Tag: family

PNW Road Trip – Day 1

July 11, 2026 11:03 pm

I’ve been wanting to take a trip through the Pacific Northwest for years, but it just never worked out amongst various family functions and COVID. But, this year was the year. We drove up the coast and took a ferry into Canada and then came back down I-5.

(I’m back-dating these posts to the day of the events for convenience of using the blog as a journal.)

Day 1, July 11, was packing up the car with enough supplies to trek the Oregon Trail and getting to the northern coast of California which required more than 7 hours of driving with a stop for lunch at a Wendy’s. Our destination for the night was Motel Trees across the street from Trees of Mystery. We had tried to visit Trees of Mystery back in 2017, but their power was out from a storm and they were closed.

Jess took some pictures along the drive of views that she liked. We stopped to watch some elk. And once we finally arrived at the motel, and after dinner at the Blue Ox Cafe, we walked down to “Hidden Beach” with hot chocolate. I got some pictures I really like on the beach. There were a lot of pelicans flying along the shore.

My Circus Debut

July 10, 2026 10:25 pm

Venardos Circus came back to Livermore this year and we took in a show before leaving on our road trip. However, before the night was out, I found myself on stage performing with the show for about 10 minutes–with all instructions communicated to me through pantomime. I was a bit nervous, but it went well.

Thinking about it academically, using audience members for a such a long bit is a pretty big risk for the performer. He has to communicate his intentions to us while entertaining the audience, roll with whatever we happen to do, and trust in our willingness to play along. I’m really impressed with his ability to convey to us what he wanted in the way he did.

Anyway, he pulled me from my seat to make muscle poses juxtaposed with the brawnier guy he grabbed. Alright, skinny guy–brawny guy some silly poses and sound effects. That’s fine. But when I thought he was done with us he drags us onto the stage and has us engage in a pantomime pistol duel.

Jess started recording as I was getting dragged on stage after the muscle silliness. Her phone somehow choked towards the end and corrupted the video, but I was able to recover most of the performance.

2026-07-10-venardos-circus-kyle-performance-480pDownload

Some pictures from the night with a couple stills grabbed from the video. And, after my participation, I had to get a group picture with the team.

Christmas 2025

December 29, 2025 3:19 pm

I intentionally limited how much stuff I was going to try to do in preparation for Christmas this year based on how last year went. Last year I wanted to get a lot of baking done and ended up kind of worn out by the time we got to Christmas. Last year I also lamented it not feeling Christmasy somehow. This year we had a cold snap in mid December with overnight lows around 34 and daily highs around 50. That actually made quite a bit of difference in it feeling seasonal. Unfortunately, a warm, wet weather system moved in and brought the temperature back up leading in to Christmas which undid some of the effect. Anyway, I intentionally limited my baking to peanut-butter blossoms and cinnamon rolls while supervising the girls making sugar cookies (that was more-discretionary baking anyway, I still made fresh bread for Christmas-eve dinner and rolls for Christmas dinner). I think it felt more Christmasy this year, maybe that was in part from not having a leaking roof and a failing clothes dryer to deal with.

Anyway, we were at home for the holiday. Just us and the cats. On Christmas Eve we had our traditional cheese fondue with fresh-baked bread (and assorted other dippings). Heather and I played some songs together on cello and trombone while Corinne and Jess sang along. While Heather and I have the same book of Christmas music, they’re written in different keys. So for each song one of us had to play in an unfamiliar key, but it worked out fine.

Corinne read “Happy Narwhalidays.” Heather read “Mistletoe and the Christmas Kittens.” Heather played some more songs on her cello. I played some more songs on my trombone. And I read “The Polar Express.”

Then we opened the books chosen by the girls for each of us, drank hot chocolate, and read a little before putting the girls to bed.

In the morning we told the girls they had to wait until 7 to get us up–which they did. Then it was the usual whirlwind tour of stockings, presents, breakfast, and playing with stuff.

Thanksgiving 2025

November 28, 2025 8:17 pm

Another Thanksgiving at home just the four of us. Looks like we didn’t take much of any pictures. So here’s us with our dinner and then dessert (pies with fresh whipped cream).

Heather made the pumpkin pie and crust with minor assistance. I made the chocolate-cream pie and the butterscotch-cream pie. The chocolate-cream pie came out really well (having managed to correct an error in reading the ingredients using the power of math). The butterscotch-cream pie, I think, got too hot before I pulled the custard off the heat. It has a not-very-pleasant graininess to it. It’s an extremely fine graininess, but detectable. Flavor was good though.

I made rolls as usual. Jess prepared turkey, sweet-potato casserole, and fancy macaroni and cheese. We also had mashed potatoes, stuffing, and corn.