Walking With Dinosaurs A Must See!

Yesterday we took our 3 kids (7,5,3) to an amazing show called Walking With Dinosaurs at HP Pavilion and it was great! The show covers the age of the dinosaur and features a combination of huge animatronic animals and smaller human powered puppets. The kids loved it though they did cover their ears during some of the load simulated fight scenes and dino roars. The visuals are fantastic and the dino's themselves are impressive if not scary!

Here is a great short youtube video if you want to get an idea of what it was like.



The hit of the afternoon is the dramatic entrance of T-Rex to cheers and applause. The show was very high on production value though light on science which is probably appropriate considering the number of small children that were there.

Walking With Dinosaurs is a traveling show and it appears to be working its way back east so if you have a chance to go I highly recommend it.

Reconnecting...

I love all of the social and professional networking sites that exist now like LinkedIn and Facebook. Since I started using those tools a few years ago (well linkedin not facebook since it is new) I've steadily built networks of friends and acquaintances.

Every now and then though something cool happens and it just did for me. When we lived in Australia we met the nephew of our good friends Terry and Ann. Steven was a great guy but we fell out of touch not too long after we left Australia. Well he just found me again on LinkedIn the other day and we reconnected. After graduating from uni (as they call it in England) and working a bit in the North Sea (geologist) he gave that up and followed his passion for responsible travel (gained in part when he was in Australia when we met him) and started a web site that is a resource for anyone who wants to travel differently and more responsibly. It is called Make Travel Fair and is a great site and if you are going to travel I urge you to take a look at it as a resource.

Interestingly one of the things they have on the site are socially oriented news articles which highlight various issues around the world. There are several articles on Burma and specifically on the Karen people which are the refugees we hosted in September.

Great work Steven! I am glad we were able to reconnect and I wish you great success!

Train Challenge

Nicolas is very into his trains. He plays with his GeoTrax almost every day. Now Melissa and I are often involved in the construction of the tracks that Nicolas plays with and lately we have gotten into a bit of a competition over who builds the better tracks. There are lively debates over what makes the best quality track like how many trains can run at once and the likely hood that they will collide, if the track is "self correcting" etc.

This is one of Melissa's creation. While it is clever and gets points on the elevated loop back (very cool) and parallel bridges the trains basically only go in one direction once they have turned around. I'll post some pictures of mine shortly to let the collective be the judge.

I think Santa will bring more track for Nicolas so I see this as a long term thing! Either way Nicolas will be the benefactor of some seriously cool creations to play with!

My theme song for when the girls are older

My friend Philip sent me this link from YouTube - this will be my theme when the girls get older! Watch out!

Early risers...

It's 5:30 am (i would blame jet lag but that would be fooling myself) and I am sitting at the kitchen table trying to catch up on so many thing I rarely have enough time to do (like blogging).

Lea has just come down, as she did yesterday and as she commonly does. She is not a normal child in this regard! I just tried to convince her to go back upstairs and lay down but she refused.

Weird!

I blame my parents for my insomnia (although mine did not start until after college), I guess she will do the same.

Knock Knock...

Dinners at our house can sometimes be pretty roudy and fun. The kids lately have been on a tear to tell and here knock knock jokes which has been very funny. What's funny is not necessarily the jokes themselves rather that they are all telling the same 2-3 jokes over andover again and cracking themselves up.

It goes something like this...

"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"A cow"
"A cow who?"
"Cows don't say who they say 'moo'!"
Fits of giggle and laughter.

"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"A pig"
"A pig who..."

You get the idea, they will repeat this for the entire barnyard and giggle and laugh the entire time.

Busy Busy

It's been nearly two weeks since my last post. Things have pretty well been crazy busy around here. I've had my first of two nearly back to back trips. There have been more rehearsals for Julia's upcoming play. Christmas preparations including putting up the tree and other shopping related activities have kept us up late.

So while I don't want to make excuses the holiday season is always a busy time for us.

Big Day for Melissa

If you know Melissa at all you probably know that she hates speaking in front of large audiences (large being bigger than 3) :) and would rather be almost any place else besides a stage in front of a crowd (even if friendly).

But when she is passionate about something, as she is with the refugees, she will overcome any obstacle to her in making a difference and today she did just that. She was asked to speak at our church in front of the congregation about her experiences with the refugee ministry. The very thought of it made her extremely nervous, but the thought that she might motivate even just a few families to open their hearts and their homes was enough for her to fight the fear and agree to speak.

Today she gave an eloquent, well thought out, funny and poignant speech about how getting involved with and hosting refugees has profoundly changed her life (and our family in general).

I am so very proud of her for getting up there and doing this (there were probably 400-500 people in the main service). As she was speaking I was thinking how grateful I am to her for leading us down this path and the wonderful experiences we have had so far and the ones that are out there yet. Many people came up to her and me after the service and congratulated her and mentioned how they were touched by the story and our openess to accepting strangers from another country into our house. So I am guessing that she did make a difference and in some small way move things forward for the refugee cause she is so passionate about.

Great job Melissa!

Wonderful weekend treat!

Melissa and I given a wonderful treat over the weekend from our close friends Darren and Carol. Darren and Carol were just married last year and do not yet have kids but are clearly going to be awesome parents because the kids love them. The last time we had them over for dinner Nicolas (yes the 3 yr. old) suggested that they could take all of the kids for a sleepover. Of course we did not have to take that advice but Darren and Carol seemed enthusiastic enough about it.

