The second week was lots of hanging around. The cousins all had a blast playing together. You can see one of my notebooks in these pictures on the table. That was just half the reading for the deterrence class. Once I was back for the weekend we went to the Dallas Aquarium.
And here's a video of Heather playing with the hose:
June 1 - 7:
Jess and Heather spent this week (as most of the month) hanging out with family. Heather was able to meet grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. She had a blast with all of them after having a little time to warm up.
Kyle picked up his rental car and drove down to College Station. The Lab invited me to participate in what they call the National Security Leadership Program. It's a joint program with Texas A&M. Each year the Lab selects ~7 employees to participate in the program. During June, those employees go to Texas A&M to take two graduate courses in national security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. Then we take another course during each of Fall and Winter via video conference.
The two classes during June covered nuclear deterrence and coercion theory, international relations theory, military strategy, history of U.S. intelligence programs, intelligence agency organization and tradecraft, and counter-intelligence operations. The intelligence/counter-intelligence course was taught by a retired Director of Counter-Intelligence at the CIA who spent his life under cover as a case officer working operations around the world. So he knew his material. Both classes were fascinating and enjoyable.
They were a lot of work though. The deterrence course had 4 books to read plus 100-250 pages of reading per night and two papers. The intelligence course had 3 books, but luckily minimal additional reading, as well as a paper and two exams. So I was very busy the entire month.
I was, however, able to drive back up to Frisco for the weekends to hang out with everyone and have a little fun.
The first weekend we went to the Perot Science Museum and celebrated my birthday.
The Dickerson family had a reunion this year in Cedar City, UT. We stayed in the dorms at Southern Utah University and just happened to be there during the first stage of the Tour of Utah bicycle race which ended right in town and went past our apartments three times.
Throughout the trip I took over 900 pictures, so I did a lot of culling to get it down the 15 I'm using in this post, so don't complain about too many pictures.
The reunion ran from August 4 through August 9. The 4th and 5th was just people arriving and wandering about doing whatever.
The Tour of Utah stuff on was the 6th. As the race wound its way through the mountains there was stuff going on downtown including a booth for the Shakespeare Festival with various costumes and props to try on. Heather fit perfectly in the jester's hat.
The racers got into town in the late afternoon. Here's the main group of racers coming down the road:
Here's the crew that stayed up in the apartment watching on:
That evening a group of us went to watch Peter and the Starcatcher. It's a retelling of the origin of Peter Pan. A little odd at times, but enjoyable.
On Wednesday, the 7th, we went to Frontier Homestead State Park where Heather sat on a horse (statue, obviously). It's a bunch of old-timey machinery and buildings and stuff to look at.
That evening obligatory family fun & games were held, of course. Here's Evan in his cowboy getup enjoying Bingo (run by Megan & Chad) after he won some honey-roasted peanuts:
Erin ran The Price is Right complete with Plinko, which Megan and Chad played:
On Thursday we took a horse- (and mule-) back ride through Bryce Canyon (thanks again Mike!). Mike's mule was appropriately named "Porky" as he took every opportunity to graze at the side of the trail.
Jess had a blast. I have a bunch of pictures of her riding with a great big smile on her face.
Riding and taking pictures is easier said than done for someone with very little riding experience. We weren't allowed to take anything with us except a camera, so I picked my 50-200mm zoom lens with a polarizer and hoped for the best. I probably should have taken the 18-55mm instead as with the 50mm widest angle I wasn't able to get any grand panoramic shots, however with the 200mm telephoto I was able to get closer-up pictures of everyone else riding.
The biggest issue was trying to look through the viewfinder to take a shot with the horse bouncing around and me trying to hold on. To compensate, many of my pictures were taken Rambo-style just aiming in the general direction and hoping for the best.
Here's my favorite picture of the few hundred I took while on the ride. I think it's neat how clear the various layers of rock are across the hoodoos.
The next day was checkout so we all spent the morning trying to get packed up and out the door. After checking out we tried to take some family pictures.
Here's the Dickerson grandchildren of 2011. Heather, born in October. Charlie, born in December. And Addie, born in August.
After family pictures we had a round of bowling to celebrate Evan's birthday (with requisite cream-cheese pie).
From there the party broke up and went separate ways. We went up to Provo along with most of the rest for Will's baptism on Saturday. After the baptism and lunch it was time to head home. Heather was starting to not feel well and didn't much like adjusting to hotel rooms so we decided to drive straight through and just get home. So we got home at around 4:30am Sunday completely exhausted.
