Utah After-Christmas Continued

We also had fun playing with Kristin's side of the family. Grandad and Anna got to know each other better.



And William enjoyed playing with vintage toys.

Utah After-Christmas Trip

We had lots of fun in Utah after Christmas. Grandma was very helpful, showing us how to dance on the musical dance-mat she gave us.








The kids really enjoyed giving their Great-Grandma toys to play with.







And Uncle Cory got some big hugs.

Disneyland Blog... been done before

As Chad told me, "the Disneyland blog has been done to death". But Kristin says that if I'm going to be on the computer now I should be doing something productive.

For those who don't know - we had a Killpack family reunion in California. It was a blast! We entered the park and first thing - William HAD to ride the train. We rode that train quite a bit for the 3 days we were there. The next two rides we tried were a disaster and I think it kind of ruined Williams trust in us - he'll be scarred for life. First the haunted mansion was really loud and dark, so we had to bail out before the car part. And then splash mountain freaked William out. So the rest of the time we stuck to the mellow rides (even though William was tall enough to ride any ride he wanted).

Rather than a play by play of all three days I'm just gonna put up some of my favorite pics...


The last ride we did was Autopia - Anna and I were in front - and I took this while driving...
















The raft ride out to Tom Sawyer's island

















Anna on Tom Sawyer's island
















Loungin' around on TSI. This is also where Kristin was breast feeding Anna when the big boat came around the corner and all the people waved.
















Tea-cup ride - we didn't spin it like madmen































Anna didn't particularly enjoy the train ride

















William and Grandma did
















The C

Day 2 in San Jose

The second day we rode the train to a small playground near Kevin and Jesse's place. I caught a shot of William as the train approached... does he look excited?


Part of the playground was under construction and the workers kindly left their roller out for the kids to play on. Everyone had to have a turn:



After the park, we went to the San Jose Children's Museum. That place rocked! It puts our Oregon children's museum to shame. There was a section with water AND balls - William and Anna were in heaven. I especially like the shot of Anna with the splashing water and the balls balancing on the top of the water streams.



I was going to leave it out, but I had to show this water tornado that the kids would throw balls in. They would get sucked down and then pop out the bottom to float down into another section...
It was a lot of fun seeing Kevin and his family. Lots of thanks to them for showing us around the area, suggesting fun activities and good food, and letting us hang out at their place for yummy waffles and lots of kiddie toys.

Guess Whose Footprints

California Dreamin'

We went to California last week. Our first stop was San Jose to visit my best friend from high school: Kevin Anderson, and his wife and daughter Jesse and Evelyn. It was great to see them. Especially to see Evelyn and Anna play together (or fight together as it seems most toddlers do).

The first day we went to the Zoo - and then to the beach. This is Jesse, Evelyn, Kristin, Anna, and William at the Zoo.











We rode the zoo train - which William loved!



After to zoo, we headed to the beach and had a blast there - Evelyn got to go home and take a nap, so we went without the Andersons. It was a LONG walk down to the beach...



We waded into the water even though it was pretty cold. It was about like summer at the Oregon coast.

Halloween

Our Halloween was a ton of fun. First, we went to the Intel party on Thursday night with Butch and Jo and their kids. Their two boys were firemen, as was William. They were sure cute all together. Jo and I took some of the kids on Monday to the Childrens Museum Halloween party. Anna and William had a blast playing trains, of course. Anna also enjoyed biting the tip off a marker and chewing it up while William and I made a paper plate mask.




Finally, we went to the ward's Trunk or Treat on Tuesday night. We would have done the door to door thing, but it was desperately cold. Instead, we posed for pictures and went rushing inside to munch on candy all night.

Taco Night

I don't know what it is about the two words "Taco Night" that just makes my mouth water. Maybe it's cuz tacos taste so good, or maybe it's cuz you get to eat a whole meal with no utinsels. At any rate, Anna would agree that Taco Night rox! She's really into feeding herself right now - stubborn kid!

Primary Stress

Last Sunday was our ward's Primary Program. As the presidency member in charge of the program (compiling, assigning parts, running practices), this was a bit of a stressful time for me. There are about 90 kids in our primary which means a lot of them don't get individual parts. In fact, since I am a procrastinating minimalist, that meant A LOT of them didn't get parts. Since I'm also an appreciator of fine music, I threw in a couple of really pretty, lesser-known songs, which added to the stress of everyone involved.

