Tah Tales

Good Bye, Bob

2011-08-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning my step-dad, Bob (above with my mom in August 2004), died. He had chronic ailments that were being treated over the last couple years. As much as he disliked doctors and hospitals it was appropriate that he passed at home.

My mom and Bob were married when I was very young. Bob was instrumental in my upbringing. He was a good, funny, intelligent man. His sense of humor had a strong influence on me and I like to think of it as the main influence on my own sense of humor. He and my mom had a strong love of books that was also passed on to me. (Though it didn't seem to kick in while I was actually in school.)

While I am very sad to lose Bob in my life - and Anne's and Sydney's - I am even more sad that my mother has lost her husband of over 36 years. He will be missed by all who knew him.

After That

2011-04-19T20:59:00.000-07:00

I really have wanted and tried to post this update sooner. Unfortunately, Blogger was the culprit in the delay of this post. Each time I came and tried to post it would let me upload the picture but then I couldn't insert them into the post. It was quite frustrating. Anyway...

Shortly after we got back from Michigan it was Halloween. Sydney had long decided that she wanted to be (don't click, Mom. It's a link to a Flash site and might be a bit much for dial-up. Maybe just Google the name if you're not familiar enough already) Word Girl for Halloween.

Here she is in costume:

The longer we live here the bigger our trees seem to get. Weird how that works. But it's not a problem for Sydney. She's loves playing in leaves in the fall.

Before we knew it Christmas time was here. (That was right after Halloween, right?) It was time to take our picture for our Christmas cards. My apologies to those reading this that got a Christmas card from us. You are about to see a duplicate picture.

And almost before we got our Christmas cards mailed, Christmas was here! (We're procrastinators, but we did manage to get them out before Christmas.) Sydney got spoiled, as usual, but here are some highlights. (Because they're the only pictures I have of Christmas they become the highlights.)

Like we've done each of the last several years, we had a fun Christmas Eve get together with our friends.Sydney got some very nice kitchen/cooking/baking items. They are real items designed for kids to use in the kitchen, not just play items for use with a kitchen play set.

Before we started opening presents on Christmas morning Sydney wanted her picture taken with all the Christmas stuffed animals. And Penguin, her favorite stuffed animal, of course.

Sydney was very excited about the Word Girl book she got. (She's jumping up and down.) (And notice her very loose front tooth.)

Sydney also got a Leapster Explorer for Christmas. She has had a lot of fun playing many various games on it. And she got a Tinkerbell pillow.

She also got a nice easel. It has a roll of paper on top you can pull down one side for painting or drawing. It has storage bins and lots of storage space. And there is a chalkboard on the side opposite the paper.

The real reason for the above picture is to show you Sydney's gap-toothed smile. She lost that very loose front tooth on Christmas night.

Grandma B's birthday is just past the middle of January. Each Christmas we send along a birthday present for her. Each year she knits us socks for our birthdays. So we pick out yarn we like and send it off to her to be turned into wonderful socks.

This year we didn't do such a good job of picking out yarn. Anne and I picked out yarn that wouldn't make good every day socks. It would wear our too easily. So Anne opted for a scarf. I opted for Grandma B to find some appropriate yarn in a similar color, knit socks in that, and use the other yarn as she saw fit.

Since Sydney's birthday is around the beginning of Spring Grandma B knits her socks a bit earlier so she can wear them while it's still cold and before she outgrows them. She usually sends them shortly after Anne's birthday socks in January.

Sydney picked out some yarn in her favorite color: purple! As it turned out, though, it had some color change in it, hidden in the ball of yarn, so the color changes slightly as it is knit. Grandma, being ever wise and figuring that Sydney would probably think the socks were weird changing color and not being all purple, knit Sydney a scarf. (She got socks, too. Both socks and scarf are in the picture. And she loves them both.)

Not long after all that, Sydney's other front tooth came out.

Look closely and you can see the tooth coming in the spot where the first one was lost.

And here's a last picture as a bonus. This is from my phone and was taken back in June. Our small city has a celebration each June. This past year we went as usual. (Have I ever mentioned the really awesome Italian sausages I get at these types of events throughout the summer? I have? Well, the guy is at this one, too, which is the main reason for going. For me.)

There was a petting zoo there that had camel rides. Sydney wanted to ride. And not long into the ride she discovered that camels smell. But here are Sydney and Anne riding a camel.

Back In October

2011-04-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

Back in October we went to Michigan to visit my family. Grandma B hasn't been able to come out and visit us for a while. She has to stay close to home to be available to a couple family members with some health issues. So we went to see her instead.

We went to the house to see Grandma and Grandpa B. First order of business was making friends with the dogs. They are friendly dogs, but friendly after you know them and even friendlier if you feed them snacks while getting (re)acquainted. Sydney had fun with the dogs.

After that Anne and I went off to visit a couple wineries in the area. Sydney went to go have fun with Grandma B. They went to McDonald's for lunch. Then they went to the bird sanctuary to feed geese. Or ducks. Or maybe it was the fish hatchery to feed fish. Do you know how long ago that was? And you expect me to remember? Oh. You expect me to update sooner so I do remember? Fine.

We got to spend some time with Grandma and Grandpa B at the house, too.

As you can probably tell by the clothes, it was very nice weather in Michigan for our trip. Especially considering it was October.

The next day we went over to Great Grandma Monette's home. Aunt Heather, Uncle Jason and Cousin Kimmy came. Grandma B came, but Grandpa B wasn't feeling well so he stayed home. We had pizza for lunch. We also took lots of pictures of everyone with Sydney.

Sydney's riding Great Grandma Monette's rocking horse (with Great Grandma watching from behind). Which she's had since I was young.

Chatting at the table.

Sydney and Aunt Heather. Have I ever mentioned before that my sister, for whatever reason, rarely ever takes a good picture? For proof I offer the pictures below, which are the best of the lot.

And really, I love my sister. She is a very beautiful lady. But the poor thing just very rarely can take a good picture. Cousin Kimmy is in the background of this one.

Heather's cracking up here because as soon as Sydney sat down on her lap Sydney ripped a big, loud fart. And proceeded to act like nothing had happened.

Sydney really liked that rocking horse, in case you can't tell. Here she is with Uncle Jason.

And some attempts at a group picture.

The next day we went to see my buddy Vic. He was the best man at our wedding. We went with him and his daughter, Kayla, to a pumpkin patch place with lots more than just pumpkins. It was a fun day.

Kayla and Sydney picked out a pumpkin.

Yes, this is the same pumpkin, but we needed a picture with Vic, too.

Sydney likes to bounce. Though she's fallen down here.

See? Bounce.

They have this drainage pipe set up as a giant tube slide. Kayla took Sydney down it. Why? Because all the adults knew it was going to be really bumpy and we could make Kayla take Sydney down it. Mwahahahaha! Luckily it was too bumpy for Sydney and she didn't want to go down it again.

They had a climbing area with tubes and hay bales.

And pumpkin Peanuts characters.

And pumpkin Sesame Street characters.

And water troughs you could pump water into and make ducks float down.

And an orange train made from old barrels pulled by a tractor.

For the more daring kids they had a zip line set up. We didn't think Sydney would want to go on it. But she did. We didn't think she'd want to go on it once she got up to the front of the line and had it right there in front of her. She did. We were surprised but happy. She zipped right along on it.

Sydney was tired that night and went right to bed.

The next day we played at a playground. Full of dinosaurs!

Then we met Grandma Cathy for lunch. She took us out to Cornwell's Turkey Farm. They have turkey on the menu. They also have the best peanut butter pie. I got a slice despite my usual efforts to try not to eat peanuts around Anne since she's allergic.

Sydney and Grandma Cathy:

Somewhere in there, probably the next day based on the order of my pictures, we went to Kingman Museum. It is a small, local museum in Battle Creek and is mainly a natural history museum. It was a bit disappointing from my memories as a kid going on school trips, to be honest. But the main attraction I wanted to go for was prominenetly displayed in the main hall right inside the door.

That is the polar bear my Grandfather Baker shot way back in the '60s. He had it in his house for years. It was down in his trophy room along with a bunch of other animals he shot on hunts. Several years ago he donated it to the museum. I remember being amazed by it as a kid because it was so big. Even as I got bigger and hit my full height it was huge.

Here it is from above:

After the museum we went and picked up Cousin Kimmy after school. We took her shopping for her birthday which was coming up in a few weeks. And by the food court at the mall they had Sydney's favorite ride!

It was even a double-level carousel. And, of course, Sydney had to ride on the top level.

After the mall we met Grandma B and Great Grandma for dinner. The next day we flew back home.

Tune in again soon. I have another post (also with lots of pictures) I'll need to put up soon. Because I need to get stuff caught up so I can tell you about the great vacation we just got back from and then Sydney's birthday. Holy cow, she's going to be six tomorrow!

Picture Update

2010-08-29T22:01:00.001-07:00

Because I've been busy and neglectful you get a post with a bunch of pictures spanning Sydney's birthday and hit or miss over the last few months.

Many of you probably know that we got a dog back in March. I grew up with dogs, Anne wanted a dog, Sydney wanted a dog. So we got a dog. Several days later Sydney and I were showing signs of suffering some from allergies from the dog. Sydney was wheezing a bit after a few days. We had to take him back to the Rescue we got him from. We were all very sad and disappointed, but we were also very happy that he was adopted the same day we took him back.

This is Roscoe, our four-day dog.

The spring season here was particularly nasty. Everyone had allergies and the people who normally get allergies got them particularly badly. This may have had something to do with our reaction to Roscoe. Or it may not. We might try a dog again but it won't be for several years when Sydney is a bit older and a bit more ready for one.

In early April was Sydney's birthday. So here are a bunch of birthday pictures!

If I remember correctly, the only pictures I took of Sydney opening presents were presents that Grandma B got her. This was the first year Grandma B wasn't able to be here for Sydney's birthday. So I wanted to make sure I got pictures of Sydney with Grandma B's presents so I could post them on the blog in a timely manner so Grandma B could enjoy them.

*Cough*

So here are the present pictures.

More of those coming up later. Sydney only opened a few presents at her party on Saturday. She opened the ones her friends brought her and a few others we let her open. The others we saved for her actual birthday on Monday. The Sunday in between her party and her birthday was Easter. Here's Sydney waiting anxiously to be able to come downstairs on Easter morning.

And her Easter basket.

And Sydney digging into her Easter basket before egg hunting.

The main present Sydney got for her birthday from Mommy and Daddy was...

It's probably just a touch too big for her. And she has no idea how to ride a bike and be able to balance on it. After two failed attempts at putting training wheels on it (the axle is too short so the bolts that would hold them on can't be put on) we have finally taken it to a bike shop. We should get it back in a day or two (yes, it took us all summer to take it in) so she can hopefully ride it on her own.

I had the day off work for Sydney's birthday. As a special birthday treat I took her to our local Build-A-Bear Workshop. She built one of her new best friends, Fuzzy.

The door jam barely visible on the right side of the picture is Sydney's bedroom door. We have her measurements there. On her fifth birthday she was right about four feet tall.

She also insisted on measuring Fuzzy, who was about one foot tall.

Also on her birthday she insisted on taking a picture with Fievel. Remember him?

And Sydney once again got birthday balloons from Great Grandma Monette.

And Sydney got to open more birthday presents on Monday (her actual birthday). These pictures are Grandma B presents again. I think.

One day Sydney asked if she could take a picture with the camera. She decided she would take one of her various art supplies here in the office.

One morning Sydney crawled into bed with us and then zonked out. I was already zonked out and Anne got up and got the camera.

At the beginning of the summer Sydney asked if she could cut her hair shorter. She felt her hair was too heavy and too hot and she wanted it shorter.

And found this picture of this funny looking kid on the camera so I decided to post it here.

Randomness

2010-03-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, heck. Let's put up another post. Here are some pictures that are on the camera.

This first batch is from Sydney had her hair cut. Anne took her to the same lady she goes to. She didn't think the kids' place really did that great of a job so she tried this. And she did a good job. (Note the ribbons the lady put in her hair.)

And Sydney apparently helped Mommy make the bed in Grandma B's room. (That is what our guest room is called. It doesn't matter who stays there when or for how long. It is always Grandma B's room.)

Catching Up - Anne's Birthday

2010-03-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

The beginning of January saw Anne's 40th birthday. Her sisters, Aunt Marta and Aunt Helena, both came into town to help celebrate.

The last time, I believe, that the entire Murvosh clan was together this picture was taken:

This most recent time the entire Murvosh clan was together this picture was taken:

You might notice that Anne's hair looks a bit lighter in the second picture. No, that's not from gray hairs popping out now that she's (almost) 40 (in the picture). For her birthday she went and got her hair styled and colored. She had some lighter highlight streaks put in it. It looks really good.

Anne's hand-knit socks from Grandma B arrived in the mail. Sydney had to get in on the picture.

Sydney also got some socks from Grandma B. Her's arrived early because Grandma B wanted her to have them before it was too warm to wear them. All of our socks were knit from yarn we picked out and sent to Grandma B for her birthday. (Along with yarn Sydney picked out for Grandma B for her own socks.) I didn't get a picture of Sydney with her socks, but maybe I'll try to do that and get a picture with me with my birthday socks that just arrived.

We held Anne's party at Mark and Jackie's house. Not only is it larger with a basement, but Mark has a Wii set up down in the theater in the basement where we were able to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate. While we hardly got any snow this year we did get several weeks of sub-freezing weather. And Anne's party coincided with a day of rain and sub-freezing temperatures. So work friends that were supposed to come over from Spokane had to cancel due to the weather. But we still had a great time.

And my 40th birthday is in just a couple days. Wow. Are we really that old?

Catch Up - Christmas

2010-03-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hmm. Apparently it's been a while since I've done one of these things. Well, hope you like lots of pictures.

Sydney drew this picture all by herself on her Magna Doodle drawing board thingy. It is a picture of her family. Pictures are (from left to right) Grandma B, Mommy, Daddy, Sydney, Grandma and Grandpa M.

For Christmas we went over to Mark and Jackie's on Christmas Eve. Sydney spent some time playing Mario Kart with the boys.

Then she waited patiently while everyone came in and presents were sorted and handed out.

She got the Hungry, Hungry Hippo game and a tea set. Both were things she really, really wanted.

And she still has a thing for bows.

Christmas morning arrived and we had breakfast while we waited for Grandma and Grandpa M to come over.Imagine Sydney's surprise when she got to her breakfast spot at the counter and found a new Tinkerbell plate, cup and bowl set from Santa waiting there.

Peeking over the sofa as we came down the stairs in the morning was a lion! It turned out to be a pillow pet. Sydney loved it and sat on it while she opened presents. Below that is a picture of her holding up an Abby Cadabby (from Sesame Street) shirt she got.

After all the excitement of opening presents it was time to relax. Tea with Grandma M is a good way to relax.

And then maybe take a nap with Mommy in Sydney's new sleeping bag with her new pillow pet as a pillow.

Two Visitors - One Week

2009-12-20T22:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I got four posts done in November before I petered out. Not great. Not what I wanted to do, but better than I had been doing.

Also happening in November: we went to Disney on Ice. Sydney absolutely loved it. She had a great time. And got some extremely over priced souvenirs.

In the early part of December Anne brought Sydney down to the Resort and we took her out on the Holiday in Lights cruise. It goes around the Resort to see the Christmas light displays then goes across the lake to the "North Pole". We stay on the boat and Santa stays on the shore, but he comes outside and talks to the passengers. He reads out the kids' names. Sydney, of course, got very excited when Santa read her name.

Long time readers might remember this picture:

That was Sydney's first tooth coming in when she was still a baby.

Well, today Sydney lost her first tooth.

It started to get loose about a month ago. Luckily, it was just a few days before she had a dentist appointment. Anne asked and the dentist said it was not too early for her adult teeth to start coming in. Especially since she started to get her baby teeth a little early.

In the picture you can see the bloody spot where the tooth came out. The adult tooth is already well on its way to growing in. You can see it quite well there. Her tooth had been loose for a month or so and kept getting looser every day. She ran through a full range of emotions from being excited about it to being scared about it. To wanting the tooth to come out so the Tooth Fairy would visit to not wanting the Tooth Fairy to take her tooth.

The adult tooth started coming up behind her baby tooth, making it looser. But it didn't knock all the roots out so it didn't come out yet. Finally, today, Anne was looking at it. I suggested that Sydney try wiggling it side to side instead of front to back. Anne tried that and the tooth popped right out.

That other bottom front tooth is also starting to get loose and the adult tooth is starting to peek out behind it just like the first one did.

So Sydney had the Tooth Fairy visit her tonight. And Santa will be visiting in a few days. Two special visitors in one week.

And now here are some extra bonus pictures.

This morning I got to sleep in a little. When Anne and Sydney came to wake me up Sydney snuggled up with me. She declared that we were cute snuggling up and deserved to have our picture taken. Anne obliged.

And again. (You can see her loose tooth sticking out at an angle in this picture. Click to enlarge in case you didn't know.)

And then after her tooth came out she wanted another picture.

Basketball! Er, Wait. No.

2009-11-09T01:50:00.000-08:00

After Sydney had so much fun playing soccer - during two different six week sessions - we moved on to basketball. Our Parks & Recreation Department has a four year old division for basketball. It's an introductory league where they teach very basic fundamentals and then have short games for the kids to play.

It is held in the gymnasium of a local elementary school. They have six-foot rims and kid-sized basketballs.

While not overly excited about Sydney did seem to be looking forward to it. Until we got there.

The gymnasium was about the size of a regulation basketball court with very little room past what would be the out of bounds lines. There are two hoops on each long side of the court. That means each half-court of the regulation court was its own smaller basketball court. That means, with the two courts there for the kids to play on, with two teams on each court, four teams could fit in the gymnasium. With the parents, siblings and miscellaneous onlookers lining the walls just barely off the court.

They had eight teams of kids there for our session. (And, apparently, eight more teams for the later session.) That means that during the "coaching sessions" during the first hour of this thing two teams had to share a half court and one hoop of the already small court (so a quarter court of the full thing).

For the actual games four teams would play first while the other four sat around and waited, obviously making the sidelines even more crowded. Then they would play after the first four teams finished (and hopefully left, making it less crowded). But we didn't make it that far to find out how it would work out.

Yeah. It was crowded. It was chaotic. Small basketballs were flying through the air and bouncing all over.

Sydney did not like it. With a bit of coaxing I got her out on the court with me. When I managed to get a ball she shot it and made the basket. She was still very apprehensive about everything.

Her friend Hunter was in the same session, though on a different team. He came over and shared a ball with Sydney. She seemed happy enough so I went over to get our coats and things and move over to where Anne has gone closer to where Sydney was playing. This was all before the session officially started during the free (for all) time.

From Anne's description of things, as I was picking stuff up a ball came close to landing and hitting Sydney. And several kids crowded in on her in apparent attempts to chase down that ball (or others in the vicinity). And Sydney freaked.

At that point basketball was over. She got very upset and was basically hysterical. She was scared and crying. She didn't want to be there and didn't want to play basketball. We spent a bit of time trying to calm her down and seeing if we could get her out there again. As things became (sort of) organized on the floor and the coaches started with warm-ups she still didn't want to go.

Her coach was very nice. He came over a couple times to see how she was and try to get her out. As the kids met each other he pointed her out and they all waved to her and said hello. But nothing could get her to play basketball.

We finally called it quits. We turned her shirt back in. We apologized to the coach and let him know she wouldn't be back in the following weeks. He was very understanding.

At the beginning of things one of the Parks & Rec guys spoke. He mentioned that the gymnasium was small and it was crowded and hectic. This was the first year they were doing this basketball program and it had been more popular than they anticipated. They already had plans for having it more under control and less hectic for next year.

Unfortunately, that doesn't do Sydney any good for this year.

Oh, sorry. No pictures in this post. Sydney wasn't active long enough for me to get any pictures of her playing basketball. But maybe in the spring out in the driveway. She said she only wants to play basketball there.

Picture Update

2009-11-06T00:10:00.000-08:00

Grandma B wrote:

As long as you throw in a picture of Sydney, it doesn't matter how much you write. Can't get too many Sydney pictures.

So this post is all about the pictures!

Wednesday was picture day at preschool. Sydney doesn't have preschool on Wednesday, but parents are invited to bring their kids down for pictures anyway. So Sydney and I went on Wednesday just before the assigned time for Sydney's class.

As you can probably imagine with anything involving preschoolers (and toddlers and some kindergarteners) organizing and keeping on schedule for something like this isn't going to happen. And it didn't. We were there about 20 minutes past the scheduled time for Sydney's class. But Sydney was very patient even if she was acting extremely shy for some reason and didn't want to leave my side.

When the class before us finished up they ushered her class in to do the group picture. After that they took the individual pictures. Since Sydney was there on an off day they took her in first for that.

So Sydney's first ever class pictures are taken and ordered. I have no idea when they'll be here.

And now Grandma B can be happy because this whole post is about nothing but Sydney pictures.

What? What do you mean that's not what she meant?

Five Little Pumpkins

2009-11-03T22:48:00.000-08:00

What? Another blog post? From ME!?

Well, yes. November is National Novel Writing Month. I'm sure there's probably a blog version of that out there somewhere. (That's what my mom may have been doing posting every day in October.) But I'm not doing any official blog version. I'm just doing my own version.

Since I certainly don't have time to participate in NaNoWriMo this year I'm going to attempt to at least update my blog regularly this month. It won't be every day. Heck, I already missed November 1. And November 2 if you count the Halloween post as being posted after midnight so it was posted on November 3. But look, this is the second post already on November 3.

Anyway, my goal is just to post on as many days as I can. It won't be every day. Some posts will be short and sweet. Some posts will be long and sweet. Some probably won't even be sweet. But I do have a lot of content to catch up on from the last several months and more stuff happening this month that I'll be writing about. So we'll see how this goes. Check back regularly.

Near the end of September Anne sheepishly admitted that we should have signed Sydney up for three days of preschool. Sydney really likes going to preschool and it was more Anne not wanting to be away fom her so much as thinking that she couldn't handle it. So we talked to the school and got Sydney signed up for a third day.

A lot of times Sydney doesn't remember what she did in school. But many times she does. When asked about friends she can't remember any names except her teacher. When I take her in there are several kids that come up and say hello and call her by name and sometimes even give her hugs. But she doesn't remember their names.

But here is one of the things that Sydney does remember from school. She was reciting it over and over again the last few days before Halloween and on Halloween. This video was taken at the table right after we finished eating dinner on Halloween. A transcript follows the video in case you can't make out what she's saying (and the first word or two are cut off since she started before I was ready).

[Five little] pumpkins sitting on a gate,
The first one said, "oh my it's getting late".
The second one said, "there are witches in the air".
The third one said, "we don't care".
The [fourth] one said, "let's run and run and run".
The fifth one said, "it's only Halloween fun".
Oooo came the witch, and out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Halloween

2009-11-03T01:15:00.000-08:00

We had a good time on Halloween.

We saw some costumes at Costco close to two months ago. One of them was a Tinkerbell costume and Sydney wanted to be that for Halloween. So we got it.

Sydney has been very excited about Halloween. Just about every day she would talk about it and get herself excited.

There's a house down the block and just around the corner that really decorates for Halloween. They get the whole yard and front of the house decorated with all sorts of things. They even do the inside over-the-top (from what can be seen at the door). Two years ago Sydney wanted to go there, she got scared by the lady living there (she was in costume and had a skull face painted on with black and white paint) and that promptly ended all trick-or-treating. Last year Sydney did not go there.

Since that house started putting up decorations Sydney was fascinated with it as always. It is always the "Halloween house," or something similar to that. But it is also the "scary house," and one she is not going to go to for trick-or-treating. Fair enough.

We had a generally relaxing day on Halloween. There were only a few times Sydney asked how much longer it was until she got to go out trick-or-treating. Only a few times before breakfast. A few times after breakfast. A few times while we were getting dressed and ready for the day. A few times before lunch. A few times after lunch. A few times while we were playing. A few times before dinner. She didn't ask too many times after dinner since by then it was just about time to put on her costume and get ready.

But she did ask a few times during breakfast, during lunch and during dinner. I forgot to mention those.

Mommy promised Sydney that she would put some make up on her for her costume. So around 5:00 they went upstairs and started getting ready. When they came down we had Tinkerbell in our midst!

Tinkerbell doesn't normally wear leggings under her skirt or a long-sleeved shirt under her top, but then Tinkerbell doesn't live where it gets very cold. But Sydney didn't care. She was a very happy fairy.

It had actually been a fairly warm day (high around 60F), though it was windy. Sydney was warm enough trick-or-treating dressed like that and she didn't need a jacket. (She did need and wear shoes, though.)

Sydney's make up involved some face painting by Mommy.

A flower on one cheek.

And a butterfly on the other.

They're not the best artwork, but then a hyper, excited four year old is not the best canvas. You make do with what you got. And Sydney certainly loved them. (For the record, I think they're great, too. I am not artistic - I missed out on all those genes from my mom's side of the family - and are better than I would have done.)

Grandma M came over to hand out candy while Anne and I took Sydney out. We went around the block and then down the street at the end. Sydney decided that she wanted to go to the scary house! She was so sure and so excited about it that she was willing to skip houses to get there.

We slowed her down and went to all the houses and finally made it to the scary house. Sydney was barely apprehensive about it as we went up. The lady of the house was in a much more normal, non-scary costume this year and Sydney had no problems at the house. Trick-or-treating continued on after that.

Anne decided that she was cold enough that she went back to the house to relieve Grandma M. Sydney and I continued.

Sydney managed to fill up her little cloth pumpkin bag so I grabbed handfuls out and put them in my coat pocket so she could continue on. At every other house or so after the scary house Sydney would ask me if the next house was going to be scary. I kept telling her I didn't know but assured her that I would be right there with her and that everything was only pretend.

After the trip up the street beside us she had enough. We went back down the other side, trick-or-treating as we went and then headed home. We hit one or two houses on our street that hadn't had their lights on earlier.

When we got home Sydney was just as excited about helping to hand out candy. She would run to the door in front of us every time someone came. She wanted to be the one to hand out the candy.

It was a rather light night for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. I'm guessing it was mainly because of the nasty illness going around (including the swine flu and subsequent scare of that).

