To the City! - Day 4

Oh how I love San Fran.  I find an excuse to go there every time we're down.  :)  Loren, on the other hand, typically dreads it.  This time I had Addie on my side -- once I told her there was a zoo, we were in.  ;)  We set off early in the morning to make the most of our day.  The trip in was actually quite good (traffic wasn't horrendous) until I got some lovely news about school.

I had run in the store for some diapers and cash for the bridge, and on my return poor Loren showed me an article he found -- about University of Idaho discontinuing fee waivers for other state university employees for online and hybrid classes.  I say poor Loren because he got the wrath of my reaction to this news.  To say it lightly, I was a bit upset.  One of my top considerations in the PhD program I chose was that it was eligible for fee waiver.  With about half of it left to finish, this was definitely not good news for me.  Granted, paying full tuition for the remaining credits is still a great bargain for getting my doctoral degree, but after a number of advising issues, unclear expectations, and less than stellar classes, this was my "last straw" with the program and I have since decided to pursue a degree at Boise State again. I begin this semester (assuming I'm accepted - cross your fingers) and am currently happy with my decision -- I already have connections with great faculty in the Education department, the classes are offered in person (I'm so sick of online classes), I've heard wonderful things, and I can actually finish sooner.  Oh, and did I mention that I get to walk at BSU graduation in front of all my coworkers and students?  Very cool.  :)  But I digress, back to San Fran...

I think this may have been the first time we didn't stop at Marin to enjoy the view.  Both kids were asleep and I was still upset about the news, so we just continued on over the bridge.  We didn't even manage to get lost in San Fran.  :)  (thank you Droid Incredible!)  I did get to enjoy a beautiful ocean view on our way, making me forget my troubles, and we arrived just as the zoo opened.  It was clear, sunny, and about 60 degrees.  Perfect!

Hayden didn't even want to leave the first exhibit we found - giraffes.  He may have been happy to stay there all day.  But we finally got him to move on, and then he was off!

It's a pretty nice zoo.  Rather expensive compared to ours, but that's totally expected (I think we about spent what we spend on an annual pass here).  Got to see some new animals.

Here we are checking out the gorillas.

We rented this wagon, but managed to end up carrying both kids most of the way.  Why does that always happen?  We were pretty dead tired by the end of the day!

Hayden is at such a fun age for the zoo.  He's just fascinated by everything!  Addie is already getting bored with certain things.

One of Addie's favorites was the hippo.  She also liked the kangaroos and tiny baby turtles (SO cute!).  The baby turtles and rhinos were probably my favorite.  I think Hayden's may have been the rake (see below).  ;)

We, of course, had to ride the train.  Pretty short and you mostly see greenery, but fun for the kids.

After the train ride we had some overpriced zoo food.  We were all getting pretty tired, but wanted to hit a few more exhibits.

My little peacock.

And you know the carousel is a must.  We were literally the only people on it (and this is way bigger than Boise's).

After the carousel we checked out the playground.  The kids played a little, but both were pretty tired, so we headed off to finish our outing with the children's zoo.  Loren was also hoping to beat 5pm traffic out of town.  The children's zoo area has goats and sheep that can be pet, among other animals.

Hayden was in hog heaven after finding this rake.  I think he raked the whole zoo.  ;)

He also liked harassing the goats with it.

We had a bit of a hard time getting him away from his precious rake, but we finally did.  After that a quick stop at the bug exhibit, and we were off.  We made it out of San Fran a little after 3pm, I think, but ended up hitting some major traffic around Santa Rosa (missed our turn-off).  Once we finally arrived back at Grandma's, we were all pretty beat and ready to settle in for the night.

Party Time! - Day 3

I now have, of course, waited so long that I'm not sure I can remember each day's events.  :P  But I have pics to help.  :)  Our Sunday morning began with some new noises upstairs.  Addie insisted that there was a baby and I said she was crazy.  And then remembered that Loren's cousin Jake had come in Saturday night from Florida with his little boy, Logan, who is just a few months younger than Hayden.  So upstairs we went to investigate these new people (well I've met Jake before, but new to the kids).  Instantly my thoughts of my big wild boy (Hayden) were surpassed by even bigger even wilder Logan.  :)  We said our hellos and caught up a bit, and then I had the brilliant idea to take the kids outside to explore the grounds.

