Camping at Walker Creek Ranch

One of the fun things about being married to a famous Node programmer is that he gets free tickets to local programming conferences (if they have anything to do with Node, which is a rather small niche...). This conference was out in the WOODS, the great California outback. It was so far removed from civilization that there was no cell phone signal with any carrier (I had fun imagining myself as one of the advertised 3% not covered by AT&T).... but there was wireless internet, courtesy of a router duct-taped to a tree. It was called CouchCamp, thrown by CouchOne, which is the company built off the success of a database software called CouchDB. I don't know why everything is couches... but Tim likes them, and they like Tim. They just don't need his skills at the moment, so he can't work for them. (Shame, too, b/c they're one of the few awesome companies in Oakland, which is MUCH cheaper to live in, and much closer to the temple!)

So, we were only home from Utah for a couple of days before we left for this 3-day camp. Thankfully the camp was in lodges, not tents, so we had room to put all our stuff, beds to sleep in, and bathrooms indoors. It was also catered by the Ranch kitchen, which cooked us superb food that they said was about 80% local (and of course most of the local stuff was either organic or close to it). So, in a lot of ways it wasn't really camping, but it was out in the boonies and there were lots of animals around to gawk at. We saw tons of deer, and birds and squirrels and rabbits, and Tim saw raccoons and foxes. And we got to hike and trek in the woods and on the not-wooded hills. It was so so so much fun for me, the biologist, to go hiking with my kids and have Jack point out the trees and rock formations and be curious about whether they were all one big bush or lots of different bushes and trees together, and want to pick our way through spiky, thorny grasses to go investigate.

See this? It looks like a gigantic bush!

But this is what it looked like when we got closer:

It was so much fun for me as a mom and homeschooler to see Jack get tuckered out with all the hiking, but then see something interesting and forget that he was tired and want to go investigate, even if it's farther uphill or on the other side of spiky thorny plants. And of course Lily loved every second of it, too!

There was also a creek (Walker Creek!) to play in. It was so nice and shallow; rocky, but with sandy parts too. And cold! But not too cold for Jack and Lily :D There was a little bridge that was just a few 2x6s laid across some rocks, and Jack thought that was so neat and wanted to cross it. I asked him to just take his shoes off first in case he fell in, and he did, but he didn't even come close to falling in. He's got pretty good balance :D That reminded me so much of my own childhood, when my mom used to take me to Logoly State Park just outside of my hometown, and let me play in the creeks there. I used to love it when I could find a tree fallen across a creek, and I would cross the creek on the log and feel so proud of myself for balancing. My mom was always worried I'd fall in, so one day she asked me "What are you going to do if you fall down?" I thought and couldn't come up with any answer, so she gave me a good one: "Get right back up again." And she asked me that same question every time I was about to cross a log, for years! So it was really fun for me, to see Jack getting ready to go across on this little footbridge, and ask him "What are you going to do if you fall down?" and he did the exact same thing I did, searched for an answer, and I did the exact same thing my mom did, give him the right one after just a few seconds: "Get right back up again." And he smiled, and I asked him again so he would give me the answer this time, and he did, with a big smile, and I had to blink to hold back the tears of pride in my big grown up boy. I had to do a lot of that, blinking, watching him run back and forth across that bridge, and wade in the water, not minding the rocks in the bottom, and shriek and yell and splash and watch his rope floating in the current.

There is very little in Jack's life that offers as much fun as a stick tied to a rope...

And my sweet baby girl! She rode happily on my hip when we first got to the creek, but when she saw Jack getting in she was not happy. I put her down but she didn't want down, so I held her but she still wasn't happy. Then she kicked down again, and started heading for the creek like she wanted in, so I took off her shoes and let her go in, but she wasn't quite comfortable getting in it yet. So I held her hands and walked her across the bridge, and she got more and more confident, and then she waded a teeny bit and let her feet get wet. Then she went across the bridge one more time but wanted to reach down and splash the water. I leaned in and held her torso so she could have her hands free, and lowered her down so she could reach the water, and she went to town! *splash splash splash* went the Lily hands, and *shriek squeal giggle* went the Lily mouth. The front of her overalls were SOAKED by the time she was done. And then she happily plopped on her bottom and played in the sand on the "beach" while Jack continued his playing.

