Happy Mother's Day!

We've had a busy past few days. On Friday I went to the Oakland Zoo for a library workshop. It was a fun day, but a really long one. That night we saw the new Star Trek movie with some friends, and that was a lot of fun. I've never been a Star Trek fan- in fact, this is the first Star Trek movie I've ever seen- but I really enjoyed it.
I had to work yesterday, but luckily I'm off today and tomorrow. After church this morning we went over to my parents' house for a family lunch. We took Clark with us, and he did amazingly well with the group of people. We were able to let him off his leash to run around with his friend Abby the beagle, and he only growled a few times all afternoon. He had his 2nd birthday on Friday- he's really growing up!
The weather was nice this afternoon. The dogs enjoyed lounging on the lawn:
Dad grilled excellent burgers, as usual: Here are the three grandmas. From left to right, they are our "adopted" grandma Bea, my mom's mom, and my dad's mom: Logan with Clark and Abby. The three of them had fun together: And a family photo. We couldn't get Clark to look at the camera!: Abby, like Clark, loves to sit on laps. However, unlike Clark, she's actually small enough to sit on laps: All three dogs (Clark, Abby and Bailey) were exhausted by the end of the afternoon. Clark fell asleep as soon as he had finished dinner, and he's still out cold three hours later:

The beach, the garage, and "Wicked"- oh my!

It's been almost a month since my last post, and I have lots of updates.

Last month Logan was off work for Spring Break the week after Easter. I am saving my vacation days for summer, so we didn't take a trip for Spring Break this year- the first time in at least four years that we haven't! But Logan enjoyed staying around the house and hanging out with Clark. I did take Monday off that week, though, and we decided to head up north to Fort Funston beach, which is just south of San Francisco. It was a cloudy day, but not too cold. Clark was a very good boy and had a great time running around and playing in the waves. As he gets older, he's showing more of his Chesapeake Retriever side- he can fetch driftwood with the best of them!



As you can see, he's no longer scared of the waves. In fact, he would have gone farther out if we had let him.
However, he is apparently scared of empty crab shells. They must smell weird to him. He barked at this one!
One of the fun things about going to Fort Funston is seeing all of the strange graffiti. I especially like this one. It reminds me of the Toys R Us giraffe.
Here are my boys doing what they do best- exploring. I've continued my crocheting, and I'm really having fun with it. My most recent project was a pink elephant that I made for a birthday present. We went to Logan's cousin's daughter's birthday party last weekend, and I finished it just in time to give it to her. I'm planning to make more, as time allows, for all of the kids we know. It's so much fun!

Well, we're chugging along on finishing the garage. Our most recent projects have been putting down a coating of floor covering and buying/putting together storage cabinets. Next up: getting Logan's workbench and tool storage and re-building the garage steps.


Here's a picture of the old steps during demolition. They really were in sad shape- maybe original to the house? (60+ years)
Here's me in the entry to the kitchen. The step down to the garage doesn't look like it's very big, but it is!
And here are the boys in the doorway. Wherever Logan is sitting, Clark is soon to follow (and climb onto his lap).
Here's the finished garage floor- yay! It looks so nice and bright and brand new.
Here's a close-up of the floor covering. It's an epoxy paint. We had to scrub the floor first with a special cleaner so that the paint would stick. Then, after it was dry, Logan used a paint roller to roll on the epoxy coating and sprinkle on the specks. I was in charge of cutting in along the edge and corners with the paint brush. It was relatively easy and the results are so nice.
Yes, Clark likes to "help" build cabinets too. He is fond of sitting on the piece we're trying to work on, or licking Logan's face while he's trying to use the screw driver.
I get the sense that Clark thinks we do everything for his benefit. He was climbing into the cabinet before we added the shelves!
Here are three of the five finished cabinets. We're still waiting for the biggest one to be delivered to the store for us to pick up. It's rare that Clark decides to sit on his bed in the corner of the living room, but one night last week he was being a model dog and keeping himself quietly occupied chewing on his duck toy. Small miracles!
A photo of our cherry blossom tree in full bloom. We didn't have a lot of blossoms this year since it's still a young tree, but hopefully we'll have more each year.

One more exciting tidbit: last Friday Logan and I dropped Clark at my parents' house for the evening and took BART up to San Francisco to see the musical "Wicked."

Logan's mom had given me tickets to the show for Christmas, and it was worth the wait. The set design, costumes, music- everything was wonderful! I'd love to go again, but it is expensive to see a show that good. Maybe next time it comes to town. I read the book a few months ago in preparation for the show. It was also very good, but there are lots of differences between the two. I highly recommend both if you ever get the chance.

That's all for this time. I'm hoping by the next time I post I can show a completely finished garage!

Happy Easter!

After working last Saturday, I enjoyed a day off on Monday. I started off the day painting in the garage before taking Clark for a walk mid-morning. We had only gotten a half-block from our house when we saw a little dog running across the street toward us. We live on a really busy four-lane street, so I was concerned that the little dog, who was unaccompanied, would get hit by a car if we left him out there. So I picked him up and took him home with us. He and Clark ran around the backyard while I got in contact with his owners. He was only with us for fifteen minutes or so, but Clark really enjoyed running around with him until his owner came and picked him up. With the warm weather lately, our cherry blossom tree is finally flowering. We planted it last year after it was done flowering, so we have never seen it in spring before. I has really pretty little blossoms.
About a month ago I decided that I wanted to teach myself to crochet, so I got some books from the library to help me learn. I had seen some patterns in a library book that I wanted to try making Katie for her birthday. Since she's a dietitian I thought she'd appreciate having a little crocheted apple and pear. I just finished another project too, but I have to wait to put up a picture of it until I have given it to its intended recipient. I am really enjoying my crocheting projects so far.
On Friday night we went over to my parents' house to celebrate Katie's 25th birthday. We had a good dinner and then cake and presents. Friday was also Bailey's birthday. He's 11 now, and still as feisty as ever, despite being blind and diabetic. He seemed to enjoy the party as well- or at least the extra attention!
Katie has the same cake every year- a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
Today we went to the 9am church service, and then over to my aunt and uncle's house in Cupertino for an early dinner. I left our house an hour early and walked with Clark toward Cupertino. Logan picked us up and drove us the rest of the way there. Clark enjoyed playing with his friend Abby the beagle and then slept in the truck while we enjoyed dinner.

