In mid-August just before school started, I made a plan with my friend Elizabeth to meet at the Bay Area Discovery Museum just north of San Francisco in Sausalito. It was fun to take another trip over the Golden Gate Bridge and the kids had a fun day. I don’t have many pictures because I was busy gabbing with Elizabeth — we also had a fun day.
They played outside in the playground for a while and really enjoyed this boat.
They liked this area where they could paint on the windows, too.
There were lots of other hands-on exhibits reminiscent of Kidspace in Pasadena. Another great day of hanging out with old friends!
In an effort to take advantage of a few of the things we have access to here, in August I took the boys on a bike ride over to the bay where we had lunch at the Lakeside Cafe by Shoreline Lake. Then we biked over to the kite flying area and flew kites for a while. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers — a man who knew how to work Ezra’s kite noticed us struggling to get it set up and helped us get started.
Finn’s kite — one that he made in school last year — is remarkably easy to fly. Unfortunately, while I was helping Ezra, Finn decided to let it fly itself and put the string under his backpack. Of course, the kite took off and all I saw was Finn running after the runaway (flyaway?) kite. It eventually got hooked on the power lines.
Bruce rode over from Google to join us for a bit, and he looked for Finn’s kite on the way back but to no avail. Ezra’s kite, however, while harder to fly is easier to keep track of and made it safely home. Here’s a picture of it with the magnificent sky we had that day (along with the mysterious blue dot that shows up on some iPhone photos).
OK, let’s get this out of the way first since it will be obvious by the pictures here: We finally let Ezra have his mohawk. Bruce did a very thorough job, even using a regular razor to shave the sides completely.
Now, on to the regular post. On August 8th, Google[x] had an afternoon picnic for employees and their families, our first Googley event. There were food truck and carnival games, along with some [x] swag, and we all had a great time. The kids brought home tons of prizes and ate/drank a bunch of sugar — a perfect day for them.
We took a weekend staycation in San Francisco in August with the intent of getting to know the city a little better. While I was unprepared for how cold it was, the scenery sure was lovely! Here’s one view from our hotel the day we arrived.
And here’s the same shot the next morning … a little foggy!
Here are some images of our exploration.
One of the highlights was a boat tour which took us under the Golden Gate and over around Alcatraz. It was a freezing but very informative, touristy thing to do.
We also spent a good amount of time at the penny arcade and took a set of photo booth pictures.
On Sunday morning we met up with the Stevenson/Saveri clan who happened to be visiting as well. We got to see Elizabeth’s childhood home and neighborhood and had a delicious breakfast close by.
Then we let the kids run around outside the Palace of Fine Arts building which is right across the street from Elizabeth’s house — not a bad place to grow up!
Obviously, these four hooligans take picture-taking very seriously.
There were some great trees to climb, too.
Ezra would have stayed here all day …
… but alas, it was soon time to stay goodbye to friends and head back home.
With the busy-ness of the new school year, the summer feels like a distant memory, but way back in July the boys and I spent a peaceful, warm week with the Bannings in Laguna. There is something so relaxing about this spot (even with the stress of Ezra looking like he’s going to fall over the side of the deck).
Ezra was definitely in his happy place all week — with Chester.
Of course, we spent lots of time at the beach with the kids digging, running and jumping in waves until complete exhaustion set in.
We had Jack, Theo and Olivia (and their moms) join us for a playful day. Jack buried Ezra.
And Finn spent a little time with the ladies …
There was also some LEGO involved.
During the week we also did some kayaking, biking, roller blading, a little school on the deck …
… and lots of ice cream eating.
Bruce joined us at the end of the week and we were able to spend Saturday afternoon with the Bondsmiths and take part in a little celebration for Jenner’s birthday.
It was a great week of time spent with such good friends. We are grateful to the Bannings for their generosity!
Finn lost another tooth in July and Tootho and Mootho came to visit again. Ezra left them a note and some LEGOs to play with. Here is his note with all the responses.
It was hard to capture but Tootho and Mootho put strings up all over the living room and “flew” the toys on the strings.
I love that both boys are totally uninterested in the money left and only want to see what hijinks ensued with Tootho and Mootho. (Come to think of it, maybe that’s because the Tooth Fairy only leaves them a dollar.)
While the transition to NorCal has not been easy for me, one thing I am thoroughly enjoying is how much more we get to ride bikes. The kids did two weeks at a bike riding camp called Wheel Kids, Bruce rides to work everyday, and I’ve explored much of Palo Alto and the surrounding areas on my bike. We’ve all gotten new bikes over the last few months — a bigger bike for Ezra, a gear bike for Finn, Bruce finally replaced his bent-framed commuter bike, and I got a new Specialized that fits me. (That’s my beauty in the front here.)
On this day we rode over to the bay. I can’t take pictures and ride at the same time but I snapped this one during a break. The boys were throwing rocks into the marshy soil and enjoying the thud-like sounds they made.