Isn't she so darling in her rolled-up overalls?

I didn't actually get any pictures of her in the creek, b/c I was so busy making sure she didn't drown :D But we got a picture of her in a different spot in the creek the next day:

The camp was really only a day and a half, as far as I was concerned. We got there Wednesday evening, just in time for supper, then had all day Thursday to play, then just Friday morning. Tim got done with his scheduled activities at lunchtime, then he took some time to play in the creek with us before we loaded up and headed out. THAT was fun, getting to share my kids and creek fun with Tim :D He clambered around on the steep slope down to the creek, and explored, and provided an extra set of arms and eyes to keep the kids safe :)

Road Trip to Utah!

We took a road trip to go visit Tim's grandparents in Orem, Utah, the first weekend in September. We planned it as a trial run, so that we would see how Lily might do on a road trip to Texas later :D

Packing up was an all-night event. I decided that this time, I was going to have a clean house before we left, gosh darn it! (We always have goals to do all the dishes and laundry before we leave on a trip, but we NEVER do, and we always have such a let-down coming home!) Between cleaning and packing and that ever-present feeling of forgetting something, I didn't go to bed at all the night before we left. And we left early in the morning, 4:15am! (The plan was to get a few hours of driving done before the kids woke, so we might make it there faster. It was the best compromise between driving overnight and not leaving until dawn.)

The kids were so excited; we warned them the night before that they'd wake up in the car. (Jack sometimes has a hard time handling surprises, so we warn him beforehand whenever we think a surprise might upset him.) So, they felt us lifting their sleeping bodies up to put them in the car, and they woke right up! Luckily they were happy, and ended up going back to sleep after an hour.

We stopped and breakfasted as soon as we got to Nevada. Got back on the road and Lily threw up her breakfast. YUCK! Took off the carseat cover, changed her clothes, got back on the road. She threw up again. Oh no, this girl gets motion sickness! (She threw up on the way home from the beach, both of the last two times we went, and both times I attributed it to other circumstantial factors.) So we made more frequent stops, and tried to put easily washed blankets down under her, and made it to Utah with only one or two more incidents, at 8pm.

We had so much fun hanging out with Tim's grandparents :D I love Tim, who happens to be just like his mother, so I love his mother too. Well, she's not too much unlike her own parents, so of course I rather like them too! We cooked and cleaned kitchen together, we toured the garden again, we chatted, we saw Tim's aunt and uncle that live right next door and another aunt and uncle that live across town, and we spent time with Tim's sister who just had a baby.

(And I am disappointed in myself that I never thought to go take care of her postpartum like I'm planning on doing for my friend in Dallas. I think it was just that the friend DID live just around the corner from me when she got pregnant, and so the plans were laid before we ever knew we were moving away. But next time a sister-in-law of mine has a baby, she will have the option of my help after the birth!)

Jack and Lily enjoyed playing on the steps in their house, and the movies they have there that Tim got to watch as a kid. Jack enjoyed the jacuzzi bathtub, and got his first-ever bubble bath. Put regular baby soap into the water right in front of the jacuzzi intake, and you get a MONSTER bubble bath!

We left at about 5am to come home. We turned Lily's carseat to be facing forward, and Tim sat next to her and helped her to look up and forward instead of down inside the car.We made great time, stopping once in Utah and once or twice in Nevada. But the entire state of California was a traffic jam! It was Labor Day weekend, and there are lots of state and national parks there at the eastern edge of the state that people were driving home from. We stopped multiple times, and had a pretty cranky toddler by the time we got home, but we got home by 9pm and were so happy to have a clean home! And, turning Lily's seat around and helping her look up, worked, and we made it home with no vomit :D

And then I bought a plane ticket to Texas :D I arrive at 5:35pm on Saturday, October 2nd, and will hopefully go straight to visit my in-laws in Texarkana. I'd like to get 2 visits in before I have to come home, and Malina doesn't want me too far from Dallas when her baby is due, so I'd better get that first visit in as soon as I get there so I don't manage to miss her baby's birth :D Then I'll go visit again after the baby is born and before I come back home.

