At the top of the steps

Here's Katie at the top of the terraced steps in the back of the library. (It might look more dangerous than it actually is, so don't worry.) 

Second cool wall painting at the Belmont Library

And here's the second wall painting. I had never heard of this proverb before; will have to check my parents to see if they completely made it up. :-) 

Playful wall painting

We didn't linger long at the library since the opening-day crowd was huge, but we did see two cool wall paintings; here's the first. 

Mmmm...fruit!

Not only were the kids able to find all kinds of books to check out (dinosaurs! Star Wars! Legos! aircraft! big rigs!), they enjoyed a fruit and cookie snack on the back patio. They loved climbing up and down the big terraced steps as well. Colin declared, "that was much more fun that I thought it was going to be!"

(Hmmm...looks like Katie got the short end of the stick with the books this trip...) 

Grand Opening!

We've been fortunate to live in two cities which opened brand new libraries: Foster City and Belmont. Today was Belmont's turn, and frankly, this was the building they should have built in Foster City.

The Foster City library was always too funky for my tastes: its exterior seemed at odds with its surroundings (it doesn't look like any of the nearby buildings or any other building in Foster City, for that matter), and its interior space always seemed too cold and museum-like to be inviting.

The Belmont library is the exact opposite: it blends in perfectly with its hilly surroundings with its textured stone exterior, and the interior is warm, bright, inviting, and sized just right. The kids loved the outside patio space as well, with its large terraced steps and bubbling water fountain. The library especially impressive given the contrast with the library it replaces, which was dark, dingy, small, and overcrowded. It's the perfect example of local government getting things just right. Hats off to all those who were involved! 

Welcome, Abby and Icky

At the kids' third Easter egg hunt of the season, they added two more animal friends to our ever-growing menagerie which you can see in the picture above. What's a menagerie without plush whales, we ask.

Katie named her purple whale Abigail, or Abbie for short. Colin at first suggested Colin 2, but we managed to get him to reconsier. I believe his whale's official name is Ichthyosaurus, but we all call him Icky for short. You can tell what one of Colin's current crazes is. :-) 

The Fiesta

We've learned a lot as first-time-parents-with-kids-in-school. One of them is that fund raising is a serious business -- at least it is with our school's PTA. Last weekend, the PTA hosted its biggest fund raiser of the year, an annual event called the Fox Fiesta. It was held at the Grand Ballroom in the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame. Nearly 200 parents and guests attended (many in suits, and the principal came in tails!).

The final numbers aren't out, but their goal was to raise something on the order of $50,000! There were both silent and live auctions. A day with the school secretary and a police car ride-along both went for more than $1,000; a day with the principal, alas, went for about half that. You could donate money to put anyone in "jail" (or get them out), spin a Wheel of Fortune for prizes (mostly gift certificates at local merchants and attractions), or hit the bell on one of those carnival hammer-things (what are they called?).

All Things Creative donated holiday cards and a 12-month calendar. (You can see their display above.) We're still waiting to see the results, but I think both items got at least one bid.

We did our part for the PTA. We bid on a bunch of items, including Chinese summer camp for Colin, a gymanstics class for Katie, and a collection of kids outings at various local zoos and amusement parks for everyone.

Overall, it was quite the impressive event. 

Cool -- video games!

Nicholas brought his GameBoy over to the last BFAM meeting, and let's just say it was quite a hit with our kids too. 

Asleep in the Baby Bjorn

Perhaps a better line for his bib would have been, "where shall we fall asleep today?" :-) 

Our sleeping beauty

Katie is a big fan of the Disney princesses (of course) these days. Her favorite seems to be Cinderella, but in this shot, she's definitely more Sleeping Beauty. (That's Colin's favorite bear Teenie Ted keeping her company.) 

Another beautiful artifact at the church

Check out the calligraphy! Amazing... 

Close up of the stained glass

I've noticed that there are shots I can get with the digital SLR that I couldn't get with the pocket camera: not sure if it's the lens or the more even flash or the instant gratification of the shutter opening precisely when you push the button. Probably the sum of all of those, plus better hardware and software to boot.

Still not sure we're going to keep it -- we might opt instead for one of those mini digicams which record to a hard drive or a media card instead.

Cool stained glass

You don't see much stained glass on the West Coast, but they have a few beautiful examples at the 21st Ave Baptist Church, where Fed's dad is the pastor. 

The return of the red hat

Here's Cameron showing off his red hat and his two lower teeth. He's turning out to be quite the eater. Today, he was drooling up a storm, which might mean more teeth are on the way to help him chomp down on bigger food! 

The third Easter egg hunt of the season

Here are the kids on their third Easter egg hunt of the season: their first was at the church Easter retreat, followed by one at Anna's birthday party, and topped off with the Easter Sunday version at Fedora's dad's church in the city.

I've always wondered about the origins of the Easter eggs, as well as the association of Easter with the bunny (after all, bunnies don't lay eggs: they're mammals!).

Anyway, the Internet consensus seems to be that both the egg and the bunny are symbols of fertility and birth. If true, eggs represent the same thing at both the Easter egg hunt (or exchange, as it might have been in earlier days) and the traditional Chinese red egg and ginger party. (In fact, some Greeks celebrate Easter with dyed red eggs.)

