A Disneyland visit. Is it just me or does this remind you of a High School Musical poster? We could be the new kids for a High School Musical 6: After the College Years.

Someone didn’t get the memo that bum-bench sleeping is not allowed at the happiest place on earth. Or maybe it is allowed because it is the happiest place on earth…

God bless her.

Spring is good for hiking, before it gets too hot. Here we’re at Quicksilver.

I want to have a huge kitchen window one day. So huge it will take up most of one wall. Outside there will be heavy, bright green foliage kind of like this.

One summer I visited a beautiful house in Seattle. There were old maps covering the kitchen walls, the bathroom was painted red, pots and pans were hung from the ceiling around the stove, but the best part was the kitchen window just behind the dining room table. It looked like some vivid 3-D wallpaper with the tall, bright green bamboo growing right outside. Anytime we were inside I would secretly be admiring and enjoying the house and our host would be constantly running inside to yell at us that it wasn’t raining and we should go outside to take advantage of it before it started to.

I don’t do well in extreme heat. I think it increases my anxiety level and I also am prone to heat exhaustion. Right before taking this picture I was convinced all the deer were running in the opposite direction as fast as they could because a mountain lion was close behind us all.

Sure, I smile now. About 10 minutes after this I thought I was going to die. No one was around and the tunnel vision and desperate need to breathe and throw up at the same time consumed me. I wanted to drop to my knees and crawl back to where we started, but decided against it because I could see in Alan’s face he was starting to get really worried.

My new bike. A vintage Peugeot.

When it’s sweltering outside, nothing beats having an ice cream sandwich. Unless it’s eating it while floating down the cool waters of the American River. Surprisingly semi-rafting/paddling/swimming/floating/toe-dipping/otter-watching will tire you out. Just take a look at what it did to Nubs.

Lokda and Scott — his 13th birthday (Scott’s, not Lokda’s). Now that he’s a bona fide teenager we should probably stop with adding the extra consonant at the end of his name, but when you’re introduced to someone from the first day of their life as Scotty, it’s hard to change ways.

Something about Lokda, he photographs so handsome.

One of my favorite things about summer is the fruit selection.

And the endless possible ways to eat them.

It’s really hard to take what you’re doing seriously, especially when you’re trying to do work, when you have someone snoozing off on your work (while you’re working on it) in sheer mockery. If Pagoda could talk, I think he would meow with his eyes barely open, “Why do you need to make a living anyway? Why don’t you just find some nice people to take care of you, feed you and give you attention all day like me? Then you could nap in the middle of the day and not feel guilty about it at all.”