Saturday, November 25, 2006

Thanksgiving



Happy Thanksgiving, Gentle Reader!

Well, happy post-Thanksgiving food coma/shopping frenzy.

Things here were quiet but fun. Andy made a fabulous Thanksgiving feast which the three of us thoroughly enjoyed. Well, two of us did. The third was too tired and wound up to at so ended up going to bed after two bites of turkey and three bites of roll.

We spent Thursday morning exploring part of the wildlife refuge up in Alviso. This is the area at the very southern tip of the bay, and we got to see lots of marshy stuff and shorebirds doing shorebird type things. It was neato! Next time, we’ll bring bicycles or at the very least the gigantic stroller so that we can explore a little more.

Friday was dominated by an ill-fated attempt to procure a loveseat for the den. We fell for a fabulous ad that (surprise of surprises) turned out to be a really crummy deal in disguise. Ah well.

Today, we spent the morning at Vasona Park in Los Gatos. Technically, I think we were at the park next door to Vasona Park. It has an awesome playground featuring big shade trees and benches all around, Oh, and the slides and climbing things are cool too. This is the same park we visited waaaay back when we first arrived-the one with the miniature railroad! In the winter months they run a diesel engine instead of a steam engine, so that was a new and exciting experience. Elise loved it, and at $2/head for a 20 minute ride it’s a fabulous deal.

Happily, we have no idea what we’ll be doing tomorrow. Enjoying the last day of our four day weekend is our big goal. Woo hooo! Having all of this time together is really helping San Jose feel like home now. Something to be thankful for indeed!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Uneventful




We’ve been blogless for awhile now, but that’s mostly because there isn’t much to report. We’ve been settling in, meeting some new people, establishing some routines. Exciting lives!

The rainy season has started here, which so far means that it is cloudy and drizzly about three mornings out of five, and occasionally rains overnight as well. Amazing, eh?

It’s already the middle of November, and we’re realizing that Elise will be three years old in a matter of weeks. Where has all of the time gone? No, seriously, where? We want to know...

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Trick or Treat!



We decided to do all of our trick-or-treating at Andy’s office this year. What a great time! There were nice people with buckets of candy all over the place, and they were willing to just give it away to kids!

At our first stop, Elise was sooooo excited that she could just stand there bouncing and laughing. Finally, she mustered a “trick or treat” and was rewarded with “cAAAAAAAaNDyyyyyyYYY!” There was some parental concern that we’d have to pry the mini Snickers bar out of her fingers before bath time.

Once the thrill of wandering the cubicle maze wore off, we found a place where they were giving away CUPCAKES and we took one to sit and eat on a bench outside. (See picture above.) From there, we went to decorate cookies and learned that frosting on a giant sugar cookie tastes pretty good. Afterward, we all went outside to run around on the grassy hill. It was wildly fun, and none of it spooky and scary for a kid. Hooray! Perfect first trick-or-treating experience.

Of course, the trick came later when some evil cretin ignited an incendiary device near where we’d been playing hours before. Nobody was hurt, but the entire campus was shut down today while authorities investigated. It’s not that fun to work from home after your office campus has been bombed. Things are set to re-open tomorrow, so we take it as a good sign that this was “just” a freak thing.

In other news, today marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. Woo hoo! Heather is on target to meet today’s word count goal. Feel free to chart her progress and jeer her on through the link provided above on our NaNoWriMo page.

Happy November!