Ada's party

For her bday party, Ada wanted a Harry Potter theme.  I didn't have time to make it all cutesy, but we did get to help the kids make wands and have a "potions" class.  My friend was asked to take pictures... two sides of that coin.  I don't have very many pictures, and I'm actually in the ones that I didn't take.

This nut started singing, "Happy Birthday to me!" and pretending to blow the candles out until we actually sang to her.

Grandma Robertson with Susie.

Ada's week

This week has been long and hard with a good ending.  We've been tearing down our backyard fence, cutting and hauling (5!) truckloads of tree branches out of the back yard, and doing many other get ready items for this weekend.  Lots of people were asking me at the beginning of the week why I wasn't asking for help.  Three reasons... one is that I didn't feel like I should be asking others to do my chores, second is that I know that my husband is amazing and would work hard, and third is that I have all these angels that keep showing up.  The first day, not only did my brother Seth (I did ask him) come by to help Jer and our neighbor remove the fence panels, but my visiting teacher came by to see me and decided to go get her teenage son and haul everything that I was cutting down into the front yard.  The second day, my mom and my backyard neighbors came by and helped prune extra large bushes.  The third day, my brother, Dad and Mom all came by and helped with kids and lugging things around the yard and to the dump.  Every step of the way has seen angels helping us.  By Saturday we were exhausted and ready to for Ada's 8 year old day. 

The Stake baptism day was right on Ada's birthday.  She very happily was baptized the day that she turned 8.  There was a problem with the font getting filled, so her baptism and birthday party were pushed back an hour.  We got there and she seemed a little shell shocked.  I asked her what was going on and she was worried about everyone watching her.  Sweet girl.  She was getting baptized along with two boys from our ward. Janelle was the chorister, I said a prayer, Dad performed the baptism and confirmation, Ada's Grandpas were the witnesses, Grandpa Wilcox gave a talk about covenants, and Dad, Grandpas and her Uncles all helped with the confirmation.  What a neat occasion.   I loved being able to help Ada get changed and talk to her.  She was so excited to be in the font with Dad.  I asked what she thought and she said that she felt different... she felt happy.

Wednesday

Wednesday, my cousin and I went to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose.  Wow!  The gardens were stunning even in the middle of their drought, and the museum was very well organized with lots to read and look at.  Very highly recommended!  I enjoyed discussing art, history, Egypt, pharaohs, and church doctrine with my cousin.  If we lived closer, I would love to get together more often.  I feel like I have a lot to learn and a lot of fun to share with her.  It was fun to notice that one of the sidewalks around a statue was in the shape of an ankh.  It was neat to see the Mesopotamian things that they had collected as well since that was what my main Art History professor had her focus in... Syria, Assyria, Mesopotamia....

After dropping off Eowyn, I went to pick up Jer from the hotel.  We were going to leave to start heading home, but one of his co-workers was stuck in the hotel one more night so we took him to go eat sushi.  Delicious, but I definitely ate toooooo much.  Then we dropped him off at the hotel and started on our way up through San Francisco and out.  We made a quick detour for shakes at Ghirardelli Square and made it to North Sacramento for the night.

Thursday, we drove all day and even got stuck behind two different accidents because of tons of rain and lightning.  There was about 2 1/2 hours worth of delays... yuck.  But there was something very surreal about driving over the Salt Flats with the pouring rain and huge bolts of lightning.

I tried to get at least one picture of us together before I left.... yeah, I accidently bumped the camera and it focused on the ground in front of us, but here we are!  Thankfully, it started raining right after this.  California needs all they can get!

Tuesday

Both Bruce and Eowyn had said that they loved seeing the ruins of the bath house in San Francisco.  Tuesday morning, I drove up there and hiked around.  It used to be a Turkish style bath house where people could come bath in the salt water that was piped into the house.  They ran out of funding and the bath house was left to fall apart over the years.  It's also the same place that the local native Indians used to camp.  It was neat to see so many different types of birds.  The beach was kind of a gross beach, but the plants, trees and ruins were neat.  On one of the levels is a tunnel that goes through one of the out crops of rock.  I walked into it and BOOM!  It reminds me of the sounds described in caves from books like Treasure Island.  The waves boomed in the cavern below and echoed through the entire tunnel.  So cool!  Then I took the hike that went up the cliff and around the top.  That was neat, but very steep and my calves were sore for the next two days.

Then I drove 15 minutes back down to the gardens.  I was very proud of myself for successfully parallel parking in San Francisco... took me a bit, but it was done.  Then I unloaded the car of all my art supplies and hiked them into the middle of the Japanese tea gardens.  First I toured the gardens and took pictures.  Then I found my favorite spot, sat down on the end of a log and water colored for a couple of hours.  It was very freeing.  Oddly, I didn't care if people glanced over my shoulder.  I didn't stress when the tour group came by and all started tittering in Japanese.  I just sat and enjoyed doing.  I'm not quite done with the main one I was working on, but I think I get that done in the next week or so... I don't want it to just sit in my bag for years. 

After this, I met Jer and his two co-workers back at the hotel and took the walking bound workers out to eat.  We were trying to go get sushi in Sunnyvale, but the sushi place wasn't open yet.  We found a little hole in the wall Italian/Cajun place that was delicious.  The waiter was so upset when we asked for 4 checks though.  I couldn't see what was so difficult about putting one plate on one check each, but that's okay. 

