The California State Railroad Musuem

Over Thanksgiving, we took the kids to the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacremento. We took the Amtrack from Hayward up to Sacramento, and the museum was an easy walk from the railroad station, though we did get slightly turned around right outside of the train station -- the path isn't very clearly marked for pedestrians. 

Amtrak

The Amtrak was clean, smooth, spacious, and even had a snack car. Our train was no match for Japan's shinkansen (bullet train), of course, but it was smoother than I thought it'd be given our experience riding the Caltrain around.

The kids found the trip a touch on the long side (especially compared to our short jaunts on the BART, the Caltrain, or the SFO shuttle train), but it sure beat driving back and forth!

All aboard the museum train

The railroad musuem operates a steam train that takes a short 30-minute trip along the Sacramento River. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, they had a Santa Claus and guitar-and banjo-strumming duo on board as well. Here we are waiting for Santa Claus to come through.

Santa Claus

Only Cameron consented to pose with Santa Claus aboard the Santa Train. Well, come to think of it, I'm not sure he really consented either. For some reason, neither Katie nor Colin seem to be into the whole Santa thing. It's just as well: we'd rather keep the focus of Christmas on Jesus. 

Our tasty late afternoon snack

We enjoyed some Deep South fries just before heading home on the Amtrack. Mmmmm, french fries. Possibly Katie's favorite food of all time -- and believe me, she has plenty of favorite foods. :-) 

Colin training for his future career...

...as a stockbroker.

(It's actually one of those exhibits with the audio commentary piped through the telephone handsets. Katie used hers to "talk with mommy".) 

The Amtrak

Here's Katie on the Amtrak train coming home from Old Sacramento. Ah, the romance of train travel through the sunset.

I was initially a little worried that the Amtrak would be full given that it was Thanksgiving weekend. But both trains (coming and going) had plenty of room for us. When we got on at Hawyard at around 8:30 am, the train was pretty deserted -- but by the time we got to Sacramento, it was pretty full.

The train route from the Bay Area to Sacramento is actually pretty scenic: you see a lot of the actual bay and there are plenty of recognizable landmarks along the way (e.g., the Golden Gate Bridge, the Carquinez Bridge, Berkeley, the UC Davis campus, and others). 

The mail train

The kids explore the mail car. Trains played an important role in getting mail across the country, and the USPS had entire cars dedicated to sorting and transporting post. 

King of the world

Here's Cameron perched atop his Uncle Feo, who was up from LA to celebrate Thanksgiving with the family. The poor boy is balding, but hopefully he'll get his "real" hair in any day now. 

Thanksgiving, Part 1

We're blessed to live within driving distance of both our parents. For Thanksgiving Day, we drove up to the city for a decidly non-traditional dinner at Ming's Diner.

We had pretty much the same meal as the time we visited in September, except that this time it wasn't purely vegetarian -- the shrimp and chicken were the Real McCoys, for instance, but the fish and ground squab were not. I preferred the hybrid menu: as convincing as some of their vegetarian alternatives are, sometimes there is no substitute.

I like this shot of Katie. She's learning to pose for shots, and I guess you could call this her perky, half-crazed look. 

The Great Renaming

So out of the blue a few weeks ago, Colin started calling his sister "Annie". Now his sister is actually named Kathryn Alison. We typically call her Katie (unless she's in trouble, in which case we call her "Kathryn"), and we've never once called her by some other name. So we were puzzled.

The plot thickened when he renamed his little brother "Quincy" and himself "Leo". We were stumped. Did he not like the names we had chosen? Was he doing a kindergarten project on names? Were they reading a book in class?

Then we finally figured it out: Annie, Quincy, Leo, and June are the four Little Einsteins. We started watching the Disney show after seeing an episode on Michelle and Wilson's Tivo at Ryan's birthday party, and it's now their favorite show.

(Incidentally, Colin is now lobbying for yet-another-sibling so we can have a 1:1 match with the four Little Einsteins. We told him he could call cousin Leann "June" to complete the set if he absolutely needed to.)

Google...not just for search anymore

Once upon a time, it was cool to work for an enterprise software company like Opsware. Well, maybe it was never cool -- but at least it was a hot sector of the software industry.

These days, enterprise software companies like the one I work -- and even consumer software companies like Intuit -- are being eclipsed by Internet companies like Google and Yahoo and consumer device companies like Tivo and (increasingly) Apple.

A part of me is slightly jealous of the revenue, attention, press, and P/E multiples those companies are commanding. But another part of me is standing on the sidelines cheering for the Googles and Tivos of the world. They're innovating like crazy.

Take Google. If you thought Google just about searching the Internet, check out this surprisingly long list of Google services. It's amazing. I'm an early adopter of technology, so I use about a dozen of those services everyday, another half-dozen at least once a week -- and I'm not even getting to half of what they offer. And they're all free. In fact, in some cases, they're paying me (for example, when you click on the Google links on my LASIK blog)! If that's not progress, what is? :-)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

(I'm testing the integration between Flickr and Blogspot. Check out our Flickr photos on the right hand side; you might have to scroll down.)