Because it was light Sydney kept getting frustrated at the wait times between people coming to the door. She wanted to hand out candy, darn it! She kept asking us where the "customers" were and when the next "customers" were going to come trick-or-treating. We tried to explain that they weren't customers, so to speak, but she kept calling them that anyway.

Finally we turned the light off and took Sydney upstairs for bed. She got to stay up late, but she also got an extra hour of sleep due to turning the clock back.

Pre-School

2009-08-27T19:37:00.001-07:00

I have some older stuff to post, but that will need to wait (some more) until another time. The summer at work has been very busy. Short, but very busy. Combined with a busy household - especially now that Sydney is older and a lot more active - makes for tired parents. And makes for one parent in particular not feeling like writing blog posts.

I am on Twitter, though, and I try to tweet more regularly when anything of interest is going on than I tend to update the blog. So if youre on Twitter, not already following me, and are interested let me know.

Sydney and Anne are in bed now. I am home from work early. Tonight was the open house at Sydney's new pre-school. We got to look around, see and meet some of the other parents and children and meet the staff.

Sydney will be going to pre-school two days a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It starts on Tuesday. I will be taking Sydney to class in the morning. Anne will be picking her up in the afternoon.

Anne is nervous, anxious and sad. Sydney is a little excited but quite afraid. We've assured her that everyone is scared when they first start school but they soon realize there is nothing to be scared of and start having a lot of fun. I am a little sad and very excited to see my little girl start out into the larger world. Anne is glad that I'm taking her on her first day and she is not.

So we'll see what Tuesday brings and all the changes we'll need to endure and work through.

Short Sydney Story

2009-06-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

Monday morning I turned the TV on. I usually try to leave it on ESPN when I turn it off because I know that's an okay channel for Sydney to watch no matter what time of day it is. (And it's an okay channel for me to watch, too.)

This past Monday ESPN was televising the end of the U.S. Open Golf Tournament. Sydney is aware of most of the major sports from watching ESPN or sports on TV with me. She immediately knew golf was on and watched for a few minutes with me.

At one point they showed a golfer getting ready to make a shot and Sydney said, "Daddy, is that Tiger?"

"No, Sweetie, that's not Tiger," I answered. I was, of course, talking about Tiger Woods.

"Oh," she said, sounding a bit disappointed. "Is he Kipper?"

Santa Barbara

2009-06-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

I have two things to mention before getting into the Santa Barbara trip.

First, happy birthday today (Thursday) to my Grandma Monette. (She's Sydney's Great-Grandma.) She turned 87 today. To celebrate she had surgery and had a heart catheter and four stents put in. She seems to have come through surgery fine and when Mom (Grandma B) left the hospital a little while ago she was awake, having dinner and chatting with the cardiac nurses. (Edit: Finishing this post up on Friday, Grandma is now home and doing fine.)

Second, I need to post some pictures of stuff from our Montana trip that I forgot last post. Grandma B asked to see some pictures of the things we bought at the stone shop and I completely forgot them last post.

First up is Sydney's hedgehog. Our friend Shawna crocheted it and brought it for Sydney when we met. The hedgehog lives in a little mushroom. Sydney loves it.

Here are the stones we found in our big pile of rocks. The ones on the left are the large, good stones that could be finished. The ones one the right are the stones that are too small or flawed/cracked to be finished.

And here are the items we bought in the shop. There are two pyramids Anne got to put in her Egyptian room. There's also a little camel there. And Sydney picked out a little stone hippo. The large rock formation on the right is something I thought looked nice and bought.

So there's that. Now, Santa Barbara.

We went down to Santa Barbara the first week in May. Anne had some training to do for work. The company they bought some new lab machines from (I think hey got the ones where the lightning crackles up between two flanges) flew her down and she had to go to training for four days. They paid for the hotel so Sydney and I got tickets and went down, too.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon and immediately started to explore. We were right down at the waterfront. We were across the street from a beach and marina and a few blocks down the road was Stearn's Wharf. That's a large wharf with shops and restaurants on it.

Pelicans made a sand bar/break water out a ways from the beach home. In the late afternoon they would all get up and start flying at the same time. Then they would spread out and go fishing. It was neat to watch them dive into the water and then pop back to the surface a few seconds later.

Out near the end of Stearn's Wharf a few pelicans apparently decided it was a nice place to be rather than the sand and rocks. You could actually get pretty close to them before they seemed to care. (Though we didn't get too close.)

And sometimes they were flying close enough to be able to capture them with the telephoto lens.

The candy shop up on Stearn's Wharf had a caged Tasmanian Taffy Turkey right outside the door. It bobbed up and down at the taffy. Strangely enough, in all my time spent over at the Museum of Hoaxes I have never heard of one of these creatures. But I got a picture of it to make sure I had documentation for further study.

Anne didn't have to go to her class on Monday so we all went exploring. And if I had updated my blog earlier I'd probably remember exactly what we did. But I'm sure it was exciting and that some of the pictures came from then. In fact, I believe we walked to Stearn's Wharf and got the pictures of the pelicans and the creature outside the candy shop.

On Tuesday Anne had training so Sydney and I were on our own. We went to the Santa Barbara Zoo.

Santa Barbara was very easy to get around even though we didn't have a car. We could pretty much walk anywhere down along the shoreline or, if it was too far, they had an electric bus that ran during the day. It cost $.25 per person to ride. There was a bus that ran along the shore and one that ran up the street where Stearn's Wharf was. Up that street was the downtown area. The zoo was at the far end of Santa Barbara along the beach so Sydney and I took the bus down there.

First we walked along the beach and stopped in the Visitor's Center to get a discount coupon. Along the way I snapped a picture of the beach, Stearn's Wharf and clouds rolling down the mountains.

The big black thing near the center of the picture was a tractor that was raking the beach.

After we got to the Visitor's Center we still had to wait about a half hour before the bus started running so we checked out a park next door. There was a fountian there and Sydney always like to throw pennies into fountains so I gave her a couple.

The park ran a good length along the road and there was a playground at the far end. We didn't go down there. I figured we'd have time to play on it another day (we did on Friday) and that it might be hard to get Sydney away from it to catch the bus. So we crossed the road and found a bus stop to wait at.

Nearby where we were waiting there was a culvert that came in from the ocean. The sides of it were lined with rocks. In the spaces and cracks between rocks lived a bunch of squirrels. They had cute little baby squirrels running around too. We kept our distance but enjoyed watching them. A lady walking by fed one of the squirrels some peanuts. Sydney got slightly freaked out when, shortly after this, one of the squirrels started approaching her. It thought she had food and was coming to get it. I scared it back and we retreated to a safe distance to watch them and wait for the bus.

We reached the zoo shortly after they opened (which was the same time the buses started running) and went in. First stop was to use the bathroom. Sydney, for some reason, decided on this trip that she was going to have severe anxiety about using any toilet that wasn't in our house. And since we were in southern California and not northern Idaho that posed a bit of a problem. As the week progressed she got better about it - especially at the hotel - but early in the week she would have complete meltdowns about having to sit on a foreign toilet.

After a traumatic toilet experience we were ready to start our trek through the zoo. First stop was... Sydney tripping on the sidewalk and scraping her knee. So we headed back into the bathroom to clean it up. Then we headed out to start our zoo experience.

The zoo was good-sized, but not too big. The website said it was a good half-day trip. And it was.

We got to see California sea otters.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

Many types of tropical birds.

Including flamingoes.

We got to see some penguins.

And we got to hear them call out.

We got to see some elephants.

There was a nice fountain where we sat down and took a rest.

But we didn't throw any pennies in because there were koi in it.

Sydney got to ride a little rocking car ride.

We got to see some California condors.

And bald eagles.

But if you ask Sydney what her favorite part of the zoo was she will probably tell you it was the giraffes. Because she got to feed them.

When we had lunch we were sitting in a little courtyard area near the entrance of the zoo. A mother and son, about Sydney's age, were sitting at the table next to us. The son had chicken nuggets for lunch. Some type of sea bird (not a gull) was hanging around and, when no expected it, it swooped in and stole one of the boy's chicken nuggets. The mother and I found it kind of funny but tried not to laugh. Sydney was amazed and couldn't talk about anything else the rest of the meal. The little boy was traumatized and upset. He guarded his chicken nuggets closely as he finished. And when the bird finally managed to swallow the one it stole and looked like it wanted another I had to jump to the rescue and scare it away.

While we were at the zoo a forest fire started up in the hills of Santa Barbara. You might have seen something about it on the news back then. It didn't affect us that much, really, since we were down at the ocean. But in the late afternoon winds would shift and start blowing out to sea. So the smoke clouds would cover the sky above us and ash would fall from the sky.

Wednesday morning when Sydney and I were out and about there wasn't much smoke up in the hills. It seemed like the fire was mostly out. But it wasn't. We went to a park with a playground at the far end of the downtown area, so we were somewhat close to the hills. Planes and helicopters kept flying overhead. That afternoon the fire burst up again and spread as high winds hit it. The fire was still going (but mostly contained) when we left on Sunday.

But that Wednesday Sydney and I went to the downtown area. We road the bus to the far end and then took a walk a few blocks to a park. It was pretty, but pretty bland and boring for a four year old as we approached.

But once we got through those trees in the middle of the park we could see the playground.

The playground was huge. It was of the same style as the Fort Sherman playground in downtown Coeur d'Alene that we have been to many times. But it was about twice as big as Fort Sherman playground. And Fort Sherman playground is a pretty big playground.

Sydney had fun playing.

And then, without warning, Sydney was attacked by a shark. AHHHH!

But she managed to wrestle it into submission.

Thursday the company Anne was training with took us out to lunch. Here's the group picture of everyone there (except me taking the picture).

And this is a shot of the tree we were sitting under out in the back of the restaurant.

On Friday the training was canceled. The fire had forced evacuations and the company was close to one of those areas. There was a warning that they might be closing the area they were in if the fires spread more, so they just canceled the last day of training rather than risk having everyone there and then having to leave.

That was actually good because Anne started to get a bit of a cold on Friday. And Sydney hadn't really taken much of a nap all week so she and Anne took one Friday afernoon. So I went out and took a walk. I took some pictures of an interesting tree in a park around the corner from us.

Somewhere along the line the last couple months Sydney decided that she is afraid of crabs. We don't know where or how it started, but she tells us at any and every opportunity. Although crabs in cartoons don't seem to bother her.

So after I snapped pictures of the tree I took a walk down along the marina. As I went along guess what I noticed down by the water, crawling over the rocks?

So after I went and got up Anne and Sydney from their nap we went for a walk. We went to the marina and I pointed out the crabs. We were well above them and Sydney was fascinated. She wanted to watch them and point out everytime one of them moved. But she didn't want to get any closer (not that we could have).

She still says she's scared of crabs, but she seemed to enjoy the time she actually got to see real ones.

Friday night Anne and Sydney went to bed so I got to go out on my own for a while. I walked down to Stearn's Wharf to get some ice cream. On my way there I was waiting to cross the street. A guy came around the corner, did a double take at me and walked right over to me.

He was completely high on something. I was wearing my LEGOLAND baseball cap. He said he loved my hat and wanted it. He asked how much he could buy it for. I told him it wasn't for sale. There was then the minute or so of, "Dude. Really. I want the hat. You wo't sell it to me? Really? Come on. Please? I'll give you anything. I really like it. I have to have it."

He finally gave up ad turned away. But, because I'm a smart mouth and don't know when to keep my mouth shut, I said, "How about $5000.00?"

He turned around and said, "Really, man? Sure." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his driver's license and tried to hand it to me. I told him I didn't want his driver's license and he tried to stick it in my pocket. I grabbed it and he turned around and walked off to go into the restaurant we were in front of.

I said loudly that he may want his license but he didn't pay attention to me. So I flicked it in his general direction and it fell to the sidewalk outside the restaurant. I went off to get my ice cream and on my way back I didn't see the guy or his driver's license anywhere around.

That night I hung out by the pool with two of the ladies from Anne's training, Stephanie and Tanya. (They're the two girls in the foreground of the lunch picture above.) We drank wine, wine, more wine, walked over to the 7-Eleven to buy another bottle of wine and drank that.

I wasn't feeling so hot on Saturday. I went to breakfast with Anne and Sydney the next morning, but didn't get any further than that. It was back to the hotel with me to recuperate from too much wine.

On Sunday we got up way too early and flew home. Overall it was a really fun trip. It helped that we were there during a warm and sunny (around the smoke) week. We were told the week before was cool and rainy and the forecast for the following week was the same.

There are other pictures that didn't make it into the blog over at my Picturetrail photo album if you want to check them out.

Easter and Stuff

2009-05-25T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's been way too long since I've updated. It's been a little busy and hectic. And I have lots to share that I won't get to in this post. And hopefully it won't take me long before I post again. We'll see.

Before going into the promised Easter update I'll share some other stories.

The following (approximate) conversation took place in our bathroom the morning of Saturday, April 25, 2009.

Anne: What's the date today?

Me: Uh, the 25th.

Anne: Did we both completely forget our anniversary yesterday?

Me: Yep.

So happy tenth anniversary to my wonderful, beautiful wife. I love you!

Sydney had her four year check up a couple weeks after her birthday. She weighed in at 44 pounds and had a height of 44 inches. She's a well-rounded little girl.

Sydney has also completed soccer. It was six weeks long and we missed the second-to-last week when we went to Santa Barbara. But Sydney really liked playing soccer (even if she was hesitant to get in there and kick the ball when others were around) and wants to do it again. The Autumn session starts in September and we'll be signing her up for that.

So now we dial back to Easter.

On Easter morning we got up and all went downstairs to see if the Easter Bunny had visted. He had!

Then Sydney went around looking for Easter eggs.

A little later in the day we went over to Bill and Donna's house for Easter brunch. (That's where we went on Christmas Eve, too.) With all the snow melted we got to see the pond and waterfall out in the back yard. Bill let Sydney throw in fish food to see if the fish could be coaxed out of their hideaways in the rocks. And they came out.

Sydney brought her Easter bucket (that she made with Grandma B at her class) for the Easter egg hunt. After we ate the kids (Sydney and the four boys) went out in the back yard to look for eggs.

The eggs were all plastic and had money, candy or little toys in them. In addtion to the eggs there was also a large toy hidden for each of them. Sydney got an Easter Mr. Potato Head.

Here is a picture of three of the beautiful ladies at the Easter brunch: Jackie, Anne and Kathy.

And here's a picture of the cake Jackie made for dessert. Real flowers. All the other parts of the cake were edible.

And next time a post telling about our trip to Santa Barbara.

What A Week!

2009-04-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

Though it was really more than ten days. And it ended a week ago. But it's been quite a week since then, too. (I spent most of last week working hard to catch up on four weeks' worth of paperwork at work, so it's been a tad busy at work with little free time.)

Anyway, we start this tale on Friday, April 3, 2009. Grandma B had arrived two days before for a visit. It just happened to coincide with Sydney's birthday weekend. It's amazing how those things work out.

When Grandma B arrived on Wednesday Sydney immediately had things for her to do. She had to see all her toys and play all sorts of games. Thursday morning Grandma B stayed home with Sydney while I went into work early so I could get things done and start my time off that much earlier.

So I guess we really started on Wednesday, April 1, 2009. But we skimmed over that and we're now at Friday, April 3, 2009.

Friday morning we didn't do our usual pre-preschool class with the kids and moms. Sydney was signed up for an Easter "Eggs-travaganza" through the Post Falls Parks & Recreation Department. It's just one of the many classes through the city we sign Sydney up for and have been taking her to for several years.

This time, though, Grandma B was in town and Sydney thought it would be grand if Grandma B took her to the class. So I dropped them off and then went home to finish straightening up for what came after. You can read about the class and more of Grandma B's visit here on her blog.

They had fun and about five minutes before I was going to leave to pick them up I got a call that they were done and one of the last ones left. So I hurried over to pick them up. Then we went to go pick up pizza. At noon we were having the pre-preschool kids and moms over for Sydney's birthday.

Seated to the right of Sydney in that picture is Sydney's oldest (length-of-time, not age) friend, Mary Jane. She's not in class but was invited to the party. And in the picture everyone is eating cupcakes and ice cream that came after the pizza.

Even though we weren't asking for or expecting any gifts from these friends Sydney did get a few. She knew that going in so was extra excited to have them. And since we knew she'd be getting a lot more gifts the next day we let her open the gift from Aunt Heather (not pictured - it was a play doctor kit. No jokes necessary - I've already made most of them).

And then there was a lot of mass chaos while the kids played. (Grandma B was smart and lucky in that she got to retreat to her bedroom for that part of it.)

On Saturday we had Sydney's birthday party with family and close friends. (You can read even more about Sydney's birthday over at Grandma B's blog.)

Around noon Sydney's birthday balloons arrived. They were a gift from Great-Grandma M (Grandma B's mother and my grandmother). Do I need to mention that Sydney really likes getting balloons?

Shortly after the balloons arrived Sydney got dressed up for her party. (See Grandma B's blog linked above.) Since Sydney's favorite foods are pizza and pasta and we had pizza on Friday Anne made an awesome baked ziti for the party. We also had fresh garlic bread made from a garlic loaf picked up at Costco.

Since everyone was stuffed on the meal we let Sydney open her presents before having cake.

Then we had cake.

Sydney picked out the design for her cake all by herself. And she wanted the white frosting on the chocolate cake with the chocolate cream filling. Mmm...

"Happy Birthday" was sung.

And candles were blown out.

On Sunday it was actually Sydney's 4th birthday. We relaxed and played with Sydney's presents. What? You thought we were going to have another party? Don't you think two is enough? Sheesh.

On Monday Grandma B went out to lunch with a friend. And we went out to lunch and then to Toys R Us so Sydney could spend her birthday money. Why, no, we don't think she got enough toys for her birthday. Why?

Sydney did do rather well in spending her money, though. (With a bit of prodding, coaching and coaxing, of course.) She bought a soccer goal for outside for when she wants to play soccer. She bought a slightly smaller and lighter basketball she can play with since Mommy's is a bit big for her. She also bought some more bubble mixture so she can blow bubbles and some cheerleader pom poms that she got extremely excited about as soon as she saw them.

Tuesday Grandma B was leaving. And Sydney was getting sick. This was bad news because we were planning and reserved to go to Fairmont Hot Springs in Montana on Wednesday for a few days. We were going to meet a couple of my online friends there.

So on Tuesday we relaxed and took things easy. Sydney got plenty of rest. On Wednesday she was much better. She wasn't completely better, but she was better enough that we decided she could travel. She relapsed a little on the drive, but we arrived safely and Sydney got a good night's sleep that night. She woke up feeling even better.

On Thursday we went swimming in the pool and spent a few hours there. Then we went outside (even though it was a little chilly and muddy) and played on the playground at the resort.

Sydney liked all the stuff there and spent some time running back and forth between things. But then she settled on the tall, metal slide. She'd climb up, slide down and then run around to repeat. She did that for about twenty minutes straight.

Long before she was tired of that Anne and I decided it was about time to think about dinner. We had contacted my friends on the road earlier and they estimated they would be in between 6:00 and 6:30. Since it was a little before 6:00 I called them and they were close. So we went inside to wait for them in the lobby.

As soon as they arrived I made them pose for a picture with me.

That is DavePrime and Crafty Dragon - Dave and Shanwa - from the Museum of Hoaxes forum. They live in Billings, MT, so had a slightly longer drive than we did to arrive at the resort.

And in case you're wondering, yes, this is the fourth time I have arranged a meeting with people I know from that forum. We have previously met Alex, the owner of the Museum, when we went to San Diego last year. I then met Oppiejoe when I went back to Michigan for my reunion last summer. In October we went over to Seattle and met Nettie and Transfrmr. And now we've met DavePrime and Crafty Dragon.

Someday I'll figure out how to meet some of the other folks from the forum. Those trips could be fun and involve various parts of Europe and Australia. (Unless they come here, like Nettie did.) Though there could be more possibility for meeting some members from here in the States.

Anyway, on Friday it was time to leave and head back home. Dave and Shawna were staying another night, but we all drove up to Philipsburg, MT for some fun.

There are two main attractions there we were interested in. The first was the candy store (we actually went there second, but I didn't take any pictures of it, so I'm mentioning it first). It's a large candy store. One of those places where you walk around and just start throwing candy into a bag. At the end they weigh it and charge you by the pound. There are hundreds of kinds of candies including handmade taffy and caramels. They also have storemade fudge in a variety of flavors (not for the same price as the other candy). And some storemade chocolates (again, not the same price). We spent a good amount of money there.

The other big attraction for us was the sapphire store right next door. For $25 you get to pick out a four-pound bag of gravel. They get it wet and sift it a little bit then plop it down on a table for you. They show you what to look for and then you pick through it with tweezers to find raw sapphires. We ended up finding five quality sapphires with a total weight of 7.55 ct. We had several others that were too small to do anything with or were flawed and cracked. We opted not to pay the extra to have them (the good ones) heat-treated and cut.

Dave and Shawna had similar luck with their bag.

The bad thing about that place is that when you first walk in you are actually in the store part. You are surrounded by stones and things carved from stone. Beautiful, exotic and sometimes rare, there are a lot of fun things to look at. Yep, we spent a good amount of money there, too.

At the end of that excursion we continued on home and Dave and Shawna went back to the resort for their second night.

The reason we couldn't get our dates to coincide for the entire trip was because we had to be home before early Saturday morning. It was Sydney's first soccer game!

Sydney had been very excited about it since we asked her and signed her up back in February. But, once we actually got there, Sydney reverted into her shell and decided she was too shy to play soccer. We explained that she was signed up and part of a team. We explained that she couldn't not play now just because she was feeling shy. We tried what we could to coax her out of her shell. She just continued to stare at the ground and mumble that she didn't want to go out and run around with the other kids and kick the ball. (This was before the start time when the kids got a few minutes to run around and kick the ball on their own.)

So I went up to Sydney's teammate who looked lonely. She was holding her pink, flowered soccer ball and looking like she wanted to kick the ball with someone but certainly did not want to go run around and kick with those boys over there. I introduced myself and got her name. I asked if she would like me to kick the ball with her. She agreed.

Strangely enough, I was standing fairly close to Sydney. The little girl kicked the ball to me and I kicked it back to her. Then I asked Sydney if she wanted to join us. She decided she did, so the little girl kicked the ball to her. Sydney kicked it back and then promptly ordered me off the field.

The first half hour of soccer (for the four year olds, at least) involves some simple drills. The coaches help them learn some of the very basics of soccer. The second half hour involves a bunch of four year olds running around the field, kicking the ball, forgetting which direction they're supposed to be kicking it, falling down (sometimes on top of the ball) and frequently looking around at anything but the soccer ball or the other kids kicking the soccer ball. (There are no goalies for this age group.)

Sydney really likes to kick the ball. Unfortunately, she's not real big on getting into the middle of things and trying to kick the ball. If it's out in the open and she's near it she will run over and try to kick it. But mostly she runs around the outer parts of the game and doesn't seem sure of what she wants to do. While a little frustrating because we know she's capable it's also quite funny.

This week was Sydney's second week of soccer. While she did the same things while playing she was completely involved in the entire process. Once she got there she was out on the field. Mommy and Daddy were almost completely forgotten (except when she came over for water). She practiced and ran around the field and had all sorts of fun.

The last day to be covered in this post was going to be Easter Sunday. But I think it's long enough so I'm going to save that for the next post.

Socks and Aprons

2009-03-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Grandma B likes to knit.

Each year Anne and I get a pair of knitted birthday socks. Sometimes we go and pick out the yarn and colors we want at a local yarn shop and send it to Grandma B so she can make our socks with it. We pick out some yarn for Grandma B, too, to make her own birthday socks.

This year Anne decided she had enough socks and didn't need a new pair. (And then recently lost two pairs due to holes worn in the bottoms from wearing them so much.) But Sydney and I picked out yarn. Sydney even picked out yarn for Grandma B's socks. (I didn't see a post with a picture of those socks being completed, but I'm sure Grandma B will let me know if I missed it.)

This was the first time since before she was born that Grandma B was knitting socks for Sydney. I don't think she could have refused the request even if she had wanted to. Sydney picked out some pink-purple-greenish yarn for her socks.

Sydney was VERY excited when her socks arrived a few weeks ago. She jumped up and down and squealed a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't get that reaction on video. But here she is trying on her socks.

And here's Sydney happily wearing her socks.

And here's Sydney showing how much she loves her birthday socks.

If you would like to see a better picture of what the socks look like you can see them here over at Grandma B's knitting blog.

My socks arrived yesterday. Mine are a beautiful green yarn. Grandma B used a cross-pattern something or other to knit the upper part of them. This uses a lot of yarn, apparently, and she had to contact her knitting friend in Idaho to get her some more of the yarn to finish the socks.

They turned out wonderfully and are absolutely gorgeous. I wore them today for St. Patrick's Day.

And since you can't see the socks very well in that picture you can see a much better picture of them over at Grandma B's knitting blog.

A couple weeks ago Sydney and I also got presents in the mail from Aunt Helena. They were either late Christmas presents or early birthday presents. I'm not sure. But Sydney and I both really like them and we don't care.

They are Washington Redskins aprons for when we grill. Washington is my (our!) favorite football team.

The koala bear Sydney is holding is the koala bear puppet my online Australian friend Nettie gave her when we met in Seattle in October.

New Post

2009-02-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

We've had a lot going on lately. Not the least of those things is getting a new computer. Our old one died. (Yeah, it was about three months after our extended warranty expired on it, why do you ask?) And, along with a new computer comes losing all our emails.

I do have an older list of email addresses printed out, but if you are someone who has our roadrunner.com email address would you please send something to us? (I'd prefer it be non-virus, thanks.) It will be easier to get emails that way than to manually enter then all again. (And if you don't have it and feel like you should you can contact me in whatever normal way you know how to contact me and I'll give it to you.)

And all of these things are no excuse for not updating. I really don't have an excuse for that. Sorry.

Anyway, along with the new computer comes a new wireless router. So we now have wireless available in the house. Anyone coming for a visit can feel free to bring their laptop and know they will be able to use it to get on the web.

It also means I have the Wii online now so if anyone out there has a Wii and wants to share console codes let me know.

