The Adventures of the Tober-Zambrano Family

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Garden, treehouse, bird treat

Took about a 1/2 hour to dig some rows. Just left the grass between them, so we'll see how this turns out. Chard, Zucchini...7 rows and I can't remember what else we planted!

Seeding...mystery seeds!

Black soil on top of the seeds.

Ramon pounding in posts to mark the rows and hang the seed packages.

Ta-da!

Treehouse construction. Well...a few boards on a Eucalyptus stump.

Making bird feeders: paste peanut butter on a pine cone.......

Roll it in bird seed.....

Lick your fingers, spread it on your face and eat more than what you put on the pine cone.

Attach a string and hang it up.....

After 2 weeks we have not seen one bird take a nibble. Just lots of hummingbirds on the other feeder.

Hiking holiday

Had a week off and for the 1st time ever, we didn't plan a big adventure and take off somewhere. Just hiked around the Quito area.

Papa bear, mama bear and two baby bears!

Think they better re-google their kms to miles conversion.

Gotta love that year round green.

False coral snake.....non-venomnous apparently....although I'm sure the bite would hurt.

Carla at 3

Dad's a bit late with this posting, as her b'day was Oct 20th

Goosy Goose! "

3 big ones!

I'm a big girl now"

Snug as a bug in an MEC sleeping bag.

Always something blooming here!

Hiking with baby.

Learning how to do a full cirlce with those pedals.

Taking pictures with her cell phone!

Dad's little climber girl!

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Pedal girl pedal!

Ramon has moved up to a bigger bike....Carla get's the hand-me-down....with training wheels re-attached. As you can see, she is trying to get the pedals to go all the way around!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Ramon's 1st big mountain-Volcan Pichincha 4696m

Well...this dad is just so darn proud of his little boy that he had to do a separate entry for this achievment! On his own two legs, at age 4.10, Ramon made it up his first big mountain! 700 vertical metres height gain; 4 hours up, 1 hour on top, and 2.5 down, on a rare clear day in what is supposed to be the middle of the rainy season. What makes this even more amazing is that we all climbed up the extinct Volcano behind our house, Ilalo, the day before, for about a 600-700m gain! And furthermore, upon returning home from Pichincha at 5pm, he had a bath and then went to play at the new playground at the school and rode his bike until dark, just before 7pm. Dad stayed at home for that one, licking his wounds. Of course I'm sore today and Ramon is a bundle of non-stop energy.

At the start....4000m at the top of the gonola ride up from Quito.

A piece of Quito in the foreground. We live at the base of the round hill, which is an extinct volcano below Quito. Antisana at 5700m in the background.

Cotopaxi and South Quito

It was t-shirt weather all the way...but it was cool enuf in one spot for some tasty icicles.

Thanks for the great boots Elisa!

Ta-da!

Clouds over the Pacific lowlands

Anyone know the name of this critter?

Upon decending, Ramon was somewhat apprehensive, as he was not facing the mtn rock anymore, but rather the "abyss"....he held my hand thru the rocky bits and was then worried about sliding down the sand as I had told him on the way up, that we would come down this way. Need I have worried? Let loose for a few seconds and he was on his own!

Teleferico/gondola back down to Quito

Around 6pm from the house. Now he can look out the window every day and know that he has stood on the top of that big volcano.

Upon his return home, Mom had made him a cake with this flag stuck in it.

The quote below is from a little PDF booklet "Cycle touring with Children" Written by a family that biked from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego with their two 10 year old kids. They stayed with us Christmas before last.

"But honestly, the best bit of advice I can give is to never doubt your child. Never, ever doubt your child – not even for one nanosecond.
You see, children have this uncanny ability to live up to their parents’ expectations. Somehow, kids know exactly what their parents expect them to do – and they do exactly that. If parents expect their children to pedal around the block, they’ll do it!! And if parents expect their children to cycle around the world, they’ll do that too. It’s us – as parents – who tend to limit our children.
We are the ones who look at our kids and say, ―You’re just a kid. You can’t do that!‖ But do we ever ask our kids what they can do? Rarely. We tend to assume they can’t do it – and so they can’t. Or maybe we assume they won’t do it – so they won’t."