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!

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!