Swim Lessons

 This month, Meghan gets to have swim lessons!

She does pretty well, although she's not always obedient to the "stay here and don't splash" command and she's a little emotional at leaving time.  But she's rapidly getting comfortable in the water.

Here we are waiting where the little girls can't fall in the pool.

Mountain Women

One afternoon we went up into the mountains for a picnic.  We had lots of fun.

 Wilderness.

Stick Fights.

Also, Bananas.

Meghan's Unicorn

So after watching The Last Unicorn, Meghan decided she wanted to draw one.  I talked her through it.

"Draw a head.  Now a body.  Give him four legs.  And a horn.  Good.  Now some eyes and a smile. Give him some ears."

And here is the end result.

For those who have trouble seeing the green unicorn, here is my recreations.

It was pretty good.  I liked how her unicorn had puppy ears.

But this isn't the end of the story.

Several days later she was drawing unicorns while we were otherwise occupied.  I glanced over. 

The distilled essence of a unicorn.

"Look at my unicorn, Mom!  He has a baby unicorn."

"Meghan, where is his head?" I asked without thinking.  She looked at it a moment.

"Oh."

"It's a beautiful unicorn," I corrected myself.

I went back to what I was doing, feeling a bit guilty for pointing out her mistake. A few minutes later I returned to find this.

"It's a spider, Mom."

 I was careful not to mention that the spider had more than eight legs.

It only got better from there.

 "It's a spider in his web! In his cocoon!  And he's hugging the baby unicorn."

What a way to improvise.

Meghan's First Talk

Meghan had to give a talk on Easter Sunday.

She my not have written this, but she DID read it at the Primary pulpit.

 Here is the picture she drew for her visual aid.  Sadly, one little boy complained that it "wasn't very good."  We like it just fine, Meghan.  See if you can figure out who everyone is in it.

Trampoline Baby

Where Have I Seen This Before?

Oh yeah.

And.

Eagle Park

Yeah, more lazy camera action going on here.  These ones are too dark. What we need is a camera phone that takes as good pictures as a regular camera.  With zoom function.  Or maybe I can just stop being lazy and paranoid that someone will berate me for taking pictures of their kid when I whip out my normal camera. Yeah. Camera phones are great for stealth mode. 

Anyway.

This is one of those perfect, standard parks.  No bells and whistles, but it is done right. It has it's own parking lot which means no parallel parking on the street.  This is very important to me: you'd be surprised how heavily my park ratings are weighted towards ease of access.

You can't really see it here, but this is a really neat teeter-totter.  It is arch shaped.  I wish I had a good picture of a similar one to show you.  Maybe I'll update with one when I go back to this park.

It is also very shady, which is super nice during the warm months.  During the cold months, it may be a bit chilly but that's what sweaters are for. There is a great big field to play in and pick flowers.  Nearby restrooms. Lots of Mom benches.  Sand.  No unexpected water equipment.  I couldn't think of anything negative at this park while I was there.  Of course, I might just have been in an unusually good mood.

652 Franklin Street, Mountain View

Las Palmas Park

Ok, So the pictures in this one are kind of weak because I was using my phone.  Convenience over quality and all that jazz.  However, don't let the pictures fool you, because this park is pretty neat.  It's a very large park, inset from the road with it's own parking lot so that's nice.  Apparently, during the summer the playground is surrounded by a little pond, but when we went it was empty.  Sadly, the pond suffers from the "No Wading" obsession most local water features have around here. For younger kids, the pond may give parents heart attacks, so I think this park is aimed more for the older kids or the helicopter parents who follow 3-4 feet behind their only child the entire time.

There are several parts of this park.

First, there is the boat area.  It is over a bridge and would be mostly surrounded by the pond.

Then there is the other playground. It is not surrounded by water.

 Finally, there are these blue pillars that I am told spray water during the summer and the concrete slide which is right next to where the pond would be.

 One of the main attractions to this playground is that it's a little different.  You get so used to the standard 2-playground, sand and field arrangement that throwing in a boat and a pond and a water play area would make for an interesting day. We will have to try this during the summer to see if the water features end up being a plus or a minus. 

850 Russet Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94087

Mission: Laundry Retrieval

A few weeks ago, Kyle did the laundry.  I love it when Kyle does the laundry.  It's so helpful to me and I don't have to chase children around the laundromat or agonize over finding quarters for our complex laundry room.  However, there is a downside.  Kyle will occasionally forget loads. We love him anyways.

The laundromat we use is about 3/4 of a mile away so this time we decided to test out our wagon capacity.  Meghan walked the entire way there, but couldn't make it all the way home.  Boy, were my arms tired afterwards.

Mini-Cheesecakes... Oh, and Kyle's Birthday

 For Kyle's birthday I asked him what kind of cake he wanted with the restrictions that it couldn't be a standard cakey cake because I don't like cakey cake.  It is too crumbly and makes a huge mess. 

 So Kyle opted for cheesecake.  I was so excited because I found a cheesecake site with all these recipes I wanted to try.  No, Kyle just wanted a plain one.  Ok, that's still great because I have always wanted to try making one and a plain recipe is a good place to start practicing. 

On his birthday, I went to make the cheesecake and discovered I didn't have enough cream cheese to make him a full cheesecake. I had just gone shopping and I didn't want to do it again.  Frustrated I did some googling and found I did have enough to make mini-ones.  Apparently you can make mini cheesecakes with any cheesecake recipe.  You just cook them for less time.  These took like 20-25 minutes at 350 I believe.

Mini Cheesecakes
Some crushed graham crackers, about 1 Tbsp melted butter and little bit of sugar (yeah I totally winged it. So I don't have the exact amounts.  Sorry.)

2 8-oz packages cream cheese

3/4 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Toppings

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line muffin tins with paper liners.

2. Mixed graham crackers and butter and the little bit of sugar to make the crust.  Press it into the bottom of each muffin cup.

3. Cream together cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Fill each cup with this until it's almost to the top.

4. Bake for about 20-25 minutes.  Apparently, it's OK if the middle falls, according to Kyle.

5. Cool.

6. Top with a flavor.

 Here are what we topped our cheesecakes with:

Oreos

Homemade Blackberry Sauce

Homemade Blackberry Sauce

Put some blackberries, a Tbsp or two of flour and some sugar in a pot.  Cook on the stove-top until the berry juice has thickened. (Sorry, more winging it. I'm practically an aerial chef.)

 So, happy birthday Kyle! 

Surface mount soldering practice.

 Last night I was practicing surface mount soldering of fine pitch chips. I learned quite a bit, got some experience, and managed to not kill anything (that I could see.) The things that I can pass on are: Flux! Clean well tinned tip, and knowing that you will create solder bridges, and knowing how to remove them. (Clean tip and lots of flux with a downward motion.) Don't try to use de-solder braid with anything this small.