Well since it was my b-day weekend we decided to take them up on their offer and they kids had a great time. In fact it happened to be a weekend where the parenting duties were ratcheted up a notch b/c Lea lost her first tooth so the tooth fairy had to visit and Nicolas has an ear infection so he needed medicine in the evening and in the morning.

Darren and Carol spare no expense when it comes to the kids and they had all sorts of fun activities planned for the kids including making pizzas and cookies from scratch, watching movies, playing in their awesome yard (they are renting a house from a couple with small kids).

Needless to say the kids were super excited about going over and so were we! We dropped them off around 4pm and headed out for the evening. Apparently the cookie and pizza making got quite messy and there was a lot of cleanup to do!

We went to a bar and had a nice cocktail in downtown Palo Alto and then went to dinner and a comedy club. It was a great time. The kids were so worn out after all of the activity for the evening that they apparently crashed hard around 9pm which is great.

Darren and Carol reported that the kids were great! Everyone seemed to have a great time so hopefully this will not be the last sleepover!

Big thanks to Darren and Carol for giving our entire family this special treat! Hopefully we can repay the treat for them one of these days (hint hint)

Indicators of things to come

The other day at breakfast Julia and Lea were having a small argument over spelling which ultimately lead to several indicators for me. Julia had asked Lea to spell the word "wish" and at this stage Lea does not know how to spell it. So they were arguing about it something like this: Julia - "is not", Lea - "is too", Julia - "is not" etc. etc. You get the idea, it was quickly getting on my nerves.

So I suggested to Julia that just because a word was easy for her did not mean it was easy for Lea. I then said there are lots of words that you don't know how to spell which might be hard for you. This is where I got into trouble. I started to try and think of a word that was harder that she could not spell and the first word that came to mind was "indignation", which was my first indicator and in my defense this was still early and pre-coffee.

I said Julia for example the word "indignation" to which she said (somewhat indignantly) "OK, what's the definition?" and her mini-spelling B was on. After quickly deciding that "you" and "to be indignant" were not reasonable answers I gave her a definition. She took that in and then said "can you pronounce the word again please". Thank god at this stage she did not ask me for the language of origin!

I slowly repeated the word and without missing a beat she spelled it! and said "see daddy I am a good at spelling." Now I was somewhat backed into a corner so I said (somewhat indignantly) "Great, that was very good, but my point is still that there are some words which are hard for Lea and not for you." hoping that I could exit this gracefully, with a point and saving face. I did but this was certainly my second indicator of things to come.

A Visit to the Silicon Valley Mecca!

Earlier today I was lucky enough to visit what is literally the mecca of Silicon Valley and give a presentation. The top silicon valley venture capital firm is Sequoia Capital and they happen to be one of Mark Logic's investors. Now you may not have heard of Sequoia but you have heard of the companies they have successfully backed. These companies include Apple, Yahoo, Google, Youtube and many more! And they are not just into s/w they also backed Nvidia and many other hardware vendors as well. Amazing! Amazing run they have had.

So I went with our VP of sales to their offices on the famous Sand Hill Rd. to present Mark Logic to a German Publisher who was in town to learn about opportunities that might be around for them in the SC portfolio. The presentation itself went well and we will get some follow on meetings. The fun thing was seeing the actual offices where so many silicon valley legends have started! They may even have sat in the same seat as me! No wait, I never sat down.

Well hopefully that won't be my last visit to the Sequoia offices. It was certainly a lot of fun.

For a bit more fun look at some of their current portfolio, plenty of names you might recognize there!

Bee Movie Night

On Saturday afternoon we decided to treat the kids to a movie since they had been good all day and cooped up because of rain. I had heard that the Bee Movie was good and family friendly so we took them to a 5:20 show.

Jerry Seinfeld still has it because the movie was clever and funny. The animation was great and the characters and story were entertaining. The kids really liked it and even Nicolas stayed engaged throughout.

I highly recommend it if you have kids or are just looking for something light and funny to see.

Poker Night Almost Winner

Last Thursday I played in my second ever Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament with a great result! This was the Rivermark dad's club and they have the tourney about once every three months. There were 31 people there and as I have mentioned before it is very professionally run with timed rounds, fixed buy-ins etc. We had 3 tables divided into 10-10-11 and players were eliminated at a pretty regular rate including two very quickly from our table.

I played conservatively and did not try to steal any hands or bluff too much as there were a few very good players sitting at our table. I did get some good cards including pocket Aces when they guy to my right had pocket Kings and except for one hand played them well enough to make it to the final table. In fact I took a couple of players out and made it to the final three! That is well into the money places so I ended up taking home $150 net! The game went from 7:30-12:30! Whew I was tired on Friday but it was worth it! The picture is of the top 4 players and the huge trophy for the winner!

Milestones #2341

Over the weekend I had another one of those kid related milestones. This one was technology related and I am guessing one that comes earlier and earlier as kids get exposed to all kinds of electronic gadgets at a younger age.

In this case I was attempting to assist Lea in logging into one of the kid oriented social sites from Disney called Club Penguin where they have an avatar that represents the kid. We were struggling to remember both the spelling of the login id as well as the password. We were repeatedly trying different combinations in hopes of hitting on the right one. At some point I asked Lea to go and ask Julia if she could remember the spelling of the login id. Then I sent Lea to ask about the password.

Well Julia must have gotten the sense that we were having trouble because she turned up next to me to assist. Now we have windows XP on this particular computer and each child has their own login. It so happens that we were using Julia's account at the time (she must have been the last one playing on it) and each time I brought up the browser there was a cookie which defaulted to Julia's user id which I was attempting to override. It immediately occurred to Julia to suggest "Dad, just login as Lea and her id and password will be stored there". That worked. Brilliant. She solved the problem right over top of good old dad (and I consider myself reasonably tech savvy, after all I do work for a Silicon Valley software start up called Mark Logic.