So shortly before Christmas Sydney got invited to join a home class. Her friend Hunter's mom and another mom we met at Romp & Roll (back when Sydney went to it) were doing some informal homeschooling for their kids to help them start to learn letters and numbers and to give some socializing. So Sydney and I do that now. It is usually three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It's for about an hour and a half in the morning so I take Sydney (or we have it here - we rotate houses) then we come home for lunch and I get dressed for work.

Sydney has known her alphabet and been able to recognize numbers for a while. She's been able to count pretty consistently up to about 12 and recognize those numbers. But since we started the class she's been getting better. And, of course, she's been learning to write her letters and numbers, too.

And she's been more excited about writing them. After we did Cs she filled one of her large sheets of blank drawing paper with Cs randomly written all over it. And she's recently been wanting to learn her numbers up to 20. (She knows them all except 15. She skips that every single time.) She hasn't had much chance to practice writing the higher numbers, though, because the book we're using only goes up to 10.

But she has a dry erase book for numbers (and another for letters) she has been using more recently. That really only goes up to ten with a little bit of depth and counting, but there is a two page spread near the end that has 11-20 on it and allows for writing the numbers on it.

The class has also helped her open up a little to people beside Mommy and Daddy and to get her to play more openly with other kids. It's been nice to see her develop bit by bit that way.

Back at the end of January we got an opportunity to go to a water park. Silver Mountain Ski Resort, about an hour east of us, has an indoor water park at the hotel. They invited Resort employees to go at a discounted rate. Normally you have to be staying there to even get in.

It was a very nice water park and we had a great time. Sydney was wearing her water wings and enjoyed swimming around on her own. Particularly in the lazy river. She also enjoyed the hot tub that was not-quite-as-hot as a normal hot tub so kids wouldn't be uncomfortable in it. It was fairly large and Sydney enjoyed being in there, too.

Despite our success with her "swimming" there and her more-openness from having to be with us all the time we were unable to talk her into trying swimming classes again. We stopped the ones we were doing some time ago (over a year) because she was getting to old for them. But in order to move up to the next class she had to be able to go in the pool herself and not cling to Mommy (or Daddy). She wasn't willing to do that.

Anne may try the swim lessons anyway. We have a lead on a new place that's closer to home, cheaper, and comes with a good recommendation about the lady being really good with kids.

We did manage to get Sydney involved with something that she's really excited about, however. Starting the week after her birthday Sydney will be playing soccer! She's in the four year old league (duh!) through our city's Parks & Recreation Department. At that age it's a very casual thing and just gets the kids out there to run around, kick the ball and have fun. We asked her about it and she was really excited about wanting to play so we have high hopes for her.

There's also a Fall league that starts in late July (July = Fall? What?!) we'll plan on signing her up for. And in the Fall there's also a basketball class/camp of some type for four year olds. I saw that mentioned in the catalog today and Sydney got really excited about it. (It was just a date list so I really have no information about it yet.)

Let's see. What else has been going on? Grandma and Grandpa M are next door, but you know that. They haven't made it back to Vegas yet. Grandma M had some medical issues come up that I won't get into here and now. But until she can get some things taken care of they won't be going back to Vegas to sell the house.

Sydney really likes having them close by. Whenever they leave to go somewhere and we see them leaving she will get up in the window to wave to them.

Grandpa has started shooting dice with Sydney so whenever he comes over he has to bring them. She enjoys counting up the dots and seeing what she got.

And don't fret, Grandma B. Sydney thinks of you and mentions you often. The guest room is (and probably always will be) "Grandma's Room". And Sydney wants to know when you're coming for your next visit, so get planning.

And now for some pictures.

Last week (on Valentine's Day, actually) we had a fun function to go to. A couple of the local art groups had a Kid's Carnival at the Plaza Shops at the Resort. The main organization was Art on the Edge, which I'll let you read about if you're so inclined.

Anyway, for $5.00 the kids got to go around to a bunch of different art stations and do different things. There was some type of glass art which we passed on. We figured glass art (safety goggles required!) probably wouldn't be the best thing to get Sydney involved in at this age. They also had a clay station set up. Clay on spinning wheels. And despite Kipper the Dog having fun with it in one of his episodes Sydney decided to pass on it. She didn't want to get messy.

But she did everything else!

Here's Sydney picking out what to put on her mask. (And Mommy helping glue it.)

And skipping ahead in the pictures, here's Sydney wearing her mask after we got home.

Here's Sydney gluing stuff onto a large, paper heart.

And here's Sydney decorating some paper hands.

The hands were going to later be glued to sticks and used as paddles at an art auction. The gimmick was to have the kids decorate the hand on the condition they gave it up. But then they got to move down the table and make a mask! Of course, we came from the other end of the table so the lady let Sydney make two hands and keep one. (I'm sure she wasn't the only one.)

Here's Sydney painting part of a really large painting of a flower.

They were having the kids paint a little bit of the painting to complete the flower. The child could pick what part they wanted to paint and then the lady would give them the appropriate color paint. Here's a picture that shows the overall picture a little better.

And the final art project of the day was just some free form painting on blank paper.

So that's all for now. I promise not to be so long before another update. I still have Anne's phone videos to upload and share, so that will probably be the next one.

Christmas

2008-12-31T00:20:00.000-08:00

We had an excellent Christmas here. (Well, other than the tons of snow we've been getting and the sub-freezing temperatures.)

I had Christmas Eve off so I was able to attend the get together we have with friends each year. Like last year it was at Bill and Donna's house. Bill and Donna are the parents of our friend Kathy.

Here's Kathy (in the red) with Jackie and Anne.

Bill and Donna have an absolutely gorgeous house They also have a fairly large backyard with lots of trees. Here you can see part of it with snow (surprise!).

Mark (Jackie's husband) wore his new Christmas sweater to the party.

Mark bought it as a joke to wear for Christmas. It's a woman's sweater. I think it'd look better without the tee shirt under it.

And here's a picture of Mark, Kathy and Anne.

And Jackie and me.

Aunt Marta was visiting for the week. She and Sydney had a wonderful time playing together. They frequently sat up on the bed in "Grandma's Room" (that's what Sydney calls the guest room) looking through wrapping paper tube telescopes to try to find pirates.

Aunt Marta was at the party and Sydney brought Penguin (the one she got at Sea World in February - he's her favorite bedtime stuffed animal).

After eating and nibbling on excellent food that everyone brought we eventually got down to the present unwrapping. We let the kids go first then booted them out of the room to go play with their new stuff.

Sydney, of course, liked everything she got, but two presents stand out as apparent favorites from the party. First is a blanket that Kathy's boys made for her. They made a blanket for each of the kids (Caden and Rylan - Mark and Jackie's boys - and Sydney). Sydney really likes hers and it is a regular part of her bed now.

The other present was a little Yorkie (I think?) stuffed dog in a carrying case. She's pointing at the pink case in this picture.

We got home around 8:00 pm. Sydney spent much of the trip home looking up in the sky for any sign of Santa. When we got home she had something to eat (she wasn't that interested in the food at the party for some reason) and then we checked out NORAD on the computer to see where Santa was. Luckily he was still visiting the east coast.

Sydney went to bed and we expected her to fall right asleep despite the excitement. She only had a short nap on our way to the party earlier in the day and it was almost two hours past her bedtime. But when I went to check on her about fifteen minutes later she was still awake and had a silly grin on her face when she saw me.

I went in, tucked her in again, kissed her on the cheek and told her I thought she would be asleep. Her reply was, "Daddy, stop bothering me."

The next morning she got up at her regular time (7:00 am) and was very excited. So were we! Aunt Marta got up and we called Grandma and Grandpa to come over. (They stayed home on Christmas Eve. Partly because of various ailments that limited them and partly because of the weather.) Sydney had a bite to eat while we waited for Grandma and Grandpa M to arrive.

The first thing Sydney did when it was present time was to put on "her" Santa hat. (It is generally worn by a stuffed Snoopy Anne has, but Sydney decided she was going to wear it this year.)

She was very excited and had a good time opening presents. She got a lot of things and just about everything she opened was, "Oh, boy. Just what I wanted for Christmas!"

She was particularly excited about two of the presents she got from Santa. First was a pre-school laptop.

She's wanted one for some time and always plays with them in the toy aisles of the store when we go.

The other particularly exciting present was a new baby doll set. It is a newborn doll that comes with a stroller, crib/bassinet, car seat and diaper bag. Here is Sydney jumping up and down with joy.

Santa was also very good to the three of us by bringing us all new Redskins jerseys. Here we are wearing them while watching them lose the last regular season game on Sunday. (Sydney's is several sizes too big so she can grow into it.)

There is only one thing that Santa seems to have missed out on this Christmas and that was a purple hippo.

Sydney's favorite cartoon character, Kipper, has a purple hippo squeeze toy. Sydney has been talking a lot lately about wanting a hippo like Kipper's. After the stockings and Santa presents were opened we were ready to move on to other gifts. But Sydney had other ideas.

She was still very excited about her Santa presents and getting "just what I wanted for Christmas" as she looked at the presents still under the tree. And she asked Mommy, "which present do you think has my purple hippo in it?"

There wasn't too much of a problem with it, luckily. One thing Santa had put in Sydney's stocking was a purple snake/anemone squeeze thing. Mommy quickly explained that that was probably as close as Santa could come to a purple hippo toy. Sydney seemed satisfied with that.

(If anyone happens to find a purple hippo squeeze toy let me know. And, yes, we did also try explaining before Christmas that the purple hippo was probably a dog toy and not a little girl toy, but Sydney didn't seem to care.)

As much as Sydney loved all the presents she got from everyone there are two others that will get special mention here seeing as I have some video to go with them. First, Sydney got a harmonica from Grandpa M. He enjoys playing and she likes to listen to him. So she got one and immediately took to it. (She even "taps it out" as instructed by Grandpa every time she's done playing it.)

The other gift is the sled that Grandma and Grandpa M got her.

Between our two houses is a giant pile of snow the snow plows push up. The streets have been packed snow so it's been easy to slide down it and into the street. On Saturday, though, a plow came up our street to clear things out better since it had actually warmed up to a little above freezing. It cleared the street a lot better and pushed more snow around to make it easier to get from driveways to the street. In the process more snow got piled up on that pile. It's now over eight feet high and has a rather steep drop to the street. We won't be sledding on it anymore. But there are a couple local areas that are supposed to be good for sledding.

We had a great Christmas here and we hope everyone else did, too. Happy New Year to all of you. We wish you the best in the upcoming year and hope everyone has a great 2009.

Pre-Christmas Stuff

2008-12-21T22:49:00.000-08:00

So, like most of the country, it seems, we are buried under snow. It couldn't get warm enough fast enough for us to not have a white Christmas. But more on the snow later.

I took a couple pictures earlier this week and knew I sorely needed to do a blog update. So I pulled the memory card out of the camera tonight so I could upload pictures. When I stuck the card in the slot on the front of the computer the little green light didn't come on.

Uh oh.

The computer didn't recognize or read the card for some reason. I tried all sorts of complicated, technical stuff to make the computer recognize the card. I pulled it out and then put it back in. I did that again. And a third time. I pulled it out, blew canned air into the slot and onto the card. I pulled it out, sighed, and set it aside while I went and did some browsing.

About twenty minutes later I tried again. The little green light came on this time! But the computer still didn't want to recognize the memory card. So I finally resorted to restarting the computer and that seemed to work.

At the beginning of November I got a gingerbread house kit from work. We sell them there and then people can turn them back in for coupons to the restaurant. They're then displayed and voted on for a contest. But we didn't turn ours back in. I just got one because I figured Sydney would like making it. And she did.

Sydney got that apron from one of Grandma M's friends. She made it especially for Sydney.

We all helped make the gingerbread house a little bit and it turned out pretty well, I think.

There are a couple more pictures of the finished house over at the online photo album.

A week or two ago Sydney came to the conclusion (with the help of Mommy and Daddy) that she didn't need to eat in a high chair anymore. She either eats from her booster chair at the table or from one of the high stools at the kitchen counter. (We're going to need to buy a third stool.)

Over the last several weeks Anne has been making Christmas cookies. Sydney has been helping. She really enjoys standing on the step stool and helping Mommy measure out, pour in and mix up the ingredients. She helps cleaning up, too.

So late last Tuesday night it started to snow. It was off and on at first. Then a switch got flipped and someone forgot to turn it off again. It kept snowing. And snowing. And snowing. And about 36 hours later it finally stopped. For a little while.

That picture was taken sometime Wednesday morning, I think. Long before the snow stopped. But you can already see how it was piling up - even under the patio cover. Yay!

I'm not sure what the records were, exactly, but they say we set records for the amount of snow that fell in a 24-hour period. For this area it was the most snow at one time since, um, sometime in the early-1900s, I think. It might have been the late-1800s. It was over 100 years, but I don't remember how much over 100 years.

Anne said on the news Thursday they said the small city where we live got 29 inches. The city where I work (slightly higher elevation) got 37 inches.

One nice thing that came out of all the snow is that our bird feeder finally got a visitor. We got the feeder back in early November. Since Sydney likes looking out the front window and she's always excited to see an animal I figured she'd like to watch a bird feeder. Of course, it was a little late in the season to set it up, probably. Most of the birds were gone for the winter and the ones sticking around didn't know it was there so it'd be chance that would bring them around.

And just by chance we got a ton of snow dumped on us and a bird found our feeder.

I believe it's just a little sparrow, but I don't know birds that well. And it only seems to be that one bird that comes back to eat the seeds. We have yet to see more than one bird at the feeder at a time.

And tonight we're getting more snow. The temperature hasn't been above 20°F in two weeks now. (If it has it hasn't been much above it.) And many of those days (like today) we have a nice arctic wind blowing in that takes the windchill well into the negatives.

We had another three or four inches of snow between last night and today. And now we have another winter weather advisory for tonight and they're calling for six to eight more inches overnight. What a fun winter this has been so far. I can hardly wait to see what the next three months bring us!

I won't wait as long for the next update. I promise. I'll be doing a post-Christmas post by next Sunday at the latest, I think. Plus I have videos off Anne's cell phone. She's been bugging me for several months to put those on the blog. So there are two posts right there.

Oh, and for anyone interested, potty training is pretty much finished. Sydney is in underwear all the time, even when going out, except at night when she wears a pull-up. She goes to the bathroom on her own, both pee and poop. (We still have to help her wipe poopies.) And even though she has some potty stickers left she rarely ever puts them up anymore. Sometimes if she's upstairs she will, but I think most the time she wants to get back to playing or doing whatever she was doing before she went potty.

Classes, Halloween and President Sydney

2008-11-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

Lots of stuff for this post. As most of you know, Anne goes to bed early. So last Tuesday she did not know the results of the election until she got up to go to work and I told her. But she was watching the news for updates before bed.

Sydney asked what she was watching. Anne attempted to explain to Sydney about the men that were running for President and would be the ruler of our country. People were choosing who that wanted and whoever got the most votes would be the winner.

Sydney decided that sounded fine and told Anne that she wanted to be President. She will run with Daddy. (Anne thinks she thought of it as a running race.)

And, apparently, on Wednesday, Sydney was quite disappointed that she wasn't President.

As you can see in the following video, Sydney has gotten much better at dribbling a basketball. Her best time wasn't even captured on video. You might also note that she makes a great rebound, too.

One of the classes that I took Sydney to through the Parks & Recreation Department was to a fire station. I had been mentioning it to Sydney and she was quite excited about it. I had been avoiding mention the P-word part of the class. And then, a day or two before the class somebody told Sydney that there would be a park/playground there that we would be playing at, too. Suddenly Sydney no longer cared about the fire station, meeting the firemen and seeing a fire truck. She just wanted to go play at the park.

*Sigh*

So after she ignored everything in the fire station, repeatedly whined about going to the park and refused to sit in the fire truck for a picture we finally went to the park.

As you can see she gladly took the fireman's hat they gave her.

One day a box arrived at the door. I had ordered some Redskins apparel online when they were having a sale. Sydney was quite excited to get something. She really likes her Redskins outfit. (Unfortunately, the hat is a bit small. I tried to make sure I got a "kids" hat, but their definition of "kids" is apparently "toddler," so it doesn't fit right.)

The week before we went to Seattle we went out to Green Bluff to pick apples and pumpkins. As usual, we had a great time. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the camera. But I had my phone to take video with.

We picked apples.

Sydney wanted to ride back in the wagon.

And she picked her pumpkin.

The day we went to Seattle we had a Halloween class to go to. Since Mommy was off work for the trip she got to take Sydney. I finished up some errands for the trip and them met them for the rest of the class.

They got to wear their costumes to the class. Sydney was a Snow Princess this year.

But since crafts were involved in the class the costume didn't stay on for long. There was pumpkin painting.

And slime making.

And at the end of the class they got to frost cookies and eat them.

Then came Halloween. Sydney was so excited this year (as opposed to last year, if you remember). Grandma and Grandpa M came over and watched Sydney so I could go to work in the morning. I got to come home in time to take Sydney out trick-or-treating with Mommy.

The first stop was next door to trick-or-treat Grandpa M.

As you can tell from the video Sydney didn't quite have the timing down. At first she had trouble realizing she had to wait for the door to be opened before she said "trick or treat". But before too many houses she had it down pat.

You might also tell from that video that Sydney "likes blue". She doesn't get candy so isn't familiar with it. She doesn't know the different types, names and what they are. So whenever someone held the bowl out to her and asked what she would like she would reply by saying she liked whatever color of the wrapper.

We went around the block and got houses on both sides of the street. We avoided the scary house at the end of the block that frightened Sydney into ending the trick-or-treating early last year. Being the end of the day she was a little tired and was ready to finish up when we got around the block.

We finished up at our house where Grandma M was covering for us while we were out. Mommy asked if Sydney wanted to trick-or-treat Grandma. You can see the results here.

In case you didn't catch that, Sydney did want to trick-or-treat Grandma. When Grandma came to the door Sydney reached in her pumpkin, took out a couple pieces of candy and gave them to Grandma.

And the final Halloween video shows Sydney in her costume while enjoying some of her Halloween candy.

That weekend we spent a little time out in the yard. Sydney got to play in the leaves and Mommy got some good action shots of Sydney throwing leaves in the air. (You can see the rest of them over at my Picturetrail album. Link up there on the right.)

When Sydney saw these pictures on the computer her reaction was, "Look! I'm juggling leaves."

And last for now is a video of Sydney doing "Piggies" to me. If seeing my naked foot would either disgust or scandalize you, you might want to skip watching this video.

Aussie Invasion (of Three)

2008-10-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I learned that a friend of mine, Nettie, from the Museum of Hoaxes forum would be traveling to our neck of the woods. She lives in Perth, Australia. She and her sister and niece would be visiting her father and step-mother in Vancouver, British Columbia.

We couldn't get up to see them because we don't have a passport for Sydney. But if they were willing and able to go to Seattle for a visit we were willing and able to go to Seattle to meet them.

So plans were made, hotels were booked, plans were changed after Nettie got to Vancouver and started looking into the schedules for the ferries to Seattle and hotel bookings were changed again. But in the end it all worked out.

We drove to Seattle on Friday. Nettie, her sister Jo and Jo's daughter Darce would be arriving on a ferry late that night. I would meet them at the ferry and get them back to the hotel. We would spend the day Saturday doing touristy stuff, having fun and hanging out together. Nettie, Jo and Darce would go back by ferry very early on Sunday and we would drive back home not long after that.

A couple weeks before the trip we found out that another friend from the forum, Transfrmr, had just moved to Seattle. Last year he had moved across Canada to Vancouver. His new job kept him busy and we didn't see much of him around the forum. But he just got a new job that relocated him to Seattle. So we made plans to meet up with him, too.

So Anne, Sydney and I drove across Washington to Seattle. We stopped in Snoqualmie at the Salish Lodge and had dinner. We overlooked the Snoqualmie Falls from the dining room. (The following picture was not taken from the dining room, but from the overlook area outside the Lodge. We could have gotten a better picture but didn't feel like walking around to the observation deck.)

We drove to the hotel and checked in. Sydney and Anne were both beat and went almost straight to bed. I still had about an hour and a half until the ferry came in. The pier was about a five minute drive or a twenty minute walk from the hotel. (And I should note that I'm a night owl. I wasn't tired or ready for bed yet, so staying up to meet them was no problem.)

With assurances from the valet staff that it would be safe to walk to the pier I set out. I figured I had no idea what the parking was like there. I could walk down, see what options there were for parking and walk back to get the car if I figured I needed to. I had plenty of time.

It was a very nice walk. The evening was chilly, but not cold. There was good traffic around and I didn't feel unsafe. So I found where the boat would be coming in and hung out. There weren't very many people around the pier and no one even showed up so I could ask if I was in the right spot and where they would be coming through until about ten minutes before the ferry arrived.

Nettie had her dad's cell phone and I tried to call it a few times while I was waiting. I wanted to see how tired they were and whether I should go get the car. Either I had the wrong number programmed in my phone or I was unable to get through for some other reason (when they got there the phone was roaming, so the phone carrier might not have been available in Seattle).

The passengers disembarked from the ferry but I saw no signs of Nettie. Hmm. A lady standing a few feet away was also waiting for someone who didn't get off. Luckily she was able to get a hold of her friend. It seems the passengers with checked luggage had to wait and get off last. And those people all seemed to be on the far side of the boat so we couldn't see them through the windows from the angle we were at above them.

So a few minutes later Nettie, Jo and Darce got off the boat. We waved and said hellos through the fence and the difference in heights of the platforms we were on. I asked if they wanted me to head back to the hotel and get the car while they got through customs/immigration. They said they were fine for the 20 minute walk.

I didn't bring the camera with me since I didn't want to walk through an unknown city at night with it regardless of assurances of safety from the valets at the hotel. But I did manage to snap a picture of the new arrivals with my cell phone.

That's Jo in the foreground in the light-colored coat and Nettie smiling (?) for the camera. Yes, it was dark on the pier and my phone does not have a flash.

And, unfortunately, I found out the next day that my camera had gotten broken somehow during the trip and that is the only picture I have of Nettie from the whole visit.

Just kidding.

So after they got their luggage and made it through the security checks (I'm still not sure how Nettie managed that) we started off to the hotel. There might be claims that it was a forced march, but it wasn't. I gave them the option and offered to go get the car. I just happened to neglect to tell them that the last several blocks would be up a very steep hill.

The next morning we met up and headed out for our day in the city. I tried to call Transfrmr but couldn't get through. Still. I had been trying since they arrived the night before. I asked Nettie if she happened to write down his phone number (I had programmed it straight to my phone). As it turned out I had the wrong number (again?), though it's since been shown he gave me the wrong number. I checked the message he sent the first time and it was wrong. The second time he sent it I didn't double check since I had already programmed it in my phone. But we got a hold of him and he would be meeting us.

First stop was over to Pike Place Market for sightseeing and breakfast. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in the hotel room. No, really. But I went back and got it and planned on meeting up with everyone. Somehow I managed to arrive at Pike Place Market before they did.

Here are Darce and Sydney standing by a giant piggy bank in front of the Pike Place Fish Market. (They throw the fish around and it's quite fun to watch.)

After breakfast it was decided that the Seattle Aquarium would be a fun place to visit. So off we went.

On our way out of Pike Place we passed a little shop with snow globes. Darce collects them so she and Jo went in to buy one.

And while we were waiting I realized I didn't have a good picture of Nettie yet.

Then came the tricky part of figuring out how to get down to the aquarium. Most of Seattle downtown is built on a large, steep hill. The aquarium is straight down the hill from Pike Place Market. We're pretty sure there's a way to get down through the market (it does go down the hill for several levels - Anne and I have been through it). But we had Sydney's stroller, we didn't see many options with ramps or elevators and the market was quite crowded. So we opted for taking the streets.

Unfortunately, the streets that go through down to the ocean side aren't really close to Pike Place Market. We would have to go down several streets to find one that went through and then back those several blocks to get to the aquarium. There was a nice plaza, however, that went all the way down. Even though it was all stairs and no ramps we went for it. I held Sydney's hand down the stairs and Anne figured she could take the stroller down with the back wheels down one stair at a time.

That quickly went south as the stroller tilted back and forth. Luckily, a kind samaritan grabbed the front and helped her lift it down. Nettie and I, probably with the same Scottish friends in mind, both snapped a picture.

After they all got down to where those tables are we thanked the man for his help. He smiled, waved and said we were welcome and then went back up the stairs to his day. He was very nice to step in and help.

The rest of the way down (we were only about half-way) I helped with the stroller. Nettie stepped in to help make sure Sydney got down all right.

When we got to the aquarium we stopped at the fountain out front for pictures. Look how tall Nettie is!

Okay, so she was standing on a bench. Here we are standing on the same level. (Notice my nice new Perth, Australia, hat I got as a gift.)

As we got there Transfrmr called. He was leaving his house and would meet us at the aquarium in about a half hour. So we went in and got started. There's a huge tank right in the entrance and we got there just in time for the diver exhibit. That was fun and informative. After that we headed over to the tide pool tanks.

Both of the kids (and the adults, too) enjoy petting the starfish, anemones and other creatures in the pool.

There were other fun things for the kids, too. If there's ever a wheel to turn Sydney will want to turn it.

Behind Sydney there you can see a jellyfish in a small window of the tank. The tank is a giant ring the jellyfish swim around in. It's about eight feet high and goes down just under the floor. You can walk through it (and have to to get to the ship's wheel).

Right about then Tranfrmr called to let us know he arrived. Nettie and I headed back toward the entrance to meet him.

You're right! That's not Transfrmr. That is Sydney playing with a large felt board, putting felt cut outs of sea creatures on it. She loved it. I didn't get any pictures of Transfrmr until a little later.

And here's Sydney in one of the cut-out picture things where you stick your face through. She loves these things. (We don't know who the little boy is. Just another kid that was at the aquarium.)

Nettie brought Sydney a koala bear hand puppet. Here she is, in her stroller, snuggling it.

After the aquarium we went over to the Seattle Center area where the Space Needle is. Transfrmr had to move his car from a temporary parking spot to an all-day spot. While waiting for him we enjoyed the sites and sounds of the vendors set up across from the walkway along the piers. There was a Scientologist booth set up along with the little machine that takes whatever readings they take. They were also selling copies of Dianetics. Since they are sometimes a "target" of discussions over on the forums Nettie and I (and Transfrmr when he met us) got a good chuckle out of seeing it. I didn't take a picture, but Nettie did. It will be on her blog, I'm sure, when she gets back from her trip.

