Camping

June 13, 2015 8:29 pm

Heather has been asking to go camping for several weeks, but while I was still in class there was no way it was going to happen.  So once that wrapped up I decided to stop putting it off and pick a date.  So I took the afternoon off on Friday, and Heather and I packed up the car, and then sat in traffic… (Jess and Corinne stayed home.)

I wanted to get on the road by 1:00-1:30, but inevitably it took longer.  We were driving by 2:30 which I thought would still be alright, but no.  It was stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic from Livermore out the other side of Stockton.  That drive should normally take like 40 minutes, but it was over an hour and a half.  Then we had another hour of driving to do on top of that.  Heather fell asleep, which was good given the amount of sleep she was likely to get in the tent.

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We drove out to Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park.  I liked it when I was there last year–quiet, secluded, trees, and shade.  Presumably there are comparable locations closer to home, but I couldn’t figure out how to find them.

We got to the campground, picked out a spot and got our stuff unpacked.  Then we wandered about looking at the bark houses and grinding rocks.  The high for the day was in the upper 90’s and we probably should have rescheduled, but that’s tough to do with a 3-year-old whose heart is set on the adventure.  Once it cooled down a bit we got our fire going and roasted our hotdogs for dinner.

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Once dinner was cleaned up it was time for s’mores.  I had neglected to put the chocolate bars in the cooler.  But it wasn’t a total loss, I bought the “fun size” chocolate bars which are still salvageable after becoming bags of liquid chocolate.

After Heather was asleep I played with the camera for a bit.  Couldn’t get any usable pictures of the stars, but I got this really fun picture of one of the neighboring campsites:

IMGP3086asI really like the light hitting the trees.  And a picture of the fire:

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In the morning we had breakfast of Silly Circles (off-brand Fruit Loops) at like 5:30 AM since that’s when Heather decided that it was too light out to sleep.  Then we went for a hike and back to the bark houses and grinding rocks while it was still cool and shady.  After that it was time to pack up and head home.

Heather fell asleep, but I woke her up for lunch at A&W.  She was excited to discover they have mini corndogs and milk, her favorite meal.  Then we stopped at the Ghirardelli chocolate outlet and ice-cream shop in Lathrop for an ice-cream sundae.

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Heather declared it, “The best camping trip ever,” so I guess it was a success.  I think we avoided sunburn and heatstroke with only mild sleep deprivation.

It occurred to me that I could set up the camera on the tripod to take pictures automatically so we’d have some pictures of the both of us camping.  Then I thought about turning them into a little video.  So enjoy the 4-minute abridged version of the trip with more music and less heat (sadly, I didn’t take the camera with us hiking or to the historical sites).

If your browser doesn’t want to play the video you can download it here: Camping June 12-13 2015 (small)

Audio credits, in order of use:
The end of the last adventure” by soundtrackmusic.org – Creative Commons Licensed
Chimney Fire” by reinsamba – Creative Commons Licensed
Calm Sky” by [SMJ] Music – Creative Commons Licensed
Ocarina – Sun’s Song” by ZREO – Creative Commons Licensed
Call to Adventure” by KevinMacLeod – Creative Commons Licensed

Heartbreaking

May 24, 2015 8:26 pm

Heather was acting rather unsettled at bedtime this evening.  We had finished story time and Jess and Corinne had left the room while I stayed with Heather for a few minutes while she got comfortable.

After only being in bed about a minute she got up and climbed down in to my lap and curled up against me (she basically never does this).  She told me she was tired but didn’t want to go to sleep; she wanted to stay with me.  So I held her and snuggled her for about 10 minutes and then convinced her to try climbing in to bed again.

Instead of lying down and getting ready to fall asleep she started saying that she was hungry–really hungry.  I was skeptical as she had eaten quite a large dinner less than an hour earlier so I convinced her to try to fall asleep and I’d check on her in a few minutes.  When I tried to leave she pleaded with me to stay a few more minutes, so I did.  After a minute or two she fell asleep so I got up and went out to the family room.

After 15 minutes or so I can hear her in her room sobbing.  So I make my way to her room just as she’s getting out of bed and I scoop her up and ask her what’s wrong.  She tells me that she’s, “Super hungry, really really really hungry.”  So I agree to find her something to eat.  She agrees to eat some graham crackers and then says she’s really cold.  So I bundle her up in a blanket on the couch with her graham crackers and sit with her while she barely nibbles on them.

I ask her if she’s feeling alright and she says something like, “I feel sad.”  And then she asks where Jess is.  I told her Jess was trying to get Corinne to sleep.  Then she broke my heart: “Why does Corinne get all the attention?  I know it’s hard work getting Corinne to sleep, but I want to see Momma too.”  Or something pretty close to that.

I told her we could wait until Jess came back out and have Jess take her back to bed when she was ready.  So we sat on the couch wrapped up in a blanket while she nibbled on graham crackers waiting to get some attention from Momma.  It was so sad.  Poor girl.

Easter 2015

April 11, 2015 1:53 pm

Mom was here helping with Corinne for a few weeks and she happened to be here over Easter. She helped Heather dye some eggs and made sugar cookies and cooked Easter dinner. Thanks Mom!

IMGP2659asIMGP2687asIMGP2694asThe Easter Bunny paid us a visit but just when Heather discovered what had happened it started raining.  And it rained right up until we finished finding eggs and came back inside, so that was really convenient.  Heather didn’t care though and it wasn’t too cold regardless.

IMGP2712as IMGP2752asThe Easter Bunny hid 4 special “golden” eggs for Jess.

IMGP2703as IMGP2738asThey found almost everything, but got stuck on the final egg.

IMGP2768asAnd some additional photos:

Tech Museum

12:54 pm

Heather’s been feeling a little uneasy about the new family organization.  So on April 1st I took the day off and we went down to the Tech Museum in San Jose for which Mike and Tina gave us a gift certificate for Christmas.

Heather had a blast.

We started with the requisite Chick-Fil-A, since one was in the area.  As we pulled in to the parking lot Heather began exclaiming, “I love Chick-Fil-A.  We’re so close I can almost taste it!”  And as soon as we walked in, “This is the best day ever!”

IMG_20150401_120704So the trip started off good.

At the Tech Museum she liked playing with the infrared camera:

IMG_20150401_134349And anything she could put her hands on, which was pretty much everything:

IMG_20150401_140418The downside of the visit was that the place was crawling with school groups with little to no supervision.  Nothing particularly bad, but every exhibit was therefore swamped and trying to get a chance to play with it was difficult at times.  But, after about 2:30 when all the school groups left it was quite nice.  Heather got a chance to have the robot artist draw her picture:

IMG_20150401_143934And the spelling robot wrote her name in blocks:

It was fun. We’ll have to go back sometime.