I am sure she went back to whatever she was doing saying "Duh!"

p.s. I am sure in my defense that I would have eventually gotten to that too!

Halloween Fun!!

Last night was Halloween and our neighborhood was crazy! We had people knocking on our door past 9pm long after we ran out of candy.

We had two of our close family friends over to Trick or Treat with us in our hood because there are so many houses. Both the Wilde's and the Kokinos family brought their kids over, which meant we had 10 kids total in our not so little group. We managed to coral them long enough to grab a picture of all of the great costumes!

There was also a party at Julia and Lea's school as well yesterday (can you say all party all day!) and Melissa went up with Nicolas and shot some video of them chicken dancing in costume and of Julia running around in her costume.




All in all they had a great day and did not get to bed until after 9! Which is why uncharacteristically they are still in bed now at almost 7am!

Happy November!

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Last night we had our first real significant earthquake since living in Silicon Valley! A little after eight o'clock a magnitude 5.6 temblor hit the Calaveras fault just about 8-9 miles east of where we live. My understanding is that the deeper an earthquake is the larger and more sever it can be. This quake was roughly 5 miles deep which is not terribly deep as earthquakes go. You can read about it in the Mercury news online here.

When it hit I was sitting downstairs working on my computer when all of a sudden it sounded like the ceiling was going to fall in. What really surprised me was the noise. I have often heard of these things described as a "freight train" going by. I would describe it as 10 kids upstairs jumping off of the bed, and was actually my first instinct. I thought "why are the kids running around at this hour?" but that thought quickly went from my head and I ran upstairs and found Melissa and the kids scrambling to get into a doorway. It lasted about 30 seconds so there was enough time to huddle there together and calm the kids down. We did not have any damage from the quake but all the chandeliers in the house were swaying back and forth pretty severely. I went downstairs and checked the USGS site and the temblor was shown pretty quickly on their site here.

We called a couple of friends in the bay area to see how they felt it and I even was on instant messenger with a co-worker Danielle whose husband Alexis is out of town.

Anyway very

Cool Kindergarten Blog

Hey! Just a quick post to highlight a cool blog from one of the parents in Lea's kindergarten class.

You can access the blog by clicking here.

If you look closely you can see Lea in the videos and even a quick shot of Julia.

It is great and has lots of cool videos from different events in Lea's class. Judging by what is there now this will be a great site to watch!

Signs of age

As I approach my 41st birthday I must admit I still feel very young. At the men's retreat we were asked "how old we feel" to which I replied "mid to late 20's" because I generally do at least mentally. But...recently there were to occasions where I felt my actual age.

1) We played a pick-up game of softball at the men's retreat. Nothing special, not a marathon game or anything else out of the ordinary but it was the first game of softball I have played in 9 or 10 years. I was however sore in my legs and shoulders for days after! I am guessing my "slow twitch" muscle fibers hadn't been used that way in a long long time. I had to take ibuprofen just to sleep! Compounding the whole thing was a long plane ride for a business trip to San Antonio the following day which meant I sat on airplanes. I think if I could have gone for a run I would have been OK. I actually had to use my arms to extend and retract my legs while sitting in the plane seat!! Bummer!

2) A few weeks back I was on a business trip to NYC to meet with some of our publishing team. During the visit after one of the team dinners I found myself chatting with two of the younger members of the team. At some point they asked me how I had been successful in my career and did I have any advice for them, which I willingly offered. It was only later upon reflection did I realize that I had become that "older sage" at the office whom younger workers ask for advice! Ouch!

When did I cross the line??

Signed - Still young at heart!

Where you are and where you should be

I just got back from a weekend men’s retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains at a place called Mt. Cross camp which is a Lutheran church camp tucked deep in the redwoods. There were about 30 men there with age ranging from 30's to 80's and it was really great to get away and just talk and have fellowship with other men. When I left for it on Friday it was the place I felt like I least had time to be as it was an extremely busy week and I am now on my way to San Antonio for a work trip (it’s Sunday) however after the first hour or so I felt like that was the place I most needed to be. Once can become so unbalanced that it is good to take time and reflect and have fellowship. We had a speaker who was a friend of one of our pastors and the theme he spoke about was “life comes at you fast”. He broke the discussion down into 4 phases of life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and older life. We also broke into small groups to talk over questions he had prepared in a more personal format. The questions were related to each phase of life we discussed like “what do you know now that you never thought you would?” etc. There was also plenty of time to play games both physical (softball) and mental (blockus a really cool game you might want to look into).

Despite the fact that I really did not have time to decompress and discuss with Melissa I am glad I went and will endeavor to go again next year.

More family visits

Our run of family visits continued yesterday when we had a visit from my Uncle Lester (Kreisa) and his wife Julie. I have not seen them in probably 8-9 years and Melissa and the rest of the family have never met them!

They are in the bay area enjoying the sites and came down to Santa Clara to have dinner and meet the family. It was great to catch up with them, find out what is happening with my cousins. They also gave us an update on my great aunt Betty who lives near her son Gary in Bend Oregon. They went to the Albuquerque Balloon festival.

We hope they can come see us again sometime soon as we really enjoyed their visit.

Benefits of Family Visits

We are currently enjoying a visit from my in-lays the Durley's and everyone in the family benefits.

