For my birthday this year I took the day off work and we made the trek up to San Francisco with the girls to see the California Academy of Sciences. This amazing museum, which just completed a multi-million dollar, five-year renovation, is a must see for everyone. The only downside is that everyone knows they need to see it so the lines are very long, and the museum is very crowded. Most days they sell out and unless you arrive early it’s unlikely that you will be able to see any of their shows or get into the centerpiece rain-forest exhibit.
As a handful of our readers know – and anyone that attended our wedding – my parents have a pair of American Eskimo dogs that they treat like children. Imagine our surprise after visiting Sausalito to get a chance to see a couple with THREE of these beautiful dogs. They seemed to be of great personality and the girls dived right in to get their kisses and hugs from this great family.
Since I know that Grammy reads this, I’ll remind everyone that you can click on any photo for a larger video (thanks to the recent fixes) and now the kids are talking more and more about seeing grammy and the dogs that they miss so much.
The best part of not having written in a while is that there is so much to talk about. I want to catch up quickly, but think it might be best to talk about current events first and roll back into the older stuff. That way everyone knows what’s going on now as well as having a chance to catch up on what’s been happening.
I’ve aways been a fan of the ocean – and the water in general – so this weekend we decided to take the ferry from San Francisco across to Sausalito to talk around for a bit. It would be a great way for the girls to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather and for us to introduce them to the experience and fun of riding the ferry. Needless to say, it was an awesome day and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
With such a small readership and so few regular posts, its difficult to imagine that anyone noticed that there haven’t been many posts in the past few months. Unfortunately, problems with WordPress, the blogging software that I use, and then Gallery, the photo management tools, kept me from posting. Those problems have been fixed and the site appears to be working better than ever!
A special thanks to the blogosphere for their help getting the WordPress problems fixed and an extra special thank you to consultant engineer Andy Lindeman who was instrumental in resolving the problems with Gallery and WPG2. The good news is that there are six months of updates coming!
It has already been a few weeks since I last posted, but not for lack of want or content. With the beautiful weather, we’ve all just been out enjoying the “winter.” I did want to share, though, so that everyone could see, some of the video that we took on a recent trip to Moss Landing, just south of Watsonville. The weather was awesome -- especially so for the end of January -- and we spent a few hours around the beach enjoying the sun, sand, water, and local wildlife.
The videos below will show off some of what we saw there, with the main attractions being the beautiful (and very friendly looking) sea otters who were both enjoying the sunshine and getting a little lunch to pass their day.
I was totally joking earlier today when Isuggested on Facebook that global-warming might not be such a bad thing, but it’s truly difficult to imagine that a 73 degree day in January could be all that bad. Of course, that was at 4:00 in the afternoon on the beach in Santa Cruz, so I imagine earlier in the day could have been nicer. It almost shattered my happiness to hear that this is the first day in the past eight that hasn’t created a new record high temperature in the Bay Area. I hear that some areas of the country are seeing snow.
So what did we do today… after a brief visit to urgent care to see the doctor for Sofi’s mystery rash, we went to enjoy a walk through Mountain View before heading off to the beach. Both parts were wonderful, but it’s amazing to realize how beautiful the weather has been these past few days. There were hundreds of people at the beach and it looks like -- with the holiday -- it’s going to be a great night down there, too. After an hour or so at the beach we picked up Babi and headed home.
I took another video and even asked the girls to tell Audrey how much they wish that she could be there, too. I figured since she was enjoying the last round of videos so much it might be nice to be mentioned on their site, too! Hope you enjoy it Audrey (and everyone else, too)!
I’ll have some photos coming up to the site sometime really soon, but I wanted to share with everyone that we have actually completed the unwrapping (not too out of control this year) and right now Mama, Sofi and Natalie are all playing with the new Cinderella game (complete with battery powered musical, lighted shoe) trying to understand that not everyone can win every time.
In the meantime and especially for those waiting for pictures, I’m attaching another short video clip to share some of the unwrapping.
Christmas is off to a rip-roaring start this year and the girls are as excited as can be. So far they have found the bicycles that Santa left and cleaned out their stockings. The first gift, from Grammy and Grampy has caused quite a stir. They each got a barbie doll that includes a golden retriever. The excitement from this comes from the fact that you can actually feed the dog. Parent’s will get a chuckle from the fact that this dog also “poops” the biscuits and barbie comes with all the appropriate attachments for cleaning up the poopie. Brief video attached for those that really must know.
This past week was a blast -- going by way too quickly. I can’t believe that there are only 5 more days until Christmas! This past week we went to see the lights and fun at Christmas in the Park in downtown San Jose (pictures coming in a later post). Mike, Lisa and Audrey joined us to enjoy this annual fun-fest. Best of all, this year we got to see Santa!! Check out the video for an idea of how much fun we had.
The Downtown Livermore Christmas Parade was one of last years highlights. So much so that this year we decided to get involved so that we could be a part of the fun. After decorating the J. Rockcliff mobile and trailer – complete with Snoopy and Woodstock – we toured through the parade route in spot 49 and enjoyed the thousands of people that came out to enjoy the festivities. As a wonderful bonus, the girls got to spend a little one-on-one time with Santa!
We’re already looking forward to something bigger and better for next year!
Deb Fielden: Love the new feature- the pictures are great
even if the are sometime "poses"- The girls are so cute- and yes take all pictures because they [...]
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