Well, yesterday was the big day on our block. We had our usual Halloween block party with tons and tons of kids. We gave out glow bracelets. We had about 500 of them and gave out about 7:15. The kids had a great time. Katy got tired of trick-or-treating, so she handed out candy at the little house while Margaret and Sam kept trick-or-treating. Margaret was Blossom, a PowerPuff girl, Katy dressed as a teacher, and Sam was “Steve” from the TV show “Blues Clues.”
On Saturday, Evan and I did this ride. We rode over Page Mill to Pescadero and along the ocean back towards Santa Cruz. Elizabeth and the kids met us at a pumpkin patch and got pumpkins for Halloween.
Katy and Margaret had their Halloween parade at their school this morning. All the kids get in their costumes and have a big assembly where they march around so that everyone can see everyone else. Elizabeth is busy all day at Halloween parties for all three kids in their classrooms.
Katy had her dance recital. Click on the picture above for a few movies and pictures.
Margaret’s kindergarten class went to the pumpkin patch. Sam and I went, too. It was a sea of children and pumpkins, noise and mud. The pumpkin pyramid and train ride were the highlights of the trip.
Well, we are done with construction for this year. It has started snowing in Tahoe and the TRPA won’t let us build after October 15th unless we do some things that we don’t want to do right now. If all goes well, we will start around May 1st, 2005 and have something we can use sometime next year. Bruce was nice enough to take a few pictures the weekend before everything was wrapped up. I think that there is about a foot of snow or so over everything right now. If it melts a bit, maybe we will get up there and get some more pictures before the winter really sets in. We were able to get everything done that we wanted to this year. We got the foundation in and the propane tank buried.
I talked to the contractor today. He said that there was about 2 feet of snow on the ground right now. So, we may or may not see our foundation again this year.
I went for a bike ride with Tyler Hamilton today. He has gotten 2nd in the Giro d’Italia with a broken shoulder and 4th in the Tour De France with a broken collarbone. He also won gold in the Olympic Time Trial in Athens. He was out here raising money for his foundation, this was a ride to raise money for that. He gave a talk the night before where he passed his gold medal around the audience. The gold medal was pretty cool.
The ride was a lot of fun even though it pretty much rained the entire time. We climbed Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County. There were supposedly really great views of the ocean and San Francisco, but unforntunately at the top of the mountain, the visibility was only about 50 feet. Click here to see a graph of the ride.
Here is a picture someone else took of Tyler riding near the top of Mount Tamalpais. Notice that you can’t see any of the really nice views because visibility is about 50ft at the most.
This was outside the bathrooms at Cowell Theater in San Francisco. I was able to identify it as art right away.
Friday was my 40th birthday, so Rusty took me to Yosemite (because he is a good husband). We stayed at the Ahwahnee; the kids stayed home (because Rusty is a good husband). We had a nice time, and on Saturday hiked to the top of Yosemite Falls, a 7.2 mile roundtrip with about 3000 ft elevation gain. We made it, although the trip took 5 hours. There were great views of the valley, although it was hazy. Click here for a whole bunch pictures from the trip.
Katy went to Girl Scout camp in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was exactly the same as Girl Scout camp in Michigan 30 years ago, but with better scenery. Here are Katy, Rachel, Jenna and Holly making a fairy house in Fern Grove. You can see more photos here.