And if you don't come home in the middle of the night completely exhausted then you're not doing your family vacations right; at least that's what my childhood memories suggest anyway.
The second and third days of our trip (and the original reason for going) were spent with my brother Christopher, his wife Jenny, their two kids Miles and Hannah, and Jenny's parents. We went to Disneyland! And it was super fun. There was a fair bit of walking around, deciding what to do next:
Miles was really excited to go to Cars Land. This is Jenny and him riding one of the rides there:
Aaaand those are the only pics we got of the family we drove all that way to visit. Oops?
For the most part, we stuck to kiddie rides that everybody could go on. Heather's favorites were the splash pad in A Bug's Land (where she basically chased the water around) and the carousel. Over the two days, we actually rode carousels six times!
Her least favorite rides were Pirates of the Caribbean and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Both actually scared her quite a bit. She recovered easily, though, once it was all over.
Our second day we actually split from the rest of the crew. Christopher got food poisoning and wasn't up for Disney. They were all staying a day longer than we were, so they could put it on hold for a day. We could not, so it was just the three of us! The day started out chilly and drizzly, but it was lovely once the rain stopped. Nice and overcast.
In the carousel picture above and the first picture below, you can see Heather's Ride Face. She'd be looking around, laughing and pointing, right up until a ride started. Then her face went completely blank and she just looked around, as if studying and trying to figure out just what was going on. As soon as the ride stopped, she'd become animated again. Silly girl. (Regarding the first picture below: No, I am not a crazy person. The ferris wheel car was sliding around.)
I just want to put in a comment about the Baby Care Center in Disneyland. Of course, the bathrooms all have changing areas. But the actual Baby Care Center was fantastic! We popped in to change Heather's diaper just as we were leaving, and man, it is posh! The staff are dressed up like old-school child attendants (I don't know how better to describe it, but think of a traditional nursemaid, I guess) and the whole place is so cozy. There are areas for nursing and places to warm bottles/heat up food for toddlers and the changing tables are deluxe. They actually change the paper liners every time they're used! It's also where they take any children who get lost in the park, and I honestly can't imagine a more soothing atmosphere. And now, moving on to more elephants:
This is the parade. She really liked the floats and even mimicked the princesses' arm movements. But I think what she's really pointing at in this picture is those balloons. She went crazy-go-nuts every time she saw one: pointing, babbling, laughing, and running after it. We didn't get her one because we figured it'd be a pain on the car ride home, but she sure loved them.
I was, of course, nervous about how Heather would handle this trip. Long car rides and sleeping in hotels are not the norm for her. But she was a champ! I think that most of the success of the Disneyland days was due to the fact that we were very mellow about our time at the park.* We got up and went in the mornings, but returned to the hotel for Heather's nap in the early afternoon. Then we went back to the park for the evening, until Heather needed to go to bed. We certainly could have seen and done more than we did, but it wasn't worth making Heather miserable over. So we did what we could and were satisfied. Our real reason for going wasn't to see the parks, after all, but to see family. So it all worked out.
The day we left town, we met up with the whole crew again for lunch in Downtown Disney. It was good to see everybody again, especially since we'd missed them the previous day. All in all, it was a really good trip. Yay Disney! Yay fun! Yay family!
*And the binkie. As always when Heather is on the edge, that was key.
We went down to southern California for most of the week on a short vacation. We drove down on Sunday and met up with Josh (of Project Runway fame) for dinner. On Monday we met up with him again to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.
Traffic in the Los Angeles area is notoriously bad, but what makes it even more fun is when they hold a Grand Prix event on the blocks that surround the place you're trying to get to. The Aquarium had been closed over the weekend for the race, but reopened on Monday. However, they were just starting to take down all of the fencing, barriers, stands, etc. from the race. So roads were randomly blocked off and everything our GPS unit wanted us to do was simply not possible. We finally wandered into a member of the event staff at yet another intersection where our only allowed movement was a U-turn. They were able to tell us how to get to the aquarium.
Heather thought it was pretty great.
For somewhat unknown reasons, the aquarium also has a lorikeet exhibit you can walk through. You can buy a little cup of nectar to feed the birds. This wasn't any of us, just some random other person feeding this bird.
Jess finds the jellyfish to be mesmerizing.
Here's Heather playing in a touch pool:
Josh meets up with a sea turtle:
And this is Jess' other favorite thing at aquariums, sea dragons:
And this is where we part ways.