If things weren't already stressful enough, Anna went and got sick the Thursday before the presentation. She got a miserable cold and on Friday it developed into her signature eye infection. Off to the doctor we went. They gave us an eye drop prescription. She also had the possible start of an ear infection. I was given a prescription for that and told to fill it only if the ear seemed to become infected (ie high fever again, lots of crying and pulling at ears). That night was the second where she wouldn't sleep unless held in my arms in the rocking chair. And her fever went high again. So Saturday I ran her to the neighbor's house (the dad is a physician's assistant) and the ear was indeed infected.

We filled prescriptions that day and continued frequent doses of pain meds and dealt with yet another day of clingon-Anna. Kip let her fall asleep in his arms Saturday night while I ran the program practice, which went surprisingly well. Sunday, Kip brought the kids to church just in time for the Sacrament (I had needed to be early, of course). They enjoyed the program. I was quite pleased with it. The kids really pulled through in the end. They sang very well and we got a lot of positive comments from people in the ward. We were told that people liked the simplicity of the presentation and that the songs were performed well. So, procastination and minimalism can sometimes lead to something positive!

I took Anna home right after Sacrament meeting. William stayed and had a wonderful time in Nursery. (He even prayed about it that night.) Amazingly, he never got sick with whatever Anna had. Although, our friend Emma seems to have picked up the eye infection. (She spent the night Friday while her mom recovered from gall bladder surgery.) Sorry, Rachel. And now Anna is doing much better and things are getting more relaxed.

Tonight is the first concert of our orchestra season. The music is good and I hope to perform well. I just wish there were more time to practise. Time when Anna isn't clinging to my legs and crying up at me. I think, though, that she does wonders for my ability to concentrate.

Horticulture In Oregon

Its FALL! as you can see from our changing leaves. So it was the last chance to do some planting in our yard. We had two rose bushes, but only one was producing roses. So I dug up the non-producer and we went to the nursery to get a replacement. While we were there, this Monkey Puzzle tree caught our eye and we bought it! We moved the Bluebeard bush to the middle of the yard, and the MP tree took its spot on the corner. These trees are native to Chile. Its pretty pokey, but the secret is that you can grab it and slide your hand in one direction (kinda like stroking a cat). Going the other way is a real disaster.

RSS Feed?

"What's that?" you might be asking. Chad told me he just opens all the family blogs in his browzer and looks for new stuff. But if you suffer from long term memory loss like me, there is another way... RSS feeds to the rescue!

All these blogs have a built in RSS feed. Most email programs (and even Mac Safari for my Macophile friends) have the option to open the feed and download "new" posts that you haven't read. Plus you can click the link to get to the actual blog and post comments.

So if you are interested, my RSS feed is "http://killpacktravels.blogspot.com/atom.xml" All the other blogs on blogspot use the same format. http://blogname/atom.xml

Good luck! Feel free to post a comment ranking this entry on a scale of 1-10. 1 = I knew all this stuff you dork. 10 = You are the coolest techno-geek out there (apart from Josh Nintedo-Boy Bancroft).

New Calling - EEK!

Kristin told the Primary President that I was bored in my calling ... I said no such thing. But word got out, and I am the new Venture Advisor! That's the priest age scouting program since 1998 in case you were wondering. And yes, venturing is the best kept secret in the church. I went to training yestereday and was amazed to discover that Venture Crews have different uniforms, and awards and ranks. No brown khaki shirt or Eagles here. Instead it's green shirts (venture crews can be co-ed outside the church) and they work on the bronze, gold, and silver badges instead. Check this out if you are curious. Of course they can finish up their Eagle if they want to.

At first I panicked, but now I'm excited. I really loved all my scouting days with Troop 1072 deacons. I'm lookin' forward to lots of fun times with these boys. Our first campout is in mid November. Campin' in cold, rainy Oregon should be a new experience - compared to all the summer Utah desert camping I used to do.

I guess I'm gonna have to get that trailer hitch installed on our minivan after all.

Birthday Zoo Trip

For my birthday, I took the kids to the zoo with a couple of my good friends and their kids. We saw lots of animals. Even the tiger was out for a while. And we had a lot of fun.

The best part was probably the zoo train. William, Emma and Ian loved it and the mommies all got to sit on their behinds with their babies for a while. It was nice.






Of course, William and Anna would probably put the sandpit as a close second. It wasn't bad either, except that Anna managed to fill her diaper to overflowing with sand. I had a lot of fun cleaning that up when we got home. Next time we go there, I'll make sure she wears a onesie.

Baby Doll

Anna loves her dollies. She got three for her birthday and has seriously grown attached to them. She loves to pick them up and cuddle them, then hold them out for me to cuddle. She expects me to hand them right back and can become very angry if I take too long. The other day, she was snuggling her dolly just like I do her. She held her in her arms and swayed side to side. I thought it was so cute I had to take pictures. I asked her to kiss the dolly and she obliged. Of course, Anna-kisses at this point are still frequently more like Anna-bites. In the picture she appears to be attempting to eat the doll's ear.