My little bronchosaurus is just chillin' on the tractor.  No biggie.  Just some farmin'.

I say that this was a brilliant idea, because about 10min after being outside, poor Logan took a header on the pavement and split his lip and scratched his face.  Great kid watching on my part.  :P

Here you can see Hayden and Logan together (mind you Logan is 4 months younger than Hayden) and you catch a glimpse of Logan's nice lip.

Addie decided she was going to act as photographer.  Managed to capture the only pic of Grandma that I got on the whole trip!

And beautiful shots of Bubby and myself.  I'm not quite sure why I always insist on the cheesiest smile for her.

We just hung out for a bit that morning.  The kids played and eventually Uncle Ron and Aunt Patty, cousin Liz with husband Arron, and cousin Peter showed up.  Sunday was officially family day.

The festivities were later that afternoon.  The whole Sand clan was meeting at the Kenwood church for Christmas festivities, good food, and a gift exchange.

Addie decided to wear her pretty "Santa" dress.

The kids had a blast at the party, playing with cousins Dillon and Conor.  Hayden basically just enjoyed getting into trouble.  ;)

Dillon even found Addie a bug that came home and spent the night with us.  I finally talked her into letting it go the next morning.  

The evening was spent with silly kids. Hayden cracks me up in the background.

Addie was really into posing for the camera that night.  She kept insisting I take more pics.  Crazy girl.

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!

Thanksgiving 2011

Typical Thanksgiving for us this year. :)

Headed out the door with my girl.

Started out a bit different -- loaded up the van and headed towards Rick's to pick up the Subaru (Loren was driving separate so he could run off to the football game) and noticed the power steering problem was getting worse (started Tuesday).  Stopped at the dreaded Mart (Wal) to pick up some fluid and discovered the heater wasn't working either.  Made it to Rick's, Loren popped the hood, and steam billowed out.  Apparently a radiator hose had a hole and was spraying coolant all over the serpentine belt.  Thankfully we had the Subaru right there so we loaded up and headed out -- who wants to deal with car issues on Thanksgiving?  Off to Grandma Dean's we went.

There we found Grandma Dean with Ray, Mom with Kris, Uncle John, Uncle Scott and Aunt Chris, and cousins Steve, April, Sequoia (4), and Miriam (2); Michelle and Harrison (2); and Stephanie and Damian (4).  The most kids we've had at a holiday in a long time!  Ate way too much delicious food and enjoyed catching up.

My super handsome stud muffin.  This was handed down from Becky Brown whose son I believe wore it for a wedding.  We don't really do many weddings and we're heathens that don't go to church, so we don't really have many excuses to dress up the kids.  :)  So why not holidays?

Addie is a another story.  She had a beautiful yellow dress my mom had given her on in the morning, but of course changed her mind by the time we were ready to leave.  So she picked a too big black tee with a too big denim skirt, white tights, new reindeer slippers, and a denim jacket.  ??

Boys will be boys.  And boys will have battle scars.  I swear he's always got a mark on his face.  This, I believe, was Hayden vs. keyboard tray.

He was just too stinkin' cute in this get-up!

Thanksgiving this year happened to also be my mom's birthday.  The girls, of course, had to help her open presents.

Look at those dimples.  :)

A few of the kiddos out playing with Steve.

I mentioned Addie's skirt was too big.  She eventually lost it and just went with tights.  She took a walk like this.  That's my girl.  ;)

Hayden was completely wore out by late afternoon and finally fell asleep in the car. We then ventured back to Rick's to watch some football and finish stuffing ourselves. Both kids were tired and whiny -- Addie said she wanted to go home, so we loaded up and left Loren to enjoy the game in peace. A few minutes down the road Addie started crying that she wanted Daddy. So we ran by the house to pick up pjs and blankies and headed back to Grandpa's for the evening. Once Hayden got some more sleep in the car and we got some medicine for Addie's earache, the two ended up really enjoying themselves. Loren and Ryan yelled at the poor playing 49ers and I just sat back and worked on some knitting. :)

Happy Holidays friends. It's only just begun...