While waiting I also scouted out a parking garage with an elevator going back up to the Pike Place Market so we went up there and avoided stairs. We then walked a few blocks to the monorail to go over to the Seattle Center. Darce was a tad nervous about it since it was elevated, but she was a brave young lady and handled the ride well.

We decided to check out the Children's Museum there. No one was interested in paying to go up in the Space Needle. Especially with Darce's apprehension of heights.

The elevator down to the Children's Museum was out of order. So we found another one and then had to go up about five stairs and then down about five stairs to get back to the museum. And guess what they had out front?

I caught Sydney!

Nettie caught Darce!

And Darce caught Sydney!

We then had a lengthy discussion about who would go to the museum. Would we all go? Transfrmr doesn't have a child, so did he really want to pay to go in? Did both Anne and I have to go in with Sydney? Both Jo and Nettie in with Darce?

We were discussing many different options when Darce decided she didn't really want to go to the Children's Museum. Problem solved! We went back outside (there was a side door with ramp access) and played on the rides out in the square.

While Darce and Sydney were waiting to go on the first ride I snapped a picture of Tranfrmr and Nettie.

The girls then went on the car ride. It was basically a flat, kiddie roller coaster with cars.

Then we got a picture of the three Forumites together.

Then Sydney dragged me on the ferris wheel.

And Sydney went on her favorite, the carousel, with Mommy and Darce.

Sydney was then out of tickets but Darce gave her two so she could ride on the bumper cars with her.

It was then time to head back on the monorail. Darce seemed fine this time around. She didn't seem nervous at all. She didn't even seem to have any problems waiting for the monorail up on the platform for the ten minutes it took to arrive.

Next stop on the expedition was the Underground Tour. You can't take strollers on it so we headed back to the hotel. Which was fine since we had to go right past it to get over to Pioneer Square anyway. So we stopped at the hotel, freshened up, dropped off the stroller and then headed out to Pioneer Square. Transfrmr headed down to the waterfront to get his car and drove over to Pioneer Square to park.

When we got there just after him we went in and paid for our tour. It was recommended to get there an hour ahead of time since it was first-come, first-served. To kill the time until the tour started we went across the plaza to Magic Mouse Toys and browsed through the shop. We all found things we wanted to buy. Luckily, we also asked and found out the store was open late so we could go back after dinner. That way we weren't carrying bags along on the tour.

The tour tells (and shows) how Seattle was settled on the tide plain. How the city constantly flooded with the tides and how a fire that burned down 33 square blocks solved that problem. The city was rebuilt and the streets were raised to the second floor of the buildings. The streets were raised with dirt ripped from the hills so the hills aren't as large or steep as they originally were.

The "Underground" is really the original street level of the city and you get to go under the current sidewalks and see between the buildings and the retaining walls that raised the streets.

The Underground Tour was the one thing Nettie really wanted to do while she was here. I hope it lived up to her hopes and expectations. She said she enjoyed it and it really was neat if you're interested in history. (The fact we had a really good guide probably didn't hurt, either.)

After the tour we went to dinner at a restaurant in Pioneer Square called Mitchelli's. It's an excellent Italian restaurant. Anne and I have been there twice before on previous trips to Seattle with another (non-MoH) online friend. Aunt Marta drove down from Mount Vernon (about an hour north of Seattle) to have dinner with us, too.

After dinner we went back to the toy store and bought many things. There are some really neat things in that toy store. It would have been easy to spend a whole lot of money there (er, we did). And they didn't even have that much of a LEGO stock.

Nettie, Transfrmr and I took one more picture outside the store before we called it a night. And even though it looks like I'm burping in it and it's a terrible picture of me, I'll share it here.

We said our good byes to Transfrmr and he headed off home. Jo and Darce weren't feeling well and took a taxi home. Aunt Marta headed off to home and Nettie walked back to the hotel with us.

The next morning I got up early to see Nettie, Jo and Darce off. Anne and Sydney had said their good byes the night before when we got back to the hotel. It would have been easy to force march the ladies back to the pier - it's much easier down hill, after all - but since it was so early I went ahead and drove them.

It was sad to have our time together end. It was a lot of fun. Darce and Sydney got along great. Nettie was just as nice and as much fun as I knew she would be. But I'm really glad we got to share the time together. Living half the world away there aren't many opportunities like that to be close and get together.

Transfrmr is also a great person. Just like I know him from the forum. The positive thing there is that he only lives in Seattle. That's close enough to visit again. And this time it's his turn to come see me.

And for anyone keeping score, that's four people from the Museum of Hoaxes I've met. We met Alex, the owner and curator of the museum, when we went to Seattle in February. (Pictures are already deleted or I would post a link to the blog entry.) I also met Oppiejoe in Hell, Michigan, when I was back there for my high school reunion.

So who will I meet next?

(There are a few pictures in my online photo album that didn't make it into this post. If you're interested in seeing them you can do so right here.)

Flood

2008-10-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

Click!

Did somebody flip a switch?

The day after my last post Sydney really did turn a corner, flip a switch, whatever you want to call it. She is doing much, much better with going potty. She's in underwear most of the time (though she sometimes asks to be put in diapers and we tell her no). She holds it and rarely goes in her underwear anymore.

She's not completely there yet, but she's getting a lot closer. She doesn't always know when she has to go, I think. We have to ask her or make her go sit on the toilet before she will frequently. But even in the morning I don't think I've had a day in the last two weeks where she peed in her over night diaper before we got to the toilet.

And she has had a handful of times where she has gotten herself to the toilet, pulled her pants and undies down and gone pee all on her own. And - ready for this? - there have been at least two times (one of them just this morning) where she has gotten herself to the toilet to poop on her own.

So we're getting much, much closer.

And to answer Grandma B's question from the comments of the last post, yes, Sydney does get upset when she pees (or poops, but that's only happened once or twice) in her underwear. But having it happen and getting upset about it didn't seem to help right away in the training process.

So there's a potty training update. And as appropriate as it might seem, that is not the reason for the title of this post.

We had a very long, cold winter with lots and lots of snow. Record-breaking amounts of snowfall. And that's just here in the city. That's not even mentioning the snow pack up in the mountains.

We had a very late spring here. It stayed cool well into May. The second week of May it really started to get warm and all that snow melted almost all at one time. The lake level rose. The flood gates were opened on the dams on the river. The water rose faster than it could get down the river. (The river was flooded, too.)

The last two weeks of May, during absolutely gorgeous weather - the longest stretch of it to that point this year - they had to put a "no wake" restriciton on the lake. Boats could not go fast enough to leave a (significant) wake in the water. So no water recreation.

A couple days before the flood levels were supposed to reach their peak I took my camera to work. I took some pictures of the water levels. (I did it a few days before the expected peak time because we were going to leave for Vegas the next day and would be gone for the peak.)

Then, a few weeks ago I brought my camera back to work and took some pictures of the lake at the end of summer with "normal" water levels. Below are the pictures. The first one in each pair is the flood level. The second picture in each pair is the same location at normal water levels.

If you want to see slightly larger versions of the pictures you can see them over at my Picture Trail photo albums.

This is City Beach next to the Resort.

This is the City Beach but angled a little further out into the water. On the left side of the picture you can see Independence Point. It's a public dock where daily public lake cruises leave from as well as the parasailing and seaplane tours.

Between City Beach and the west entrance to the Floating Boardwalk that goes around the Resort is the Boardwalk Bar. This is taken from the seating area looking back at the City Beach. If you look closely at the right side of the picture you can see a man standing to the left of the tree and to the right of the white sign. That's just about where I was for the first two sets of pictures above.

The next pictures are taken next to our Corporate Offices next to the Resort (you'll see that building in the next pictures). The closest dock is a City Dock open to the public. The further dock with the blue awnings is part of the Boardwalk Marina, which is private space leased through the marina portion of our Corporation.

These pictures are taken from near the top of the ramp of the Boardwalk Marina entrance you saw in the last pictures. The large wooden building is the Corporate Offices. The small, cooper-roofed building near the right side of the picture is the Boardwalk Bar where I took the earlier pictures. The City Beach is beyond that.

The Boardwalk Marina wraps around the south end, lake side of the Resort. At the water's edge we have a nice grassy area with steps down toward the water. People sit there and during the (nicer days of the) summer we have live music out there in the evenings. It's called the Floating Stage area because of the stage off the boardwalk where the musicians play (barely seen on the left side of each picture).

Grandpa Ate All The Candy!

2008-09-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

First things first. Go over to my Mom's blog and read the really cool post she just made. Well, I think it's cool anyway.

We have a candy dish on the table between the front hall and the living room at the base of the stairs. Last weekend Sydney noticed that the candy dish was empty.

"Oh, no!"

"What's wrong, Sydney?"

"The candy dish. Grandpa ate all the candy!"

"Uh, yeah. Right," I answered. "Grandpa ate all the candy." (Grandpa does eat it. But so do I and everyone else. I just happened to be the one who ate the last few pieces this time. Grandpa just happens to be the one Sydney sees eat most of it.)

"We have to get more, Daddy."

"Okay. We'll get more next time we go to the store."

"Okay. And then we'll hide it from Grandpa so he can't eat it all. And we'll tell him he can't have it."

True story. Or at least close enough since I'm sure the conversation isn't quoted exactly.

So last entry I promised an update on potty training. Those of you not interested in potty training can skip it. You won't hurt my feelings. If you're interested in seeing pictures you can scroll down to the end of this post for a few new ones.

Sydney has not been interested in potty training. She would pee on the toilet after her bath. We could sometimes get her to pee on the toilet if we happened to catch her right at the right time and get her there. Otherwise she didn't seem to care about learning. She's happy in a diaper (or pull up diaper) and doesn't care how full, wet or poopy it is.

Now Anne and I haven't exactly been pressing the issue, either. We were slacking and not trying as hard as we should have been. So we decided it was time, even if Sydney wasn't showing much interest, and took her to the store to get what we needed.

She already had a couple step-stools spread around to help her reach the sinks. She also had a padded toilet seat that she used when going so she could sit on the toilet without falling in. But we took her to the store and she got to pick out her own, new seat and a step-stool to go with it. (The first one was given to us by Mark and Jackie.) Her other one we moved downstairs and the new one went in her bathroom.

We also debated how we wanted to handle the potty training. A lot of parents will do a reward of some kind every time the child goes to the bathroom on the potty. We know several parents who did this with some kind of candy or snack. We really didn't want to do that since Sydney rarely eats candy. (No, she doesn't eat the candy in the candy dish.)

Since Sydney likes stickers we decided to make her a sticker board. We bought some construction paper and taped four pieces together. We taped it on her bedroom wall. She got to pick out her own stickers. Whenever she pees on the toilet she gets to put one sticker on her board. Whenever she poops on the toilet she gets to put two stickers on the board.

So far she's been putting single stickers up. I think she's only pooped on the toilet one time. She's tried and she's told us she needs to poop, but when it comes to doing the deed she can't do it.

We decided that stickers would be easier to stop than a snack. When she's "officially" potty trained we can explain to her that she has learned it and doesn't need the stickers as a reward anymore. She can finish up putting the stickers she has left on her board and then she'll be done. They will be "all gone".

I don't think this will be a problem for Sydney for several reason. First, she has other, non-potty stickers she plays with at times. Second, she usually understands these types of things when we explain them to her. And third, when she pees downstairs she frequently forgets completely about putting a sticker up and won't unless we remind her.

The potty training is going okay so far. Sydney still doesn't have much care for it. She doesn't bother to tell us when she needs to go. She just pees in her pull up. So we started putting her in her underwear (she also got to pick it out at the store) and if she pees she gets wet.

She's gotten better when she knows she has underwear on at not peeing her pants, but she still has issues with telling us (and still pees her pants sometimes). We almost constantly have to ask her if she has to go. She usually doesn't tell us if she has to go, though she is pretty good at holding it. The other day Anne didn't realize I had her in underwear. Sydney had her nap and then went outside and helped Anne in the garden and played. Several hours after she had last gone Anne realized it (Sydney never said anything) and got her to the toilet to go.

And we still put pull ups on her when we're going out because we don't want to worry about an accident while we're out and about. But, again, Sydney doesn't tell us if she has to go. If she has a pull up on she just goes in that.

There has been progress since we started, but it's going slow. I'm hoping, like many other things Sydney has done, she will just a flip a switch one of these days. She'll just suddenly understand and listen to what we're telling her and realize how/when/why she has to know when she has to go and ask us to get her to a toilet. I'm hoping. Until then we'll continue to plod along this road.

And now for the promised pictures.

Sydney and Mommy baking.

Sydney snuggled up and reading.

And Sydney posing up against the tree because Mommy wanted a new picture she could print out and take to work.

Or 5 or 6

2008-08-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

(If you don't get the meaning of the title read the last line from the previous post.)

It's time for some much overdue Sydney pictures and videos. Let's do some videos first.

One day Sydney decided that the plants needed to be watered. We had just watered them a few days before so they didn't really need to be. Sydney insisted that they would be sad if we didn't water them. I explained that the plants could get sick if we did water them.

Sydney was determined to make the plant in the front room happy. But how would she do that? Why, by offering to let it play with her "soccer ball" of course!

At the end of the video Sydney does her usual of asking to see the video I just recorded.

Sydney is getting to be quite the basketball player. She's starting to learn to dribble and even though her jump shot is a bit short she's trying hard.

Oh, and WATCH OUT!

She can even steal the ball and drive to the basket.

Sydney still likes to build "play houses" in the bedroom while I'm getting ready for work. Here she is with Bear.

Our city's Parks & Recreation department has a couple classes each season that are age-appropriate for Sydney. (She's too old now for the Romp & Roll class we used to go to and that has been written about in this blog before.) There were a few classes earlier this summer. One of them was a pirate-themed class. They got to make pirate stuff and then go outside and find a treasure chest (full of more pirate-themed booty).

Here's a picture of Sydney at home after class. She has most of her pirate booty but after initially liking and wearing the eye patch she refused to wear it for the picture.

You may remember past entries from when Sydney was younger of a friend named Mary Jane. Mary Jane and her family moved to the Seattle area at the end of last summer. Mary Jane's dad had a good school/job opportunity there.

It was sad. The two of them were only about a week difference in age and had so far grown up together. Well, this summer they moved back. It might be temporary. It might not. We're not sure yet. Regardless, they've had a play date or two.

Yes, they're eating popsicles in the picture.

At another point this summer we went over to Hunter's grandparents' house for a barbecue. You may recall Hunter being another friend of Sydney's. We met him and his mom (and grandma) in Romp & Roll and have been friends since. Hunter's mom was having some friends over and since the grandparents have a big yard they let her use their house for the barbecue.

Sydney had a good time playing (and we had a good time socializing - with grown ups!)

That bouncy castle is something the grandparents bought for Hunter. It stays at their house. The older boy who fell down is named Matthew.

Sydney got a super special double treat a few weeks ago.

First of all, Grandma and Grandpa M arrived! No, really. They're all moved and everything.

They drove up with a small load of stuff in their pick up truck. A few days later the big moving company truck arrived and unloaded all of their other stuff. They're all moved in and living here now.

They still have the house down in Vegas and will be going down in the autumn to put it on the market.

I'm not sure. Don't ask me.

Sydney wasted no time at all in realizing she had someone new to read to her.

For those parents out there wondering, that's a magazine called High Five. It's the younger sister to Highlights. It just started at the beginning of this year and is designed for children age 3-6. Sydney really enjoys getting it in the mail each month and we usually end up reading it to her several times in those first few days. And she's really good at the find-the-hidden-stuff pictures.

The second part of the super special double treat was Grandma B coming for a visit. She arrived the day after Grandma and Grandpa M (and the day before the moving truck).

You might remember from Grandma B's last visit that Sydney had her reading Blue's Clues books to her. Well, the Blue's Clues books are Sydney's favorite potty-reading books on her own, but she barely ever asks us to read them to her. But she remembered that Grandma B reads them to her.

A day or two before Grandma B arrived I mentioned that she was coming. Sydney got really excited and said she was going to read Blue's Clues with Grandma B. So here they are.

We are trying to get Sydney potty trained. She's somewhat reluctant, but we had some ideas and bought a few things to try to help the process along. It's been about a week with some successes and some remissions. I'll tell more about the process next time. Hopefully with more positives to share if we can really get this thing going.

Michigan

2008-08-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

The last weekend in July I went back to Michigan for my high school reunion. It's been twenty years. Wow.

First of all, let me apologize to those people I didn't get a chance to see when I was back home. It was a short trip (arrived in the middle of the night Thursday and left again Monday afternoon). There were lots of things to do, lots of people to see and I just didn't get to all of them. Sorry if you were one of the people I didn't get to see.

Sydney and Anne didn't make the trip with me. It would have been very expensive and we wouldn't have been there long enough to have to put Sydney through a full day's worth of flying each way on either end of it. Regardless of how good she's been when traveling before we didn't think it would be a good idea.

So while in Michigan I stayed with my friend Victor. He was my best man at my wedding.

A lot of people attended the mixer on Friday night. Most of the people I at least remembered in the "oh, yeah" kind of way most people do at reunions. There were only a couple I didn't remember at all and there were several people I knew fairly well, having gone to school with them for the better part of our K-12 education.

Two of my best friends growing up were Tim and Keith. They weren't at the mixer on Friday but were at the dinner on Saturday.

Tim I went to elementary school together, though we really didn't become friends until fifth (maybe sixth) grade. In seventh grade we started junior high school (7-9th grades) and met Keith. Keith has the same last name as I do so we met in several classes we shared since we were sitting next to or in front of each other.

The three of us spent the better part of our youths playing role-playing games together. Tim and Keith eventually went away to college. I stayed home and went to community college, but then dropped out. Tim and Keith stayed close and were best man for each other at their weddings.

Here is Tim with his lovely wife, Marianne.

Anne and I got the pleasure of meeting Marianne just before we got married and about a year (I think?) before they got married. They took a trip to Vegas and we all got together. Even though I don't know her well it was good to see her again and know that she and Tim are doing well (and have two children).

They live in Chicago where Tim is an Assistant Principal at a high school. And I would like Mom (Grandma B) to know that we are partially to blame for Tim falling in love with Chicago. Although most of the blame goes to my Uncle Dave.

We went to Chicago in ninth grade. It was a birthday present for me. Mom took us there for several days over spring break. During the visit we saw Uncle Dave who was living there at the time. One of the most vivid memories Tim has of that trip is Uncle Dave driving down Michigan Avenue, swerving in and out of traffic and Tim thinking he was going to die in the back seat. We were going out for Indian food for dinner. (Tim told me to mention that, Mom. And Uncle Dave, if you see this. He still remembers great things about that trip.)

Here is a picture of Keith and his wife, Wendy.

This was my first time meeting Wendy. I kind of felt like I knew her (and their three children), though, since I keep up with the blog Wendy keeps.

While there were a lot of people it was good to see again at the reunion there was one other person I was very happy to see. This is my friend Michelle.

Michelle had a bit of a crush on me at one time, but mostly I just annoyed her. Anyone who knows my sense of humor will understand why. And since I knew she liked me and I could annoy her with my sense of humor I made that much more of a point to annoy her. In fact, one of our teachers was so amused by the situation she declared that we would be married within five years of graduation. (Sorry, Mrs. Miller, didn't happen. In fact, Michelle is still happily married to the man she was dating when we graduated.)

Even though we've barely seen each other since graduation Michelle and I still got along great and seemed like we barely missed a beat in all the years. (Though I tried not to annoy her.) She even said that she talks about me all the time. She has a 16 year old son who is struggling with Algebra, she said, and she is constantly telling him, "If my friend John was here he could help you with that."

On Sunday I didn't go to the Family Day picnic. Not much reason to since my family wasn't there and my two closest friends with family weren't going to be there. So instead I took a little road trip to Hell, MI.

I have an online friend who goes by the name of Oppiejoe over at the Museum of Hoaxes forum. (You might remember that we met Alex, the owner and Curator of the Museum when we went to San Diego in February.) He lives in Michigan and we wanted to get together to meet while I was there. A good "middle ground" that was interesting enough for us to get together was Hell. So we met there.

We met, we talked (though I was bit socialized-out after the previous two nights with old classmates), we shopped a little and we had ice cream. (It didn't melt as fast as you might think.)

Oppiejoe came with his lady friend, his daughter and her boyfriend. As we walked around we found the little "church" behind the store that is used for weddings in Hell (apparently). I managed to talk Oppiejoe and his lady friend to stand in front for a picture.

Since pink lawn flamingos seem to be a fairly common trope in stories over at the Museum of Hoaxes I found the Skel-A-Flamingo a funny item in the store. I had Oppiejoe hold it and snapped a picture.

When I got home I sent information about the Skel-A-Flamingos to Alex. He posted about them on his new "shared" website/blog, Weird Universe.

I think that's all I have for now. I have more to post, but that will be in a separate post (or two). I was going to try to get them up last night, but the site where I host my pictures was down. And I don't have enough time tonight so the updates will just have to be a bit slower than originally planned. But look for another one in a day or two.

Father's Day and Vegas

2008-06-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

Father's Day a couple weeks ago was a good day. I got to sleep in. I woke up a little before 10:00 am. (Wow!) When I went downstairs I caught Sydney helping Mommy back a cake for me.

We then had brunch. French toast and bacon. It was Sydney's first time having French toast and she threw a fit. She didn't want it (for lunch for her) and she wasn't going to try it. After getting her calmed down and talked into at least trying it she loved it and had seconds.

We played most the rest of the day and grilled steaks for dinner. After Sydney's nap she helped Mommy frost the cake.

She got to lick the frosting off her spatula when she was done. She really enjoyed it and got quite a messy face doing it. I would have taken another video or picture of it but I didn't think of it while I was licking off my own spatula. Yummy!

Saturday night before Father's Day we went out to dinner at a newer restaurant called Ciao Mambo. It was really good (Italian) food and really good service. In fact, they had a barbecue chicken pizza there that was pretty darn good. I've been looking a good barbecue chicken pizza since we left Vegas and this is the closest I have come to finding one as good as the Memphis pizza at Metro Pizza. If I liked the thinner, crispier type of crust better it would probably be just as good.

Anyway, the one complaint about the restaurant is that it's a little noisy. It's open-ceilinged, so you see the vents and everything up above you. This seems to makes noise carry and echo really well. Coupled with the music being played a tad bit loud makes for a rather noisy dining experience. But still good.

While we were waiting for our food a song came on that made Sydney feel like dancing.

Also while we were there Sydney announced several time that, "when I grow up I will be as tall as Daddy." Of course, trying to get her to say it for the video camera is completely different.

Then on Tuesday Sydney finished her lunch and got some chocolate cake for dessert. Afterward she had a bunch of crumbs down her front. I picked her up and stood her on the ledge of the kitchen sink and brushed her off. I remarked that, look, she was as tall as me.

Sydney turned to me and said, "No, Daddy. I have to be as tall as you on the floor."

This past weekend Sydney picked out a green dress to wear. Anne got her hair all done up and Sydney wanted to wear one of the bracelets she got in San Diego. The outfit was just too cute not to take a picture.

At the end of May we took a trip to Vegas. We left on a Thursday and came back the following Monday. We went for Anne's high school reunion. As usual, Sydney was excited about getting to go on a plane and behaved exceptionally well in the airport and on the plane.

We stayed with Aunt Helena and her dog Blue. Sydney really liked Blue, as you probably know already by the simple fact that he is a dog. Here's Sydney saying hello to Blue.

One of the things that Sydney apparently took away from the San Diego vacation was riding on a carousel. She let us know that she was going to do it again on this vacation. We cautiously explained to her that we didn't know if there was a merry-go-round that she'd be able to ride. She took the news well.

Of course, there was. Las Vegas has grown so much that they probably have everything there somewhere. Out in the area we last lived the changes were so great and development so expansive that more than one time we had no idea where we were and frequently barely recognized streets and areas we used to drive on practically every day.

Anyway, a new shopping area had put in a carousel in their park area. So we took Sydney to it.

Sydney is such a sweet little girl but she made sure to tell us how excited she was about the merry-go-round and threw in a few, "See? I told you" sos along the way.

I'm not sure what it is about that picture that I like so much.

After they rode the carousel it was time to go back to Aunt Helena's. We made the mistake of telling Sydney that it was time to go "home". She did not want to go home. She wanted to stay on vacation. So we corrected ourselves and explained that we wouldn't be going home for a few more days and that we needed to go back to Aunt Helena's house.

Well that was okay. Sydney got a bit happier as she announced that it was time to "go back to Blue's". And for the rest of the trip it wasn't Aunt Helena's house. It was Blue's.

Sydney had fun with Blue. She would give him treats.

And she would try to get him to shake. (Or "give me your paw" as Blue knows it.)

In the mornings Sydney would go out with Aunt Helena to water the plants on the front walk.

Aunt Helena fills up the watering can.

And even though (on the right side of the picture) this next one looks like Aunt Helena is getting ready to spray Sydney, she isn't really. And didn't.

And in this one it looks like Sydney needs to pay more attention to what she's watering than to smiling for the camera.

Saturday night was the reunion. It was fun enough. You know, for an event where I know one person (my wife) and may vaguely know one or two others if I happen to remember them from the last reunion.

Anne had been very excited about it but as it drew closer she cared less and less. She didn't enjoy it as much as her ten year reunion. Regardless, it was a fun night out. (Even if I did ruin her purse by putting chocolates in it that melted all over.)

Sunday was a lot of fun. Aunt Helena and Grandma M planned a brunch and everyone was invited. We ate a lot and sat around all day and talked. Then we still hung out, the grandparents left, some other friends came over and we had hamburgers and chicken for dinner. It was a great, fun and relaxing day.

Sydney really got to meet people who care a lot about her but who she hasn't seen since she was itty, bitty little. Like Aunt Leana.

And if I leave that by only mentioning "and Aunt Leana" and posting a picture I will probably never hear the end of it. Leana is a wonderful lady and has been best friends with Anne forever. She loves both Sydney and me with all her heart and we are part of her extended family. And while I can't speak for Sydney, I love Leana, too and miss her. Even if she didn't show up for babysitting duties with Aunt Helena on Saturday night.

Sydney also got to see Uncle Neal.

I will probably never hear the end of it if I don't mention more about Neal, but too bad. That's all you get. Ha ha!

