We’ve logged some good family time in the past two weeks…some with friends visiting and also just the four (and almost five!) of us around home.

Last week we adventured much more than usual with our friends from out of town.  We picnicked in view of the Golden Gate…

Walked on the beautiful bridge.

And in general just took our time playing and enjoying the beautiful day in a beautiful place.

We also paid a visit to the sea lions…something about this sleeping arrangement was oh-so-familiar.

Whitney couldn’t shake the urge to dance and tried to run on the break-dancing floor of some street performers.  And Dylan’s day was made when I found two coins on the ground and we went back to the fountain in Ghirardelli Square to throw them in.  We walked at length along the Embarcadero and I might have just wondered a little bit if I was going to induce labor…I was getting a bit of practice contractions along the way.

Dylan and I also visited the Stanford Campus with our friends…he could not get enough of running around with the big kids.

This pic just makes me laugh…too cool for school?  Duh….. This is like one of five photos snapped in a row and all of them stunk.  

Meanwhile, back at home we have been enjoying the outdoors with lots of wiffle ball (pictured), zip lining, strider bike riding and tree climbing.

Whitney doing some “ballet” steps.  

The kids working on some Mother’s day water colors…Dylan ended up painting the entire page black.  There were colors underneath and he’d mix colors with black and say “look mom!  I’m using red!” I tried not to read into it too much but the therapist training in me was metaphor-ing up his little dark period project.

In case you missed the reference, the title to this post “Time let us play and be” is a nod to a favorite poem of ours by Dylan Thomas called “Fern Hill,” here’s the full poem:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.