One fascinating theory for why the egg is associated with the bunny is cataloged on Wikipedia. The theory is that German Protestants wanted to retain the Catholic tradition of eating colored eggs for Easter but did not want their kids fasting at Lent, which they figured to be a Catholic tradition.

Anyway, Easter egg hunt or not, happy Easter to one and all! He has risen. (Mark 16:1-19) 

What if Apple had hired MSFT to create the iPod box?

All right: maybe this is a little too work-related, but I found it hilarious. Ever wonder why Microsoft and Dell and HP just strike you as blah brands while Apple seems oh-so-shiny? What this case study on how graphic and industrial design can really shape your perceptions of a company's brand identity.

More along the wacky & creative theme

Here's more along the same theme as my previous post on wacky & creative people. Check out these Rube Goldberg-type devices courtesy of Google Video:

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate

I saw this post on Slashfood and had to share: here's the Website of a UK-based food artist named Prudence Emma Staite who makes astounding things out of chocolate -- like entire people sculptures, chandeliers, dresses, ovens, and Jenga (you know: the wooden puzzle game).

I'm thinking that people have always been this wacky & creative: the Web just lets us see more of them and their amazing creations.

Time to eat!

Cameron enjoys some quiet time before beginning his lunch at my mom's. We're quite pleased that the baby is turning out to have quite an appetite. He's eating beans, rice, little bits of chicken, and (we must confess) ice cream. I think Colin was well over two before we let him have any. Ah, the perils of being one of the smaller children... 

Slightly better example

Here's a slightly better example of where the blurred backgrounds help focus you in the main subject. Alas, Colin's not perfectly in focus in this shot, but the background is softly out of focus which is useful in this shot. (Note that "cape" Colin is wearing -- it's his favorite blanket which he calls binkit and is now part of his Super-Colin super-hero costume.) 

Yum....Oreo's!

I'm not sure what you call this look: mischevious? maniacal? delighted? Anyway, Colin was sure enjoying his Oreos at my parents' over the weekend.

For the digital photo buffs, we took this picture with a Canon Digital Rebel XT (experimenting again to see if the 2nd generation is worth keeping). The colors are balanced, we think, and you get much more interesting effects given the shallow depth of field (not a great example, but note how the chair is blurrier than if we had used our regular little camera which usually shoots pics with a long depth of field). For pics of people close up like this, shots like this focus your attention on the person, not their surroundings. 

Something for nothing?

I'm a big skeptic of the free lunch. You gotta work out to build muscles. You gotta eat right and exercise to lose weight. You gotta discipline yourself to grow spiritually.

Consequently, I've always been mildly nervous about artificial sweetners like Equal and Splenda and Nutrasweet. Not enough to abstain, mind you, but enough to feel a twinge of uncertainty every time I reached for a diet soda. How did you get the tasty sweet sensation with NO calories? Could you really be getting something for nothing?

Well, the National Cancer Institute announced yesterday that it studied over half a million people without finding any link between typical aspartame consumption (less than 600 mg/day) and cancer or brain tumors. (Aspartame is the stuff in Equal packets and sweetens most diet sodas except for some of the new-fangled ones like Pepsi ONE.)

• Of course, the American Beverage Association is delighted.
• Of course, they would finish this study right after we switched to Splenda, which is not aspartame. Sigh.
• And of course, the Internet is not convinced about Splenda (or any artificial sweetener) safety. Check out the skeptics here or here or here.

So I guess the jury is still out, but it sure looks more settled than it did before they tested those half million retirees for 2 years.

Is this an April Fool's joke?

OK, I'm not sure if this is an April Fool's joke or not. It might not be, but if it isn't, I'm still not sure the world is ready for Lasik @ Home, the world's first DIY LASIK appliance. Even if I thought I'd be qualified to do this myself, the diagram showing you how to do the thing looks terrifying: you really just grab the thing and aim it at your eye without any sort of support?

My hands shake when I've trying to take pictures with a digital camera; imagine how much they'd be shaking if I thought I was shooting lasers into my own eyeball!

Maybe one day this will be routine, and oh happy day when that arrives. I wonder if it will be by the time the kids need their procedures?

What time is it, Mr. Fox?

It's amazing watching the kids get more sophisticated with their play every year. This year, they managed to spontaneously organize themselves into playing "what time is it, Mr. Fox?" -- one of the games made popular by birthday parties at Junior Gym. Here are Colin and Tyler racing towards the Fox. 

Pretty in pink

We didn't color coordinate them in advance, honest. The pink-and-purple explosion just happened this way.

On a related note, we've noticed our two kids getting more boy-y and girl-y recently.

Case in point: we switched from Netflix to Blockbuster's DVD-by-mail program last year, mostly because you can get a free video at the store once a week. Our last trip, I told them that they would have to agree on a video to rent. If they coudln't, I would get a video for mommy and daddy to watch. As little as 3 months ago, this would have been a trivial negotiation.

But this time, we were in the store for at least 15 minutes, with My Little Pony slugging it out with Charlie Brown, Hello Kitty with Mega Machines. Even old standbys like The Little Einsteins or Clifford the Big Red Dog didn't make the mutual nod. Sigh... I suppose this will only get worse before it gets better. :-)

Having fun at Easter Retreat

The entire family had a great time at Easter Retreat, even the newest member of the family. Here Cameron demonstrates with his signature Michael Jordan tongue-hanging-out-of-his-mouth look.

For lots more pictures, check out the pastor's Yahoo album.