I am SO excited to go see my best friend and see our kids play together again. I have to be careful not to talk to Jack about it too much, b/c I don't want to make him as homesick as I am, but when I do ask him if he's excited to see Lorn and Hal, he says "I want to see them RIGHT NOW! I can't wait!" I worry that I won't be very helpful while I'm there; I want to do all her laundry and dishes and help her to welcome her newest child in peace and joy, but I'm barely hanging on to my own duties right now. But that's a whole nother post ;)

Picasa album of road trip pictures!

Playing on the pony ride

This was a double pony ride outside a baby store in San Bruno (just south of San Francisco, between San Francisco and South San Francisco :P ). It was worth the 50cents to get this pic :D

Little Miss Independent!

Eating breakfast :D We were still trying to not put anything on the credit card, so it was a meager meal of bread (whole-wheat, of course) and honey and milk for Lily, and peanuts for Jack.

The pic came out blurry but you can still see her grin!

And I can't take a picture of just Lily without taking a picture of just Jack. Oh dear, what will I do when I have 15 kids?!

Lily has a chair to sit in at the table!

We had a little strap-to-existing-chair seat back in Texas. It broke, we glued it back together, but it kept on breaking. I refused to pay to have something broken shipped across country, so we came here with no chair for Lily. And having carpet under the table made me hesitant to let her have a place at the table in the first place :( She's been asking for spoons and for cups and for food, so I finally got tired of letting my fear of messes get in the way of my daughter's development. I stacked some old college textbooks (calculus, organic chemistry, and anatomy!), put a towel on them to protect them from dropped food, put her on it and scooted it up to the table. She loves it! Now she will settle for nothing less, of course :D

The best was when I gave her a spoon and a bowl full of yogurt and cereal. She was so excited! She wanted to keep playing and exploring it even after her belly was full, but I put a stop to that. She was pretty angry at me... so I laid down and nursed her until she fell asleep. Gotta love being a Mommy :D

Last Post of the Night: Ocean Beach in the City

(with "the City" being, of course, San Francisco)

Lily was asleep when we arrived. She woke as I was putting her in the wrap, but she was quite content to stay in the wrap the whole time we were there, making my job just that much easier :D Being at the beach in thick fog means I have to keep an even sharper eye on my kids, and only having one to keep an eye on was just fine with me!

We ran races, we investigated the statues, we watched the surf, we collected rocks, and we enjoyed the fog that was SO THICK that we literally got wet just walking through it.

I had a hard time picking which of the pics of Jack to put up. He's just so darn cute!

After an hour, we went to join Tim back at Node Knockout. Parking was a little tricky; the signs posted on the street had different instructions for different times of the day and different days of the week. As I was getting my kids out of the car (and Jack was dilly-dallying getting out), I commented to the guy standing nearby (waiting for a cab?) how hard it is to figure out if it's legal to park there, ha ha. He said "Yeah, that tow truck in front of your car is just waiting for you to walk away."

*gasp*

He was right! I'd seen it there but just couldn't fathom that it was waiting for me to walk away. I quickly re-read the signs and realized I had 20 minutes until I could park there legally. I got Lily back in the car and told Jack to buckle back up. As I was getting into the driver's seat, I noticed that two official-looking vans had stopped, on in front and one behind my car. They drove away as I did. WHEW! I was so glad I talked to the guy.... but then I was annoyed that he hadn't volunteered the info without being talked to.

Drove around for 20 minutes trying to find a place to park. (I miss Texas...) Finally parked back in that exact same spot, no tow truck in sight :D

Next post: Little Miss Independent!

San Francisco and Node Knockout

Tim's work is dealing with some revolutionary programming called Node.js. It's javascript on the server, which is remarkable b/c it always before only ran in the browser. Tim understands it pretty well and has been helpful in getting it publicized and in shaping its development. The guy who started it lives in San Francisco, and that is the biggest reason we now live here. Node is growing like crazy, and we hope it will be our ticket to fame and fortune someday, but for now it is still beta and changing too often to be doable for a large business. (So, that said, Tim's job is to make sure that with all this growing and changing, Node ends up being something that his company can use for their software; they get an inside voice in an awesome new platform, and Tim gets paid to work on Node. Win-Win!)

