Miscellaneous Mountain View Madness

Hi all,
My paucity in posting lately means I have some catching up to do! We've been so busy, the photos have been building up. So I will go back in time a bit to fill you in on the madness, this time it's mostly Maggie:

Choral Fest at Shoreline

Maggie participated with the Bubb School Choir in Choral Fest, along with other schools from the district. They sang a cute song (excerpt below) and then in the end-of-show extravaganza. We all sat in the audience and clapped. The music ranged from fairly poor to quite good at the high school level!

Mother's Day at Hakone Gardens

After a nice brunch at church, we spent Mother's Day afternoon at the nearby Japanese gardens in Saratoga, Hakone. The property is a small but interesting Japanese garden built about 100 years ago by a local couple in conjunction with a famous Japanese landscape architect. Now it is the site for local Japanese cultural events and some beautiful gardens.

The main gate, or Mon

The Waterfall bisecting the garden

The Moon House, originally built without nails

Williamsbubb 

Later in May, the Bubb school 5th graders stage a day in the life of a colonial revolutionary. Maggie dressed in her colonial finery. Most of the 5th graders were dressed in period attire, but Carson decided to save his tricorner for next year.

The military camp

Kids can buy stuff at the apothecary and other places like the tavern

Here comes the militia!

Maggie's First Piano Recital

Maggie has been taking piano lessons since October, and this was her first recital! Unfortunately we didn't get the full video, but I've included a snippet below along with the Choralfest piece.

Maggie and teacher Jeff

 Solar Eclipse Party

Last weekend was the partial annular solar eclipse in the Bay Area, so I made a pitcher of Pimm's, took out my telescope, projected the image onto a screen, and invited the neighbors to take a look. The image of the sun is projected onto the shadow of the telescope. We could see sunspots, then gradually watched the sun disappear until something like 85% of the sun was covered. The light became eerily dull, but the sun stayed surprisingly bright throughout. All the shadows lost their crispness, and some smaller objects like tree leaves projected a crescent-shaped shadow!

About halfway there....

Here it is at maximum eclipse.

So that summarizes the action of the month...I'll do another posting soon with our Memorial Day trip to Yosemite. Hope all is well!