Okay, fine. Neal is my best bud. We moved to Vegas together back in the day and while Anne and I were trying desperately to get away he stuck around. It was great seeing him again because neither one of us is good at actually calling the other. Or sending emails. Or any other type of communication.

Oh. Saturday we had lunch at Metro Pizza. And, yes, I had a Memphis barbecue chicken pizza. And, yes, it was as great as I remembered. Leana and Neal were there for lunch. (And Neal and I had just gone to a hockey game on Friday night. Great fun.) An old friend, Brad, also came (he was there for brunch on Sunday, too). He is a good friend of Helena's and therefore a good friend of ours. Even if he didn't come to our wedding because he was golfing. (You can sort of see Brad in the background behind Neal in the picture above.)

On Monday it was time to go home and leave Blue's. Sydney said good bye to Blue.

We went out to lunch with Grandma and Grandpa M. We followed them to the restaurant and Sydney, knowing they were in front of us, kept going, "Oh no. They're getting away," just about every time we left an intersection.

Helena came over to see us at their house afterward before we went to the airport.

I have no idea why this next picture didn't focus, but it's the only one I got with Sydney and Grandma M, so it isn't getting scrapped. Sorry, Grandma M.

And Sydney got some Grandpa M time, too.

That's just about all I have this time. I'll leave you with one last video. You can see how good Sydney has gotten at riding her tricycle.

General Update

2008-05-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been really busy at work. Not only is the summer busy season finally getting here but I have new responsibilities, too. A week or two into April I added on our Recreation Center to my list of departments. And with the weather finally settling into summer mode that means I've been busy all week getting things ready for the outdoor pool to open full time.

Compounding the matter is the fact that we're going out of town this weekend, so my week at work was short. We leave in just a few hours today to fly to Las Vegas for Anne's high school reunion. Mine will be in July and I will be flying back to Michigan for it. Unfortunately Anne and Sydney will not be going with me for that.

But this weekend Sydney is going. She is really looking forward to it. She wants to fly on the plane. She wants to take her penguin (stuffed penguin she got at Sea World). She wants to take her book Go, Dogs. Go. She wants to take her "pink pack" (pick roller back pack). We have such a good little traveler.

We will be staying with Aunt Helena. Grandma and Grandpa M are still in Vegas so we'll be seeing a lot of them, too. In fact we're borrowing one of their cars and they bought a car seat. They'll keep the car seat for use up here when they (finally) move here (?) in June (???).

Last post I gave some lame excuses for not having any new pictures of Sydney to share. So we made a point of taking some pictures of Sydney so we had new ones to this time.

Sydney is holding up the Word World scene Mommy helped her make on the computer at PBSKids.org. Word World is one of her favorite shows.

And then Sydney poses with Mommy holding another Word World they created.

On Sunday nights Anne actually gets to go to bed at a decent hour. (That's a relative term meaning she gets to go to bed and get a normal amount of sleep. When you work at 3:00 am there is no such thing as a decent bed time or a decent time to get up.) Sunday is also the night I give Sydney a bath. After the bath Anne is usually ready for bed. Sydney crawls up and gives Mommy big hugs and kisses.

Then she helps pull the covers up and tuck Mommy in.

Sydney's latest fun thing to do in the car is to find stop signs. She loves trying to find them and exclaim, "There's one!" when she sees one. She then spells it out. "S-T-O-P. STOP!" She's gotten quite good at it.

She also has another little game we play, but we only play this one if we drop off Mommy and are waiting in the car for her to come back. Sydney picks a color and then we try to find a car of that color. She's pretty good at finding them, though we had trouble finding a pink car the other day. Strangely enough, an orange car drove by almost right after she picked orange just before pink.

Sydney's hair is finally getting long enough to put into a fairly decent pony tail. Not that it's stopped us before, but now we can use elastic bands instead of just clips. Here she is with a Cookie Monster band in her hair.

When I went to take this picture Sydney told me to wait. She apparently felt that she needed a prop in the picture so she picked up her ball. That ball has the letters of the alphabet all around it with an item pictured by the letter. (Just in case the image is difficult to make out.) Sydney calls that her "soccer ball". That's one of her indoor balls.

She did get a real soccer ball for her birthday. Here's a video of her kicking it around the yard!

Sydney also likes to bang away on the piano. She knows how to turn it on and off, turn up the volume and change various settings (though she doesn't really understand what they do). Here's another video!

Sydney has been going to a play group/class called Romp & Roll offered through our city's Parks & Recreation Department. She was doing that quite a bit for the last two years. The highlight for her was always to see what the craft was for that week, make it and then bring it home to show Mommy.

A few weeks ago was the last Romp & Roll for the summer. And since Sydney is at the high end of the age range she won't be going back again. (But there are other classes they offer and we'll be signing her up for more stuff.)

Here's a video of Sydney crawling through a play tunnel during the last class.

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend. Mark and I went to see the new Indian Jones movie Friday night. Anne and Jackie went to see it on Saturday. Then on Saturday we had a barbecue over at Mark and Jackie's house. They have a Wii, too, so I took Mario Kart and the controllers over so we could play a bit.

Sydney likes to play Mario Kart, too. Except she has some trouble driving straight, staying on the road in general, and thinks it's funny when she runs into the wall.

Oh, well. She's learning. And she's only three.

Mark and Jackie got a new puppy a few weeks ago. (Their previous dog of many, many years passed away a couple months ago after battling lung cancer.) The new puppy is named Daisy and is a black lab mix. She's really cute and very energetic. Sydney, of course, loves dogs and enjoyed playing with Daisy. Though she was a little shy at actually just petting her.

That's Rylen holding Daisy's leash. And in the next video, that's Mark standing in the middle of the room.

Tell A Story

2008-04-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

We haven't taken any pictures since Sydney's birthday. I think I might get some angry comments from relatives about that. But there are still a couple videos to share. And some stories.

The weekend after Sydney's birthday was absolutely gorgeous. It got up to about 72 F (22 C) on Sunday. Both days (Saturday was slightly cooler, but not by much) we went to the park. Sunday was actually windy enough that we took Sydney's kite with us to try to fly. She had been asking to try to fly it almost everyday since her birthday and would then lament that it wasn't windy enough.

It was windy enough at the park to fly the kite, but just barely. Every few minutes there would be a slight lull in the wind and the kite would head for the ground. Sometimes we could yank it and save it as the wind picked up again. Most of the time it would crash and we'd have to start over.

This explains Sydney's comments you can barely make out over the wind. First, "It's flying. It's flying." That's followed a few second later by, "It's crashing. It's crashing." It actually wasn't that time, but whenever the kite would take a dip in height she thought it was crashing.

After that weekend the weather took a turn for the worse. It has mostly been raining with enough snow mixed in (but not sticking) to be annoying. It's been cool and it wasn't until this past weekend that we've had some decent, sunny, somewhat warm weather. Then it got cool and started spitting some snow at us again today. It's actually supposed to be nice the next couple days (around 60 F/16 C) just in time to rain again all weekend. Glad we mowed the lawn last weekend.

We did get Sydney in for her three year check up about two weeks after her birthday. She is 41 inches tall. Best estimate, at least. She wouldn't stand still (or straight) and started getting freaked out when the nurse tried to put her back up against the measuring spot multiple times. Consoling from Mommy and Daddy didn't help get her measured any better. But our experience from our vacation told us she was about 41 inches tall, so I'm good with that measurement.

As you might imagine, that puts her at the top of the height chart for her age. She's not off it, but she is certainly at the top if it. She also weighs 38 pounds. That puts her weight squarely in the 95th percentile for her age.

On Sunday evenings I give Sydney a bath after dinner. Anne gets ready for bed and goes to sleep at a "decent hour" (for her). This is the only night of the work week that she really gets good sleep since every other night I'm working and she puts Sydney to bed. Sydney goes to bed at 7:00 PM (though she doesn't always stay there and rarely falls asleep at that time), but since Anne gets up around 2:00 AM for work so she is frequently short of sleep.

One of these recent Sunday evenings Sydney and I went downstairs. Sydney asked her usual question of, "do you want to play, Daddy?" Of course I did, but Sydney wanted to play Chase. As I've done before, I explained to Sydney that we couldn't. Mommy was upstairs trying to sleep and we had to be quiet so as not to wake her.

Sydney understood this perfectly. So she took a couple steps toward me, slowly reached out her hand and touched my leg and whispered, "Tag. You're it." She turned and ran a few steps away and then turned back toward me and, still whispering said, "Is that good?"

So of course we played Quiet Chase for a little while.

This past weekend Sydney decided at one time that Mommy needed a nap. She tucked Mommy in on the sofa and then told her a story. I ran and got my phone to video it and made her do it again. It is a re-enactment (you can tell by the knowing looks she gives to the camera), but is otherwise pretty much the same.

Now let me offer a transcript of that video in case you didn't get it.

Sydney tucks Mommy in and then goes to sit in her Elmo chair. She then tells Mommy a story.

"Once upon a time a girl went up the hill and fell down the hill. And after after after."

That last part, I believe, is supposed to be the traditional, "and lived happily ever after." At least Sydney says "yes" when I ask her if that's what it means. (She's repeated this story several times over the last few days.)

Sydney then goes on to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to Mommy.

I think there was another story I was supposed to share on the blog but I don't remember what it is. I'm sure Anne will remind me when she reads this, so it will probably be in the next update.

Happy Birthday, Sydney!

2008-04-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

Grandma B is here for a visit over Sydney's birthday weekend. Sydney is taking full advantage of it and playing with Grandma every single chance she gets. We have a stack of Blue's Clues books in Sydney's room that she hasn't shown the least bit on interest in until this week. Grandma has read them to her four or five times through now.

On Friday we were waiting for a delivery. My grandmother emailed to say Sydney would be getting a balloon delivery on Friday before 11:00 AM. Sydney didn't know this, but she still apparently didn't feel like eating lunch. She got up and went to play by herself while Grandma and I finished eating.

Sydney was looking for "Monster," who is apparently invisible. She went and grabbed her sunglasses to find him and then led him off to play. "Oh, there you are, Monster. Come on."

She moved out of the kitchen and into the front room where we could continue to hear her play with monster and then, apparently, monster disappeared. "Monster. Where are you, Monster? Come out."

A few minutes later Sydney realized we were done with lunch and wanted to play Chase/Tag with me. Grandma was sitting in the front room watching us. Sydney decided to tell her every time we went by that we were playing Tag. She then proceeded to go into demonstration mode to show Grandma how to play.

In case you can't make it out, the instructions include stopping, running, stopping and running and falling down. While it sounds intriguing, that doesn't sound like a version of Tag we've actually played. And notice she still had her sunglasses on. Monster wasn't playing as far as I could tell.

Anne got home from work at noon and I got ready to leave. The delivery still hadn't arrived yet, but then I looked out the window and saw a white van come around the corner. I managed to get Sydney out into the living room so she wouldn't look out and spoil the surprise.

Sydney really loved getting the balloons. She wants them in her room when she takes a nap and goes to bed at night. They go downstairs when we go down after waking up.

And did I mention that Sydney really loves the balloons?

Saturday was her birthday and she was a happy birthday girl all day long. She was very patient all day, knowing friends were coming over for a party and she couldn't open gifts until then.

We all had a good time chatting and eating pizza. Sydney was finished but some of us were still eating when she came up and asked when she could open her presents. So we decided to skip cake so our food could settle and open gifts first.

Sydney was very happy.

As you can see, Sydney was excited to open a present. And as soon as that one was open she was excited to open the next one.

The gift in that video is a Birthday Girl accessory set (for lack of a better name). It included a tiara, a star wand, a "Birthday Girl" sash and clip on earrings. Sydney absolutely loved it. It was a gift from our friend Kathy.

And then Sydney opened the other gift from Kathy.

That is a play dress for playing dress up. It completes the whole ensemble. Sydney wanted to wear it all right away. Of course, she wasn't going to stop opening presents, either, so Mommy had to take everything out and help her put it on while she continued with the gifts.

There's Sydney opening one of Grandma B's gifts. And yes, Sydney has most of her outfit on. (Anne held off putting the earrings on her and the sash was packaged too well to get out easily. The wand is on the table and she kept very close track of it throughout the gift opening process.)

And, yes, Grandma B has very good taste on gifts. That is a Duplo LEGO set.

Here Sydney seems to be eying her wand while she hands some of the clothes Grandma and Grandpa M got her to Mommy. They got her some really adorable outfits. I'm sure regular readers will be seeing her in them as I take pictures this summer.

After presents came the cake. Sydney picked it out herself as we filled in the order form last week. White cake with a layer of chocolate mousse frosting between the layers. And white cream cheese frosting. She even picked out the balloon design on top. And since we ordered it last weekend she asked Anne about it several times this week, saying she wanted to eat her balloon cake.

Later in the evening we played Wii with Jackie and the boys. Everyone else had left and Jackie had brought their Guitar Hero guitar so we could play two-player. Sydney snuggled while we took turns playing.

We've never really done the "you're a princess!" thing with Sydney, though she certainly knows that we love her and think she is a super special little girl. But Saturday, after getting her outfit, Sydney wasn't shy about letting us know that she's a princess. And a birthday princess at that.

After everyone had left and we got her ready for bed she let me know she was a "tired princess". But that still didn't mean she wanted to go to bed. She recapped the day, telling us that she had a great time. She got to open presents and eat pizza and eat cake. And she got clothes and games and she got a crown and a wand and a dress.

She was a very, very happy little ~~girl~~ birthday princess as she went to bed on her birthday.

Anne put her dress in the closet when she changed Sydney into her pajamas. The tiara and wand went on her bookshelf across from her bed so she could see them. The balloons were in her room, too, of course.

Sunday morning Sydney came in to get us when she woke up. Saturday morning she had been carrying her balloons. Sunday she was carrying her wand and tiara. And she seemed very indignant that she had to ask Mommy where her dress was.

Anne didn't let her wear it until after she had eaten breakfast and gotten dressed. Then she took a few pictures in the full outfit. (And Sydney proceeded to wear it the rest of the day, of course.)

The balloons, as you can see, were starting to wilt. We cut off the latex balloons.

What a great weekend. There are a few other pictures not posted here that you can see over at my Picture Trail Photo Album.

Grandma B Is Coming!

2008-03-30T21:37:00.001-07:00

Hah! You thought that my last post would have the last of vacation stuff, didn't you? I fooled you with the "Vacation Wrap Up" in the title.

Apparently that was all a lie. But I think this little bit will be the last of it.

There are two pieces of art that we got on vacation that are now hanging up in Sydney's room. Both of them were bought at LEGOLAND, but, surprising, have nothing to do with LEGO. (They're both something that can be readily found and purchased in any amusement park.)

That is a scroll of Sydney's name painted in plants and animals. From left to right there are a koala bear, monkeys, a kangaroo, a giraffe, a kitten and panda bears. Anne went out and got the frame today and, since it's kind of a custom-sized picture, she got the colored paper to put behind it as matting. I think it turned out great.

She also picked up a frame for the caricature we had done of all of us together. I'll let it speak for itself.

One of Sydney's favorite lullabies is Rubber Duckie. I'm not sure how that became a bedtime song, but it is. We only sing one (slightly modified) verse to her, though.

Rubber duckie you're the one.
Quack quack
You make bath time lots of fun.
Quack quack
Rubber duckie you're the one for me.
Quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack

The other day Sydney was singing it so, of course, I had to video it.

The duck she's holding in the video is not a rubber duckie. It's a plastic duckie and you push the purple thing down and it will go across a flat, hard surface.

Our weather has been strange over the past couple weeks. It has almost constantly been above freezing during the day, but that hasn't stopped it from snowing. It usually doesn't stick, though, except at night when it's below freezing. Or, when it does stick during the day, it's not sticking on the roads and is usually gone within a couple hours of it stopping.

Friday night we got a good four or five inches of snow over night. It stuck around for a while, even though the streets were the first to melt and be gone. We did go out and shovel the driveways. After that I had to cut up some boards to fix the support in Sydney's bed. While I was doing that Sydney and Mommy made a snowman.

I should note that those are Mega Blocks on the snowman and not LEGO blocks. Jackie gave them to us in a little wagon when her boys outgrew them. But since nothing but LEGO is allowed in the house the Mega Blocks have been in the garage and designated as an outside toy.

As of this afternoon almost all the snow is melted. The poor snowman has lost almost all of his features and his head is tilted sideways and about to fall off.

This afternoon I was watching more basketball. Sydney curled up beside me and Anne decided she should get a picture.

While we were watching basketball Sydney decided she wanted my hat. Then she decided she wanted her own hat and went and grabbed a plastic pail and put it on her head. She had a little plastic spatula from her kitchen set she held and pumped her arm and went, "Arr!" because she was a pirate.

By the time I grabbed the phone to record it she had decided she was a chicken whenever she had the pail on her head. So here you go. Sydney the Pirate Chicken!

Last but not least we come to the title of the post. Grandma B is coming for a visit. She'll be here on Wednesday and will be here for a week for Sydney's birthday (Saturday).

Sydney is very excited about Grandma B coming. When Mommy mentioned that we had to clean this morning in anticipation of her visit Sydney was all for helping. (I should note that Sydney is usually all for helping with cleaning or whatever we're doing. She was just extra exuberant today.)

She kept telling us that we had to clean "Grandma's house" for her because she was coming. Here's a picture of Sydney helping dust "Grandma's house" (our guest room).

Finally, I have been tagged with a meme by MadCarlotta. It is "What's on my nightstand".

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.

Right. I'm in the office which is pretty much our default library. Since there are so many books in here and they are all close I was sorely tempted to just go into the bedroom and grab the book off my nightstand that I am currently reading. (His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman)

But then I happened to glance to my immediate left and look on top of the old television we have sitting here to see Legends of the Mountain State sitting right here. You might recall me mentioning it before. It's the anthology Anne's sister Marta wrote a story for. Her first published story.

For some reason Anne and I have yet to read the book (I did actually read a couple pages of Marta's story while I was waiting for something to download). Probably because all the copies we bought are sitting here in the office waiting for us to ship them off to Marta to have her sign them.

Anyway, that's the closest book so I'm going with that.

2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 3rd sentence.

You're not going to believe this. Page 123 happens to be the fifth page of Marta's story. Really! I'm not making it up. I'm not fudging the least bit.

Right. Found it. That wasn't hard. But since everyone else has actually typed out the third sentence I guess I should do that, too. I'll count the third full sentence since the first sentence is continued from the previous page.

"Don't know," the tramp whispered.

3. Post the next 5 sentences.

"Ghost ate me. There's a fire in the furnace you know."

"I'll get some food. Sit tight," Joe said. He shuffled to the lockers and retrieved his lunch pail.

4. Tag 5 people.

Nope. Won't do it. If you feel like doing this meme feel free. (I half expect my mother and grandmother to do it since they're big readers. And at the same time I half expect them not to.)

Vacation Wrap Up and Easter

2008-03-27T22:26:00.001-07:00

Well, I never went back and proofread my vacation post. Oh, well.

In that post I mentioned that we did some stuff over the few days we were still home after we got back from the trip. Before we went on vacation we had been shopping for beds. Sydney's (main) birthday present this year is a new "big girl" bed.

We had decided on looking at bunk beds. We wanted one that had storage built into it. We found a few models that we liked as we shopped around. The weekend before vacation we were at a store and they had available one of the models that we liked. They had to order it, but they offered a really good price on it so we went ahead.

It arrived while we were in San Diego and we had it delivered on Thursday, the day after we got back. We didn't pay for assembly, but apparently the guys in the warehouse were slow and bored one day and put most of it together for us.

During vacation Sydney enjoyed sleeping on her own "big bed" (roll away) in the hotel room. So when we explained and showed her that she was getting her own bed she was really excited. We shopped for new sheets and a comforter, cleaned and re-organized her room and got everything set up.

The bed takes up most of her room, but it is worth it. She loves it and it gives us extra storage space in there. Especially since she's still too young for the top bunk and we can stick all of her stuffed animals up there. (Except the ones she sleeps with - which varies since every few days she puts one back and pulls another one down.)

The bottom bed is a full/double. It's plenty big enough for even our tall daughter to grow into for years to come.

Sydney has a new hiding spot when we play Hide N Seek.

Of course, I have to help her stack the pillows up around her, so it's not too difficult to find her. But I pretend it is. One day after I stacked the pillows around her she was peeking out of a hole between pillows. She looked so cute I had to get the camera to take a picture.

And she thought a picture was such a great idea that she had me go get her camera so she could take a picture.

The camera was a Christmas present and Sydney loves taking pictures with it. (There are a lot of floor/feet shots, but not as many now that she has figured out where the button is so she can push it will looking through the view finder.) And some of you may be wondering why you haven't seen any of Sydney's great pictures.

Well, mainly that would be because, to be a durable children's camera, the batteries and memory card are in a compartment that is screwed on. So it's a bit of a pain to get the card out. Plus I usually forget about it when I'm planning blog posts. Sorry.

And to answer the other question I can hear everyone asking, yes, we did take the camera on vacation with us. Unfortunately, it stayed in the backpack almost the whole time. As we were packing things each morning I'd see it and think that we need to give it to her when we get to where we were going. And then I'd forget. And I don't think Sydney gave it much thought, either.

Last week I took Thursday and Friday off (in addition to Saturday and Sunday). It was mainly to watch basketball since the NCAA basketball tournament opening rounds were those two days. There was other stuff to do (like take Sydney to her play class on Thursday morning), but when I was home I was mostly watching basketball.

So you can imagine my distress of having a young little girl want to play Chase or Hide N Seek and having to chase her into other rooms of the house while I'm trying to watch the exciting end of a tournament upset. What's a loving father to do?

Why find a game that can be played in the living room, of course!

So I had Sydney go get the pillows out of the front room and I built her a fort out of pillows and blankets on the couch. She loved it. (And enjoys knocking them down when we're done almost much as she likes playing in them.)

Sydney was very excited about Easter, as you might imagine. The Easter Bunny was coming. He was going to hide eggs for her to find and bring her an Easter basket full of goodies.

We dyed eggs on Saturday. Sydney mostly enjoyed it though the waiting part was hard. Between the egg being put in the dye and taking it out there wasn't much to do. And between taking the egg out and waiting for it to dry so it could be further decorated there wasn't much to do. But she made due with "stirring" the egg in the blue dye and she seemed happy with that.

Easter morning arrived and she was very excited. She came in our bedroom to get us. We normally snuggle in the mornings when all three of us are home, but she wasn't having much of that. We went downstairs and found the Easter basket the Easter Bunny had left on the coffee table in the front room. Sydney saw it right away as we came downstairs.

We sorted through the various goodies that were in it.

The item Sydney is holding in that picture was her favorite present from the Easter Bunny. It's a little egg wand. When you push the button on it the little wheel inside the egg spins around and the colored lights on the wheel light up and flash in simple patterns. She barely let go of it all day on Sunday.

By the end of the day the batteries were going. On Monday morning it was time to replace the batteries and I had to tell her that I would have to get them on my way to work so she couldn't play with it the rest of the day. So I got new batteries at Radio Shack on my way to work on Monday. Then on Tuesday morning Sydney came in to get me when she woke up (extra early), told me it was time to get up, and (repeatedly) told me we had to go downstairs now "to put the batteries in". Luckily I had done that when I got home the night before, so it was all ready to go.

Aaaanyway, the Easter Bunny did a fine job hiding the eggs we had dyed. (And he didn't seem to have a problem finding them in the refrigerator, though I'm sure he's used to having to get eggs from there.) He hid the eggs throughout the four downstairs rooms and Sydney found them all.

After the egg hunt we went back about our usual morning routine. But then Sydney happened to look out the back patio door and saw an Easter egg outside. The Easter Bunny had apparently hid some plastic eggs outside in the back yard again this year!

So we (kind of) bundled up and went outside to look for more eggs.

Once the egg hunt was over we went back inside to open the eggs. Sydney got some snacks, but the Easter Bunny also had some larger plastic eggs that had little Sesame Street figures in them.

Later that day we went over to our friends' house (Diana and Ruffie - Jackie's mom and step-father) for Easter dinner. Sydney got another Easter basket from Diana and a third one (in a little purse instead of a basket) from Donna (mother of our friend Kathy). You can probably imagine that she was quite excited about it all. Though I don't think she ever let go of that light.

Catching Up

2008-03-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

All right. Let's catch up on some stuff I've had back-logged.

First, back in early January was Anne's birthday. It was on a Thursday, and Thursdays are usually the morning Sydney and I go out. We go to her class/play group if there is one or, like that Thursday, we go out and run a few errands.

I explained that it was Mommy's birthday. I told her that we were going to get Mommy a birthday card. Sydney could sign (scribble in crayon) hers. Then when Mommy got home from work we would say, "Happy Birthday, Mommy!" and give her the cards (and presents that were already bought). Sydney didn't think that sounded very fun and said she didn't want to do it.

We went off to the card shop anyway and picked out cards. When we got back in the car Sydney had changed her mind. She could now hardly wait for Mommy to get home so she could tell her, "Happy Day, Mommy!" (Her way of saying happy birthday.)

Toward the end of the football season our friend Kyle would come over on Sundays and watch some of the games with us. He is self-proclaimed to be not much of a reader. So when Sydney corralled him and had him read with her I had to get a little of it on video.

Sydney has discovered a little music box that Mommy keeps on her dresser. It plays Masquerade from Phantom of the Opera. She likes to dance to it.

And the last video of this update involves Sydney getting tickled silly. I assure you that despite the screams (you may want to turn the sound down for the first bit of the video) she is having a great time and thoroughly enjoys being tickled my Mommy.

In Sydney's Christmas stocking was some Play-Doh. She enjoys playing with it and squeezing it. This was one of the first "sculptures" she made with it.

When we were buying autumn/winter clothes for Sydney we got a pair of pants with a belt. Sydney liked the belt and would carry it around and play with it, but didn't really want to wear it.

Over this past week she starting wanting to help me get my belt down when I was getting dressed for work. I would pick her up and tell her if I needed my brown or black belt and she would grab it.

Well, except for the fact that she calls it a "seatbelt".

Then later in the week she remembered her own seatbelt and has wanted to wear it everyday when she gets dressed. So, pink outfit or not (it's a pink belt), she's had on her seatbelt all week.