For the kids they get lots of extra special attention for example:

Nicolas gets to identify letters and numbers with Gramma which he loved.
Lea got to read to Baba
Julia gets lots of time to tell both of them stories and talk about her play.

Now we parents benefit too. An extra two pairs of hands around the house means that we can get an occasional much appreciated break, particularly during the day for Melissa.

And finally for me, first see all above, and then the culinary benefits for me which include the fact that Ray and Louise are solid meat eaters (unlike the rest of the crew here). That means that occasionally when the stars align we are able to grill some big juicy delicious steaks!

Genesis was awesome!

The staging was awesome, the crowd was into the music and the band put on a great show!

I am hoping to get some phone pictures from Bruce and will post them as soon as I can.

If you get a chance to catch them the by all means do!

Genesis Take Me Back!

I'm heading to the Genesis concert tonight with a friend and I am extremely excited!! To tell you the truth I have been too busy to think about it over the last couple of weeks (see posts on refugees) to really think about the concert but tonight it is finally here!

Using modern technology I was able to buy the songs of of itunes on their set list convieniently posted to their website. Now I have been listening to the songs all day and an prepared for a full sing along journey back to my youth!

I do not go to a lot of concerts so this is really a special treat. I'll update the blog after the full experience!

Happy Birthday to Melissa!!!

Yesterday was Melissa's birthday (i won't endanger myself by saying how old). We started celebrating Saturday night using our new outdoor fire pit. This is a welcome addition to our patio and will heat the often cool nights we have in Santa Clara and make it so we can use the patio all year round. We had a nice day on Sunday including using her new rice cooker and wok cookbooks to make a delicious meal of chicken and broccoli and shrimp and snow peas.

Many more!

Halloween & Zombies

It is that time of year where my kids seem to put a lot of thought into what they want to be for Halloween. The three of them can sit and stare at a costume catalog proclaiming "i wanna be that one.." over and over again looking at witches, goblins and zombies. Of course there are deeper psychological impacts of this behavior which I don't think they grasp.

I returned late last night from a trip to New York City and had awoken early (thanks to my good friend jet lag) this morning when Lea came into our room. Side note: it was nice to hear the excitement in her voice when she realized i had returned, very nice! Anyway she told me she had had a nightmare and she climbed in bed to the safety of mom and dad. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it and she described her dream to me stating that Nicolas was a zombie in her dream and was chasing her around. She also said Julia was turning into a zombie ans starting to chase her around. I asked her how she knew what a zombie was and she described Nicolas walking with stiff arms and legs and wanting to bite her (which might just be something Nicolas would do anyway). I chuckled at this story and chalked it up to the catalog and the upcoming Halloween holiday. For her part Lea, having successfully dumped the unpleasant memory, rolled over and went to sleep. I got up and went for a run.

Days like waves on the ocean

Every one's daily life ebbs and flows somewhat like the waves on the ocean. Sometimes there are flat days and sometimes there are wavy days with lots of peaks and troughs. Every now and again on the ocean two wave peaks come together to form a particularly high and powerful wave and the same kind of thing happens in peoples lives.

Today(Wednesdays in general) are a double peak day for us for the rest of the year. On Wednesdays the kids have school (of course) followed by swimming lessons in the afternoon, followed by LOGOS which is a kids fellowship program run through our church. This means the day starts around 6:30 am and does not stop until 7:30 pm. A double or even triple peak day!!!

Today is the first peak day this year.

I am a benefactor of this day because I can get a little extra work in, take time out for some exercise or get some much needed things done around the house. I am guessing that I will try to get a little extra done around the house b/c I am sure Melissa will be completely spent by the end of the day.

Bush Speaks Out on Myanmar

In his speach to the UN president Bush spoke about the situation in Myanmar! He also indicated that there would be further sanctions against the military goverment there.

CNN covered the speach here


This comes on the heals of continued protests in the country by monks and students. These are apparently some of the largest protests against the goverment in nearly 19 years.

We are of course very excited about this news and very happy for our refugee friends. Esther told us that her dream is to return to Myanmar in 5 years to help people there.

Very exciting news from our perspective and long over due.

So True!

A friend just sent us this video, and it is so true for anyone (unless they are wierd) with kids!

Either way it is definitely the truth for our house. Enjoy!

Our friends have moved on

Well the time finally came on Tuesday for our friends to move on to another place. We so much enjoyed our time with them and I think they with us. We definitely had some cultural exchanges which were awesome! Melissa has an absolute fire in her belly now about helping more refugees and has also motivated friends and neighbors to help too! She is on a mission!

Here are a few more pictures to share.

John and baby Tuesday.

Paw Paw, Mel, Esther.
Out for ice cream.

Wonderful Cooking

One of the very unexpected benefits of having our guest is the wonderful cooking we are being treated to. Esther has been treating us will all sorts of tasty meals from a curried shrimp with bacon to sausage with fresh vegitables and plenty of asian spices, chili's etc.

I am being spoiled because everynight this week she has made something special, beef, fish, egg, awesome. Our wok has never had it so good! The smells permeate the house and make everyone's mouth water!

I have taken some of this yummy food for lunch as well.
This morning she is working on some special made with chicken, i cannot wait to taste it when I get home!

Quick Update on Our Guests From Burma

Just a quick update to say everything is going really well with our refugee guests. They have shared with us more about where they came from and one even volunteered to cook some traditional meals for us which were hmmm, hmmm great!

Here are some additional links on the welcome house and the refugee camp they came from.

