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.

Type me a letter

For Anna's birthday, Kip gave her a computer keyboard with the cord cut off. She loves to sit at it and pound on the keys. When Kip gives it to her, he always asks her to type him a letter. The other day, William sat down at it and asked me if I wanted him to type me a letter. I told him I would love that.

"What letter do you want me to type, Mommy?" he asked.

Kids see things so literally!

Birthday Girl

Anna is 12 months old! Her birthday was August 7th. She had a great time at her party with lots and lots of friends over and got plenty of fun presents. She loves the dollies she got. She swings them around and bites their heads. It's great. And she loves the books and Little People things. She's a lucky girl. She wasn't so sure about her cake at first, but she liked it in the end.

No more pursuit of happiness?

We went to the Oregon International Airshow on the 15th. It really was international because we met my Russian coworker and Indian coworker there. The planes were fun to watch, and the jets were LOUD!!!

We waited in line for 2 hours to let William sit in a fighter jet. I thought it was some fake show jet, but the guy at the top asked if I would get in so he could hand William to me. I asked if he could just get in on his own, and the guy said, "Yes, just make sure he doesn't push any buttons." What do you think of this top gun photo?















Well, the Airforce was at the show in full force. There was free water with Airforce recruiting cups. We took our cups home and noticed later that they say, "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it." Whatever happened to the pursuit of happiness?

Angry Anna

Anna has anger issues. I know it's early to say that, but I'm almost certain she does. This picture depicts a very common expression of late. When she wants something that is too slow in coming or when she is denied something she wants, she clenches those fists and makes a very angry "aarrgh!". I find it rather amusing and often egg her on just so I can take pictures. I'm not a nice mother...

Congratulations to Italy

In honor of the World Cup, Kip and William dressed up in their matching England jerseys and let me take their picture. We had a lot of fun watching the games, especially the ones we recorded off the Spanish channel because they weren't shown on ABC. We didn't actually watch most of them. After we heard the scores the next day, we lost interest in watching. But we enjoyed the ones we saw before the outcome was ruined by the newscasters.

Early in the series Kip asked me who I thought would win. Scanning the listed competitors, I answered, "Italy, of course." When Kip told me he supported Brazil, I amended my answer. How could Italy win against the likes of Brazil and Argentina? Alas, my gut feeling was correct. I've got to learn to go with that...

The Hideout

I recently cleaned out the area under the computer desk in our TV room and stashed some of William's toys under there. It has now become one of William's favorite places to play. He calls it his playhouse and tries to block Anna out with his big truck and anything else that may be available. She doesn't mind as long as she can get a toy car or two to chew on. Emma has been allowed underneath, since she is a special friend. I love her "Uh-oh, they caught me" look.

William updates

William is doing some really cute things lately, interspersed with all the really annoying ones that come with being a three-year-old. I thought I'd share some with you.

William has caught on to the "proud of you" comments we make and now likes to turn them back on us. When we do things he likes us to do, he tells us how proud he is. When I made him an apple-juice bottle for bedtime a week ago (before we stopped bottles for good this week) he said to me, "Mommy, I'm so proud of you for making me a bottle." I had to laugh. Yesterday he told me he was very proud of Anna for pulling up to stand at my chair at the table.

He also seems to be stuck on the idea that something he likes is "the best in the world." Of the Costco frozen lasagne I baked for dinner the other night he said, "Lasagne is the best food in the world." The next night it was, "eggs are the best food in the world." He proceeded not to eat much of the eggs, so I'm not sure he really understands what he's saying.

Meanwhile, he can't seem to understand that you can't make five peepees at one time and earn a potty prize. He sits on the potty and asks how many peepees he made. I tell him how many stickers are on his chart and how many more he needs to reach five. Then, he tries to get some more pee out and tells me he just made five peepees and should get his prize.


He's really stuck on the concept of "bad guys" lately. I believe it's something he picked up from a 5-year-old friend. He's always talking about seeing bad-guys in our house and making them dead. OK, this isn't one of the cute things, but I think it is very odd. He also told me and Kip yesterday that he has an orange-haired momma that goes everywhere with him and holds him when I'm not there with him. He calls her his Orange Momma. Do we have any red-haired ancestors who might be guardian-angeling him? Of course, he told me today when we were playing with some Little Mermaid foam waffle blocks that Ariel was the Orange Momma. He used to say Ariel was me...

Sick Sick Sick

We are all currently sick. OK, all but Kip. Anna got a cold Tuesday. I thought it was the one William had recently cast off, but apparently it was a new one. Her fever reached 102 Wednesday. William's is at nearly 103 tonight. And what I thought was just particularly bad hay fever for me has settled into my own version of this miserable spring-time cold. We're not having a good time. William took 2 long naps today. Anna slept for one of them, allowing me to sleep, too. We dirtied every single snot-rag (burp cloth) in the house and I'm doing the laundry now. Every time he sneezed, William would whine until I wiped his nose for him. And coughing made him cry. Then, he would tell me that he was not going to "puke" because that's something he does at night-time. (He had the flu a few weeks ago.) He went to bed OK, thanks to the Triaminic PM he gets to take. And Anna's dosed up with Children's Motrin Cold. Now, I'm off to bed with the nursing mom's version of night-time cold medicine: Tylenol PM + Sudaphed. I think those are all legal nursing drugs...