A couple weeks ago I got out of the shower while getting ready for work. When I went out in the bedroom Sydney jumped up off the floor and said, "Look, Daddy. A playhouse. I built a playhouse."

She had taken all of the toys, stuffed animals and some books we keep in our bedroom and arranged them in a circle on the floor. She sat with her back against the bench/sofa thing at the end of our bed and was encircled by the toys.

I offered appropriate praise at the wonderful playhouse she had built.

The next day I got out of the shower while getting ready for work. When I went out in the bedroom Sydney once again had all of her toys, stuffed animals and books in a circle around her and she sat with her back to the bench at the end of the bed.

Of course, I knew it was a playhouse, but with the level of excitement she had shown the day before I figured I would ask and let her tell me what it was.

"Wow, Sydney. What's that?" I asked.

Sydney looked at me, looked at the circle of toys and said in a rather matter-of-fact way, "It's a mess. A big mess."

And last thing for today, here's a nice picture I just took today of my two beautiful girls.

Vacation

2008-02-24T20:11:00.000-08:00

It's been way too long since I posted a real post and good Sydney content. That is about to be made up to you. Be warned that this post is very long. There are A LOT of pictures and some videos.

Enjoy. (This took a long time to write and it's now bedtime. I'll proofread it later. For now you get it "as is".)

Day 1 - Saturday, February 2

Yay! Two whole weeks off from work and together as a family. We were still home in Idaho, but the prospect of all the time off was enough to make everyone happy.

Over the last two weeks we had about two feet of snow dumped on us. This was the fourth highest amount of snow in a winter since the early-20s for this area. (According to a newspaper article I read at some point.) I think by the time January ended we actually set the record for January snow fall, but I won't swear to that.

This picture was actually taken the week before our vacation, but it gives you a good idea of the snow we had.

That's taken at the front corner of our driveway where the sidewalk meets it. Sydney (and the snowman) are standing on about a foot and half of snow above the sidewalk. (There are a couple other pictures of Sydney and the snowman - and one with Mommy - in the photo album. You know where to look.)

We had an appointment on Saturday so we braved the roads and went. It was very important.

You might remember me writing this past spring about the haircut that Anne gave Sydney. That was technically Sydney's first, but it was really only a trim. On this day Sydney got her first real haircut.

The picture was taken with my phone since I forgot to grab the regular camera on the way out the door. And so was this video.

As you can see, Sydney was very happy to have her hair cut. She enjoyed it, didn't have a fit or any problems throughout the process. And she looked really cute with the final product.

Day 2 - Sunday, February 3

Super Bowl Sunday. We spent the morning packing (and much of the day before doing laundry).

While we had mentioned the trip to San Diego to Sydney we spent time talking to her about actual details of the trip, flying on a plane and some of the processes we would be going through at the airport.

Sydney was very excited, especially about flying on a plane. When she woke up from her nap the first words out of her mouth were something to the effect of, "Let's go fly on the plane".

We went over to our friend Kathy's houses for a small Super Bowl party. I was disappointed that the Patriots couldn't win. I really wanted them to go undefeated. Oh, well.

Day 3 - Monday, February 4

We woke up and finished packing. A transportation van from my work took us to the airport. Our flight wwas delayed an hour.

The flight time was originally perfect because we would be flying (it's about a 2:30 flight) during Sydney's nap time. She could reasonable sleep most of the flight. The delay doesn't bother us (much), though, because Sydney is too excited to be tired enough to sleep in the airport.

The flight is just over half full so we have plenty of space. Anne and Sydney are together and I end up moving to the seats in front of them to have more room to stretch. The flight is quick and painless and Sydney does sleep much of it.

Getting to the hotel is also relatively painless, as is getting the rental car. (The child seat with the rental car wasn't so painless, but it was serviceable. We dealt with it throughout the trip. Not that we had a choice.)

We stayed in Old Town. Our first order of business once we checked in and settled a little was to find a Target store. We went and got a few things we needed including diapers and bottled water. And since we didn't travel with a stroller we bought a cheap $11.00 fold-up stroller, too.

The stroller was really a little short for us to push comfortably, but we needed it. When we weren't at a major attraction (where we rented a better park stroller) it really was very good to have.

We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. Other than having a very uncomfortable bed it was nice. Sydney slept on a roll-away and liked having her own, big bed.

We were on the second floor and had a small balcony that overlooked the courtyard. There was a fountain below our balcony and just about every time we left the room Sydney wanted to go see "the water".

And since I've now gone almost two days of this vacation account without a picture or video I'll show you the fountain.

I'm not sure what day that was taken on, but it wasn't the day we arrived. Regardless, Sydney always loved playing outside, looking at the fountain and running around. Usually with one of us chasing her.

As you can also probably see, the weather was beautiful. It was "warm" and gorgeous every day we were there. It started out with highs in the mid-60s. By the end of our trip it was pushing 80.

Day 4 - Tuesday, February 5

The first two days of our vacation were pretty open. We didn't have one of the major attractions planned so we could go and see whatever we wanted. This day we started off driving around and finding Balboa Park. It sits right next to the San Diego Zoo and is very large. There are lots of different museums at the park.

We found a spot to park (wasn't easy) and managed to cross the busy street to the park. On our way up a grassy hill I remembered the stroller and had to go back to get it. I met Anne and Sydney at the large fountain behind the Natural History Museum.

We decided to go to the Natural History Museum. Unfortunately, we were not impressed. It was crowded, which is really fine. I'd expect it to be. But it was small and really had little in the way of displays. Add on the fact that half of two of the floors were closed for renovation and it was even smaller.

But Sydney liked the baby mastodon sculpture.

We walked around and saw some more of the park. We made our way over to the apparently popular Lily Pond. Sydney liked the fish swimming around.

According to the guide book I picked up at the hotel:

Camera buffs never tire of taking photographs of the Lily Pond (9), which is one of the most photographed sites in the park.It was built in 1915.

Can you see the problem here? If not, take another look at the fish picture above. Notice anything? If not, try this picture.

Yes, I could certainly spend all day here taking snapshots of the lily pond.

Apparently February, despite year-round nice weather in San Diego, isn't the ideal time to see lilies at the Lily Pond. (The number notation in the description above, by the way, is just a map notation. Nothing important, but I felt that I should quote the entire passage.)

The building you see up at the head of the Lily Pond is a botanical garden. We strolled around in there. There wasn't much to shock and amaze, though they did have a few Venus fly trap plants growing in there (well out of reach, darn it). The picture isn't the greatest, so it isn't shared here. You do get this very nice picture of this very beautiful flower. It caught my eye so I switched over to macro and took a close up of it.

I'm sure someone can tell me what kind it is because I forgot what the sign said.

We strolled around Old Town that evening and had dinner at Fred's Mexican Cafe. Sounds authentic, doesn't it?

It was good food and we picked the right evening to visit. The fifth of every month is Cinco de Fred. They have food and drink specials. Especially on margaritas. We were on vacation and walking so Anne and I each had two.

Right at the entrance to the restaurant is a bright red parrot in a large cage. He was making a lot of noise as we waited for our food (we were out on the patio about fifteen feet from him). Anne took Sydney over to see him. She was impressed with the parrot saying hello and spent quite a bit of the rest of the evening copying the parrot's squawk.

Can you guess what the parrot's name is?

Day 5 - Wednesday, February 6

Our second full day and still not a day-long event to take up our time. We spent some time driving around and getting our bearings. Then we drove up to Mission Beach (at a suggestion from a friend at work). Sydney enjoyed it, though we stayed out of the water. (While the weather was warm by our standards it was still a tad chilly for a water excursion.)

And, as we've seen before, Sydney always enjoys throwing rocks into water.

We left the beach and drove around mostly aimlessly. We drove around and through (via bridges) Mission Bay. We found a sandwich shop and bought lunch. We then went to a playground right off Mission Bay (and close to SeaWorld) that we had seen from the highway. We had a picnic lunch and then let Sydney run around and play.

As usual, Sydney enjoyed the slides the most.

The park wasn't very crowded (it was quite big), but there were quite a few people there, we thought, for a mid-week day. One lady had her little girl at one of the slides we spent a bit of time at. We were chatting for a while.

After mentioning that we were on vacation she stopped and looked at us. Apparently realization dawned on her now that we were wearing shorts and tee-shirts. Everyone else at the park most likely lived in San Diego since they were bundled up in jeans and sweatshirts and/or coats on this high-60s day.

More than once on our vacation we heard San Diegoans (?) wondering when this "cold weather" was going to be over with. We laughed every time we heard it.

A picture of Sydney and Mommy at a look out over Mission Bay. And Sydney on a whale.

Day 6 - Thursday, February 7

LEGOLAND!

Most of you know my fondness of anything LEGO, so most of you are probably asking why we waited two days to go to LEGOLAND.

It's all because of my amazing self-control and my complete unselfishness of wanting to do what my wife and daughter want to do before my own wants and needs.

And LEGOLAND is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this time of year.

It was great fun. Anne wasn't greatly impressed (especially with the admission price, which is a bit high). But I enjoyed every minute I spent there. Naturally.

Almost as soon as we walked in the park we were attacked by Darth Vader. Oh, no!

He just kept coming and coming so I stepped in when Sydney got tired.

Miniland is the part of the park where they have all the small, scale models made from LEGO. As you might be able to guess, I took way too many pictures in LEGOLAND. In fact, I took more pictures there than anywhere else we went during the trip. But don't worry, you won't have to see them all. But you're about to see a lot of them.

This farm was rather neat. On the little columns in front of it (where Sydney and Anne are standing) were buttons for each of the animals in it. When you pushed a button the type of animal it was for would move. The farm would play "Old MacDonald" and the verse would be for that animal. (With a quack, quack here and a quack, quack there...)

There were several displays and opportunities for things like that throughout the park. And if there is one thing that Sydney learned on this trip it was that she liked pushing buttons. By the end of the trip the opportunity to take the elevator and push the buttons almost rivaled the opportunity to go see the water (fountain) in the courtyard.

That's the U.S. Capital Building. Or at least LEGO model of it. There's a marching band going back and forth in front of it. Once again, there are buttons to push to make the various instruments play.

They had New York City (skyline) there in Miniland. And in case anyone is wondering about the building that will be where the World Trade Center used to be, it's called the Freedom Tower. And it's already built in Miniland.

If anyone is wondering how tall Sydney is now I can tell you that she is over 40 inches. But she's less than 42. There were a few rides she could ride.

This ride just goes around in a large circle. You can turn the steering wheel to angle your craft out (as seen) and make it feel like you're going faster. Sydney really liked it.

Outside the ride, for the people watching, they have more buttons to push. These buttons make water cannons shoot water into the are to help get the riders wet. This was a common theme in all the parks we went to, though in most you had to pay $.50 to spray the water/shoot the large water gun. I'm not sure if you had to at LEGOLAND. Guessing by the frequency of the geysers even when the ride wasn't going I'm going to guess you didn't. At least on that ride.

This is a LEGO workshop you could walk up to view through the window. This is one of the areas where they build test models for the park. If it gets approved it goes in the park. You can see some of the models there, though there were a lot more in the areas you can't see in this photo. The main thing to notice here, though, are all the blue, red and yellow bins on the shelves. Yes, they all contain LEGO block upon LEGO block.

*DROOLS*

Sydney, Queen of LEGOLAND!

Smerk! (For those of you not getting the reference, don't worry. Smerk is a dragon I know over on the Museum of Hoaxes forum. The appropriate people will appreciate the picture.)

One of the stores in the park is set up just for the movie/studio tie ins with LEGO. All the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, Spongebob and something I'm probably forgetting are sold there. It's nice to have them all in one spot, though not as nice as the huge store they had in the front of the store.

But the big tore didn't have Chewbacca.

I always enjoyed those photograph opportunities where the display has a hole to stick your head in for someone to take a picture of you. This shark one is just too neat.

Sydney got in on it, too. And, I'm happy to report, she was more than happy to continue sticking her head into the picture displays throughout our vacation. You'll see more later.

I got a chance to ride a ride while Sydney was zonked out in her stroller. It's at the big red dragon from a few pictures ago. It's a two-seat ride and the arm whips you around in all directions. Seeing the picture will probably let you realize what is does better than I can explain it.

You get to pick what "level" ride you want. Anywhere from 1 to 5. There is a limit depending on your height.

Unfortunately, there is also an upper limit. There girls running it thought I was too tall. They had me stand under the maximum height bar, but they were too short to see. So they had me sit in the car and see how I fit. My feet didn't touch the loading platform (well, my toes barely touched) and my shoulders fit int he harness fine, so I got to ride.

Yes, I picked level 5.

Oh. And that big red thing on the right side of the picture is a dragon leg. Or part of a dragon leg.

We walked around the park a bit more while Sydney was asleep. It was later in the afternoon than she normally naps, so the exhaustion must have finally caught up to her from the exciting LEGO-filled day.

When she did wake up we found the little playground area. There was a train ride there. It was near closing time and not many people were there so the conductor let us all ride it a couple times without getting off.

I then went and spent a lot of money in the gift shops.

Day 7 - Friday, February 8

SeaWorld

We got to SeaWorld as they opened. While waiting outside they announced that February is the 25th anniversary of the penguin habitat at SeaWorld. For the first 500 people at the penguin exhibit that day would get a penguin plush (stuffed animal). They also had cake.

We got a penguin plush for Sydney, but passed on the cake, even if it looked good. It was too early for cake, we were still full from breakfast, and would be eating junk the rest of the day anyway.

An ice sculpture in a penguin exhibit? Well, I guess it won't melt. We're not sure if they were doing the giveaway every day in February to mark the anniversary month, or if we just got lucky on that one day. We like to think we were lucky.

On our way to the dolphin show we ran across the Flamingo Parade. It makes a few stops and the caretakers talk about flamingos to the crowd. They then move on, "parading" through the park with the flamingos.

Sydney recognizes star shapes and seems to like starfish. However, at the tidal pool where you can actually touch the animals, she didn't want to touch a starfish (or anything).

But she liked looking.

Once again exhaustion overwhelmed Sydney later in the day. During this time we found the ray pool.

If you think manta ray or sting ray you'll know what was in this pool. It wasn't either of those types, but a smaller cousin. Lots of them. Wanting to be fed and you could buy fish to take care of their needs. So I did.

I almost didn't, but figured the opportunity doesn't come along often. There are still a couple things I regret not doing on our trip to Australia so that made me go pay too much for a few small fish and let the rays suck them out from between my fingers. It was fun.

Day 8 - Saturday, February 9

This is the day we had planned for meeting an online friend.

Alex is the owner/curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. (It's an online museum so we couldn't actually visit the museum while we were there.) He lives in San Diego. I am one of the Deputy Curators (moderator) on the Museum forums. We arranged to meet downtown and have lunch together.

We went down in the morning and looked around the the downtown/bayside area. The USS Midway, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, is docked there and is now a museum you can go tour. Near there is a statue that is apparently somewhat new.

It's called Unconditional Surrender. It is quite a statue.

As we walked along the park toward Seaport Village something caught my eye in the water.

It was the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie obviously knew that Alex and would be meeting and wanted to be there. Luckily I got this picture of her.

Anne still insists that it was two seals eating fish.

At Seaport Village Sydney and Anne rode a carousel.

We walked around a bit and then headed back to where we were going to meet Alex and his wife. We both arrived at the same time and introduced ourselves. I asked (made) Alex sign all three of his books that I brought with me and we had a very nice lunch. After that we took the ferry over to Coronado Island. Alex and his wife had to return right away because they had to be somewhere, but we took a few pictures first.

After we saw them off at the ferry we headed across Coronado. It's a little over a mile to where the resort is on the other side of the island, but stopped for ice cream on the way and managed to handle it. And this is one of those days where the temperature was pushing 80.

The beach there is very beautiful and really nice. The slope down into the water is very gradual and you can go out a ways into the water without getting very deep. We all took off our shoes and socks and went wading.

That one is the desktop picture on one of my work computers.

And that one is on my other work computer and our home computer desktop.

Day 9 - Sunday, February 10

Wild Animal Park

The Wild Animal Park was fun, but it's very large and requires lots and lots of walking. Luckily we conserved some energy from the day before and took the shuttle back to the ferry on Coronado.

There are two giraffes in that picture. Can you see them both?

This is just a cool picture.

We took the "bus train" (Sydney's phrase) around on the tour of the grounds. At then end it passes the lion enclosure where they mentioned that some cubs were there. A lioness was sitting on top of an old vehicle they have in the area, but the cubs couldn't be seen. The cubs, they told us, hadn't figured out how to get to the roof of the vehicle.

As we exited the area we headed toward the lions.

The cubs were still no where to be seen. Until right after I took that picture.

There were four cubs total, which we found by circling around the enclosure further.

Sydney liked the lions. She even wanted her picture taken by one.

As soon as Sydney saw it she got excited. (She kind of likes balloons.) She had to go on that ride. That's practically all we heard from the moment the balloon was spotted. And we went on it.

And just to show that we were on it, here's a picture of the flamingo pond from high up.

The Wild Animal Park was our first encounter with meerkats. And Sydney really liked them.

At lunch time I stopped to take a picture. Anne and Sydney continued ahead. As I was following to meet them at the restaurant I came around a bend. In a water fowl pond there was this black, shiny thing hanging on a tree limb. I stopped, trying to figure out why a garbage bag was in the animal area and no one had gone in to get it. Then the bird lifted its head. It had been preening its back so I couldn't see its head and neck when I first saw it.

And it's feathers were shinier in the sunlight than they show int he picture.

Sydney got to feed ducks.

And she got to pet animals in the petting area.

I think her favorite part of the Wild Animal Park, though, was seeing the baby elephant. It's been a big thing for her recently in her play for her toys to have and be in families.

We saw a lot of babies at the zoos, too. Most of them seem to have been born around November, if I remember correctly.

Toward the end of the day we found the carousel and this time it was my turn to go on it with Sydney.

Day 10 - Monday, February 11

Anne's sister, Helena, flew down from Vegas to spend the last couple days with us in San Diego. It was the first time she had seen Sydney (live, in the flesh, blog not counting) since her first birthday. Sydney was just as excited to see her.

Since she arrived mid-morning this was another day without a major attraction planned. We went up to Cabrillo National Monument. It's where they believe Cabrillo (the man credited with discovering the area) first landed. It's also supposed to be a great spot to see whales as they migrate between December and March.

Unfortunately we didn't see any whales.

Aunt Helena did have a neat camera, though. The LCD screen flips around so if you want to take a picture of yourself you can see what you're doing.

I also had my tripod with me and my camera has a timer.

And here's the view of San Diego from Cabrillo Point.

After that we went to the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. They have two really neat whale fountains out front.

They had a tide pool at the aquarium, too. We were there just at feeding time. We got to watch them stick a dead fish on a long pole and then put it in the water to feed a couple large lobsters in the pool. It was quite neat.

And Sydney also plucked up the courage to pet a starfish this time.

I try not to take offense to the fact that she wouldn't pet the one I was holding, but is petting the one a perfect stranger is holding.

And there was an opportunity to stick her head in a hole and have her picture taken. This time with Aunt Helena.

The aquarium had two water tables set up outside. The water is pumped up to the top of them. It then flows down the table/ There are pegs in the table and small, plastic boards can be played to change the currents. There are little boats to stick in the water and watch how they go through the water.

It's designed to help teach children about currents. It was quite fun and interesting. We let Sydney play with it, too.

That's La Jolla as seen from the aquarium.

Day 11 - Tuesday, February 12

San Diego Zoo

We saved the Zoo to go to with Aunt Helena. It was originally going to be LEGOLAND until I found out that they were closed on Tuesdays.

Aunt Helena wanted to see the tigers first. She lost out, however, because the baby panda at the zoo is only on display for a few hours at the beginning of the day. And they're on opposite sides of the zoo.

So we headed toward the pandas. The path took us through a bird atrium or three.

There are lots of birds at the zoo and by the end of the day we were all a little sick of seeing birds, no matter how beautiful they were.

But we made it to the area where the baby panda and its mother were.

And here's mom.

This was by far Sydney's favorite part of the trip. When asked the baby panda is the first thing out of her mouth.

Dad and sister panda were in a separate area and we saw them later in the day, but here they are.

As we wandered around we saw one animal that was very pretty.

He's a Singing Dog. At first he wasn't visible. Then he popped his head out. As I read the sign and said what he was Sydney started yelling at it. "Sing doggy." She repeated it several times and we all chuckled. The dog didn't sing, though.

That's a camel Sydney and Anne are looking at in case you can't tell.

Once again there were meerkats at the park.

That meerkat was standing up right next to the sign. I raised my camera, framed the picture, focused and then right when I hit the button the meerkat decided he had something else to do.

Hey, they have a store especially for our daughter!

A big gorilla statue makes a good picture spot.

I seem to remember petting zoos having a better variety of animals when I was younger. But that doesn't matter, She obviously enjoyed it.

Hey, look. More holes for Sydney to stick her head in.

Finally, toward the end of the day, we made it to the tigers.

Can you see the tiger? We couldn't, either. Oh, well. Sorry, Aunt Helena.

The polar bears didn't cooperate much, either.

This was the only one visible in the area. Anne and I walked around from the viewing window. There was another viewing area around a ways. It was a little lower and looked in the water for when the bears went swimming. By the time we got around there the one bear had gotten up and moved. This was the view we had of him.

Notice his face. Have you ever seen a face like that on anyone before? What were they doing at the time?

Yes, it was confirmed. Aunt Helena came around and told us about the bear getting up. Everyone over at the first window was excited because he was moving. Then he walked over to where he was, butt-first toward the crowd, and did his business. Aw. We miss all the fun stuff.

Sydney likes hippos. I think she likes trying to say the name. Regardless, she recognizes them without a problem and enjoyed seeing some live.

That night we packed up for the trip home. We had a discussion about going back home with Sydney. She gave us her take on some things, too.

Day 12 - Wednesday, February 13

It's time to go home. As much fun as we had and as much as we'll miss it (especially the warm weather) we were happy to go home.

After breakfast at the hotel we had to go finish packing. Of course, Sydney wanted to play outside by the water and run around. Aunt Helena stayed outside with her while we packed.

The flight home was uneventful. Sydney got a little antsy the last half hour or so, but overall did very well. We were all very happy to get home and Sydney even cried with happiness when she saw her toys at home.

We had a few days left on our vacation. There are one or two things I will tell you about in another entry, but mostly we relaxed and recuperated from the trip. We had a lot of fun and spent way too much money.

Almost a New Post

2008-02-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Vacation was great. Computer is fixed. (It was the secondary hard drive having issues, so nothing too serious to fix and all that content was backed up.)

A longer vacation post will be up sometime hopefully soon. It depends on how long it takes to get through the 600-700 pictures I took on the trip.

Now, most of those pictures were of animals at Sea World, the Zoo, the Wild Animal Park or the aquarium. There are also many of various displays at Legoland. So many of the pictures will not see the light of the internet and be posted here or in my online photo album. But I still need to go through them all and that will take a while.

And then I'll need to write up a post about the vacation and all the fun and exciting things we did. That will be a long one and have lots of pictures and some videos, too. So you've been forewarned.

But until that post is ready, here's some fun and exciting stuff for you. My online friend NEO recently had a post with his Bucket List. So I'll do a Bucket List to help pass the time and give you something fresh to read.

A Bucket List, in case you don't know (from the movie of the same name that is or was recently out) is a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.

Part of NEO's stipulation was to have one item for every year you have been alive. I'm not going to do that.

First of all, as you get older your Bucket List should be getting shorter. At least that's what I think.

Second of all, if I made a list with 38 things a lot of it would just be filler. There are a lot of places I would like to see and visit before I die, but I don't see a need to list every single one individually. It could easily fill more than my list with places I want to go. And if I did break it down, where do I draw the line? Is it enough to say that I want to go to New Zealand? Or should I list the cities in New Zealand I would like to visit? The specific sites within those cities I want to see?

Anyway, that's why I made my list as long as it is without trying to pump it up to a designated requirement.

Travel and see more of the world. There are more places than I could reasonably list.
Go to space. They keep promising that commercial space flight will be along soon. We'll see.
Sky dive. I bungee jumped many years ago and loved it. And I wanted to sky dive even before I wanted to bungee jump.
Watch my daughter grow up into a beautiful woman.
Pay off my house and all debt.
Buy lake property.
Build a cabin on said property (if it doesn't already have one).
Retire as early as possible.
Write book. Though not necessarily have it published. This is mainly for my own enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. And for anyone feeling the need to comment about it, yes I am familiar with NaNoWriMo. I completed it in 2004, but I'm not really sure that I consider 50,000 words a "book". Plus my story wasn't really an original story. It was an adaptation of a movie that was a remake of another movie.

If anyone is reading this who hasn't done a Bucket List and you feel like making one, consider yourself tagged.

Back When We're Back Online

2008-02-01T20:11:00.001-08:00

I'm posting from work.

I took the home computer in today. It's on a 7-10 days repair schedule. Which means it should be ready sometime in the middle of our San Diego trip. So no internet access from home this weekend.

When I get the computer back I will try to update here with a new post as soon as possible. No promises on speed.

Uh Oh

2008-01-23T22:09:00.001-08:00

This isn't the post I planned on making. And I hadn't planned on almost a month between updates, either.

We were sick this last weekend. All three of us. Neither Anne nor I went to work on Friday. It was miserable. We're all mostly better now. Just some dregs left.

On tha bad news front, however, Anne went to charge her iPod tonight. iTunes needed updating so she did. When she restarted she got a message that our hard drive would imminently be failing. We needed to back up any data we wanted and arrange to have it replaced.

Yay! Just what I wanted to do!

Good thing I purchased the warranty for this computer. (And used it once already when the power source failed last year.)

Currently the computer seems to be running all right. I'll be backing up some items to our secondary hard drive (ripped out of our old computer when we upgraded) tonight. Tomorrow I believe I will be buying a portable hard drive. If this thing keeps running long enough I'll further back things up there.

Next week is our last week of work before vacation. Then it's Super Bowl weekend and then we fly to San Diego for a little over a week the next day.

Our warranty is "in home" so I'm not sure when they'll be able to fix it. I think I'll tell them I just want it done in store. Then I can just drop it off and not worry about it if the repair goes through our trip. Plus I won't have to worry about scheduling a fix it appointment for when I'll be home.