Here is some background... All of the people in the Sunnyvale Welcome house are Burmese/Karen...
http://www.jubileecampaign.co.uk/world/bur5.htm

They come from a refugee camp in Thailand called Mae La
http://www.churchworldservice.org/Immigration/archives/2007/06/165.html

John

Opening Up the House to Those In Need

Sometimes you just have to have faith. When Melissa called me as I was boarding my flight home from Washington D.C. yesterday (9/7/07) and asked if we could host refugees from Myanmar (formally Burma) I have to admit I was at first somewhat stunned but then decided to listen to and trust the universe and agreed. They would be coming that day and in fact would arrive before I even got home.

So we now have 2 women and a baby staying with us. They are Karen which is an ethnic group in Myanmar and have been living in a refugee camp in Thailand for years to avoid persecution by the government. Apparently one of their villages had been burned as well as many other atrocities over the years. There is some additional background information here.

One of the women is named Esther, one is Paw Paw and the baby is Tuesday (apparently it is customary to name a baby after the day on which it was born). Esther speaks a bit of broken English and Paw Paw speaks no English.

So today is really the first full day and everything is going really well. This kids have adjusted extremely well and even play with the baby who is 8 months old.

I'll certainly keep everyone up to date on the status. They are only supposed to stay with us for a week.

Why I Will Never Use Blockbuster Again

I have finally had it with Blockbuster and plan to never use them again.

The other day I went into Blockbuster to rent movies with my kids. This typically involves getting 1 for each of the kids plus one for Melissa and myself for a grand total of 4. We also occasionally buy popcorn or some other movie related candy and the bill can be $20 or more.

On this particular occasion we went to the checkout counter with an aforementioned load of goodies with the plan to watch some movies over the next day or two. The person behind the counter told me that there was a "block" on my account and that we could not rent movies until we "paid" for the movies we had previously rented. Now we don't always return them promptly (note we only started renting again when they created there much promoted "no late fees" policy) but we always return them. I asked them to check for the movies and the person turned and pulled out the very movies in question from a drawer behind the counter where they had apparently been sitting for several weeks (we had been on vacation).

Now they wanted me to pay for movies they had in their possession and had been keeping out of circulation (denying themselves revenue). The total they wanted me to pay was in the neighborhood of $60. By my simple math if they had kept those movies in circulation (they were reasonably current kids and mature movies) they could have almost certainly generated more than $60 worth of revenue. In addition they were staring at another $20 from me at that moment.

The person behind the counter did not seem to see the fault in the Blockbuster logic or was unable to do anything about it (no manager was on hand on Saturday afternoon). I was flabbergasted, so we dropped our movies and candy (much to the disappointment and protestation of the kids) and walked out.

Now all was not lost b/c the Safeway in the same shopping center recently installed a video rental kiosk which only costs $1.50/night so we were able to save the day and get some entertainment for that night.

The straw that broke the camels back is that the other day we received a collection notice from Blockbuster for the movies (which are certainly still in their drawer) for the $60 odd dollars.

So, not only have they not gotten the revenue for the movies in the ensuing 3-4 weeks, they have also missed out on several additional $20+ rental opportunities from us. This means that their idiotic policy has cost them more than they are asking me to pay and now it has cost them a customer FOREVER!!!

On Saturday I plan to march in there, pay the X$#%@W$ $60 and show them my application for Netflix where I have many friends happily renting away.

Idiots. Don't use Blockbuster, boycott them now.

Big Day - First Day Back to School

Today was a very big day, all three kids started school for the year. Julia is in 2nd grade, Lea in Kindergarten (very big!) and Nicolas started a new pre-school. We all went up to the school in teh neighborhood together to drop off Julia and Lea. It was a really big day for Melissa as well with the funky first day schedules and driving back and forth between Santa Clara and Sunnyvale (about 8 miles each way). She summed it up very well in a message to her parents which I have summarized below. BTW she abbreviates their names to J, L and N in the note.

"Big sigh, winding down. Did the whole thing... here is the scoop.

Julia first (we all walked her to the door, JK too). Met teacher briefly seems energetic and nice. Then over to Lea's. Parents allowed in for a few minutes. L got settled in her spot and started coloring. Mrs. Burnett said there was a meeting in the gym for kinder parents with the principal at 9. This was the first I had heard of it. Either missed the note in the packet or --- I dunno what, either way, JK had to get to work and I had to get N to preschool so we missed it. Turns out not much I didn't know except no eating with kiddies at lunch anymore. I think this is good from a safety perspective, but I'll miss it. Did it quite often with J last year...

Then straight over to Nicolas' school. Stayed for a few minutes. He was happy making a fruit loop necklace so I left. Many crying kids and worried parents. Thought it better I just scoot... Then back home dropped off car at home and walked to get L. She at first said it was good, later in the day she said not so good cuz she didn't make any new friends. Well, she was there for < 2 hrs and the schedule was tight. She will be fine and her teacher really is fantastic. We all know L is a bit glass-half empty at times!!!

Had time to walk her up to jamba juice though and get some 'alone' time which we both really enjoyed. (Hot, hot here today)... Then back home to grab some food and pick up N. He was fine, said he had a great day. We stayed and ate our lunch under the tree in the courtyard and talked with Jen and some other moms/kids...

L and N slept on the way home, I packed the pool bag and we ran off to get J... Saw Mrs. Hohman who's belly is getting big. She was so sweet!!! Do hope she comes back. J said her day was great and her teacher was really nice. Went over to the pool. Had invited Jen and company and they were there waiting...