Tokyo? Osaka? Yokohama?

Nope -- this is the Japanese Tea Garden tucked into our very own San Mateo Central Park. We've been planning to go for quite some time for our monthly Family Adventure, but sleep schedules never quite aligned. But today was our day, and God blessed us with a beautiful sunny afternoon. Colin and Kathryn had a great time meandering through the garden, following all the paths, crossing the bridges, and admiring the "old temples".

This was my first time to the park as well. What a pleasant surprise to see a beautiful, Japanese-style garden right smack in the middle of Central Park in San Mateo.

Where are the fish?

We've been calling the Japanese Tea Garden the "fish park" on account of the koi pond, so on arrival, the kids immediately started looking for the fish. On this smaller footbridge, we didn't see any -- but saw plenty on the main bridge. 

Koi ahoy!

The fish were enjoying a sunny afternoon at the park, just like us. The kids are big fans of the koi fish, and this is the largest collection we've ever seen. 

Hanging by a thread

Some industrious spider managed to snag a leaf with one of its delicate spiderwebs. As the leaf dried and started to fall, the spiderweb caught it in mid-air. I couldn't get a great shot with my little camera -- maybe this is the missed shot that swings us over into getting a digital SLR? :-) 

A tranquil afternoon

It was pretty crowded at the Tea Garden this afternoon; the weather was, after all, just about perfect. (Can you believe Thanksgiving is next week and there are plenty of folks shoveling snow already?) But I did manage to get a shot without lots of people crowding around that suggests the tranquility of a traditional Japanese garden. 

Cameron couldn't see much of the tea garden...

...from his stroller, but that didn't stop him from having a jolly old time too. :-) 

I can see clearly now...

I went in for my follow-up LASIK procedure on Tuesday. After a few days of hazy vision, it looks like I'm on the home stretch to 20/20 vision -- or perhaps even better! Details on my LASIK blog. Praise God for a smooth surgery and speedy recovery!

Just before the church Thanksgiving banquet

We enjoyed a spectacular sunset in between Jeremy's birthday party and the church Thanksgiving banquet. From the Best Buy parking lot, of all places. Next year might be the year for our HDTV so we can be like Ivan. :-) 

Colin (at week 9) and Rudy

Here's Colin at week 9 with Rudy. By comparison, Cameron (in the pic below) is 16 weeks today.

Cameron and Rudy

A classic pose featuring a boy and his bear. I'll have to dig up Colin's variant of this and post it too... 

Leisurely Saturday morning breakfast

With two kids in school, it's tough to sit down for a leisurely breakfast during the week. So when we get a chance to do this on weekends, we relish it. One of the ways we do this is sitting down for a "slow food" breakfast of pancakes and waffles (though I cheat somewhat by making them from a mix).

Today, Katie demanded pancakes while Colin opted for waffles. Lesson learned: if you take the shortcut and and make both from the same batter, the waffle-eaters suffer. :-) 

We all scream...

This may be hard to believe, but this is just a sampling from our current crop of ice cream. Is it any wonder I'm putting on some weight? :-) 

Life continues to be a laugh riot for Cameron

We're still calling Cameron "the baby" or "di di" (Mandarin for little brother) or even "little di". I wonder if we'll ever stop? 

Our Own Monkey Boy

We've been visiting the park outside Colin's school as a family for years now. Colin's sporadically attempted to cross the monkey bars, but with no success. That is, until he started kindergarten and watched his classmates do it. Now, he swings from rung to rung, getting all the way across almost every time.

Sure, he's gotten stronger and more coordinated over the last months, but we see in this an object lesson in mind over matter. Just as Roger Bannister taught the world that you could indeed run a four minute mile, Colin's classmates have taught him he could be a monkey boy too. (Before Roger Bannister, no one had ever run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Within 3 years of Roger demonstrating that it could be done, 16 other runners had done it too.)

These seems to me the perfect analogy for how God can change people's thinking -- from the impossible to the possible.

Halloween party

Another shot of Colin's kidergarten class. The panda next to him is James, and Katie declared that she wanted to be a panda next year. James' parents kindly offered to lend us the costume for next year.

Colin's kindergarten class

Colin enjoyed a Halloween party at school in addition to our annual work party. Here is most of his kindergarten class in costume. Colin the framer is at the front of the line with the teacher's hand on his head. Colin is a big fan of being right on time and first in line. Despite that, he opted out of the Halloween parade. Reports from other parents revealed that we didn't miss that much. :-)

The school sent us a list of appropriate and inappropriate costumes, which we appreciated. No need for K-5 students to wear "overly frightening" or bring weapons (including "guns, swords, light sabers, tridents, sticks, balls and chains") with their costumes.