London- Day 1

I thought I'd try to do a post a day during our trip- I'll see if I can keep it up. That way I can let everyone know what we're up to, and it'll be a nice record for Logan and me to remember everything we saw and did on our adventure.
Today was our first full day in London. It was a busy day, and I feel like we really saw a lot.
But before I get into that, here are a few photos of our room. We're staying in the residence hall of the Marylebone Campus of the University of Westminster. It's a nice quiet room (which is apparently difficult to find in London), and a good price too. Here's a shot from our third floor room looking out at the garden and street below. There is a hospital on the next block, so we know where to go if we need medical attention!

Here is our door and closets on the right: Here's my bed (we have two twins. Not long enough for Logan, unfortunately.) Here's my desk- Logan's desk and bed are to the right of the shot. The room is divided down the middle by the blue bulletin board beneath the curtains, and each side is a mirror image of the other. It looks like a typical dorm room. Nothing fancy, but it's clean, close to the Underground (Baker Street station, with a statue of Sherlock Holmes out front), and it's a good price.
When we got up this morning we stopped in Starbucks for some coffee (I know, not very British of us...) and then went a few doors down to the Tesco Express market for some breakfast- a chocolate croissant for Logan and a blueberry muffin and fruit for me. Then we headed on the tube down toward the Thames to try to find a tourbus that we could take. We ended up getting the Original Tour company bus. For one price you can hop on and off their buses (with commentary- some live, some recorded) for a 24 hour period, as well as free walking tours and a Thames boat cruise. We saw a lot of London that way today- hopping on and off the buses.
Our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral. Such a beautiful HUGE cathedral with a large underground chapel and crypt. We walked the 300+ stairs to reach the whispering gallery, which isn't a place for those who are afraid of heights.
After touring the cathedral we got some pre-made sandwiches and potato salad from the market across the way and ate on the steps of St. Paul's. It was really nice weather today- almost too warm sometimes.
Here's the front of the cathedral: Here's Logan's sandwich at lunch- he had Oak smoked Scottish salmon and soft cheese on wheat bread. He said it was good...Here's me feeding the pigeons at lunch. I usually don't feed the birds, but I had to in this case. In the movie Mary Poppins, St. Paul's is the cathedral that Mary Poppins sings about in the song "Feed the Birds" when she takes Jane and Michael to visit their father at the bank where he works. So, I had to feed the birds myself. I knew my sister, a big Mary Poppins fan, would appreciate this! (Sorry you have to turn your head to see the photo- for some reason the computer wouldn't rotate it for me. There are a few more like it below.) We saw this ice cream truck parked outside St. Paul's, and we had to take a photo. Gotta love the British signs: Mind That Child!This is what our bus looked like. We rode on top most of the time for a good view of the sights (and for the cool air!)
In the afternoon, we saw the front of Buckingham Palace. The palace isn't open for tours now, since the Queen is in residence right now, so we couldn't go inside. But we did get to see the guards out front, and they're only there when she is, so it worked out well.
Here's Logan at the monument across the walkway from the palace: (By the way, Logan wore his Humboldt State t-shirt today and got two comments on it from people who actually know where it is! One of the people went to HSU herself.) Guard in front of the palace- I took this with my big zoom lens. I was actually probably about 150 feet away. There are several more things we saw today that I won't include photos of: we crossed the Tower Bridge twice (once on bus, once on foot), saw the outside of the Tower of London (decided not to spend the money to go inside), saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, saw the original Hard Rock Cafe, went on the Thames Cruise (where it was my turn to get motion sick...), and drove by Westminster Abbey (we'll probably go inside tomorrow).
One recurring theme of the day was lion statues. We saw lots of them- all different styles- but they were all beautiful. This lion is at Trafalgar Square next to the statue of Admiral Nelson (you can tell how big it is by looking at the little girl sitting between its paws): This one was my favorite of the day. It's on the eastern end of the Westminster Bridge near the London Eye. His facial expression reminds me of Clark when he's nervous! Our last stop of the day was the British Museum. It's free to the public, and was open until 8:30 tonight (nearly everything else closes by 6pm), so we decided to look around. The most famous exhibit in the museum is the Rosetta Stone. It's the first thing we saw when we walked into the first exhibit hall. It's lovely, but almost looks fake- it's hard to believe it's so old! We also saw lots of ancient Greek statues and ruins, and lots of Egyptian mummies too. Here's a picture of the outside of the museum.
We stayed at the museum until just about 8:30, and then went off in search of some dinner. We ate at a place called The Ultimate Burger. It was really good, and was our first real English dining experience (although our waitress was Russian!) Here's their website: http://www.ultimateburger.co.uk/
Lastly, a few random photos from the day. Logan and I agree that the best part of travelling to another country is just seeing the differences in daily life. How everything works and how it looks is so fascinating. Here is what the "don't walk" sign looks like on the streets: Here is a mailbox (it was BIG!): I'm off to shower and bed now. It's almost 11:15, and I'm tired. I want to be able to get up for more exploring tomorrow.