Played for a long time. Kiddies got along so great and it was hot!!! Steve out of town tonight so Jen suggested Red Robin. We got there early so not too full. Kiddies were excellent. Got to have a margarita and don't have to cook/clean!

So back home now. 5:30 and they are fed, bathed and pj's on. Time for a movie and bed!

Tomorrow a little easier. Lea stays until 12 and eats at school then pick up J at 2. N and I can just hang out. Maybe go to the park....

Anyway that is the day. We have survived so far! Whew. Think this week will be a good transition week. We can still feel sort of like it is Summer but start to get into the school routine..."

Wow what a day! I must admit I was a little bit sad to see summer pass but I know the kids are ready to get back to school and we are ready to get back to a routine.

More later!

Major milestones of child rearing #3241

We reached another one of those milestones that parents of older children will recognize and parents of small children dream about - the end of diapers!

I wrote in several older blogs about our efforts to potty train Nicolas. He did successfully accomplish that but was still wearing pull ups at night.

He had been dry for weeks at night so this week we did away with them all together!

No more diapers (sorry pampers). The income savings along will be astonishing!

Needless to say Nicolas is really happy to have moved to full boyhood.

John

High School Musical 2 - Arrives

Well last night was a big event in our household. It was the premier of High school Musical 2 and our kids (mainly Julia and Lea) have been all abuzz waiting for it to come. There has been a blitzkrieg of advertising which has had the kids in a frenzy everytime it comes on.

So we decided to make it a very special event, buying popcorn and their other favorite candies, which are usually reserved for a trip to the cinema. Thankfully the movie was show with only limited commercial breaks and the kids really liked it! Despite the late hour they were dancing and singing along to the numbers (and asking for more popcorn).

As for us we thought it was OK, maybe not a good as the original. Several reviews I've read have been more harsh but I think if the kids liked it then it likely met its goal. One thing my wife and I were wondering though was since the theme was "out for the summer" why it wasn't released in June so that it could have been a summer hit? My only thought was that Disney wanted to make sure it was still fresh for the x-mas gift seasons.

So if you have kids I am guessing they will enjoy it nearly as much as the original.

Running Music Resource

I started running again this spring and discovered a fantastic resource for thouse of you who need or want to run with music so I thought I would pass the info along. Like many others I am sure I run with an IPOD strapped to my arm and earbuds in my ears mainly so I don't have to listen to my own labored breathing. :)

Anyway while looking for new music to run to on Itunes I discovered an awesome free resource for running music from DJ Steveboy. He takes all kinds of music and creates long (mostly 1+ hour) mixes which you can download and run to. One of the things I like is that for his mixes he creates specifically for running he identifies the beats per minute (BPM) so it is easy to find something that matches your pace as you pound along (at least in my case).

He has several sites, one call Podrunner and one called Groovelectric and I highly recommend it if you like to listen to music that motivates and moves you.

Enjoy!

Earings!!

I had an interesting voice mail message on my mobile phone yesterday from my daughter Lea. It all started over the weekend when my wife mentioned that she had inquired about getting her ears pierced b/c another friend had. We talked about how her mom had not permitted her to get them until she was 13 and Lea is only 5 so I did not give it much thought chalking up to normal little girl desire to look more mature. We didn't really talk about it much after that and then i got the phone message.

It was Lea saying "Hi Daddy, I got my ears pierced today!" I was in a little bit of shock! My little girl getting earings? Wow, another stage in life! She sounded so excited on the message that I knew she was extremely proud and happy. I called her and congratulated her on it and told her I could not wait to see.

She was very excited and it is a bit hard to see in the picture but she chose little cubic zirconia for her ears and they suit her just right!

In the end it seems that she kept asking and ultimately they foind themselves at the doctor and she had a piercing gun and could do it right there in a safe and sterile environment and that was that.

Another interesting observation was that my 7 yr old said she did not want to have earings until she was 10 and Nicolas wanted to get an earing as well (that will have to come later, like father like son!)

Vacation Summary

Well as my friend Darren says blogging is about volume and consistency and I certainly have been remiss in that regard. We took literally hundreds of pictures and I will update the post with a link to the best pictures from the trip. In the mean time I wanted to update everyone. The kids were great in all aspects of the trip, plan, car, museum etc etc which really made this for our best vacation ever!

We finish an awesome two week vacation in the east coast. We visited friends and family and didn't get a chance to spend enough time with anyone!

The kids had all kinds of new experiences like seeing firefly's for the first time with Gramma and Baba.

We then went to my sisters house in Charlottesville Va to spend a little time with her family. We had a family reunion which featured four generations together for the first time in 4 years.

One of the highlights was watching my 88 yr/old grandmother play golf against my aunt Susan on the Wii gaming system. I then had the pleasure of getting beat in Wii bowling 153 to 150 by my grandfather, awesome! We also let the kids ride on a motor cycle with Uncle Lane and play on the ropes course in the front yard which was fun.

We then transitioned to a more rural scene and joined my dad and Sue at their property in Craig county Virginia (population 5000, no traffic lights!) The kids had more adventures including exploring a 100 yr/old barn and seeing the remains of the original log cabin where the only thing left is the chimney. There were tons of deer and turkey (despite the noise coming from the kids) and my dad is obsessed with "outbuildings". There were plenty of other attractions near by like hiking, lakes and other places to explore.

They have a beautiful place and we hope to visit again soon. We spent the evenings watching satellites and stars. I highly recommend it for any vacation.

We finished with an absolute whirlwind of visits including my friend Jim Geiger who just returned from 2 years in Brazil, Sheri Eliker who has her own show on XM Satellite Radio.