Home for spiders

Monday

So Jer went off to the conference and I went off to site see.  First stop was the Winchester Mystery House.  Wow!  It was a very fun old house.  The lady just kept adding and adding on to the house wherever it would fit.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not.  There are over 10,000 windows and almost every single one of them was connected to some kind of balcony.  I loved all the balconies, loved seeing the basement and how they kept the house warm, loved the aviary and green houses.  There were neat little details, like windows in the floor and cupboards that didn't have anything but wall behind the door.  There was a door that dropped out of the 3rd floor and a staircase that didn't go anywhere.  The house used to be 7 floors tall, but in the 1906 earthquake, 3 of them were damaged and dismantled.  There was a $3000 door put in the house that only was used once... but the prettiest thing that I saw was that the windows were amazing.  There were stained glass from Tiffany's and even had stained glass in the wood workers shop.  She not only had inherited $20 million from her mom and husband, but she owned 161 acres of orchard that she dried and shipped fruit across the country and to Europe as well.  She offered free room and board to all those that worked for her in her 160 room mansion and in a time that $1.50/day was a typical wage she would pay $6-$9/day.  On her death, she left the proceeds from the sale of the house to the people that worked for her. She also hosted orphanages in her garden for ice cream socials, gave anonymous donations to many different charities (they figured it out when they stopped on her death), and waved to everyone as she drove to church on Sundays.  Spoke 4 languages, played 3 instruments and stood a whole 4'9".  She would have been fun to meet.

After that, I went to the Santa Clara University to go to the art museum and see this mission that had been established in 1776 by Saint Claire.  Unfortunately the museum was closed, but the church was neat.  It had small paintings over each of the lights down the wall each depicting a scene of Christ's final week before the Crucifixion.  They were beautiful.  The Ascension painting in one of the alcoves was amazing as well.  And the organ!  You could see the pipes above the main entrance and see the space behind them where the consul would be.

After all of this, Jer and I spent the evening with my cousin Eowyn and her husband Ryan who had just moved into town for some post-doc work.  It was so fun to get to know them better.  They made us dinner and we played several games together.  Eowyn is a beautiful artist and I hope that she feels like it.  I've loved every piece of hers that I've seen, but I especially loved the one that she was doing in her family room turned painting studio. 

First night in

Saturday night, we were so blessed to get to spend time with Jer's Aunt and Uncle Bruce and Tina.  It was fun to get to know them better and spend some time with Max and Ernest.  Max is an amazing cook!  Yum!  We went to church with them in the morning and I chatted with Tina while Jer did some updating on their computer for them.  Then we had an amazing dinner and played games with Ern and Bruce.  Afterwards we drove the last little bit to San Francisco.  It was great timing.  I've been to San Francisco twice before, but I'd never seen the San Francisco fog.  Just as we were driving over the iconic San Francisco bridge a wave a fog rolled over us.  It was awesome!  We stopped to walk around the Exploratorium while the eclipse was happening.  Then we drove by the Notre-Dame Cathedral and I panicked Jer by asking him to drive the curvy Lombard street and giggling while he drove up and down some of the steep hill.  There were TONS of people on the street because of the eclipse of the moon, so it made it a lot easier for Jer to drive without worrying about other cars coming.  Then we drove through Chinatown and off to Santa Clara to our hotel.  The hotel was nice, but maybe a little too nice.  There wasn't a continental breakfast, a microwave, etc.... and buying breakfast in the hotel was too much.  $8 for a bowl of cereal or $16 for a hamburger... or $39 for a steak.  Yeah, we ended up going to the grocery store and grabbing food to eat for some of our meals and going out to restaurants for the rest.

Road trip

Jer had a conference in Santa Clara, California... my parents were kind enough to watch the kids and I got to tag along with Jer.  We drove out so that I'd have a car to use and so that we wouldn't have to pay for my plane ticket.  I told Jer that we had to take pictures at the Salt Flats because the kids LOVE it out there.

Tooth fairy fail

The tooth fairy forgot to give Sam anything for the tooth that we think he swallowed at lunch time yesterday... and then Ada lost a tooth today... so now the tooth fairy needs to remember both of them.

On the tooth fairy subject.  Ada's been asking if Santa is real and things like that.  We kept her up late tonight to talk and you could tell she felt flattered to be asked to be with just mom and dad.  We told her about the tooth fairy, Santa and the Easter bunny... though she insisted that the Easter Bunny was real while the others were not.  We asked her not to tell friends and siblings so that they could enjoy it a while longer.  And we gave her a simplified version of "the talk".  I had been really nervous for this talk, but honestly, as we talked to her it felt simple and right.  We also told her not to go around talking about sex with her friends, siblings and cousins.  We also talked about pornography and we were really glad to hear that her computers teacher had already talked to their class on what to do if it came up on the computer.  We took that and the recent video off of lds.org about kids and pornography and added the spiritual reasons why we stay away from it.   She took it all really well and was very happy that we were confiding things to her that she didn't know before.  It gave me a glimpse of what Heavenly Father might feel when we go to the temple and learn about covenants.  Everything we do leads up to that point, but the reactions of both the parent and child are really neat to see.