We celebrated Independence Day this year with Mike, Carla and family at their house in Sacramento, which meant a couple of great things: we got to see the “girl cousins” and the boys got to try their hand at fireworks for the first time. The kids had a great time in the pool while the adults chatted.
It was really nice to spend the afternoon with Mike and Carla, and we also got to see Carla’s parents who joined us. I haven’t seen them in ages!
After dinner and before the fireworks, the kids did some marshmallow roasting and s’mores eating.
And then we gathered out front for fireworks.
The sparklers were a hit.
After the sparklers we lit some other fireworks and watched the magic of things like Red Devil and Purple Rain.
We’re trying to take advantage of our new surroundings and visit some of the great things available to us. We’ve been to the Exploratorium a few times. (Bruce took the boys again while I was in Napa; they had quite an adventure just getting there on the train since there was a Giants game that day and it was Pride weekend.)
We’ve also visited California Academy of Sciences, which had lots of great stuff including a rain forest section, a planetarium, a skull exhibit and penguins. Ezra liked this giant frog.
Finn wasn’t too sure about this ridiculously huge snake.
The living roof was pretty cool.
I also took the boys to Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, where Finn and I had gone on a field trip a few months before. It’s not the most lively place, but there’s a lot of good airplane history. The boys’ favorite thing was the helicopter simulator. Specifically, they liked to crash it.
They also liked pretending to pilot the big plane.
For a change of pace, one day the three of us went to Santa Cruz. We were armed with squirt guns, buckets and shovels and the boys were undaunted by the chilly, foggy weather.
They had some pretty good battles.
Eventually the sun started to peek out. They did some digging.
The boys’ last day of school was May 29th and I grabbed a couple of quick shots from their classrooms. First, Ezra’s class with his teacher, Mr. Holbrook, in the middle.
Here’s Finn’s table.
And his class, with his teacher, Mrs. Schmidt.
It wasn’t easy coming in mid-year, but the boys did great with the transition and the teachers were very welcoming. I couldn’t really ask for more.
We took a little trip to Palm Springs last weekend for Bruce’s step-sister Michelle’s wedding. We flew out of SFO for the first time. I’m always taken aback by the boys’ enthusiasm for airports: “Mommy, look! There are planes here!”
They also had this very cool Japanese toy exhibit. My favorite was the robots.
We had a great time swimming and playing with all the cousins. I was too busy chatting and watching the kids in the pool to take pictures unfortunately. But I have some from the wedding. Here’s the bride and groom.
Bruce usually comes home from work in a good mood. He’s enjoying his new job — the team, the work itself and the whimsical Google environment are all a good fit. But one day a couple of weeks ago he came home a little embarrassed. He’d accidentally printed out a 1,000-page document when he intended to just print part of the table of contents. Because he had left the building when he started the print job, he didn’t realize what had happened until he got back much later.
He quickly owned up to the accident and suggested his penance should be to have to actually read the document: IEEE Broadband Wireless Access Standards, which sounds riveting. Another colleague proposed that he make a paper mache balloon piñata for Cinco de Mayo like the ones his group plans to fly to provide internet access to remote areas.
So in other words, the gauntlet was thrown and the Moisions sprang into action. I found a local party store that sells giant balloons and Bruce printed out some pictures of the balloons to figure out proper dimensions. Saturday morning he started the paper mache.
Here’s the offending paper.
This project really is an engineering problem, so it’s right up his alley. He was worried that the balloon would pop before the paper mache was dry, so he set up a little stand for it.
After the first couple of layers, he decided that he wanted it to get some sun since it wasn’t particularly warm out. So we very carefully moved it out of the garage. It was windy, so in addition to it needing a cushiony place to sit, he tied it down so it wouldn’t blow off the box.
After a few hours in the sun, we moved it back into the garage and tackled the next engineering issue: how to get it to drape down so it’s not ball-shaped. This is where I think most people would have a good laugh and give up. But not my nutty husband.
His original thought was to use string to get the shape and do the paper mache around the string.
But that didn’t work because the paper would just rip when he tried to stretch it between the strings. Luckily, we still have a lot of cardboard left over from the move, so out came the box cutters and the hot glue gun and we shaped a stronger base. (And I say “we” because I was tasked with holding things in place while he did all the work, but I’m taking some credit anyway.)
After tying it to a beam in the garage so it would stand upright (and take a little weight off the balloon), he started in on the first layer on Sunday morning.
Later that evening he added more layers and got a little help from Ezra.
They’re a good team.
By the next morning, it was looking pretty good!
He still had to add some layers to the part that wasn’t showing when it was hanging up.
And we had lengthy discussions about how to attach a way to hang it when it was all done. More glue gun, cardboard and zip ties.
A couple of days later it got an attachment.
And hanging proved successful.
Of course, in order to be authentic it needs a payload.
More zip ties, glue, cardboard and black spray paint.
