the sweetest part, of course), gobbled it all up and then managed to stuff most of the cupcake in too.

After lunch we headed for the ocean (the actual ocean, not the lagoon). At first Devon was afraid of the water and waves and kept saying, "Wawa no, wawa no," so Walt and I both held her. After a while, though, we convinced her to walk on the sand holding both of our hands. She finally started to get comfortable and took her shoes off -- at which point she seemed to lose all fear and was running wildly through the sand. She found a little "sandcastle" (and I have this deliberately in quotes, since it was really just a sort of moat dug in the sand), where she'd run around inside, throw sand around and then sit and watch the waves come in. The little wall of sand kept the waves out, since they were nothing more than about 1" of water coming in where we were. She had a grand time until we finally went back across the street to the party, at which point she said, "Bye bye, wawa."

When we got back to the party, they had already done the pinata (which was probably a good thing, since I'm sure there was a flood of candy to come out of it), although I'm sure that Devon would have love to swing a stick wildly at it. It was a lovely day, though, and she had such fun that she cried like a banshee when we had to leave.