Anyway, Tim got to be a judge in a Node contest on August 27th. We got to go up to the City (AKA San Francisco) and explore while Tim was at another company (also in the City) chatting it up with the Noders. We took these pics there near Ghirardelli Square:

Lily was rather sleepy... but Jack was happy to try to help her! He loved exploring and had to be reminded a couple of times to stay close. I finally had to remind him that there are horrible people in the world who steal children, but he's safe as long as he stays close. He was MUCH better at keeping close after that :D

A statue of a mermaid nursing her merbaby would only be found in San Francisco, hippie capital of the world :D

We donated money to the street musicians and danced to their music, explored the boutique shops with frilly girl dresses and neat European toys, and were headed down to the beach when Tim called and said that some other guys had their kids there and he'd like us to come, too. So we went to spend some time with him and eat free food :D We walked into the building and were greeted by little boys between Jack's and Lily's age, playing on their Daddies' smartphones. It cracked me up, but made me feel a little better, seeing that other programmers' kids also get their fair share of computer know-how :P (As a side note, simply being the kid of a programmer is rather rare. Most programmers don't reproduce. We're not going to repeat here the jibes about the social skills or lack thereof.)

Jack had a blast playing on the arcade-game machines the company had there, I had a blast eating the food, and Lily had a blast napping, nursing, and playing with the ping-pong balls :D I even got to knit a little! At the end of the evening they had live music. It was a rock concert, in a typical business office. I found the whole idea hilarious :D Like a typical rock concert, it was LOUD. They had free earplugs for our protection :D I put some in, I put some in Jack's ears and he liked them, I put some in Lily's ears and she didn't like them. Jack and Lily loved dancing in the very front, until Lily found the little amps all taped on the floor in front of the band, and nothing I did could distract her from trying to investigate those, so we had to say goodbye to the live music and go back to the arcade games.

We went back the next day for more free food :D

Diplomas!

Tim got his paper in the mail. You know, the one that is pitifully small and insignificant-looking compared to the hours of blood sweat and tears that went into getting it? We're not sure if you call it a diploma or a degree, but it's on our wall whatever it is :D

Tim did the framing and the arranging. And he sweetly put up my piece of paper from FIVE YEARS AGO, too :D (He also did the artwork on the photo; it's a pic from New Years' Day that he did some neat little photoshopping on.)

In case I've never mentioned it, Tim's degree is in Software Engineering, mine is just a Bachelor of Science. I did the work to get a degree in Biology and a degree in Chemistry, and was told by some administrator at the school that I would indeed receive two papers since I received two degrees, but I only got one and it doesn't even say what it is. So disappointing.

I have hope for my education. I sometimes despair and think I've forgotten everything, but sometimes I get a chance to talk to someone about basic science and see how little they know about it, so even if I've forgotten everything Dr. Suggs taught me in Instrumental Analysis, I still know more about biology and chemistry than the average person. Is it bad that that makes me feel good?

Jack loves to check out "body books" (books about the human body) from the library, and go through them with me pointing to everything and asking me all about it. He loves to learn about how the body works. I did, too, when I was his age; if my education does nothing more than ignite my children's curiosity to learn about the way they work, it will be worth it :D I remember being fascinated by my mom's college physics book, and a book of hers that had pop-ups of the chambers of the heart, the chest cavity, the eye, the abdominal cavity, skeletal muscles, etc. I've always credited that book with my love of learning about anatomy, but seeing how much Jack loves learning it, I'm thinking it was inborn.

Next post: San Francisco and Node Knockout!

Trying to play catchup...

I missed a few days blogging. Then I missed more b/c I knew that catching up would take a long time.

Should I start at the most recent and work my way back? Or start where I left off and work my way up?

I'll only be able to write about the things I was smart enough to take pics of, b/c I won't remember anything else :( Luckily I carry my camera with me everywhere!