Chocaholic Daughter

We got some vanilla cup-cakes with chocolate frosting from the Halloween Phantom. William ate a good dinner tonight so he got to have a cup-cake. Anna stopped eating her peas and had a freak-out session pointing at William's cup-cake. So I grabbed one and started to share with her. She wasn't wearing a bib and I broke off the bottom of the cup-cake so there'd be no frosting mess. She picked up the cake piece, dropped it, and pointed at the chocolate frosting covered top that I was eating. I took her cake piece and wiped some frosting on it. She grabbed it back and snarfed it down like cookie monster. I'm so proud of her! She managed to get chocolate frosting on her face, hands, and in her armpit!

Wee Waffle What?

I found a new friend who loves shopping the discount stores. We went to Back on the Rack together the other day and I saw a lot of fun things. Most were unfortunately overpriced considering they were previously used. But there was one thing I couldn't pass up. The Wee Waffle Castle. I found the Wee Waffle Village at Goodwill last year and William has loved it. Almost as much as Kip and I have loved it. So when I saw the Castle, I couldn't pass it up. We've had a blast building our entire medieval city. I know the cars are out of place, but we love them, too.

McMinville Air Museum

We decided to put off yard work for another weekend and went on Saturday, September 23rd to the McMinville Air Musuem, home of the Spruce Goose. That plane is HUGE. William liked it a lot. He especially liked the children's play area with little planes and training helicopters and computer games where you could crash your own airplane into the ground with flames and smoke and everything. He loves to tell me stories about crashing airplanes all the time now. It's a little unnerving as we get closer to our California trip during which we will ride three separate airplanes.

Ye Old Klunker

The Killpack hand-me-down TV finally degraded beyond all hope. For a long time the picture was tilted slightly down to the right. Finally this week, the colors went totally out of whack. All greens turned brown, and every other color was washed out. So naturally we took this as an opportunity to upgrade to a 42" flat screen Plasma HDTV! Whooo!




















The colors look awesome! In fact, we realized the colors on the old one have been going bad slowly for the past year or so. We almost feel like we should tone the colors down because Thomas the Tank Engine is so vibrant.

I've been spending hours playing with my "new toy". Kris is getting totally sick of all my geek-speak about HD this, DVR that, HD channels OTA, digital signals, iTV, blah blah blah.

I don't know who is next on the Killpack TV hand-me-down list, but we have your TV in our garage.

Wii not?

Nintendo Wii (pronounced 'Wee' for those who don't know) comes out soon. I wasn't all that interested in one of these at first... mostly because our GameCube sits under the TV gathering dust. But then I saw this movie and became quite interested. Plus I saw the opening game lineup with Zelda, Metroid, Mario, and Wario games that look fun!

So I'm starting a poll - comment your answers.

What do you plan to do concerning the Wii craze?

1) I want to be an owner of one of the targeted 4 million Wii sales in 2006!
2) I'm cheap! I'm waiting for the price slash after competition from PS3 and XBox 360 nearly cripples Nintendo.
3) Wii me? No thanks!
4) Fill in the blank option; for those with a quick wit who want to become famous in the blogosphere.

I'll start with my input: I vote 1.5 because it would be fun to have, but I'm cheap too! So I'm a probably-buy-it-maybe-this-year person.

Family Update

Long overdue, but here we go...

Anna started walking about 2 weeks ago and now she is tearing it up!

We all got sick with a nasty head cold and everyone got better - except that I developed a sinus infection. I realized that I get about 2 sinusitus a year caused by head-colds and I need to talk to the doc about how to prevent it next time. I don't remember getting a lot in Utah - did I ma?

I presented my latest work at DTTC in San Jose (internal Intel conference) a few weeks ago and it went really well.

Kristin starts orchestra again next Tuesday - she is so happy to have some 'away' time.

William is starting pre-school... sort of. Kris is doing a 4-family home-school class about once a week with kids in the neighborhood.

Anna is more vocal about what she wants at dinner. She'll point and say 'dat'. And she shakes her head 'no' if you try to give her the wrong thing.

William loves to build puzzles, legos, block towers, and train tracks. Civil Engineer perhaps?

I removed you all from being members of this blog and opened up comments to anyone with a blogger account - comment to your heart's content!

Watching Birdy

We got to birdsit for my coworker Cathy. She has a lovely green lovebird named Birdy. He is very friendly and very loud. The kids really enjoyed having him here. Especially when they got to spill his seeds all over my floor and shake his cage until I yelled at them.