I may type an update again before things get repaired, but we'll see. (No pictures or video, though. I don't want to strain this and potentially lose anything in a crash.)

The Post-Christmas Post

2007-12-25T22:59:00.000-08:00

We had a good Christmas. The short version: we all got way too much stuff (especially Sydney).

But before we do this Christmas let's revisit last Christmas briefly.

Last year Sydney got a Tickle Me Elmo. She never played with it much because it scared her. Sometimes she would play with it when it was turned off, but being stiff and mechanical didn't put it at the top of her toy list. But she did warm up to it as the year went by.

A little over a week ago she was playing with him and asked me to turn him on. She laughed and played with him and wasn't the least bit scared of him. Then she sat down in her Elmo chair, held him in her lap and sang him a lullaby.

Anne grabbed my phone to video it, but as soon as Sydney saw her with the phone she wanted to see the video.

This Christmas we spent Christmas Eve with friends. Sydney was upstairs in a play room playing with the boys. I snuck up, wanting to get a picture of her. She told me I had to go away. I told her I wanted to get a picture of her playing and then I would go back downstairs. So she promptly ran across the room and posed for me.

And, yes, she wanted to see the picture after I took it.

We got home late and Sydney went to bed. Anne and I got things set up around the tree in the front room and then after Santa visited we took a picture.

There's a lot of crap under (and around) that tree.

Sydney got up early on Christmas. We went downstairs. She was happy and excited as I carried her down the stairs, but we went and ate breakfast first.

After that we went out in the living room. I was waiting to record her with my phone as she came in. (The larger and unwrapped stuff was covered with blankets when we came down and we uncovered them while she was eating.) It was a nice little video as she came in and got excited looking at things as she walked across the room. Unfortunately, I failed to save it. (I didn't delete it. I just failed to hit the save button.)

Luckily Anne was following Sydney in with our regular video camera. And one of these days if I ever figure out how to get the video off the camcorder and onto the computer I'll be happy to post it.

Sorry about that.

Sydney had a lot of fun opening presents this year.

She understood what was going on better, but still didn't want to wait her turn and we took turns opening presents. The first few she opened were small miscellaneous gifts by her stocking. After opening those she tore into her stocking.

One gift out of her stocking she particularly liked.

We let her open the Elmo umbrella one time and then about every two minutes after that she wanted it opened again. We didn't and it got ~~hidden~~ put away in the closet at the earliest convenience.

Sydney had three "big" presents. One was a new tricycle from Grandma and Grandpa B.

She calls it a bike, so that's why I say that in the video. Anne saw it on Amazon and almost all the reviews said it was a great tricycle, except that the age range on it was too young. A lot of people said it was too big for their younger kid.

What? It's too big? That's perfect for our super-tall daughter!

With the handlebars fairly low and the seat all the way down it's just about perfect for Sydney. Now she just has to figure out how to pedal. And steer.

Sydney's second big gift was a kitchen set so she could play cooking. That was a gift from Mommy and Daddy.

It's amazing the price range that these things go through. This is the best one we found fairly inexpensively. (About $40.)

Luckily, Santa got Sydney some stuff that goes with the kitchen pretty well. She got a plastic shopping cart and a box of food. (You can see them in the tree picture behind the edge of the coffee table. When we were pricing those we found them for $15 and $10 respectively at Target. Luckily Santa saved us from having to buy them.)

Santa also got Sydney her third "big" present. It was a doll.

Yes, it's a doll that closes it's eyes when you lay it down. And, yes, Sydney is holding her eye open in the picture.

It came as you see it there with a change of clothes, a burp rag and a pillow. Santa also saw fit to supply two bottles for her. Sydney fell in love with her right away. When I asked the doll's name a little later she informed me that her name is, "Baby".

(Yes, I asked if Baby could dance. I also suggested that Sydney not put Baby in the corner. Just type "baby in the corner" into Google if you don't get that.)

Sydney also got some other dolls for Christmas. One of our friends gave her a plastic tub/bag pack of cloth dolls on Christmas Eve. It has a total of eight dolls in it. When we got home we let Sydney open it and take one doll out. Sydney held it tight on her way upstairs, making me carry Cookie, Teddy and Blanket.

The new doll got the place of honor right next to her in bed. Just even with the bottom edge of the pillow where she can snuggle it. That used to be Cookie's spot. Cookie got pushed up to the top of the bed, even with the pillow. And the doll's there again tonight. I'll try to get a picture of it for the next update.

All in all we got a lot of great presents. I would really be remiss if I didn't mention the awesome present Grandma and Grandpa B got me. It's a framed reproduction of the Ellis Island page from when my great grandfather came to the U.S. from Switzerland. He was my mother's grandfather and the man I was named after.

It was a very happy and merry Christmas here and I hope all of you had a happy and safe Christmas with all your friends and family.

Tahville

2007-12-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a short, silly update.

Please click here: Tahville

That is my new cyber-ville/town/city/whatever. Once per day when you click on it my population grows by one person. So visit it each day, please. Bookmark it if you want, or I've added a link over on the right there.

And click here, too, please: murphyzVille

That's my friend murphyz. I found out about MyMiniCity from him, so it only seems right that I link his city, too, right? I put a link to his over on there right, there, too. And a link to his blog.

And if anyone else would like me to link to their blog feel free to let me know. I'd be happy to add it onto the list. But I don't want to start linking people without their okay.

Picture And Video Post

2007-12-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

I don't have very many new pictures of Sydney up, but I have as many new videos of Sydney as pictures. And there's at least some kind of story to go with most. So here we go.

This one is too awesome and heart-warming not to share first.

This past Friday evening while I was at work Anne wrapped my Christmas presents. Sydney helped, of course. Anne let her pick out which things Sydney wanted to give me and let Sydney write on the tags. Anne wrote the translation on the tag.

On Saturday morning Sydney showed me that I had presents under the tree. Sydney seemed to remember what she wrote on one particular tag. With very little prompting she told me that it said, "To Daddy, from..."

A couple weeks ago we were shopping and saw a shirt that we had to get for Sydney.

The shirt says, "Grandma's Reason To Brag," in case you can't read it.

As I've reported before Sydney is not a climber. Especially in her crib. She will stay in her crib and not try to get out. She will rarely even sit up until we at least walk into her room to get her.

Lately, though, she'd been trying to climb in and out of her crib. (Only when we're there, though.) When we came to get her she'd stand up and kick her leg over the side to try to climb out. She'd get stuck and we'd have to lift her out. Even going to bed she'd want to try to climb up the side of the crib to get in.

So two weeks ago I asked Sydney is she wanted to take the side off the crib and have a big girl's bed that she could get in and out of on her own. She did.

So Sydney now has a big girl bed. In the bottom right of that picture you can see part of Giant Bear's head. We moved him up beside the bed in case she falls out. We also have her old nursing pillow sticking out a little under the other half of the bed for cushioning just in case.

In the middle part of last week I was downstairs watching television about a half hour before I went to bed. Over the monitor I heard Thump and a soft, tired, "ow". I waited for a few seconds to see if crying would ensue. It didn't and I went upstairs a little bit slower than I would have otherwise.

When I got to Sydney's room she was sitting on the floor in Giant Bear's lap between his legs. She was facing her bed and sucking her thumb with a confused, half-asleep look on her face. She was none the worse for wear and went back to bed with little problem.

Last week Sydney and I went out to do some Christmas shopping in the morning. As we were leaving the mall we went past the coin-operated rides. Since Sydney has had a thing about choo choo trains recently (chuga-chuga chuga-chuga woo woo!) I put her in the little train. She was all smiles while riding it. (Wait. When isn't she all smiles?)

On Thursdays we go to a class called Romp & Roll held by our city's Parks & Recreation Department. It's really more of a big play date for young kids. There is an arts and crafts project each week (that Sydney may or may not do) and lots of different toys and things to play with.

The week after Thanksgiving Sydney and one other boy were there. It was also the first week that stick horses were there to play with. They were Sydney's favorite that week.

Sydney has a friend she met at Romp & Roll last year named Hunter. You may remember him from a previous entry about a play date they had. They also took swim lessons together for a while. Last weekend was Hunter's third birthday party and Sydney was invited. Here she is with the birthday boy.

Sydney and the other kids really loved playing with the balloons at the party. They batted them around, kicked them, played catch with them and various other games. So when we were out Christmas shopping that evening and stopped at Applebee's for dinner it should be no surprise that Sydney was very excited to get a balloon when we left.

The balloon was the play object of the week last week. Or at least the play object of the three days or so that it still resembled a balloon before it deflated into a rubber blob that we threw away.

And just to post all five of the new pictures, here are Sydney and Mommy hugging. This was taken shortly after the one of Sydney in her new shirt above.

One day while playing Sydney was running around the house. Her favorite thing seemed to be to go out in the front room and then run into the living room and run into/jump onto the sofa. it looked something like this:

Another morning after we got up and had breakfast Sydney surprised me by, well, doing this:

She was wrapping her blanket around her shoulders like a cape and running around like she was flying. Anne would later tell me that the episode of Dragon Tales that she watched before bed the night before had Max (the little boy) running around in a similar fashion. (It's also where she picked up the train noises mentioned above, I believe.) So Sydney remembered it when she got up and started playing it herself (she hadn't done so the night before).

I got a clip off the refrigerator to hold her blanket on and free up her hand. When I told her I wanted to get a video of her running around she was very happy to cooperate. As you can see from the video she was happy to run around and "fly," only stopping after three revolutions to come over and see the video.

The even funnier part of this is that, while she apparently picked it up from Dragon Tales, after we were playing this for about fifteen minutes she started yelling out a Sesame Street reference. So whenever she wants to play this she calls it "Super Grover".

And, yes, I got to take my turns wearing the cape and running around. And Doggie got a turn, too. That's a little, black stuffed dog she has. Every time we play Super Grover she has to have the dog play, too. My turn and dog's turn with the cape are usually a bit shorter than Sydney's turn with it. Especially if I pick her up across my arms and "fly" her around.

GMA Update - Call To Arms

2007-11-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

I was making Sydney lunch on Monday when I got a call. It was work. They asked if Sydney could be at the Resort at 4:00 PM today.

Apparently our regular 4:30 PM cruise was going to be used by Good Morning, America to film some things for the show on Wednesday morning. The cruise was woefully lacking in people signed up for it so they were calling employees with children to see if they could make it for the cruise.

So we switched our cruise from Wednesday to today.

It was a bit of a pain in the butt. Not with scheduling and Anne trying to get Sydney down for the cruise. But because they were filming things for the show which means we were on GMA time and not regular cruise time. We were about ten minutes late leaving on the cruise. When we got to the North Pole it was almost a half hour over there as various things were filmed. Santa and Mrs. Claus were brought on the boat so we could film with them. On the way back we had to slow down and steer close to the 5:30 PM cruise coming out. We had to wave at them and they waved back as we passed very, very close. Then we took another, very slow trip around the boardwalk so they could film the lights.

All in all it wasn't a bad thing. But with the two year old it was a bit challenging at times and long.

Sydney did well overall. She wasn't real excited about Santa, though. She got a little bit freaked out by him even though she was never that close to him. (She did really like the candy cane Mrs. Claus gave her. She had a death grip on it for the rest of the cruise.)

When they came on board to film we all gathered around Santa. He said something like, "Merry Christmas from the Coeur d'Alene Resort in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and," and then we all said "Good Morning, America," and cheered.

While we were filming that I was behind Santa and just over his left shoulder. I'm holding Sydney up. Anne is on my left.

They had three takes on that. I have no idea which one they'll use, but probably the second or third one. Hopefully the second. That's the one where Sydney was actually looking toward the camera. The other two she had her head turned away and buried in my shoulder. Ah, well.

If they use the shot of us waving at the other boat you'll probably see us, too. But since we were facing away from the camera I don't know what kind of shot it was or where we are in it.

And if you can't recognize Sydney after all the pictures you've seen here you can at least look for her in her hat.

I'm not sure how late I'm working tomorrow night. Grandma and Grandpa M are in town. They said they would sleep over here tomorrow so I don't have to worry about getting home right away. I think I mentioned in my last post that I'm working late Tuesday night because of this thing. The taping starts at 4:00 AM local time.

There's probably more I could tell about this, but none of it is immediately important and I'm tired and slightly mushy-brained. Next post should have some pictures in it, but probably none of the GMA experience.

Good Morning, America

2007-11-25T23:52:00.000-08:00

The Friday after Thanksgiving each year is the annual Lighting Ceremony at the Coeur d'Alene Resort (where I work).

Around 5:00 PM the holiday parade starts. When the parade is over (pretty much right in front of the Resort) there's a speech given. It's usually some officer of the corporation that owns the Resort. There is then a big fireworks show (better than the Fourth of July fireworks) immediately followed the lighting of the light displays.

We have over one million lights in various displays up for the holidays. Our cruise boats on the lake take a trip to the "North Pole" each day from the Lighting Ceremony through New Year's. They go around the Resort to see the lights and then head across the lake. Santa and Mrs. Claus greet the visitors and there's a whole "village" of light displays set up over there for people to see. (You never actually leave the boat. Santa and Mrs. Claus are real people, but they talk to you from the shore of the "North Pole".)

We really do Christmas in a big way at the Resort.

Good Morning, America will be doing a live broadcast from the Resort this Wednesday, November 28. And, yes, GMA is an east coast-based show. We're in the Pacific time zone. That means that they will be broadcasting live really early in the morning.

You can read about the broadcast and the rest of the Holiday In Lights stuff we do at the Resort website.

I will be working very late Tuesday night. With all the prep work going into this show they want manager coverage through the night. I have to stay until 1:00 AM or so. (It would be later, but I have to be home when Anne goes to work.) But I'd rather stay at work late than have to wake up to be there at 2:00 AM like my boss is doing. (Even though Anne does something similar every single day, I would still rather stay up late than get up early.)

In other related news, Anne brought Sydney down to the Resort on Friday for the Lighting Ceremony. They ate dinner and then watched the parade. I got off work and met them and we watched the fireworks together.

We were a little concerned about Sydney. We thought the loud bangs of the fireworks might frighten her a little. But our fears were unfounded. Sydney loved them. She watched the whole time with wide eyes and a big smile. She thanked us after it was done and said she had fun.

Then we had to get home. The crowd was huge this year. Quite possibly the biggest crowd I've seen for a Lighting Ceremony. (Thanks, I'm sure, to GMA going to be there on Wednesday.) That meant lots of traffic to fight through to get home. It took us about an hour, most of that sitting in traffic on surface streets.

When we got home Sydney told me thank you again and once again said how much fun she had.

This Wednesday - in the late afternoon well after GMA is done and gone - we're going to go on the North Pole cruise. They like employees to go on the cruise each year to be familiar with it. So the three of us are going and Sydney can get a taste of this Santa person. We've been talking him up a little bit, but she doesn't seem to know or care that much about Christmas. Well, other than the lights. And the fireworks.

Post Halloween Post

2007-11-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I updated and a lot has happened that I'm not sure where to start and what to include here.

Grandma B and Aunt Marta were both here over Halloween. I actually have no pictures of Aunt Marta with Sydney. Ack! I have several with Grandma B. I even have a video.

Every time I see this video it makes me smile so it seems like a good place to start.

Grandma and Sydney were talking into plastic cup pieces (Grandma's is the big bucket the LEGO Quatros are kept in) to make their voices sound echo-ey.

The week before Halloween Sydney got a card in the mail. It was a Halloween card from Great-Aunt Carrie (Grandma B's sister). There were stickers in it. Sydney LOVES stickers.

On Halloween I worked during the day so I could go trick-or-treating with Sydney. All day we kept mentioning to Sydney about putting on her costume and going out after dinner. All day Sydney rebuffed our comments with general disinterest and sometimes flat out refusal. After dinner the time came. When it was suggested we put on her costume Sydney got quite upset.

She cried and clung to Mommy. She did not want to do this. She was finally calmed down and talked into it. It was a matter of convincing her that we were going to go outside. She likes going outside, so didn't she want to go outside. Yes, she did. But to go outside we have to put the costume on. Didn't she want to put the costume on? Well, yes she did.

So we finally got Sydney into her costume and away we went.

With the four of us someone had to stay home to hand out candy. That was Aunt Marta. The plan was to go down the street and then come back. We would relieve Aunt Marta and she would get to go trick or treating with Sydney the other way around the block.

It started out well and fine. Sydney had fun. She was a little shy, but she's well enough known that the neighbors who were home knew her and were friendly. The first house we went to across the street let her grab her own candy and take second grab, too. That led us to reining in her enthusiasm a little bit at the rest of the houses.

Down at the end of the block and just around the corner is the "Halloween house". The people there go all-out for Halloween. They have costumed dummies and decorations all over the front yard and front of the house. There was a front-page story about them in the paper the day before Halloween (small town news). Apparently the inside of the house is decked out for Halloween in the same manner.

Whenever we go somewhere we have to drive by that house even is we don't drive directly in front of it. That is a constant, "Look. Halloween!" comment from Sydney. So we got to the end of the block and worked our way to that house.

Mistake.

While the Halloween-crazy lady was very nice she was dressed up for Halloween. She was all in black and had her face painted in black and white skull fashion. Sydney didn't like that. She called an almost immediate end to trick or treating. Home we went. Once we got home she didn't even want to go to the door to help hand out candy because she was getting upset with the costumes.

Thursdays Sydney has two classes she goes to. In the morning I take her to Romp and Roll. It's really just a play date held by the city's Parks & Recreation department. But they have some arts and crafts there, it gets us out of the house, and she really enjoys it.

In the afternoons Anne takes her to a swim class. The day after Halloween was one of the few times I've had a chance to attend swim class.

Over the weekends we get to go outside and actually get some things accomplished in the yard. Lately this has involved raking leaves. And playing in the piles of leaves.

While Grandma B was here she got to play in the leaves, too.

And Sydney jumped in to play with Grandma B in the leaves.

There's a short version of the highlights of the last several weeks. I'll leave you with one last video. This is Sydney doing her broccoli song and dance. At least up to the point where she realizes I'm recording her and she wants to see it.

(And, yes, she does really like broccoli.)

Making Halloween

2007-10-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

(We're going to start out with pictures, but there are three new videos a little further down. If you're on a slow connection you may consider scrolling down so you can start downloading the videos now and then come back to read while they do their thing.)

Several weeks ago Halloween stuff started appearing in stores. Sydney got a kick out of looking at it in stores. She particularly liked pumpkins.

One weekend Anne started pulling out our Halloween stuff and decorating the house (inside and out). Sydney watched and helped. She and Mommy were "making Halloween". Even now it is either "Halloween" stuff or, if she's interacting with it, "making Halloween".

A little bit north of Spokane there is a place called Green Bluff. It is an area with a bunch of different farms in it. These farms grow different crops and are open from spring through autumn selling what they grow. A week ago we went out on Saturday to pick some apples and pick up a pumpkin or two.

We only got about ten apples, but our friends were getting a bunch for pie baking. Sydney was more than happy to help them pick apples, too. And afterward she was more than happy to help Mommy carry our apples back.

As you can probably tell from that last picture, it was a gorgeous autumn day.

Next we went to go look for some pumpkins. Sydney found one she really liked.

It wasn't for sale, though. I wanted to tell her how, every Halloween, the Great Pumpkin chooses a pumpkin patch to rise in and then travels the world to give all the good boys and girls presents. Maybe next year after we get Santa Clause established this year.

We went over to the pumpkin patch and picked out some pumpkins. This gave Sydney the opportunity to really see some pumpkins up close and personal like she can't in the big boxes out in front of grocery stores.

And, no, we didn't get the one. It was actually a little off on one side and had a scratch through to the meat, too.

This past weekend we raked some leaves out in the front yard. Sydney helped, of course.

Then she jumped in the leaf pile. You're supposed to as a kid, right?

She has a thing for leaves. I'm not sure what or why, but she really likes them. Even before this. Well before this. And she didn't understand that we were raking the leaves in order to put them in a bag and throw them away. She got quite upset when I started doing that.

Last week on Tuesday or Wednesday Sydney started to get sick. It started off early in the day as a runny nose and progressed from there throughout the day. She ate a good lunch, but wasn't hungry for dinner. An hour before her usual bedtime she was so miserable that she was basically begging Anne to let her go to bed.

Anne took her upstairs and started the bedtime process with her. As soon as she put her on our bed Sydney threw up. This is really the first time Sydney has thrown up. She's had the baby-type throw ups when she was younger and as is usual for an infant. But being a big girl this was her first big one. Blah.

Anne handled the clean up process and stripped the bed. She and Sydney both took a quick shower to clean up and then Sydney went to bed. She slept through the night. When I got home from work I got to handle most of the sheet, blanket and comforter washing.

The next morning Sydney was fine. She was happy and playful and other than a slightly chapped nose from all the tissue wiping, you could barely tell she had been sick the day before. She was exceptionally chatty that morning, too.

It took until the weekend before we got around to washing our electric blanket. Because of the wires and such involved it takes some care to clean it. It's mostly a hand wash and air dry process. With each of us alone with Sydney during the day it was difficult for us to do it during the week.

When we got it cleaned up we arranged our dining room chairs to drape it over. It looked like a tent. And Sydney really liked it. (What kid doesn't like playing tent? I know I did!)

And I didn't get my hug!

This morning while we were getting dressed Sydney decided she wanted to cuddle up with Big Bear. So she crawled away from me and snuggled right up. She even stayed there while I went to get the camera.

The pillow there next to her is one of the pillows Anne made for her. She loves them and hasn't had any problems sleeping with them.

And I would also like to point out that in that picture you can see Sydney in a natural pose. The smile is natural. However, if you ask her to smile you're more likely to get something that looks like this:

And later in the day when Mommy got home from work we were showing her the Big Bear pictures on the screen on the camera. Sydney figured we should take another picture of her and told me such. So she grabbed her pillow and plopped down on the floor with it. I asked her if she really wanted me to take a picture of her right there in the messy bedroom with her toys thrown all around the floor.

Sydney saw the wisdom of my comment and picked up her pillow. She moved over to the side of the bed, set it down and posed right in front of Mommy's mess.

Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have shared that last picture here. I would have left it in the photo album for those who go there to see more pictures to find. But it actually has a purpose this time.

This evening Sydney's Halloween costume arrived. We weren't having any luck finding one that we liked in her size. We wanted a plush, fuzzy one because it should be cold, as usual, on Halloween. We ended up ordering one online. (And if we wouldn't have balked at the price when we did see one that we liked several weeks ago in the store we wouldn't have ended up paying twice as much - with shipping - to order one when we couldn't find anything in her size two weeks later.)

Anyway the costume arrived tonight. Apparently Sydney really likes it and she put it on. She ran around in it for a while before telling Mommy she was done and to take it off.

Anne did take pictures of it tonight. They are posted over in my PictureTrail photo album. But if you don't want to see them before Halloween, do not scroll down lower than the last picture posted above. There are two photos of her in costume below that.

And, yes, I will be posting costume photos on the blog after Halloween.

Sydney Stories

2007-10-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

Winter is quickly approaching here. It's been on the chilly side for a couple weeks now. But we do have two days this week where we're supposed to have decent weather. Sandwiched in between more rainy days.

Anyway, here as some fun Sydney stories for your amusement.

Sydney likes to pretend to cook. She grabs things out of the pantry and pretends to pour them into various bowls and cups. She has a set of plastic measuring cups Mommy gave her to play with. She also has a plastic flour sifter. Along with various decorative bowls and some baskets around the house at an easily reached level, she has plenty of things to pretend to cook with.

Sunday Anne made some soup for lunch. While she was making that Sydney wanted to be picked up to see. So Anne picked her up. Sydney then proceeded to run around pretending to make soup, too. One of the things she used was a Ziploc bag from the pantry. We keep various small packets in it, mainly from fast food places: Arby's sauce, Taco Bell taco sauce, red pepper packets from Pizza Hut and the like. So Sydney "poured" those into her soup.

On Saturday while we were out shopping and running errands we got Sydney a cute new winter hat. It's pink with a poof on top, two ears flaps and tassels with poofs that hang down from the ear flaps.

Sydney's New Hat (As of this posting, YouTube hasn't finished processing this video. They give a URL that will apparently be the page of the video, but I can't pull it up to embed it since there is no video to embed. Hopefully they'll finish processing it soon and get it up so you can watch it. If it's not there by Monday evening I'll delete it and try again.)

Sydney has a habit of putting her new hat on backward. (The cut out area between the flaps is narrower, making it frame her face in a smaller area.) Sometime after lunch on Sunday Anne and I were discussing something and Sydney came up behind Anne. She had her hat on.

I looked at Sydney and said, "you have your hat on backward, silly."

Anne chuckled and grabbed the poof on top of the hat. She yanked it up so she could turn it around the right way. When she pulled the hat off Sydney's head a bunch of the small packets Sydney had been cooking with fell out and rained down on her. Anne and I started laughing so hard we couldn't stop for a couple minutes.

(That story can never be as good when told as it was to see it. I'm sorry. There is just no way to do it proper justice.)

Sydney has a cute new outfit (a few weeks old now) that is purple, has Minnie Mouse on it, and has a hood.

The first time I put it on her I pulled the hood up on her head. She didn't like that and pulled it off. I made her go in our bedroom and look at it in our mirror. While she was admiring her outfit I pulled the hood up again. She completely changed. She apparently thought the hood was the greatest thing ever.

She stood there for several minutes looking in the mirror and pulling it up and pulling it down. When she got tired of that she pulled me into the guest bedroom. She made me pick her up so she could see herself in the small little decorative mirror up on the wall in there.

And here's a another video of Sydney.

Also, surprise, surprise, Sydney has outgrown her slippers from last winter. So we had to find new ones this year. Guess what she picked out?

The funny thing is that the slippers apparently bother her feet. The way they are put together there is a seam or something that bothers her foot or toe in at least one of the slippers. So unless she has socks on she won't put them on.

We might be buying her new slippers again.

And, just for posterity, here's one last video of Sydney. This is the very first video I took of Sydney on my cell phone. This was before I had the video card, but it was my phone wallpaper up until I set the hat video for it.

What Are You Doing?

2007-09-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

I'll apologize in advance to the people who mainly come here to see Sydney pictures. There are no new Sydney pictures in this post. But if you continue reading I promise you won't be disappointed.

