Finally! I just received my (Canadian) passport in the mail this week. It took less than 3 weeks by mail. Now J&E and I have all our travel documents lined up. It's been over 7 years since I've had a valid passport, not needed, really with my greencard, but this year is the first year it will be required for land travel between Canada and the USA.
E took this photo of the dinner Daddy (T) made a few nights ag.n our house, if Daddy makes dinner, that usually means ramen noodles and potstickers.
Cynthia at Love Apple Farm is stomping eggshells for adding to a planting hole while Indie looks on.
When we say "Chevy's for dinner" E's eyes light up because that's the restaraunt where you can get a free balloon sculpture! She wasn't disappointed with her alien hat. J didn't want a balloon - he was head's down with his freshly unlocked (not a school night!) DS.
My desktop at work just died and while I'm waiting for it to reboot, I snapped a pic of my cubicle (I am actually in a hexagonal "honeycomb", not a square cubicle). Time for I-spy! 1 Patrick's "Cheers" magnet pint 2 E's sewing project bunny 3 How many Four Twin Sisters items can you see? My computer is back online - "Cheers"!
It's amazing what treasures you unearth when you clean up your office. I found these old Zazzle stamps ($0.39!) in a drawer of quilting fabric. The stamps show the logo of the FourTwinSisters.com quilt pattern site.
Bunk beds are perfect play structures and frameworks for making hammocks. J&E should have been sleeping 40 minutes ago but we needed to stress-test one of my quilts.
The trick to making kids do things they don't really want to do is to make the alternative worse.
"E, do you want to clean the table for dinner or practice the violin?"
Here you see E with cousin P. Do they look like sisters? They are genetically half-sisters - I'm E's mom and my twin M is P's mom. J&E are looking forward to seeing their cousins when we get to Alberta!
Zazzle.ca just launched today!
I love Zazzle and I get “Camp Gramma” shirts from them every year. For our roadtrip, I’m planning on getting a shirt for each of J&E and myself so we can match when we feel like it.
These seedlings should have been put out in the ground a few weeks ago. They are both a grain crop that, when cooked, make a cous-cous like dish. I'll put them out before I leave, and if the drip irrigation is working properly they should make it.
This quilt is just a sample. I made it using the laser cutter at the tech shop with heat'n'bond on the fabric. I'm trying to clean out my "office" (craft room / general dumping grounds) before we leave on our trip and I found this unfinished project.
I finally found a search engine (calculation engine?) that answers, almanac-style, all kinds of science, music, math, and "general knowledge" questions succinctly and with graphs and figures. (Huh? you ask - You don't know how hard it is to keep up with J's questions!)
| You are invited to view Annette's photo album: Exploratorium
Message from Annette: We went to the San Francisco Exploratorium in March. It was a fun hands-on science adventure. I uploaded a lot of photos to Picasa, hopefully the link will work in this post. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=annettetruong&target=ALBUM&id=5337030469052489969&authkey=Gv1sRgCM_e4MmjjO2Y4gE&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.  |
E is showing off her new jacket I sewed for her a few weeks ago. She picked out the sparkly jewel buttons. It's too hot today for more than a tank top, but it will be nice in Canada where nights are always cool.
Here you see J playing our hammered dulcimer. He's giving the strings a pluck which makes it sound like a harp. The little wooden mallet in his hand makes it sound softer. This is one of my favorite instruments, as you can have zero skill, sit down with the mallets, and sound like wind chimes. A profesional player was playing this at an antique faire, and he was kind enough to show us the basics. This instrument is too bulky for our road trip, but we'll be taking a penny whistle, fife, and recorder to flute some melodies at rest stops.
Background
My coworker Joyce's last day at work today. Celebrated (mourned?) at Miyakes in Palo Alto. California is going to miss you!
Above is a border crossing into Canada near Vancouver. This is the first year passports are required (and they mean it this time!) for land travel between Canada and the USA. I, of course, just mailed my application in last week. I took Mare's class on procrastination and passed with flying colors. I just had a pang of dout - did I remember to put my birth certificate in with the application? Yikes! I hope so.
Probably the most-asked question I have received about our road trip plans is, "How will you keep your kids occupied!?" Well, I won't lie and say that it's easy. We have learned over the years a few tricks. 1 the tub of activities you see between J&E contains: books, coloring/activity pads, pencils, 2 Nintendo DS's, games, puzzles, binoculars, and other assorted toys. Here you see J&E enjoying a movie on a tablet PC (headphones on a splitter so they can both listen while the adults enjoy music or silence up front). Everything that consumes electricity has its own car charger, and in addition we have a dc to ac converter to keep the laptop running (it provides a "regular outlet" in the car). Coupled with lots of rest stops, and some mandatory "quiet time" (gotta enjoy the scenery now and then), as well as naps, we usually don't have much trouble driving long distances with our kids.
There used to be a trail you could climb down, at Hell's Gate, my mom said. It's all fenced off now, we just admired the gorge from the top as we didn't want to pay nearly $80 for the whole family to take the tram down!
Nothing pleases J&E more than a nice little BBQ outside. We are pretty good at getting a fire going efficiently. The trick? Lots of small dry things. 6 weeks of this is what J is looking forward to!
More 1337 outdoorsy practice. "Yes of course you're allowed to walk on the stones in the stream!" Hey, in the city, this opportunity doesn't happen often.
J here is making his move on "Wings of War", a game I got for my birthday this year. The idea is to fly your little plane around the table shooting down the other planes. It's really fun but another game we'll likely leave at home rather than take with us.
"J, go out to the coop and get some eggs."
"E, help me mix some pancakes."
"T, make me an iced coffee?"
Saturday breakfast action.
When E saw the cute bed with toys and quilt set up at pbfk, she was ready to move in on the spot! She asked me to photograph the toys so we could make them ourself one day. It makes me wonder if we should take sewing supplies on our trip...
E and I are on the little train at Vasona park in Los Gatos. I briefly contemplated making this summer's road trip a train trip. But it wouldn't offer us the same flexibility, so we axed that plan pretty early.
J is going to miss out on a lot of cub scout activities this summer. He was sad because he heard about the camps and activities they had planned. He perked up when I reminded him we'd be camping nearly every day for 6 weeks. "I'm the best mom!" Oh man. What have I committed myself to...
We sometimes look after our neighbor's dog, Strider. Strider is a white german shepherd and one of the best behaved dogs I've ever met! He's a big fuzzy polar bear. Here E and neighbor-girl A are playing in the park with Strider.
What? Williams Lake? A small town like that shouldn't have one of the coolest visitor centers in all of BC let alone all of North America, yet it does. Here you see the bottom of the tree trunk that extends from the basement to the ceiling and is the main support of the entire building.