August 25th

This was at the Valley Fair Shopping Center in San Jose. We had a heat wave, which is hilarious b/c it was the coldest summer in 40 years, then all of a sudden at the end it gets hot! To escape the heat, the young moms in my ward went to the beach. I neglected to take pics, but we had a BLASTITY BLAST BLAST BLAST. Lily loves exploring sand, watching it pour through her fingers, tasting it (but she doesn't eat much of it so I don't bother trying to stop her....I think making a big deal out of it would do just that, make a big deal out of it and end up making her eat more), swishing it with her hands, squishing it with her fingers, kicking her feet in it, etc etc etc. Add a big bucket of water to the mix and you've got hours (literally) of entertainment! Jack liked to make the perfect mix of sand and water in a bucket that would look like sand but really be water to the touch, and drag any object tied on the end of a string through the sand and watch the trail it made, and drag same object through the little creek that emptied into the ocean and watch it get carried away by the flow of the creek and watch it be pulled back by the string. I could hardly compete with that string for his attention; he only stopped to eat b/c I repeatedly demanded that he do so, and he was the first of all the kids to be back up and playing. I had fun chatting with the other moms, and playing with my kids in the sand and surf. I sat with Lily in my lap and let the surf wash over us a few times, and had the high honor of getting to watch her face as the cold water washed up to her chest and back down again. I tried to convince Jack to come join us, but he was absolutely not interested. He was way too busy with his string :D I love watching his intense focus when he's doing string physics (as I like to call it...). He is MY son. (I guess he's Tim's, too, but I don't know Tim's childhood quite as well as I know mine!)

Anyway, those silly ladies made beach trips twice during the heat waves, and both times they went in the morning. Morning-time is the nice, cool time, the time that our home was actually bearable! It was evening-time that it was too hot to live in, so we just went straight to the mall from the beach. It was a pretty nice mall, with a play area as good as some of the ones around Dallas, but the best parts were the family lounges. Rooms with play tables and magazines and soft chairs, and booths with curtains for private nursing, and changing tables and sinks for washing hands. But my kids preferred for whatever reason to be out in the fray, battling the crowds to explore the mall. I was glad to get to go home, even if it was hot :P

Next post: Diplomas!

My Sweet Boy

Jack's growth is so subtle as he gets older, it's easy to miss if I'm not looking out for it. I was telling Tim today how sweet Jack was to me today, and I realized I should write it down so I can remember it :D We've been busy lately, there's tons more to write, but I'm too busy to write it, so this will have to suffice.

Today was getting ready for a road trip we're leaving on in a few hours (after hopefully a few hours' sleep...). It was stressful, as I was frazzled with a million things running through my head of needing to be done, and our normal routine off a little, and Jack feeling the excitement of getting ready to go. But I made time to play with the kids, and that helped me a ton (both directly, by relieving my stress and re-centering, and indirectly, by making my kids happier!). Jack was so helpful; he's excited for the trip and wants to contribute to it. (We're going to see Tim's grandparents and sister in Utah!)

We were grocery shopping for road snacks, hungry. Being hungry in the grocery store is dangerous enough, but I was also rushed and frazzled. We'll not mention how much I spent. I managed to be cheerful until just about the last few minutes; Jack, too, was hungry and frazzled, and he managed to be cheerful the whole time! I snapped at him a couple of times, and he did nothing more than make an angry face. Not even a growl escaped his lips. After we were done and the employee was bagging up all our food, I apologized to Jack for snapping at him, and he said "It's OK, Mommy, I love you." That really made my day!

Then, we went to the body shop to pick up our car and drop off the rental car (yes, with two kids and a trunk full of groceries!). I let Jack have a little package of crackers to eat while he and Lily played in the car, while I moved everything over. Every time I came back to our car to put things in it, Jack offered me the cracker package so I could get a bite. That was great :D

Not to mention just how generally sweet he was all day. He cuddled Lily and played with her, he was cheerfully done with his computer time (which is another thing I should mention, we're now limiting computer time to 2 hours a day, and he hasn't fussed a single bit about it yet!), and he was patient as he waited for me.

So, back to cleaning and packing. It's 11:15pm, we're hoping to get up at 3am and be on the road at 4. It's a 13-hour drive according to Google; if we stop for 15 minutes every hour, we'll get there at 9pm (there's an hour lost from here to there.) Either we won't stop that often, or we'll leave earlier, b/c I really want to get there before 9....