Happy birthday, Ashlyn!

The kids had a fabulous time at Ashlyn's fifth birthday party. Katie had an unfortunate incident involving the deeper part of the hot tub -- but shrugged it off in time to enjoy the princess birthday cake (as you can plainly see!).

If I wasn't in software, I'd probably be working on alternate energy

If I wasn't working in enterprise software, I'd likely be working on alternate energy. I would love to see America kick its dependence on foreign oil and shift more its electricity generation to renewable energy sources (two very different goals, by the way).

Even as a young child, I felt an aversion to throwing away batteries. And when I got to Stanford, one of my few organized extracurricular activities was working on the Stanford Solar Car Project.

That's why I'm so pleased to see engineering advances emboided in the car above, which gets nearly 3,200 miles to the gallon. That's not a typo. Hats off to students at the University of British Columbia who created this tiny, incredibly efficient traveling machine. I wonder how many mpg cars will get by the time I retire?

Dragon at the Joy Luck Place

We were delighted to celebrate Andrew and Miyon's reception at the Joy Luck Place in San Mateo. Congratulations to the happy couple!

Up until last week, we had never been to the Cantonese place on 4th Street -- and then, in the span of a 6 days, we went twice. Our assessment: it's a solid though not out-of-this-world addition to the San Mateo restaurant scene. They do a good job with presentation, though I have to say the food looks better than it tastes (not often do you say that about Chinese food!).

Here is the dragon chopstick holder which makes me wish I had a DSLR around. Alas, you just can't get the little lenses on the tiny cameras to do what you want. More pics of the actual food here.

More pics of the Best Birthday Party Ever

To see more pics of the Best Birthday Party Ever, check this link out. Happy birthday again to Elina, and thanks to Komal and Gaurav for their wonderful (as always!) hospitality.

BTW, the photos are hosted on a beta of Google's new photo hosting service called Picasa Web Albums linked to its fantabulous (and free) photo management software called Picasa. Highly recommended if you want to easily organize and search for photos, and then -- with a click of the mouse -- publish them to the Web.

Though it's no Flick-killer, Picasa Web Albums has some compelling features of its own, including a very easy drag-and-drop photo reordering feature that made it easy for me to "tell the story" of the birthday party.

Beautiful garden

I wasn't able to take many pictures of the amazing garden during the party, but here's one. 

The amazing birthday plane cake

Sorry about the lame framing on this shot -- there was, as you might imagine, quite a stampede towards the amazing plane cake! 

Mmmm.... herb bread!

Katie polished two of these during the party (despite the heat) -- and this afternoon, when they saw pictures, both kids demanded leftovers. :-) 

The hands-down favorite of the afternoon

We heard the distinctive sound of a gas generator and blower fan as we walked towards the house -- meaning, of course, a bouncy apparatus of some sort. But the kids weren't expecting this spectacular combination obstacle course-slide-alpine mountain-moose mouth thing. They must have spent the better part of an hour going through it again and again and again and... well, you get the idea. 

Plane shaped cookies

Colin polishes off his plane-shaped cookie which the kids got to decorate themselves. In the background, you'll see Katie is a few bites ahead of him (as usual when it comes to food!). 

The best birthday party ever!

Colin declared Elina's party "the best birthday party ever" -- a combination of great food, great rides and games (including this airplane ride) and an airplane theme! Here are the intrepid duo about to whirl around in the airplane ride. 

Amazing bird sounds

Ok, I have to confess that I never serenaded Fedora while courting her. Given my singing voice, that was definitely the right choice anyway. But check out the sounds this bird will make to get the lady bird he really wants: he mimics car alarms, chains saws, a film camera with a motor drive to advance the film, and other amazing sounds.

Cameron at the blueberry farm

All right, this is the last berry picking related post, promise. Here's Cameron enjoying a fresh-off-the-vine blackberry. That sound he makes right before my hand enters the video means, "show me the berries!" He does that at home now, too. :-)

Look, ma, berries!

Here are the kids standing on a hay bale, midway through our berry picking adventure. 

Note to self: these are the unripe ones

We had no idea what we were looking for at the farm. The web site promised raspberries, loganberries, several varieties of blackberries and boysenberries. It turned out that all they had were blackberries today, and we nearly ended up taking a bunch of these unripe red ones home thinking they might be loganberries (what color are those supposed to be anyway?) or strangely large raspberries. Luckily we figured it out before harvesting our 3 pounds worth of berries. 

Colin and Katie at Webb Ranch

Here they go, tearing down the row of blackberry vines... 

Mmmmm....blackberries!

For our monthly family adventure, we took the kids to Webb Ranch near Stanford to pick blackberries. Funny: we went to school there for 8 years between us, and never once visited the working farm and ranch right on school land.

But today was the perfect day to do it: sunny but not too hot. We wanted to show the kids how God provides us the fruit we eat, and they had a great time with their cousins looking for perfectly ripe berries. Being the suburban nerds we are, we nearly walked off with the red berries, which are merely unripe blackberries.

The verdict? Mmmm....yummy. Cameron, being the champion blueberry eater that he is, found another perfect berry to enjoy.

We arrived shortly after 10 am, and there were probably 5 or 6 other families there. By the time we left, there were probably another 10 or 15 there, but it never felt crowded. Quite the recommended outing! 

Touchdown!

Cameron started waving during my business trip this week. While waving to him from my webcam, he waved back! It was too cute.

He's since graduated to "touchdown", just in time for this year's football season in a few months. (Or maybe he'll be a World Cup fan?) :-)

Cameron's getting teeth! Not that he really needs them to eat his newfound favorite food: blueberries. If we let him, we think he'd probably eat 40-50 blueberries in a single sitting. It's very amusing to watch him grasp at the blueberries with his hands. He hasn't quite figured out how to use his opposable thumb yet, but that has not slowed him down much with his blueberry eating fests. And he's taken to vocalizing his displeasure when the blueberries don't come fast enough. :-) 

Just hanging around...

Sorry for the out-of-focus photo, but as you might imagine, it was a challenge getting them to both hang upside down at the same time. :-) 

Birthday train

Some kids didn't quite get the train concept, but it was fun to watch nonetheless.

Katie's Last Dance Class

We had thought Katie would love every one of her dance classes at the local rec center. But for most of the classes, she desparately clung to mommy as if we were dropping her off at a prison. Even offers of snuggle time with Dance Bear (pictured) or dressing her up in princess-like dance outfits (also pictured) weren't enough to entice her to participate.

But she did eventually relent -- though by that time, the series of classes was drawing to a close. Oh well, maybe next time. She did seem pleased just to get in her dance duds, though. 

Happy birthday, Elena and Johanna!

We were delighted to celebrate Elena and Johanna's birthday party at The Little Gym last weekend. The kids enjoyed a tasty cupcake. Well, to be accurate: Colin enjoyed a cupcake while Katie enjoyed the gummy candy toppings and the frosting. :-)