Eulg?

Nicolas: "Daddy is there something called Eulg?"
Me: "I don't know, what does Eulg do?"
Nicolas: "You know, it makes things break apart."
Me: "Makes things break apart?"
Nicolas: "It's the opposite of glue, which makes things stick together"
Me (with a giggle): "I don't know Nicolas but that is very funny, Eulg!!"

So is there? :)

Another Visit from Old Friends - Jim & Emerson

Melissa and I have moved around a lot in the past prior to the rise common social tools like Facebook and LinkedIn which make it easy to stay loosely connected to folks. So there are people in our past that we have lost touch with. That said it is always very special and fun when we get to connect with some of our old friends and we had that a few weeks back.

To guys we worked with back in the Autometric days (now 10+ years ago) stopped by the house for dinner. Jim Gannon and Emerson Brooks were both engineers that we worked with and hung out with. We figured it had actually been 12 or more years since we had seen either of them because they had both left Autometric before we did.

We had a ton of fun catching up with them, playing the "do you know where someone is.." game.

It turns out that Emerson is using the software that my new company produces. That is truly small world stuff. Jim now lives out here in Mountain View working for Google in their Adwords group and his job as he describes it is "counting clicks".

What a fun time and we hope to see both Emerson and Jim more often in the future.

Three Red Hotz!

We are nearing the end of Lea's softball season and it has been a great one! Although they don't officially keep score the Red Hotz have won the most games and are in first place in their league (but who's counting right?)

Additionally the coach took me aside and asked if Lea was going to play next year. He said she has fantastic hand eye coordination and is a really fast runner. Her only shortfall is her throwing, something I can work on with her. I was needless to say very proud of her. She currently bats second in the lineup because she is batting around .400-.500 (there are no strikeouts). Anyone who knows Lea knows how competitive and fiery she is. You should see her at the plate, so focused and so into the game.

There are two other girls from the neighborhood who we have been carpooling with and who are also good. Here is a picture of the three in their outfits, very cute!!

I hope they all play on the same team again next year.

Monsters in the garden

We love to eat artichokes and they grow very well in the sandy soil and warm climate in California. Down in the Salinas valley and Monterey Bay you can drive past miles of them and they are some strange looking plants. In fact I wonder about the first folks to look at them and say "Hmm, i wonder if those taste good?" because from looking at them you wouldn't guess the yummy goodness inside.

Anyway last year Melissa and the kids decided to try and grow some in our garden and to our surprise they have done really well! In fact they have more or less taken up the entire back part of our space. The artichoke is a thistle with an edible bud and each plant apparently gives off multiple buds. We will try some tonight and I am anticipating a lovely feast dipped in melted butter and mayonaise with lemons from our Myer lemon tree.

I'm just saying...this could be handy...

Won't say for who...

Big Fun on the Big Island

Last week we spent 6 days in Hawaii on a fun filled vacation on the big island. We stayed in the Kings Land Vacation Club which is co-located with the Hilton Waikoloa and which is a really great family friendly resort. There is almost too much to blog about from the trip as we alternated days out on the island seeing local attractions like Volcanoes National Park to rain forest to black sand beaches. We could have spent our entire time on the resort and never partaken of all of the activities they had.

For example the pool area alone at Kings Land had a 3 level pool, faux beach, volleyball net, basketball hoop, 2 hot tubs and 4 water slides. There was also a game room, fitness room and daily activities for the kids. They also had a pool side bar which had a nice happy hour and made great Mai Tai's . There was also a massive pool and salt water lagoon over at the Hotel site which offered different and new kinds of fun.

You can see pictures from the trip by clicking here.

One of the days we went to a local beach called Hapuna State Beach which we were told (correctly) was extremely family friendly. Turns out it was really great and there was just the right combination of waves so that everyone had fun. Nicolas was a maniac in the waves so much so that I think it was a bit unnerving for Melissa. Check out this video of him playing in the surf.

wakeup time

I'm not exactly sure when it happened but all of our children have acquired clock radio alarm clocks. There seems to be some appeal to having the clock alarm set to help them wake up in the morning.

On the surface this seems like a really good thing. Instead of having to go in and wake your kids up every morning and rushing them to get ready for school, they will be awoken by their alarm with plenty of time and there will be no rush. That, is the story anyway.

In our house what seems to be the pattern is that they set the alarm and drift happily of to sleep. The alarms are set sufficiently early that Melissa and I are still typically in bed unless I am out running (through that in for you DC). The problem is that when the alarms go off, instead of waking up the children, they seem to shove them into some kind of coma like sleep.

Litterally there is music of all kinds BLARING through the second floor and they will be out like a light!!! I don't know what is happening but it is a crazy symphony of noise coming from the rooms and the kids are snoozing away!

We are going to have to make a change to electric shocks I guess because these kids are deeeep in REM sleep, but we aren't!!