Yep, I'm still here...

I know it's been a long time since my last post. We've been really busy trying to finish up the garage, among other things. I thought I'd get in one more post before we leave for our big adventure tonight- more on that later.
Here's what we've been up to since my last post:
For Memorial Day Weekend we drove down to Disneyland. We wanted to get more use out of our annual passes, and also to have Clark stay with a housesitter for a few days to see how well he'd do with her. He knows Heather from PetSmart (she works there in the day camp), and he behaved really well with her. This is the first time we've left him with a sitter at home.
We had fun in Disneyland, as usual! The weather was great, and the crowds and traffic weren't nearly as bad as I expected. Here's a shot of me in my Mickey ears in front of the recently-refurbished Sunwheel in California Adventure: The annual Food and Wine festival was going on while we were there, and we happened to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of a free beer seminar and tasting that was going on. I don't like beer much, but Logan does, and he had a great time learning about how it's made.
Every time I go to the Disney parks, I wish I could bring their gardeners home with me. Their landscaping is so beautiful and so well themed to the different areas of the parks:
I still think it's neat that they figured out how to make a double balloon...
We're convinced our dog is at least part cat. The back of the sofa is his favorite place to be, and we haven't discouraged it much because it's an old sofa. When we get a new one things might change.
Clark really enjoys being around Logan, under his feet when he's working in the yard, and basically attached at the hip whenever possible. Here he is "helping" Logan put together his new Craftsman workbench in the garage.
Kisses are given freely!
Here's the new (almost finished) Craftsman side of the garage. Very red, isn't it? We're glad to finally have more than enough storage space for all of the tools and equipment Logan has collected over the past few years.
Here's the other side of the garage. It's our area for other storage- pantry items, work clothes, gardening tools, etc. (The garage is MUCH lighter than this now because Logan got all of our new lights installed this past week, but I haven't taken pictures of them yet.)
Our flowers in the backyard are huge this year, and we have gotten some big bumble bees buzzing around. I was practicing with the zoom lens on my camera.
I had a lovely crop of radishes. They turned out so large and fresh looking, but were way too spicy to eat. I think they were planted too late in the spring. I'll try again in the fall...
I'm growing beets for the first time this year. This picture was taken a week or two ago, so they much bigger now. They're looking good!
The soccer is ball is Clark's favorite toy ever. He finally popped it last week, after playing with it for almost six months. Not bad, considering he's a rough player. But he still enjoys chasing it around the yard even though it's popped.
A lazy Saturday morning, looking out toward the back door.
So, about our big adventure...Logan and I are leaving tonight for two weeks in London and Paris. Our flight leaves SFO at 7:30 tonight, and flies straight to Heathrow. We'll be in London for four days, on the coast of England visiting my friend Joanna and her parents for a day, and then back to London to take the train to Paris for a week. We're really excited, and will be taking the laptop with us. So I'm planning to put up a short blog post every few days to let everyone know what we've been up to. I've been learning French for the past few months so I can communicate a little while we're in Paris, and I'm excited to try it out after all of my hard work! We'll be in touch...

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!