Katy and Susan made it back from England today. They were about 5 hours late because of the tightened security at Heathrow. We are very happy to have them back.
Category: Katy
Katy has started her own weblog. Hopefully, she will be able to post things to it while she is in England with her Grandmother. You will always be able to access it from the links on the side of my blog. The url to her blog is http://hotwheelsskier.blogspot.com.
Updated with some pictures of the kids playing in the creek and most importantly, pictures of the dump.
Not many pictures, but a lot happened this last week. We went back to Tahoe to check on the construction, do a little work, and spend the 4th up there. While we were in Hawaii, the basement floors were done. They didn’t turn out at all like we expected, but we think we like it. While we were up there, we went and saw the fireworks in Tahoe City, the kids played, and we just did a few small things at the house.
The most interesting thing that we did at the house was watch the World Cup semi-final games on our deck sitting in our new deck chairs. I played golf at Coyote Moon, where we let Gene Upshaw play through. His most notable quote was, “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying. That was the Raider’s motto”.
We also learned a lot about bears. Bears can open car doors. We now know we have to lock our car and house at Tahoe now because, the bears will open the doors and look in. They apparently just opened the unlocked car doors and looked in. They did no damage. Bruce and I also went to the dump. He got pictures, if I get a copy of them, I will make sure that they are posted here.
Katy went surfing today and had a lot of fun. She had surf lessons from a woman instructor who mostly teaches girls. She has another lesson scheduled tomorrow. Both Katy and Olivia got up and had a bunch of runs into the beach. The only problem was Katy kept running into every other surfer out there. Katy had another lesson today. Next time we come, she just needs a refresher then she can surf on her own.
Marcella and Charlotte came to visit, and we all drove up to Napa to spend the weekend with Anette. It was a wonderful girl’s weekend, with great friends, great food, Anette’s awesome chocolates (and peanut brittle, and sauces, and…), lots of wine (yes, I even drank some of it), beautiful scenery and weather, fun shopping, a spa visit, and just hanging out with each other, Anette’s family and a bunch of French vintners.
This photo was taken at Silver Oak. If you click on it, you will find more photo taken at Copia, and from a terrace at Silverado. – Elizabeth
Sam had his first ski lesson. It went VERY well. Margaret had a lesson as well. After her lesson, she was skiing much better. (I think a little encouragement from having Sam do well was a good thing). They are both riding the lift now. Katy and I skied most of the day, then Elizabeth and Katy skied for a while. While they were skiing, Sam, Margaret, and I played in the snow near the Ice Bar. They showed off their new skiing abilities and I watched. Katy is now faster than Elizabeth (but that is not saying a whole lot).
We went to Tahoe again for the week between Christmas and New Years. It was an interesting week. We were able to see our house without scaffolding up around it. We went to a lighting store. I was able to get all of the communications wire run in the house. We had a flood. It rained a lot. We spent a lot of time in the dark.
We spent most of the week there with the Schwartz’s. As always, it was mostly good fun. However, I woke up early Saturday morning and stepped in a big puddle of water on the way to the bathroom. The bottom floor of Bruce’s house flooded because of all of the rain and the fact that the culvert up the street was not working. Then about 11am that day, we lost power. There was lots of rain, lots of roads were closed including I-80. The next morning we woke up and still had no power, so we left. Only to get back to Los Gatos and not have power for a little over another day. Somehow, all of this was my fault. [Now, after 60 hours without power, we have electricity again, and Rusty is not in trouble.]
The most amazing thing about the house not having scaffolding up around it anymore, was not how it looked from the outside, but how it looked from the inside. Now you can actually see how nice it will be inside once we get it done. In the great room, it seems like you are pretty much standing outside because of all of the big windows.
Categories
Hello Kitty
Tokyo is an interesting place. Christmas is much bigger here than I expected. You can buy beer in a vendnig machine. Hello Kitty actually is everywhere. The picture above was on the door of the subway. They seem to be a bit more scared than we are (or at least there are signs up all around) about terrorism. There are no garbage cans in any of the subways for example. Updated with all the pictures I took while I was in Tokyo.
We went up to Tahoe this weekend to check on the construction. We got snow!!! It was only a couple of inches and it was gone by the afternoon, but it was fun none-the-less. The construction continues to move along. We got the windows for the downstairs and they are all in and mostly all trimmed. The roof has been “dryed in”. Which means it has felt down and is waterproof, but doesn’t have the shingles or the heating stuff in yet. We are still waiting for the windows for the great room and the top floor. Elizabeth and I spent a good deal of time running wire through the garage. Hopefully, it will be dry walled soon as they start really buttoning the house up.