Pathologically speaking, "It's notta tuma!"

The pathology report came back this week. It says that Kristin and I are soul-mates! The rubbery ball recently removed from her foot really was a ganglion cyst. The summer before we met I had a ganglion cyst on my left bird finger. Both our doctors said we could leave them unless they started bothering us. Well they bothered and they are gone!

I have a calling too...

Since EVERYONE seems to be posting their callings I thought I'd remind you that I am a primary worker. There is a reason they call it that... "worker". Because we are basically the worker bees - sent out to do the bidding of the primary presidency queens (one of which happens to be Kristin). Many of the teachers were missing last week so I was demoted to junior primary to cover for the two missing CTR7 teachers. We played charades - acting out the plagues that Moses inflicted on the Egyptians. It worked well till we ran out of plagues and one of the boys started running across the room and slamming himself into the wall... then back across and slam into the door... then back to the wall. That's when I bore a brief testimony about Moses and the priesthood and moved on to hangman for the final 10 minute stretch.

At least in junior sharing time I was considered a 'visitor' and got to choose the action for "Do As I'm Doing". We stomped!

Road Trip, Pt 2

The second half of our Utah Visit was spent with the Sandy part of the family. On our way down from Kaysville, we stopped and let the kids see Temple Square in Salt Lake. William really enjoyed the visit (in spite of being over-tired and prone to crankiness) and now calls the Salt Lake Temple his temple. Its picture now hangs over his bed.


The reason we chose this particular time to visit Utah was that all of Kip's family would be there for various college graduation ceremonies. It was a wonderful opportunity to see all the cousins, Aunts and Uncles. Of course, although we were there for graduations, we did not manage to attend either of the ceremonies. Instead, we hung out with our kids and relaxed, which was a treat. Unfortunately, Anna got sick the last few days and spent a good amount of time looking miserable. She wasn't in the best frame of mind for getting to know her cousins. William, on the other hand, had a blast playing with Jenny's boys. And Daddy especially enjoyed the Saturday evening game of Bocci.


We started our return drive Sunday evening, after family dinner. Unfortunately, none of us had gotten great sleep during the trip, so we started out a little more exhausted than we had been on the drive down. This made our drive a little more challenging. Our driving shifts were shorter and we stopped several times at rest stops so both of us could sleep. Unfortunately, with the car not moving, the kids would wake up after about an hour, so our naps weren't ever as long as we would have liked. But we made it home safe and sound and were even able to get Anna in to her Pediatrician on Monday morning for her cold and eye infection.

Now, things are back to normal. Anna sleeps well some nights and not well other nights. William is great some days and cranky others. We're always busy and our garden is growing well, especially in the rain we just started having again.

Road Trip, Pt 1

We finally decided to break in our fancy-pants minivan with a trip from Oregon to Utah. We took off on Friday evening, stopping to wait out rush hour traffic at Red Robin. William had his traditional noodles and red sauce. As he picked at his food after Kip and I had finished eating, I began to fear for my white t-shirt. In my attempt to move farther from his red-stained reaching fingers, Anna took advantage of my distraction and dumped Kip's chocolate shake on me. Hooray. I got to start a 12 hour overnight drive in chocolate-shake stained clothes.

The drive wasn't as bad as I had feared it would be. Kip did the first big leg while I attempted to sleep in the front seat. Then, I took over and drove from midnight to 3 am. In the thick darkness of deepest night, all I could see of the scenery was the small stretch of road my headlights illuminated as I flashed past and the twinkle of lights in the towns I passed. I loaded the CD player with 6 CDs I hadn't listened to in a while and enjoyed myself singing softly along in the solitude of a carful of sleeping companions. William woke at one point and talked for a while about the toy cars at his Grammy's house and the Matchbox fold-out city she saved from our childhood. He was also a little concerned about the fact that we hadn't brought his bed along.

Kip drove for the early morning, sun-rising time. As he coasted through the freeways of Southern Idaho, some kamikaze deer attempted to take us out. He hit the brakes and swerved and William and I came awake. William somehow got the idea it was rabbits we were about to hit and still talks about the rabbits on the road whenever we drive anywhere.

We spent the first half of our visit in Kaysville with the Parker side of the family. Grammy and Grandad were there, and Uncle Trevor. Janean and Jeremy and Craig, Lesley and Enoch frequently came to visit. We finally got to meet the elusive little cousin Enoch and he and Anna seemed to do fairly well, although she tended to bully him a little bit. Of course, she is a little older and has the advantage of having an older brother to toughen her up. I think she was just trying to let Enoch see what it was like to get picked on.

While in Kaysville, we toured the Air Force Museum. William loved looking at all the airplanes but was a little depressed that he couldn't get on any of them and fly away. We also had fun swimming in the family hot tub.