While all this was happening, we were also trying to figure out what we should put inside. Our first thought was, of course, candy, but that seemed too obvious. I suggested bouncy balls which I thought would have a nice effect but could be problematic with little control of how far they would go. They would also add a lot of weight to an already heavy contraption.
Then Bruce had a great idea: origami cranes (or loons!) in the tradition of making 1,000 cranes for good luck. After some searching, we found people on Etsy who make them, in Google colors no less. We figured we’d buy some and make some ourselves, knowing it was unlikely we’d be able to make as many of them as we needed to fill the ball.
We initially bought 500 3″ cranes from a woman in North Carolina which came folded and needed to be pulled out into shape. We put the kids to work.
We then set out to make more (which included a late night trip to Michael’s for origami paper). We found that we had an easier time making them from 6″ paper, so we hunted through the packs of paper for the primary colors, put the kids to bed and got to work. It didn’t take long for us to realize we needed provisions.
We kept at it and our small pile got bigger as we managed to get a little faster at making each crane.
On Saturday, though, we brought in reinforcements: Baris and Alexandra.
Alexandra is a pro and cranked out lots of cranes. Baris joined the rest of us newbies, and together we made about 200 cranes in a few hours. Of course, we had some delays, namely dinner and my own stopping to cheer for the Kings who beat the Ducks in Round 2, Game 1 that night.
On Sunday, Bruce put some finishing touches on the payload: a mocked-up comm system complete with solar panel.
We took a break for lunch with our neighbors and then headed out on our two hour drive to Elk Grove to pick up the other 500 cranes we’d ordered on Etsy. The best part of that little excursion was that we arranged to meet Mike, Carla, Emily and Kendra for dinner in Sacramento. So great to see the “girl cousins” as the boys call them!
On the way home, Bruce unfolded all the cranes, threw them to the boys who threw them in the back of the car. So what started out in this box …
… ended up to be this giant pile.
When we got home, I put the kids to bed while Bruce started getting the balloon ready for transport to Google the next morning. After attaching another, smaller balloon in the hole to keep the cranes from pooling in the bottom, he filled the big ball.
Then, while trying to figure out what to use for the beating stick, we decided to contact our neighbor Chris who has his own [much crazier] project going on in his backyard — Tsunamiball — and therefore has lots of tools and scrap wood. He brought over a perfect stick and then had a look at the balloon. He proved to be the voice of reason, convincing Bruce that the ball was just too strong and no one was going to be able to bust it open. So … out came the drill.
And eventually the saw.
It ended up looking like this.
Just to take this to a whole new level of kookiness, Bruce was worried that the cranes would a) be dusty from all the drilling and sawing, and b) get wet when he put the last layer of paper mache on (he couldn’t possibly leave it full of holes), so he had taken them all out.
Trust me, there was a lot of mocking. Undaunted, he continued cutting, in part because after he did the initial cuts he tried hitting the ball and it didn’t budge.
Here’s a shot of all the holes from the inside.
Next there was sanding …
And the last layer of paper mache.
After it had mostly dried, he blew up another balloon for inside (he’d popped the first one with the saw) and refilled the cranes. He marked a tiny black spot where he thought the weakest point was in case they ran into trouble breaking it.
And we loaded it in the van.
He sent me this picture of its final home between a couple of Google buildings.
The festivities started earlier than I thought they would so I didn’t get to see the beginning; apparently Bruce got to take the first swings. When I rode up I could hear the smacking sound already so I rushed over to grab a few photos.
And here’s the guy who finally did it in.
I love this shot of the aftermath. The cranes worked out great!
You can see more of my photos here. Some of Bruce’s colleagues also posted photos. I’ll add links as I get them. For now, here and here.
Google’s Take Your Child to Work Day was April 23rd and the boys were thrilled to have a day off from school and get to spend a [half] day with Bruce at work. I was going on a bike ride with a friend that day, and the boys wanted to commute by bike to Google, so we started the day together. It’s a short 2-3 mile ride from our house to Googleplex.
Since I wasn’t there, I don’t have any pictures of the activities they did, but I snapped one when I picked them up.
Naturally, they got some souvenirs and wanted to wear them immediately.
Nothing like a little handball with “Super Android.”
Easter was, not surprisingly, a quiet affair for us. The boys were excited to see that they had baskets in the morning. I’m pretty sure they didn’t even remember it was Easter.
After checking out what kinds of candy they got, they immediately jumped into building their new small Legos.
Pretty soon they were out in the back yard trying to find all the eggs the bunny had left.
That bunny was pretty clever.
In the evening we had dinner with our new neighbors and watched the first period of Game 2 of the Kings-Sharks series. The Kings were ahead when we left but ended up getting throttled 7-2. (Side note not at all related to Easter: The Kings went down 3 games to 0 but came back to win the series by winning the last four games in a row. Woohoo, on to round 2 now!)