We went to the Zoo, trolley museum, Smithsonian museum of Natural History (awesome) as well as many other attractions. It was a full yet relaxing vacation!

Quick Trip Update

Howdy, I thought I would give a quick update from our summer vacation back east. Our trip east was uneventful and Melissa wisely dressed the kids (and me) all in orange so we stood out amongst the thousands of summer travelers.

We spent a fun few days at my in-laws the Durley's in Maryland. They live in Leisure World, a nice retirement community which caters to the active retiree, which they certainly are! We had a couple of activities as well as celebrating my mother-in-laws 80th birthday!

We took the kids to the National Zoo which was fun for the kids and good for us. We have not been since we were kids and it is nice to see the zoo is holding up well and continuing to improve the facilities.

I highly recommend it if you are traveling to the Washington D.C. area.

We also had a quick visit with Shari Elliker who is Melissa's long time and very good friend. She has a radio program called BroadMinded which is available on XM satellite radio. We hope to see her later in our visit.

We have now transitioned to my sister Beth's house in Charlottesville VA for a family reunion. I'll post more on that later.

Future Soccer Star?

Watch the future soccer star Lea in action! (I've just learned how to post video) She was playing in a summer soccer camp and on the final day they played a game, mixed boys and girls.

Here is the setup...

She is the one in the purple baseball cap moving behind the (future male star) dribbling the ball.

She sees the young gun making a break and falls in to support. When encountering traffic the young star goes down and Lea's competitive instincts kick in and she pounces on the loose ball.

Watch her keep her balance with her arms, maneuver around a defender, give a couple of toe kick dribbles and drive for the goal!

Unfortunately it is a 2 on 1 situation with two older boys defending a small goal or she certainly would have scored!!



She clearly has the killer sports instinct! As she said in a post performance interview "if it had been a bigger goal I could have scored daddy!"

As a parent it was very exciting!

John

Camping Adventures - Northern California Coast

We recently returned from our annual camping adventure with the Moxley clan. This year we chose to go to the Northern California coast and camp at great little state park called Russian Gulch SP. This was our third year camping with the Moxley's and we now have it down to a science. The kids know the routine, we have all the gear organized, and we have good estimates as to how much chocolate/wine is needed, etc.

When we arrived at the coast near Mendicino it was literally breath taking. If I had a dime for every time Melissa said "Oh my God! It is so beautiful" -- I would be rich, well not rich but if you added a dime for every time she said "John, I want to retire here." then maybe I would!

We arrived in the afternoon on a Sunday and quickly set up camp. This gave us enough time to explore the local beach and for the kids to get soaked in the cold water lagoon. We had a delicious dinner and then roasted marshmellows and made s'mores (a nightly ritual).

Melissa has posted her pictures on smugmug and Richard has posted a large number of additional photos here. Check out the photos he did in natural light around the campfire. They are most interesting.

On the second day we went to Glass Beach - which is effectively an old city dump.

Now that doesn't sound very glamorous (and it's not) but there is a small cool factor in that there are tons of wave smoothed glass beads for the kids to collect.


The next day we went on a very pretty 4.6 mile hike with the kids to a waterfall at the top of the park. We made it through to the end with frequent stops for snacks and looks into old Redwood trees. The downside was that Nicolas was unable to make it the whole way back so I carried him on my shoulders for 2 miles which at 30-35 lbs is a healthy workout.

On the final day we went to Jug Handle State Reserve to a beautiful beach with a meandering stream flowing down to the beach. The kids had a great time. We could peer through the opening in the cliffs to the crashing waves just outside. This way they could see and hear powerful surf -- from a safe distance.

There were so many other places along the Mendino Coast that we were not able to get to see. We will certainly have to go back some day. All in all it was an excellent trip and we look forward to next year and keeping up the Moxley-Kreisa camping tradition.

Potty Training 2 of 2!!!

Well as my Aunt Susan recently pointed out to me I have fallen behind on blogging so I'll try to catch up.

One effort we had undertaken was to attempt to potty train my 3 yr. old Nicolas. Boys can notoriously be slow to potty train but I am happy to report that Nicolas jumped on the bandwagon fairly quickly. We started 3 weeks ago and within a week he was starting to use the potty for #1 sometimes. We went camping with our friends the Moxley's (see an upcoming post) and brought his training potty to the woods to continue the process and to encourage him to go when he needed to. We set the potty outside the tent which was in the adjacent campsite to where we set up the cooking and play area. That led to Nicolas running off from time to time yelling "I've got to go potty!" which was really funny. He had an accident or two and didn't quite get the hang of making sure he was aiming in the potty but by in large he got it during the camping trip.

Last week (the week after camping) he used the potty for nearly everything and happily graduated to "pooping" on the potty!

So in what was really just 2 full weeks we went from no interest in using the potty to completely done! He is even dry at nights and gets up and goes first thing in the morning.

I must say that there were several keys to the process for us. First we never got upset when he had an accident, just encouraged him to keep trying. Second we bought a ton of "big boy nickers" with all of his favorites, spider man, Thomas the tank engine etc. and put him in those as a continued reward for doing well. (one funny aside, some of the underwear had spider man on the back only, causing Nicolas to wear them backwards which was quite humorous because he tended to get a bit of "cheek leak" in the back because of is ample behind!)

I am happy to say that not only can we see the light at the end of the diaper tunnel we are standing in it!

Potty Training 1 of ....

