Sunshine! - Day 2

Day 2 - Saturday
Got more than enough sleep (although Hayden was up quite a bit), but still seemed in a bit of a haze.  Had some breakfast and enjoyed some downtime with the kids.  Then we decided to venture into "town" (Santa Rosa).  Drove around looking for some food and conveniently found ourselves parked right next to Russian River Brewery (Loren has only talked about them for 6 months).  It was such a gorgeous day we actually got to eat outside!  60 degrees and sunny was heaven compared to the 30s we'd been having at home.  We enjoyed a casual lunch (Loren loves the beer, but I wasn't overly impressed with the food) and then caught the last few minutes of Connor's basketball game.

Addie was a little chilly at first, but quickly warmed up.

Eating outside with kids is the best, because they can run a bit more wild and it's not quite as obnoxious. ;)

She's into making faces these days.

And Hayden, as always, is into eating.

This is pretty much standard.  A face, hands, and front covered in food.  In this case, greasy pizza.

After that we hit the park (one of the coolest parks I've seen -- love that place) and the kids finally got some energy out.  Sad that the ponies weren't there though.  :(  They even got to feed the ducks and geese when another mom took some pity on my breadless children.  ;)

I found myself with a monkey on my back for a bit...

Who would want to play on playground equipment when there are sharp rocks to be climbed?

After driving in a circle, we found Whole Foods and grabbed some snacks and beer (of course!) and headed back to the homestead.  Visited with Aunt Lynette and then got to have dinner with Uncle Ron and Aunt Patty, and cousins Liz and Arron, and Peter.  After some delicious chocolate ice cream (Addie's choice) and some downtime enjoying Disney Princess Singalong Songs (my choice -- haha, just kidding) we hit the hay.

California Bound - Day 1

So I attempted to do this same thing with our July trip, and then our computer crashed so I only got halfway through.  I have yet to finish that one, but here goes round two with our California trip.  I can barely find the time to sit down and write at all, so I know there isn't a chance of getting the whole thing done at once.  I also know as a reader you'd get beyond bored with the pics.  ;)  So we'll just do a day at a time...


Day 1 - Friday (12/16)
Day 1 of this trip is always immensely exciting - since it involves a 12+ hour drive through Nevada.  :P  I really can't find a redeeming quality of Nevada - and don't say Vegas, because I'm not overly fond of that place either.  I woke up at 4am to finish packing, loading the car, and just make sure everything was ready.  We were on the road by 5:20am and I took the first leg of the trip (first time ever -- I've finally convinced Loren that I can drive apparently).  I figured I'd only drive maybe an hour or two, but the rest of my party zonked out until right before McDermitt -- and who wants to stop in McDermitt? -- so we pushed through to Winnemucca.  Excellent start to the trip!  (you must remember my last trip to California -- last year when Hayden was 2 weeks old, I was still a hormonal wreck, we had 2 extra people with us, and we were given the worst-ever advice of leaving at night so the kids would sleep - ha!  instead no one slept and we were all exhausted, grumpy, and a bit overly emotional)  We grabbed a bite, let the kids get some energy out, and then hit the road again. They watched some movies (thanks Amy!) and I attempted to get some sleep, but Addie was insistent that I "could nap when we got to California" -- mind you, we discovered that "California" means Great Grandma Dee's house, because after we crossed the border and I told her we were in California, she shouted "No!  This isn't California!"  :)  We were doing so good we even bypassed Reno and hit the mountain.  It was clear and gorgeous!  SO much better than the blizzard we hit 2 years ago when we had to put on chains and drive for what seemed like forever at about 10-20 mph (when Addie was 9 months old and I was still a freaked out new mom).  The kids were ready to get out, so we hit a rest stop after going over the summit.  We explored the woods and ran around a bit, and then headed for Auburn.

There we stopped for some food and ice cream and then loaded up for our last stretch.  Unfortunately we hit late afternoon traffic near Sonoma -- and found our gas light turned on with no gas station in sight and had two kids awake from a nap too early -- wailing for about 20-30 minutes.  Amazingly we made it to a gas station in Sonoma -- I'm positive the poor Sub was running on fumes!  We got out for a minute, and Addie decided she was ready for the last 20 minutes to finally get to "California".  We ended up making it there by about 5:40pm our time, so we made some good time with 2 littles.  :)  We checked in with Grandma and learned that we had the whole downstairs apartment to ourselves, so we settled right in.  Addie was ready to see second cousins Dillon and Conor, so they came to visit for a bit.  With the little sleep I got on the way, I was definitely ready for bed!

PicaBOO!

I don't usually use my blog as a place to complain about businesses, but I often use the Internet for reviews of places and enjoy honesty.  So I just have to give a critique of Picaboo.  You may not have heard of it, but it's an online place to order custom photo gifts such as calendars and books.  They promote frequently on Groupon and it always looks like a fabulous deal (over 50% off).  So I thought I'd take advantage.  Well I've regretted that decision for about the past week.

I've made photo gifts at Shutterfly, Walgreens, Costco, etc.  Most are about the same -- I obviously don't have a favorite.  I expected this to be about the same.  Well I now definitely have a favorite of NOT Picaboo.

First off, you have to download the software on your computer (any you expect to use to work on your project), which includes Adobe Air.  I should have known right there (I hate anything Adobe -- I still use the Reader, but I find their products incredibly bloated and slow, and they have obnoxiously frequent updates that inevitably freeze my computer).  Initially I thought working offline might be nice -- figured it would be faster because there wasn't so much uploading/downloading.  Boy was I wrong!  This is the slowest software I've ever used.  I seriously felt like I was working off a Commodore 64 (a little shout out to an early 90s computer).  Every task takes 10-20 seconds.  It doesn't sound like a lot, but add that up and that's a lot of time.  I actually timed what it took to turn the page on the preview -- 30 seconds!  With a 46 page book that's 23 minutes!  Ridiculous.  Also, since it isn't web-based, you have to save regularly.  And you guessed it -- it takes a good 30+ seconds to save each time.  And with 2 littles around, I save frequently.  You also have to create an account and sync your project if you want to work on it from any other computer.  Outside of the time issue, the backgrounds are vast, but hard to see without individually previewing each one, and not accurate to their titles.  You also can't change your background theme once you've created the book -- just change individual pages.  The photo editor leaves a bit to be desired and you can't zoom in on a photo to edit it -- just try to make a guess what looks good on a 1-inch rendering of the image.  When you flip between pages, you can only select the page number -- no preview of the page or title (again, with 46 pages it's a little difficult to remember which page contains what).

On a good note, the pages are completely customizable (you don't have to stick with the templates provided).  This would be a nice feature if it didn't take an hour to do everything!  Also, I ordered Christmas cards from them (another Groupon -- before I used the software) and I think they came out great.  So, I'm hopeful that the painfully long process will be worth it in the end when I see the final product.

So, although the regular Groupon offerings for Picaboo sound fabulous, I would definitely recommend sticking to places like Shutterfly and just watch for their deals (honestly, I don't think I saved much more by using Picaboo -- I just didn't get a free copy for myself like the other places often do).

Okay, that's my rant for the day.  :P  Good night!