On Tuesday last week (the day of my last post) it started innocently enough. A couple times during the morning Sydney asked me what I was doing. By the next morning it had become a full-blown epidemic.

Whatchu doing, Daddy?

What you doing, Mommy?

What are day doing?

Where day go?

What happened?

What's dat?

And various versions of those question get asked repeatedly throughout the day. She's hit the question stage and I love every second of it.

My favorite question version:

Whatchu doing, Daddy? (Doesn't give me more than a second to answer.) Whatchu doing? (About a half second this time.) Daddy, whatchu doing?

I've had that go on for six or seven questions before she'll give me a chance to answer her. She doesn't realize that sometimes I have to figure out how to tell her what I'm doing in a way she will understand.

Sydney still likes her pillow. It hasn't caused any problems for her and has pointed at it several times and made sure I knew it was her pillow.

In other news, I got a new cell phone a month or so ago. I don't know if I mentioned it before or not, but it doesn't really matter since I'm mentioning it now.

It has video capabilities. That really isn't new since my old phone did, too. But my new phone can use the videos for the phone's wallpaper where my old phone couldn't. Right now I have a video set as my wallpaper of Sydney taking a bite out of a grilled cheese sandwich.

Every time I flip open the phone and Sydney is there she says, "I wanna see girl". So I usually end up holding up my phone for her to see the video.

Saturday we went to a large park over in Liberty Lake, WA. There's a small playground area where Sydney played for a little bit. There's a pavilion near that where they apparently have concerts in the summer. A small hill spreads out in front of the pavilion. Up the hill the park opens into a very large field. In this field there was a group of about thirty seagulls sitting around.

Sydney saw them and got quite excited. She apparently thought the seagulls would want to play with her so off she ran.

While she was chasing seagulls and I was following close behind (in case she actually got close to a seagull - which didn't happen) I decided to pull out my phone. I figured a quick video would be a good test to see what I could do with getting the videos off the phone.

So I shot it, got it off the phone and onto our computer and uploaded it to YouTube. It's not the most exciting video, but it was a good test to see what I could do. It's only 24 seconds, so hopefully won't cause too many problems for the bandwidth-impaired that want to watch it. And here it is:

If you're wondering why I took that video instead of using the video of Sydney eating a grilled cheese sandwich. The short answer is that the grilled cheese video is saved in the phone's memory. The park video was saved to the memory card (purchased after the grilled cheese video). Since I have the grilled cheese video set as my wallpaper I didn't want mess with the phone by transferring it to the card. Especially since I wasn't 100% sure I would be able to upload the video. (The videos on my old phone were some weird video format that didn't seem to be compatible with anything but the phone.)

And last but not least, Marta, Anne's sister, will soon be a published author. (She's a newspaper journalist, so is frequently published in the paper, but this is in a book.) She wrote a short story that is going to be published in collection of ghost stories.

The book is called Legends of the Mountain State: Ghostly Tales from the State of West Virginia. You can also pre-order the book from that link. (If you are a close friend or family member to me and would have reason to expect a Christmas present from us you may not want to pre-order that. Or at least check to see if you should pre-order it first.)

Parallels

2007-09-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

I have a friend whose blog I read. She updates it very regularly. She has three children and the youngest one is a daughter (with two older brothers) who is slightly older than Sydney. Just a little over a month older, if I remember correctly.

She updates her blog regularly. Like "at least five times a week" regularly. Sometimes multiple times per day. I would link to it but the site she uses requires signing up and then she has to approve you to read her blog. It's probably easier to just point you to her second blog, except she doesn't update that one nearly as much and generally only with general posts instead of everyday life and family stuff.

Anyway, it's been interesting to read about her daughter over the last two and a half years. Early on (and still some now) she has posted about some milestone her daughter has reached. I would read it with a little bit of envy and look forward to Sydney reaching the same thing. Other times I would laugh because she would post about something her daughter would do and Sydney does almost the exact same thing.

Just last week was one of the latter. My friend posted about her daughter singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Sydney sings it all the time. And, like my friend's daughter, she sings it like a two year old. It's recognizable if you know what you're listening to.

She's actually been singing it for several months, but not quite as long as she's been singing "Singin' In The Rain". She started early with that one because we have a little duck that sings it when you press its foot. (It also taps its foot and flaps its wings.) She's been hearing that since she was born.

At night "Twinkle" is usually one of the songs she wants sung to her at bedtime. On Saturdays (usually the only day Anne and I put her to bed together) she will point at one of us and instruct, "Twinkle". That person then starts singing and she turns to the other and points and says, "You sing". So we have to sing the song together. (She does that for whatever song we're supposed to be singing.)

On Sunday of Labor Day weekend we had a friend of Sydney's and his mom over for a play date and barbecue. Sydney has a little slide she got from Great Aunt Bev (my aunt) that she really enjoys.

You'll notice that she's in her diaper with no pants on. She and her friend, Hunter, were playing at the water table and she got a little wet. When that happens she wants her clothes off. Luckily her shirt wasn't too wet.

When she climbs on top of the slide Anne asks if she's queen of the slide. Sydney throws up her arms and replies something along the lines of, "I'm queen uda side!" As shown in the picture above.

And here's a picture of Sydney and Hunter standing on the stairs.

Sydney is sometimes resistant to change in her routines, especially when it comes to her sleep habits. We've tried before to get a pillow in her crib but she just wouldn't have it. The closest we came was one time getting her to go to bed with it. But a few hours later she woke up crying bloody murder and we had to take it out.

This past weekend was the first week of the football season. Sunday I watched football so Anne took the opportunity to use Sydney's nap time to work on a project she's had sitting around for a while.

We had bought a pillow and some Winnie the Pooh material several months ago. Anne cut the pillow in half and removed some of the stuffing. She then sewed the halves closed to make two smaller, thinner pillows. She then made pillow cases out of the material. With leftover stuffing and material she made a third, smaller pillow for the car.

When Sydney woke up from her nap she found her fun pillows with "Pooh an' Tiggah" (and the rest of the gang) on them. We explained that we would put a pillow in her crib for her to sleep on. She likes using the pillows on the sofas and our bed just fine. We even have one on the floor of her room for when we put her down there that she's fine with. It's just been the hurdle of getting it in her bed.

Sydney was very excited to have her own pillows. She seemed happy to have them and happy at the prospect of sleeping with one in her crib later that night. She even piled all three pillows against the arm of the sofa and reclined against them while looking at the new Clifford books Mommy had gotten her earlier that day.

The moment of truth came that night when I put her to bed. Mommy had already put the pillow in her crib while she was in the bath. I talked her through having the pillow in her bed and she was fine with it. After story, singing and snuggling I put her to bed. She was still fine with the pillow.

The night passed without incident and when I went in the next morning to get her she was happy. I asked her if she liked sleeping with her new pillow and she gave an enthusiastic nod yes. When Mommy came home that afternoon she asked Sydney about the pillow and Sydney was again happy about it.

She's had it in her crib and been using it (we only use one pillow at a time) since Sunday night without any problem.

Whew!

Not Working

2007-08-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

A week ago this past Saturday we all went out to get the mail. Normally after getting the mail we walk down the block and back. This Saturday was no different except that a little way past the mailbox Sydney tripped. She fell on the sidewalk and skinned her knee.

Crying ensued and we went immediately back to the house. Mommy took her upstairs and proceeded to clean the knee. Once that was done Lanacane spray was applied.

Sydney likes Lanacane and will ask for "spray" when she gets hurt. It helps take the hurt away. This time was no exception and Sydney pronounced herself better and ready to go back outside to continue playing.

After we had been outside for a while Sydney dropped something she was playing with and it fell/rolled under her little chair. She got down to get it back. She got down on her scraped up knee.

Crying ensued again and we tried to figure out what had happened. When asked if she hurt her knee again Sydney nodded and cried, "spray, spray".

Mommy asked if she could kiss Sydney's knee and make it better. "It will be just as good as spray." Sydney nodded and said okay.

Mommy lifted her up into her lap and raised the knee so she could kiss it. No sooner had Mommy kissed the knee than Sydney started crying a little louder with, "not working. Not working".

It was back upstairs again for a cleaning and spray. Anne and I got good chuckles out of that. I still smile and laugh to myself when I think about it.

One night after dinner I was in the kitchen cleaning up. Anne was sitting out with Sydney while she finished up. When Anne had given her a cookie for dessert Sydney apparently decided that a picture was in order.

"Take uh pikka wif da camra," she told Mommy.

"You want me to take a picture with the camera?" Anne confirmed. Sydney told her yes and repeated the request.

I heard it and ran upstairs to get the camera.

Sydney has moved on to a new level with picture taking. She will still pose and ham it up for the camera, but as soon as the picture is taken she wants to see it. She'll run over and turn the camera so she can see the LCD screen on the back.

Sydney also says, "I lug you, [Daddy]." This is usually only done when prompted. (Like when Mommy asks her if she told me she loves me as I'm leaving for work.) Sometimes she will say it in response if we tell her we love her, but not usually.

She will regularly say, "pease," "tank you," and "you welcome" without prompting. The "pease" comes especially easy when she wants a cookie after lunch or dinner. And it comes constantly until she gets her cookie (or we tell her no). She really wants us to know how polite she is!

Sydney can count fairly well. Usually it is in small doses. "One, two three, peekaboo!" Or, "eight, nine, ten, go!" when playing a game. She can count up to twelve or so. I've had her get up to eighteen before, but she skipped a couple numbers (but added them in with some prompting). She regularly skips four and five. Sometimes she'll skip eight or nine, but not usually.

But that is mainly just repeating numbers. I haven't really seen her use them for counting. Until this morning, that is.

After breakfast we went upstairs to get dressed. Sydney started to climb the stairs and counted each one as she stepped up. She paused at counting four, but I prompted her. She got it and quickly went on to five. She skipped nine and counted ten. When I corrected her she repeated "nine" and then went to ten.

The top step is fourteen. I'm not sure what she said, but it mostly sounded like she said "eighteen". I corrected her and she said whatever it was that sounded like "eighteen" again. I'm guessing maybe that was her fourteen, but I'm not sure.

This past Saturday we went to a wedding of a friend of mine. It was a gorgeous day, which was good since the wedding was outside.

They actually had some young ladies in the house baby-sitting for all the children there. We weren't sure how Sydney was going to handle it, but she did fine. She stayed up there and played and ate. A little later I went in to use the bathroom. When she saw me she apparently realized that we weren't there with her and she wouldn't let me leave without her. So she came down and joined us outside. Then she and Mommy got up to dance.

With Or Without

2007-08-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

I have been tagged to make a blog post. It's to be a list of things I can't live without. I first saw it on Nettie's blog. She tagged MadCarlotta who tagged me. Just about everyone of the regulars over at the Museum of Hoaxes forums who has a blog has been tagged. Luckily I know several people with blogs outside of the MoH. But we'll get to that later.

Now I will say that I am happy to be doing this. Thanks for getting it passed around the Museum, Nettie. Even if other people grumbled, I'm not. I was hoping to avoid detection and miss getting tagged to force me to do it, but I was probably going to take it and do it anyway.

I've tracked this a few people backward from Nettie and I'm not seeing any hard and fast rules. It just seems to be "list things you can't live without". That can apparently be any number of things. Some of the others from the Museum of Hoaxes have set some guidelines and I'm going to use those. I'm also going to impose a couple more on myself so I don't get redundant from what some of those others said.

First, no people. Second, no life-giving essentials. None of the items can be things like air, food, or shelter. Third, nothing medical. This kind of falls under the previous rule for items like medicine (which I don't take anyway), but I am also using it to include corrective lenses. I couldn't see well enough to survive without glasses or contacts, but I'm not listing them. And fourth, nothing that is used in getting or maintaining any of the previous three rules. So I won't be listing my car because I couldn't get to work without it. And I won't be listing my job because I couldn't afford my house, food or medical needs without it.

So here's my list:

1) My memories. I have been fortunate to live a very good life (so far). I have loving family and friends. I have a beautiful wife and an adorable daughter. If I suddenly lost my memory I would still have those things I just wouldn't remember them. Or our past together. That would be a terrible thing. Many of those memories cheer me up when I'm sad, make me laugh even when I'm not and always make me smile.

2) Pictures. Especially those taken since my daughter came into my life. They are memories given a physical form that I can share with other people. That I can tell stories about them while showing them off. They are irreplaceable.

3) Games. I'm a gamer at heart. Always have been. Ever since the days of the Atari 2600. It doesn't matter if it's computer or console gaming. If I didn't have gaming to help me escape every once in a while I know I wouldn't survive. (I could include pencil and paper role-playing in here, too, but it's been soooooo many years since I've done any of it I can obviously survive without it. Though many computer games can probably be attributed to getting me through these many years without pencil and paper D&D.)

4) Movies. Like games it's another form of escapism. But instead of me controlling and being actively involved in the story I just get to be absorbed into it. Depending on the movie I can think a lot or I can just go without over-analyzing it. It can be a well done cinematic marvel that I lose myself in or it can be a cheesy, hokey piece of schlock that I laugh at and make fun of. It can be anywhere in between. It can stir emotions both good and bad, strong and weak. I have never met a movie that I didn't like on some level (though there have been a few that were at the very outside edge of the lowest level).

5) LEGO. I love LEGO. If I had the money I would buy every set and piece I could get my hands on. I love the simplicity and complexity all rolled into one. I love following the instructions to put the sets together into forms that are so familiar. I love trying to find the pieces I need in a large pile of bricks to build the vision that only I can see until I give it form. Yet another form of escapism for me, yet I haven't done nearly enough with them lately.

Honorable Mention: Books. Mentioned by some others on their blogs so I decided to leave it off mine as much as I wanted to put it on. But I wanted to try to come up with my own five more.

Now who shall I tag (or 'ping' if you will)? Let's see...

Accipiter write: Ha ha ha! Hardly anybody knows about my blog, and I never update it anyway, so I can just sit back and laugh at you all being pinged!

Oh. Well then I guess Accipiter gets tagged!

I will also tag Murphyz and aki2403. (That blog may require you being a member of the forum to see. If so I apologize.) And, because he hasn't updated his blog in almost four months, I'm going to tag cokebaby.

Lastly I'll tag my old friend Pollyanna Pickles.

I would tag my Mother, but whenever she gets these kind of things she leaves the tagging open. She doesn't name anyone and just lets people do it if they want to. So, mom, if you want to do this go right ahead. But I'm not officially tagging you for it. Same goes for you, Grandma.

Another Post So Soon!?

2007-07-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

Every year one of the doctors at Anne's work has a party at his lake house out on Hayden Lake. He had it a little early this year (it's normally sometime in August) and it was this past Saturday (yesterday).

We put Sydney down for an early nap on Saturday since the party was scheduled to start around 1:00 PM. We explained to her what we would be doing later and why she was taking a nap early. She got really excited that we would be going on a boat. When she woke up she was still really excited and kept asking about the boat.

We finally got to the lake and actually found parking this year in the half-empty parking lot. (Last year it was terribly busy and we ended up parking on the side of the road about a half mile away.) Anne called for the boat as we walked to the beach and dock. Sydney was really excited and kept pointing at every boat she saw.

Dr. R arrived just a couple minutes after we got out on the dock. We climbed in the boat and zoomed away. Sydney loved it. The wind whipped through her hair and the bumping as we hit wakes was fun. Of course, the boat ride didn't compare to the fun in store once we got to the beach.

Sydney spent almost the entire day throwing rocks in the water. The beach at the lake house is rocky. Actually, it's all rocks. And Sydney loved every single one of them.

She even had Daddy help throw rocks. She would pick one up and give it to Daddy and then pick one up for herself. She would count to three and then we'd both throw our rocks in the water.

Sydney wasn't the least bit interested in the water, going in the water, floating lazily on an inner tube with Mommy, or even having the water lap at her feet as the waves came up on the beach. She was happy just throwing rocks.

We went out on the boat one other time while there (not including the trip back). Mommy went out on the inner tube to be pulled by the boat. Sydney and Daddy rode along. Sydney didn't like that trip as much. With the stopping and starting and the rocking while sitting still she got quite upset. She kept crying that she wanted to "go throw the rock".

Mommy didn't like the inner tube trip much, either. In addition to the normal waves from the various other boats on the water the lake was a little rougher than normal. Just as she started out on the inner tube something happened where it bounced funny. She ended up flipping forward (toward the boat) and the rope hit her leg. She has some nasty bruises and scrapes on her leg from it. She is fine and otherwise unhurt.

At one end of their beach was a mostly-dead tree. (There was green vegetation still on the bottom half of it but it may have been from a different plant.) Up in the top of the tree was a nest. I'm guessing it was some type of woodpecker, but I'm not sure. One of the parent birds would fly up occasionally and feed the young birds in the nest. Sitting on the side of the tree it sure looked like a woodpecker.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a good shot of the birds. By the time I realized where the birds were (we heard them calling and when the parent came back we knew where they were) and got the camera ready and up in a good spot to take a picture the parents didn't come back again. Here's a shot of one of the birds sticking its head out of the hole. (You can see a little bit bigger version of the pictures on the blog over at my PictureTrail photo page. The wildlife pictures are in the "Miscellaneous Hosting" folder.)

The sun was high in the sky, but on the far side of the tree so there wasn't good lighting of the bird. From what I could tell they seemed to be mostly light brown/tan. From the five or so websites I looked at about birds in Idaho I couldn't find one with pictures of all the woodpeckers. And the descriptions they gave didn't match these birds. So if anyone knows what kind of bird this is feel free to let me know in the comments.

In the late afternoon we packed up and headed up the hill to the house. It's a long, steep climb up. I was looking forward to it this year, though. Dr. R has a bald eagle nest near his lake house.

Two years ago I didn't have a camera that could have taken a picture of them from a distance. That's all right because I only caught a glimpse of one as it flew off and didn't return while we were there. Last year I had my good camera but the eagles once again were AWOL. I didn't even get to see them.

This year my luck ran a little better. I got a good look at one of the adult eagles in one of the big pine trees. It had its back to be, but it was unmistakable.

I snapped a couple pictures and wished (not for the first time that day) that I had brought my tripod. I placed the camera on the railing of the porch to try to steady it a bit and the auto-focus kicked in and focused on the branch a couple feet in front of me. Before I could recover focus the bald eagle spread its wings and flew away. Gah! What a picture that would have been.

Shortly after that I saw the "baby" bald eagle in the tree with the nest. It's still young enough that its head hasn't turned white. But it sat there the whole time we were up at the house and seemed happy to pose for pictures. Though it didn't spread its wings for me.

This morning Sydney had a play date over at her friend Hunter's house. Properly excited about my eagle pictures from yesterday I took the opportunity to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time now.

At the top of a small hill I drive over every day on my way to work is a utilities pole. Two years ago an osprey couple decided to build a nest there. In hindsight I'm pretty sure that they were unsuccessful at hatching an offspring. That year they seemed to be gone after late-May. If they were still around I didn't see them through the summer. And I'm one who loves watching large birds of prey so I definitely would have seen them.

Last year the couple returned. They were successful in breeding and had a baby. I watched them regularly when I drove by. Sometimes I was even lucky enough to get stopped at the traffic light right at the top of the hill and be able to watch them through the sunroof of the car. The three of them were around all summer.

One day in the spring Anne and I took a walk up there with Sydney in her stroller (it's about a mile and a half from the house). Mom and Dad Osprey flew out of the nest and circled above us for a few minutes before flying off toward the river. Boy I wish I had the camera on that walk!

Then at the end of last summer the utility company struck. It can be an obvious danger to have a large bird nest right on top of a utility pole. So the utility company came and took the nest down after the birds had left. They built a nesting platform at the top of the pole, but I was worried that the osprey wouldn't come back.

In the spring I watched in great delight as I saw Mom and Dad Osprey bring large sticks (and other miscellaneous things) to the platform and build a new nest. They've hatched another baby this year and it seems to be growing up fine. Frequently when I drive to work in the afternoon I see the three of them sitting up there observing the world around (and below) them.

So this morning while Anne and Sydney were at a play date I finished up a few chores around the house and the zipped up the hill to take some pictures of the osprey. As I approached I was happy to see two heads sticking up out of the nest. As I parked across the street I could hear the adult bird calling out. As I crossed the street I saw the adult bird open its wings, flap a few times, and then settle back down.

I hung out for about fifteen minutes and took several pictures. Unfortunately the birds didn't spread their wings for me and the third one didn't come home. But I'm glad I finally got a chance to get there to take some pictures.

The adult osprey is calling in the above picture. It brings its head down a little and hunches its shoulders up when it does. (I'm guessing the other one is a juvenile. It's a bit smaller and didn't do much of anything while I was there. It seemed to be watching and taking its lead from the adult.)

A Lot Of Stuff

2007-07-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since the last real update. Father's Day has come and gone. Grandma B was here for a visit. While she was here Anne played in Hoopfest in Spokane. Then, as mentioned, the computer broke down. It got fixed a little faster than expected. Then I had to catch up on a bunch of online and general computer stuff. Then I had to finish re-reading the Harry Potter books to prepare for the new and last book. Which of course I had to read, too.

So last things first. No spoilers for Deathly Hallows will follow. I will just say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was a very good and fitting ending to the series. I'm a little sad that I won't have any new Harry Potter books to look forward to. At least there are still two movies left to anticipate. And boy will Deathly Hallows be something to see!

On Father's Day I played golf in the morning. I played as badly as I normally do. I don't have high hopes that I will ever be good at golf. I don't play enough (that was the first time this year that I've played). But I have a good time going out with Mark and usually Kyle and having fun.

When I got home I got to spend the rest of the day with my two best women.

Sydney and I danced around. And I got a hug and kiss, too.

Spokane Hoopfest is apparently the largest three-on-three basketball tournament in the country. This was our first year of going to it. Anne played on a co-ed team with our friend Mark.

Anne started out on the sidelines cheering on the team. Standing next to her over there are Paul and Christy. Anne works with Christy. And Paul is Christy's husband and works at the hospital, too. You can see Mark there on the right side of the picture in the white shirt, black shorts and black and white shoes.

Once Anne got in the game she played well. She did make the basket on that shot.

Hoopfest is played as a round robin tournament. There are all sorts of categories and thousands upon thousands of people play in it. Each team is guaranteed at least three games. If you lose your first two you go to the losers bracket and play until you lose (or win the losers bracket).

As it happened they lost their first game. I believe it was at 11:00 am. The next game wasn't until 4:30 PM. Sydney, Grandma B and I were there for support and to cheer but we weren't real keen on sticking around that long for the next game. It was crowded, the food places in the park had at least a 30 minute wait in line and it was hot. There was lots of walking involved and Grandma B wasn't up to it. I can't say I was, either. (Sydney was riding in the stroller.)

So the three of us left shortly after the first game. They then won their second game. Most of the third games get played on Sunday but by luck Anne's third game was played on Saturday a couple hours later at 6:30 PM. They ended up losing it. That was actually good. It means they got their quota of three games in and were done on the first day. Anne didn't have to go back on Sunday. (Neither did Mark or his family because Mark's son Caden's team did almost the exact same thing. They won and then lost the next two. All three games were on Saturday so they didn't have to play on Sunday.)

Sydney loved having Grandma B here. They played and played and played. Sydney wanted practically nothing to do with Mommy or Daddy while Grandma B was here.

One morning after breakfast Sydney pulled Grandma B out to the front room to play while I cleaned up. When I finished I stepped into the dining room. Sydney came over and pushed me back into the kitchen, pointed at me and said, "there!" I asked if I could come play and she pointed at me and said (loudly), "No!"

I waited a few minutes and tried to go out to the front room from the other direction. When she saw me Sydney once again pointed and loudly said, "There!" So I went back into the living room and took a snooze on the sofa while Sydney and Grandma B played.

Sydney started playing Hide And Seek with Grandma B. (Sydney calls it Peek-A-Boo usually with me.) With Grandma B she would "hide" in the corner where the two sofas meet. She would frequently squeeze herself up near the window.

Now when she plays this with me she usually just goes and squats down at the end of the coffee table, right in the middle of the room. It's not much for hiding. Coaxing to try to get her to hide some place different (after she's hidden there three or four times in a row) usually gets her upset for some reason, though I've managed to succeed once or twice.

In other news we're starting to plan our next vacation. I get ten days of vacation per year. Anne gets more than that. She earns time off as she works. The more she works the more time off she gets. Anyway, I usually split my vacation time to a week in the fall and a week in the winter. Working at a resort where spring and summer are the high seasons doesn't give much opportunity for vacations during those times.

This year - or next, actually - we're thinking of taking two weeks all at one time in February. Right now the front runner for destination is San Diego. We obviously would like somewhere that is somewhat warm but are concerned with travel times. Sydney did great on the flights to and from Michigan last year but she was still quite young. In February she will be two months shy of three. We would like a nice, easy and hopefully short flight. (Alaska/Horizon has a non-stop from Spokane to San Diego that takes just over two and a half hours.)

Looking for a somewhat warm destination doesn't leave a lot of options. February is San Diego's rainy season, but the highs are around 66F on average from what I looked up. Compared to winter here that's plenty warm. There are also lots of attractions there including the obvious Zoo, Wild Life Park and Sea World.

I have an online acquaintance who lives in San Diego. He has already given me a good list of many other attractions in San Diego to consider.

For those of you in Las Vegas and Michigan concerned that we're not considering a visit to you don't forget that 2008 means 20th high school reunions for both of us. It's possible we'll be seeing all of you for those. (Though it's been longer since we've been to Vegas - since we moved seven years ago - so if the reunions conflict we will be going to Vegas over Michigan.)

I think that's all for now. I'll leave you with a picture of Sydney and her friend Mary Jane on a play date. They obviously decided that reading a book together would be a lot of fun.

Up And At 'Em

2007-07-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

The computer is back up and running.

The parts arrived Friday. Friday evening I called Best Buy to see if they had an appointment open earlier than Friday the 13th. They had very recently had a cancellation on Sunday morning and it was still open.

So they came this morning and fixed our computer. It was the power supply. Not sure what was wrong exactly other than it didn't work.

We're now back up and running. As I get caught up on things at home on the computer I will get some pictures uploaded and get a good, picture-laden post up.

Oh. And don't forget about the email change. If you have our @adelphia.net email address make sure you change it to @roadrunner.com instead.