A Few days in the life

A lot has happened since the last update. I'm now back in Little Rock, AR.
Found out the day before I might be out for a week and here I am. Finally uploaded photos from my camera. So thought I'd share.

Chris, your card arrived. Jamie thought it was very cool! It arrived just after Mom left.

It now holds a place on the fridge with the other cards.

After Jamie was a year older... I quickly forgot. We were eating at our local Chinese restaurant, the Mustang Mandarin, when I was corrected by my now 6 year old. At the end of the meal they always ask how old the kids are, and I normally reply "4 and 5". Five years old is the cutoff for free meals. After our waiter left Jamie corrected me, "Dad, but I'm 6 now". DOH!! Dad the cheapskate.


So after Thanksgiving, which we stayed in town for this year (opted not to fight traffic on I-35 South), we attended a wedding up in Bartlesville. Congratulations Sue and John!

Posted the pictures in my flickr account. I apologize for the blurriness... that happens when you choose not to use a flash. It was a lot of fun. Would have loved to stay longer, but we still had a 3 hour drive home. The kids played some Mario Party DS some of the way, but then even they said they were tired.
They held out for Happy Meals about 1/2 way home, but chose to duck out after that.


And finally I thought I'd share one of Rose's dreams I found fun. After letting the dogs out one morning this week I came back in the bedroom and Rose was smiling in her sleep. So I asked what she was dreaming, and she told me in a sleepy manner. She said she was dreaming about "Trading Spaces", so I asked her if she was decorating a room or something. She replied, "I was going to teach Vern Yip to knit". :D Had to write that one down.

Birthdays and Puzzles!

This weekend was a lot of fun. The grandparent's came up to help us celebrate Jamie's birthday!

A trip to the zoo couldn't be turned down (the Gparent's got the coupon hookup from the Oklahoma welcome center... good strategy!). If you haven't been to the OKC Zoo in a while I would recommend going. I really enjoy their new Oklahoma Trails exhibit; my favorite being the enclosure w/ native birds.

The day before the Bday we went out to eat at Red Robin's and Grandpa hooked Jamie up with dessert and a song. She was glowing! She was just about to ask the waiter what was for dessert.

Next day we celebrated at home and stuffed ourselves with cake.


And while Jamie was playing with her new toys I got to finish my puzzle!

It is a contour map of Yellowstone (it even came with one!). Rose challenged me to build it without looking at the picture (which I did for ~3/4 the way). It was a refreshing puzzle after all that sky and trees from the last one :D Thank you Beth!!

Another puzzle down

I'd been 'working on' the sky portion for at least several months of this one puzzle. Tonight I finally did what I should have done to finish it... go piece by piece and find the one that fits. It actually took less time than I thought.

So here's the finished product:


I'm glad that's over! It was so close to finishing it that I couldn't just dismantle it, but the blue sky wasn't particularly the simplest to finish.

Now to do some of the other one's I've got laying around here! Thinking about moving on to a map one a friend gave me...

Sacramento, CA

Back out to California (picture can be seen here). There are SO many people over here. If I lived over here I'd have to live close to work as commuting several hours due to traffic would not appeal to me. My hotel was ~10 minutes away from work, but the drive here from the airport was long.

I got in around 6ish, and let me tell you... driving across Sacramento at this time is not a speedy operation! I was in the exit lane for several miles (0-5mph most of time). Then it sped up to ~25-30mph. Took me about an hour and a 1/2 to drive the 25 miles to my hotel. (Hey, I live in Oklahoma I'm not used to real traffic).

The first several days I hardly left the hotel except to work (weird hours didn't help), but everything went smoothly. Got done early today and I used the remaining afternoon to beat the traffic downtown. Toured the Capital (another State Capital... I should start a list) and walked around 'Old Sac'.



The California State Capital was pretty cool in that they have done a lot of restoration and brought some of it back to the turn of the century look. Over the years there were lots of changes done to the capital to modernize it. A lot had been damaged by earthquakes and some parts were ripped out to make more room for the government (i.e. they are restoring some staircases that had previously been removed to make room for more offices... California's a big state!). After some later building projects to build some additional buildings they now have some room to make some of the capital a permanent museum. Very cool and if I had more than an afternoon (and wasn't parked in the hour parking)... I would like to have spent more time here. Was able to catch a movie in the basement and listen in on several school class tours.


I got a tip from the gal minding the early map exhibit for a place to park downtown. The mall! The only place with validation; if you bought something at a shop they would stamp your parking ticket paid... mmmm espresso gelato was a tough price to pay to park! A short walk from the mall (literally as you come out) there is a path that goes under the street to take you to "Old Sac". This is a part of town that has been restored to the gold miner era. I don't know how many shirts gold miners bought back in the day, but my guess is there was a different variety of shops then. (Current shop listing). Again, this would have been a good place to hang out... plenty of restaurants and not all the stores were typical souveniour shops. Old trains in the train yard, and several museums. Also a school class getting a tour... fought the urge to tag along and continued to explore on my own.

I stopped my downtown tour before it got too dark, but then my trip home was deja vu (except I only had half the distance to my hotel compared to from the airport). I managed to miss the biggest bottleneck (I-5 to Hwy50/80/99... yes three big roads onto one makes for LOTS of cars). Now to finish my sushi vegtable roll!

Halloween

This Halloween was different from the past ones in a few ways... one was that I was IN TOWN! Mustang celebrated Halloween a day early. We didn't leave the house until we got some trick or treaters.

Grandma and Grandpa were in the weekend before (see pics here) and brought some costume pieces. Cian (who was planning on being a pirate) chose to be Link after seeing the costume Gma brought. Jamie was going to be a fairy, but with Cian being Link she decided she could be Link's fairy! (It's like she's watched the games or something... thank you Wii!).



Cian almost decided to be Superman. I asked him why, and he told me his hands would be free... no sword or shield to get in the way of the candy bag (damn he is smart). I managed to convince him he could use that costume next year; as it is still big.

All in all it was fun and they made off with a lot of loot!