Ann vs. Jason

By: Ann

This weekend was a very nice weekend with lots of family time spent together.  We originally were supposed to go to a fundraiser for my workplace; however, there wasn’t enough advertising which resulted in poor attendance.  There was also another health fair going on in the city that we didn’t know about until that day.  We tried making it earlier to my work’s fundraiser, but Athena was sleeping.  By the time we got there, people were packing up to leave (an hour earlier than scheduled).

After realizing very quickly that the event was shutting down, we first headed to a taqueria for a quick bite and then to Alum Rock State Park for, yet, another walk.  There used to be 20 different springs there, but, with Jason’s luck, he only found the sulfur spring.  This made us nostalgic for the sulfur springs in Delaware by OWU, our college.  For graduation, they would turn on  the fountain by my dorm Stuy and the area would smell like rotten eggs.  It was wonderful.  There was also a natural spring by the psych building that smelled like sulfur.

I spent the majority of today in the kitchen making baked goodies and such.  I made a Greek casserole (maybe a watered-down version of moussaka) and strawberry rhubarb peach pie (from scratch) for dessert.  Everything turned out really good.  Jason was looking forward to both dishes especially since he loves pies with rhubarb in them and (being the good Irish boy that he is) he loves anything potato-based.  Here’s a before picture.

Yummy Goodness

Athena’s Father’s Day present to Jason was sleeping for 2 hours while Jason and I got to eat dinner and dessert sans interruptions.  We usually take turns eating while tending to Athena.

After dinner, we decided to take some pictures outside for Jason’s first Father’s Day and with Athena being 7 months old.  Here are some pictures.  There’s more pictures on Jason’s Flickr page.

Daddy and his little girl

Happy little girl

We’re all looking forward to our upcoming trip to DC to visit my parents.  Athena has been a real jet-setter in her short little life.  She’s been to Ohio, Illinois, Nevada, and on July 4th weekend, DC.  We’re a little worried about the plain trip because she’s more mobile now and isn’t really satisfied with just being held anymore.  We’ll let you know how it goes.  Keep your fingers crossed for no tantrums and no illness.

By Jason

I just realized we haven’t updated the blog in a few weeks. Work has been very busy. I’ll cover some of the things we’ve been up to lately, including visits to a number of local parks.

GoogleServe 2009

This past week we had our annual community service project at work, GoogleServe. This year my team signed up together to remove invasive plants from the dunes at Half Moon Bay. We were going after mustard and ice plant. I was surprised to find out that ice plants aren’t native to California – I took a bunch of pictures of them when we visited Santa Cruz. They are great at stabilizing dunes but choke out native plants that local wildlife depend on.

I didn’t take any pictures, but Reid did, and you can enjoy this quick video from my friend and fellow internet-blogger Wysz.

Apparently very few Googlers (or Californians, for that matter) have ever used a hoe before. I tried to explain: in the Midwest, we have these things called yards, and with yards you can often find gardens. Given real estate prices here (even in a down market), I guess we’ll have to find a volunteer organization or community garden or something to better introduce Athena to the outdoors.

GoogleServe, by the way, is an amazing program that more companies should consider copying. Kudos to Seth for his help organizing.

Castle Rock State Park

Last weekend we took Athena on a hike in Castle Rock State Park. We’ve been on walks before, but we’re starting to work our way up to what I would call an official hike.

Athena loves hiking so far but going up and down hills is probably the only activity that’s still hard for Ann. She’s been working out and is probably in better shape than me by now but the changes in grade make walking a challenge for her.

You can see the Castle Rock formation in the photos below. Given all the mountains and cliffs around California I was a little surprised at how small Castle Rock is – it reminded me of the rocks at in Chippewa Gorge at Brecksville Metropark. Fun for climbing.

I have more photos at Flickr.

Lake Chabot with Ahan and Julie

A few weekends ago we spent the weekend at Ahan and Julie’s place, including a nice walk at Chabot Regional Park in the East Bay.

It’s a long story why we spent the whole weekend with them – we haven’t written about it much, but Athena had cold symptoms for about 5 weeks straight, since just after our visit to Cleveland. We’ve had water leaking in the ceiling and mold problems at this apartment so we spent the weekend with them to see if it would make a difference. I headed back home for one of the days to do a thorough cleaning, even washing the walls of her room.

In any event, she’s fine now. Back to the pictures:

Athena loves the grass. We couldn’t keep her on the blanket for long before she rolled over into the grass to start pulling it up.

We’ll try to do another update soon, with picture and video of Athena in her current favorite toy, the Johnny Jump-Up.