The Last Watermelon?

Katie's preschool class sang at the Gloria Dei service today. Afterwards, the church held its annual picnic where Cameron enjoyed perhaps the last tasty watermelon of the season. And boy, did he enjoy it! :-)

The other side of the table

Of course, our omnivore Katie loved breakfast too!

Stacks!

Everyone enjoyed a hearty breakfast (lumberjack pancakes and potatoes topped with carnitas, cheese and eggs) at Stacks in Burlingame on Saturday morning. We stopped there on the way to an electronic waste recycling collection event in Millbrae.

Prius driver for a week

We returned our Prius to the dealership on Saturday. Here are my thoughts on being a Prius driver for a week. Overall, I liked it well enough to get one (alas, no red, which was our first choice -- here's to another silver car for the next decade!).

Strengths:
- Drives mostly like a normal car (though with a somewhat quirky shifter)
- Tight turning radius
- Quiet inside
- Bosts cool gadgets like the keyless start system and rear-view camera
- Can't beat 56 mpg, which was what I got with a week's worth of driving (about 360 miles of 80% freeway driving on about 6.5 gallons of gas)

Drawbacks:
- Poor rear visibility due to a beam bisecting the rear window
- Handles ok, but sure isn't a sports sedan like the Mazda3 or BMW 3-series
- Artificial feeling power steering requiring too many turns of the steering wheel

It's amazing how polarizing the vehicle is. Search for groups on Google or Facebook, and you'll see camps hailing the Prius as the technological wonder which will save us from global warming as well as "hater" camps who can't stand the self-righeous smugness of Prius owners.

While I don't believe the Prius is going to single-handedly solve global warming -- but it does point the way towards the next-generation of high efficiency, low-compromise cars. I imagine that ten years from now, a majority of the cars on the road will be hybrids or high efficiency vehicles such as clear-burning diesels (probably not too many fuel cell cars on the road). And auto historians will look back at the Prius as the one that started the mega-trend. In the meantime, it's a nicely executed car with lots of cool gadgets, typical Toyota reliability, and breakthrough fuel efficiency.

More when we get one of our own.

Look, ma: a Prius!

Our Passat is getting a little long in the tooth -- plus its antilock brake system failed years ago, one in a long chain of Very Unfortunate Electrical System Mishaps. I've been hunting for a good commuter car that could (in a pinch) hold all 3 car seats.

Being the research nut that I am, I now know more than I really need to about the Mazda3, the Miata MX-5, the Infiniti G35, the BMW 3-series, the Honda Civic, the Mini Cooper, and the Nissan Altima.

But after all the investigation, I'm learning towards the Toyota Prius. I'm actually renting one from the dealership (Toyota makes this easy and even inexpensive compared to Hertz -- I'm guessing they chalk it up as a marketing expense) for a week to see if I can live with some of its shortcomings.

It's been fun trying to coax the maximum MPG out of it. I'm averaging just under 50 in mixed city/highway driving. More later as I log some more miles on it.

At Memorial Church

As we sometimes do on our anniversary, we watched the wedding video that Wilson made for us. I think this was the first year all three kids watched it. It was also the first year we had it up on the big screen, where you can see how woeful VHS quality video is. :-)

Ten years!

Colin snapped this photo of us celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary. You can tell what the two kids in the pic are thinking: yes -- cake time! They sang us a wedding anniversary song to the tune of Happy Birthday and Cameron kept on blowing towards the cake even though there were no candles. :-)

Teacups

It's pretty hard to get them all posed and looking at the camera, but this gets close.

Aladdin

We watched a story-telling interpretation of Aladdin, which was pretty fun though not quite as elaborate as the musical version at California Adventure. Again, Colin didn't want to pose.

Misled

We got tricked into rowing around the pirate island, thinking the canoes would take us from the "mainland" to Tom Sawyer island. Instead, we just rowed around the island. Or sort of rowed, as the kids (including Katie) couldn't really row despite having kid-sized paddles. :-)

Favorite ride overall

This was the surprising consensus favorite across all three kids this year: the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. Everyone had a great time shooting at the targets, and since you can get a Fast Pass for it, there wasn't a long line. We must have ridden it more than half a dozen times. Enough for Frank to discover the "secret" to a high score: have them freeze the ride (they sometimes do this when there's a mishap loading or unloading riders) right next to a scene featuring a high scoring diamond target. :-)

Colin and Ryan here rounding the corner, ready to take on the Evil Emperor Zurg.

Cars characters!

Colin wasn't much for posing with the animated characters. Cameron mostly liked it though the big interactive Mickey scared his pants off. I'm sure Mickey must get that a lot.

We visited both Disneyland and Legoland this trip. All in all, I think the kids had the best time at the interactive play structures. At Legoland, this was The Hideways and at Disneyland's California Adventure, this was the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail. Who says the imagination is dead?

Anyway, at the Challenge Trail, we saw a live ceremony featuring various animals from a Disney movie (The Magic of Brother Bear, I think) we haven't seen yet. But that didn't stop Katie from ambling down for a big hug from both momma (pappa?) bear and baby bear, pictured here.

Katie, Erin -- and Belle

Katie and Erin were delighted to meet a whole collection of Disney princesses. They dutifully collected autographs, posed for pictures, and (bonus) managed not to whine their way to new princess outfits. (The ones they already have barely fit into the dress up chest as it is!)

August 2007

Nearly 3 years later, here's the trio. Yes, we're on our way down to Disneyland again, the only reason we find ourselves in Kettleman City.

Ironically, it looks like our Casio is starting to have the same imaging problems as our old Canon (you can see the blooming around the white areas in the previous picture too).

Every now and then, Fedora thinks we should have a 4th. I remind her that each of our children didn't sleep through the night consistently until they were about two. This usually gets her to pause the insanity for a few weeks.

Kettleman City: December 2004

For a quick spin on the Time Warp Machine, here are the two moppets standing on the rock right next to the Drive-Thru sign at In-n-Out Burger. Stay tuned for a redux in the next post.