Kyle’s Birthday 2020

June 14, 2020 12:34 pm

After celebrating Corinne’s birthday at the very start of the quarantine I honestly didn’t think we’d still be quarantined by the time my birthday rolled around. But here we are.

I started my day by working in my closet. Then lunch in the kitchen and back to my closet for more work. Very exciting.

Once I was done with work, I opened presents:

Here Heather is using her “Poison Rod” to protect me.

The girls gave me new sets of miniatures to use in our Dragon Strike games. Corinne here has her “Fire & Ice staff.”

Jess gave me a set of fancy vanilla extracts: Tahitian, Mexican, and Madagascar Bourbon types. I need to come up with a dish to make to let us taste test them.

A careful observer might wonder why the box on the right says “VHS” on it. That’s the Stranger Things seasons 1 & 2 sets which are packaged to look like 80s-style tapes.

After presents I picked up some Mexican food for dinner from Anita’s Tacqueria. Since no one else likes Mexican food, Jess made pasta for everyone else. After dinner we needed some time to digest before having cake. So I played a video game for a little while.

We didn’t have enough candles, so I told Jess to use a binary representation. Since the cake is facing me you have to read the binary backwards. So the right-most candle represents a “one” for 32 then there are 3 “zeroes” for 16, 8, & 4 and finally 2 “ones” for 2 & 1.

After dessert the girls headed off to bed and Jess and I watched the 1971 classic movie The Andromeda Strain.

Corinne’s 5th Birthday

March 18, 2020 7:53 pm

Even with the world melting down, not everything stops. So on Tuesday we celebrated Corinne’s birthday. Normally I would pare down the number of pictures I include in a post, but I think right now we could all use a little extra unbridled joy.

She had an absolutely fantastic day. After lunch she did her first birthday-treasure-hunt. Heather read the clues for her and she made mad dashes around the house to find the next thing as she solved each rhyme.

Once the presents were discovered in the bench we headed back inside to open them.

After presents I had to “go” back to work (meaning, hide in my closet/office). When I “got home” at the end of the day we had dinner and then it was time for the pink cake.

Corinne was having a hard time holding in her excitement.

And she was very pleased by the smoke trails.

Happy birthday little girl. I’m glad you could enjoy the day and not be weighed down by the cares of the world.

Heather’s Birthday 2019

November 2, 2019 9:58 am

Heather came home from school to find her bedroom door had been “locked.” But she had to wait for me to get home from work before she could follow the clues to open the door. (Meanwhile a plumber worked on clearing our clogged drain line, so there was plenty of entertainment in the interim.)

She followed a series of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” style “Listener Limerick Challenges” to find each new clue and solve a math problem to get the correct digit for the lock combination.

Inside she discovered her new loft bed, which she is ecstatic about.

We opened some more presents and then off to a late dinner at the Ale House.

After dinner, we had the Andes Chocolate Mint cake that Jess made:

And then her first night in her new bed.

Kyle’s Birthday 2019

June 29, 2019 3:19 pm

On my birthday we went on a family adventure to Japantown in San Francisco. I had a goal of finding a bamboo fountain (a shishi-odoshi fountain). I was unsuccessful in that goal, but I did find some neat ceramic dishes and a sake set because I think it looks neat.

Our adventure in to the city just about did us in. But did go out to dinner and then get back home for cake.