So we are trying to potty train our 3 yr. old son Nicolas. For those of you who have tried this you know it can be a challenge. Children vary wildly in terms of when they are ready to learn to use the big boy potty and both of our girls were "relatively" easy.

The process basically let them run around either naked or in "nickers" so that they learn to recognize the feeling. Nicolas has shown basically no interest in potty training but we have a very busy summer so we decided to try to make summer travel and events easier.

So last weekend we tried to introduce him to the concept and although he was excited about the "big boy nickers" he missed the concept somewhat. For example Nicolas and I were out and did the drop by to our friends Darren and Carol last Saturday and i encourage him to go before we left, even held him over the potty and encourage him but nothing. So we went down stairs to leave, he put his hand in a fountain and instanly pees in his pants. Nice try.

Then we went to Target, again I encouraged him to go to the potty while we were in the store, no dice, we went to the car and he went #2. Ugh. No diapers, no more extra clothes.

We then added another dimension to the task. We enlisted the girls to help encourage Nicolas by offering them a licorise (same reward Nicolas gets) when he uses the potty. This as it turns out has shown some early success because the girls pester him to use the potty very often and he has shown more interest!

More later!

So we continue to try.

Running with an escort

I mentioned an earlier post that my 5 yr. old has been very interested in fitness to the point that she has been getting up and riding her bike with me in the early morning to "get strong muscles". Usually when I return from a long run I'll go back out with her on bikes to help her meet her goal of getting exercise.

Yesterday I took her on a ride that was the length of a typical moderate run to see if she could make it and handle the sidewalk with the multiple intersections and other obstacles along the way. I am happy to say she did great and that particular run takes me past a small nature area where we saw wild rabbits feeding in the field which of course was very exciting and news worthy to the rest of the house when we returned.

Well the stories of the rabbits motivated my older daughter (7) to want to join the fun so this morning I went out for my run with a full escort of my two daughters on their bikes. They did really well and I even extended my run slightly going onto the levy near the house to create a loop.

We did get quite a few smiles as I jogged along and even several comments from the other runners we saw out in the morning. Maybe I was looking more tired than I thought because one even suggested that I was running with my medical team in tow! Har Har!

Philisophical Day with the kids

With small children every now and then they catch you off guard with their questions and observations. I remember the time my oldest asked my wife and I "who made God?" which if you are not prepared (who is really) can leave you stumbling for an answer.

The other day I got a double whammy from my kids. To start off the day i was riding bikes with my middle child (5 yrs old) early in the morning (the time of day and her desire to exercise is worthy of another post) when she looked up to me with her big blue eyes and said "I wonder what the last two words will be I will say before I die?". "I think they will be 'good bye'." I was of course taken back, way back! I thought about it for a second and then told her that there were many more things for her to do and to worry about before she had to worry about death. To that she said "like getting grey hair?" I could only laugh.

Of course if that were the last of it that would still be note worthy however it was not. Later that morning as I was driving my 7 yr old to school she declared that she no longer wanted to be human because humans pollute. Now you have to know her, she can be quite introspective and in fact chose to be a vegitarian from the age of 5. She is very concerned with how humans treat animals and the world in general so she may be more evolved than some. She was very upset about pollution this day and feeling very bad. I encouraged her to use her energy to try to help humans be better and pollute less. This seemed to satiate her for the moment and she went off to school pondering the situation.

That to me was a very interesting way to start a day!

Next post - we are at the moment trying to potty train my 3 year old son before the summer gets into full swing and he is showing no interest but it is a funny process to watch.

Ultimate Geek Post

I thought I would try the ultimate geek thing today and blog from a conference I am attending called Tools of Change put on by O'Reilly the famous STM publisher and technology pioneer. The are kindly providing free wireless during the conference to enable this. Nearly 1 out of 3 people here have their computer open checking email, IM'ing, blogging, and who knows what else...

We just watch an interesting keynote from Dale Dougherty on the beauty of print and he spoke a lot about Make magazine, a very cool magazine about how to make things. He read a very funny and moving letter written by a reader who discusses the anticipation of the arrival of the magazine and the total disruption of his day when it arrives. The audience applauded when he finished reading it.

Now we are looking at a book prototype from Manolos Kelaidis which blends the physical and digital worlds in print. He just demoed a prototype book where he clicked with his finger on the book on the word Mona Lisa and it did a Google search on his computer. VERY COOL! Much applause from the audience.

Another example of reading an essay and you want to see what others are saying about it, clicking on the paragraph brings you to a blog on the topic. Also instant translation if you find words in a different language and now he just played a song (Beatles yellow submarine) from the book with the lyrics printed on the other page.

He uses conductive ink on the page with some embedded electronics in the spine to communicate with the computer. Very cool and promising stuff for things like education and training. (think physical book with a picture of a giraffe that actually played "this is a giraffe", or a mail-order catalog that can order with a touch of a button).

It's the future of books.

Signing off for now... more from the conference later.

Catching up

Ok so it has been a few days.

I took the family camping over June 8th weekendwhich in big basin state park is california's oldest state park. It is an awesome park with good family camping and hikes and has the only old growth redwoods south of the golden gate bridge. My parents went and it was the first time they had been camping in 17 years! It was a great time and the kids roasted many s'mores.

They have family events, sing alongs, kids programs etc so take your family there if you get the chance!

I highly recommend that for camping and will blog again on great family camping sites in california in and around the bay area.

Welcome to the world of blogging

Well welcome to myself to the world of blogging. I hope to use this to post thoughts, feelings, obeservations and other random things. I'm very excited to get started and want very much to participate.

John