We've had a relaxing afternoon and evening since we got home. I sat and crocheted for a while in Clark's favorite chair, and he joined me in the chair to look out the window for a while. He's sound asleep in the chair now after his busy day.
One last bit of news for this week: Logan entered a contest to have his design put on the new t-shirt for his school, and the PTA chose his design. His school's mascot is the dolphin, so that's why his design is a boy riding a dolphin. I think it turned out really well. Very cute!

My least favorite thing in the world

I realized something the other day: the weekends when I have time to post to the blog are not busy enough that I have anything good to post about. But the weekends when I have lots to post about are the weekends when I'm too exhausted at the end of the day to post anything!
The past two weekends have been the busy kind, and I'm finally taking a few minutes to tell you about them.
As I wrote about back in February, we've been working on finishing the garage. The past few weekends have been filled (at least in part) with my least favorite thing in the world- sanding drywall. It's dirty work- it gets sweaty inside the breathing mask, sticky inside the latex gloves, my arms, shoulders and neck ache terribly, and I end up with a fine dust all over me. Logan and I spent last Saturday slathering "mud" (joint compound) on the drywall seams. Then Logan and I sanded the walls and ceiling on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Logan put on a second coat of mud on Thursday and Friday. He took yesterday off while I was at work, and then the two of us sanded the final coat today before vacuuming up all of the dust and spraying the texturing on the walls. Now we're ready for me to paint tomorrow on my day off. And then- cabinets! We're very excited to finally have this project (almost) done, and really looking forward to the ample amount of extra storage space we'll have in the garage now. Here are some photos from last Saturday:Last Sunday we took the day off from garage work to head over to the beach for the afternoon. We stopped in Pescadero to get some bread from our favorite shop and then drove over to Bean Hollow Beach to walk around on the sand for a while. It was REALLY windy that afternoon. Clark had lots of fun chasing the sea foam around on the beach. (See video at the bottom of the posting.) Friday was my dad's 60th birthday, and we had two celebrations for him over the weekend. On Friday night we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Jasmine Thai restaurant and then dessert afterwards at our house. It was my dad's favorite: Strawberry Shortcake.
Clark seems to gravitate toward my dad's lap when they're together! Then this evening (Sunday) we went over to my parents' house to enjoy dinner and dessert there. In addition to my parents and sister, my grandmothers and two of my dad's friends joined us. Dinner was great, and Katie made a gorgeous pirate ship cake for my dad.
Cute Clark photo of the week: Here's Clark with his newest toy, Octopus:
(and in case you're wondering, this photo wasn't posed- he did this all by himself- what a ham!) That's all for this week- stay tuned for photos of the finished garage!

The finished product

When I put up my last post, last night, I didn't have any photos of the finished product when Logan was taped to the wall. This morning he sent me a few, so here they are. It's pretty amazing that they kids could put enough tape on him to hold him up off the ground! Like Logan says, this is a good advertisement for the strength of duct tape.

Tape Man!

As usual, we've had an eventful last few weeks. We started the month by celebrating Logan's birthday. His mom was in town, so we went out to dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant, Jasmine. I highly recommend it to anyone in the area- we take all of our friends there! We had a nice dinner with Logan's mom, grandma, and his grandma's boyfriend before coming back to our house for cake and ice cream.
The next night we celebrated again with my family at my parents' house. We were also celebrating my grandma's birthday, so it was a double party. We had grilled burgers, Grandma Adams' macaroni salad, and cake and ice cream for dessert. Here are a few photos from the party:The next day was yard work day for us. We had been waiting for a sunny weekend day so we could mow the lawn and do some weeding, and last Sunday was it. Logan mowed the VERY tall grass and I worked on weeding and cutting back our perennials, so they're ready for the next growing season. Clark...well, he just enjoyed sunbathing on the deck:
And for the most exciting news of the past few weeks: Logan got duct taped to a wall by a couple hundred students last Friday! He volunteered to do it because it was for a fundraiser at his school- Pennies for Patients, which is a fundraiser that supports patients suffering from Leukemia or Lymphoma. For every dollar the kids brought to donate, they received one foot of duct tape to help stick Logan to the wall. Logan stood on top of milk crates, and one by one the kids came up and (with the teachers' help), stuck Logan to the wall with their duct tape. I drove over on my lunch break to watch the fun, but I had to leave before all of the kids had a chance to do their taping. However, Logan said that after all of the taping was done they were able to take both milk crates out from under Logan's feet, leaving him hanging a foot or so up in the air. The kids went wild! After all of the money was counted, it turned out that the school raised $872 to donate to the Pennies for Patients program. I'm very proud of Logan for volunteering for this- he's so sweet to put his body on the line for a good cause!
And in closing tonight, a picture of the beautiful sunset from our front porch a few weeks ago: