Rob and the California George Family

We have had a definite summer mix of entropy and order in our household.

Entropy:
My work watch battery died. My casual watch band broke. The stores are always packed when I go to get them fixed, so I keep waiting for another time.

The Tivo that I got Celeste for Christmas didn't work as billed. It was not recording programs and was randomly resetting. We have gotten 3 replacement units to test (the latest seems to be working finally).

My cable modem stopped working together with cable TV. I could only get one or the other - in the middle of trying to test one of the replacement Tivo units!

The suburban needed new tires after we got a flat on a family outing.

The refrigerator was slowly dying, but gave us enough warning to go find a replacement.

The first replacement refrigerator had a leak in the freezer. It made beautiful ice sculptures, but that was not enough to offset our real need for a freezer.

The day that the first replacement refrigerator was delivered, our clothes washer decided that holding water was optional and dumped it all out on the floor. It gave us no warning, so we went appliance shopping again.

The second replacement refrigerator was obviously damaged, yet the retailer sent it to us anyway. The delivery guys were smart enough to show us the damage before unloading it.

The third replacement refrigerator and the new washer both arrived today. Both seem to work, but the delivery guys did some carving in the wood door jam to the kitchen as they moved the unit in.

I've missed some details, but that gives the general direction.

This is not a rant, but rather an observation that sometimes the bad luck cycles like to coincide. However, it's easy to forget the good things (i.e., the order) if you don't stop and think about it.

Order:
Bethany made it to Norway to visit Ina and family, stayed for more than 3 weeks, and returned as planned. Our webcam and cell phone communications allowed for daily contact as planned.

Bethany finished her Girl Scout Gold Award and we got to hold a nice party for her and her friend (they had "twin" projects at the same location) at the park where they did their project.

Celeste and I made it to our first no-kids getaway in almost 20 years last month. Hayley had a great time with Flying Van and family, Bethany was in Norway, and Andrew is still lives with Gramma in Costa Mesa.

Hayley has started summer Volleyball in preparation for trying out for the high school team. She is also moving into high school as a freshman and will join her sister at the same school for the first time in 5 years.

Hayley got a preview of being an only child while Bethany was away. It was good practice for when Bethany heads to college in a little over a year. She seemed to like it, although she did miss her sister.

Celeste and I had our first chance to see Andrew and his band perform recently here in Lake Forest. He has been working with them for a while, but it was the first venue that was close enough when the kids were busy for us to check it out together.

Labels: Andrew, Bethany, Family, Hayley, Ina, Scouts, Vacation, Volleyball

Things have been very busy for me since the cruise. The week after the cruise I was in Montreal visiting my current customer. This was followed by a week of preparing for another prototype review for that customer. This week, I am in the Toronto area at another office for the same customer. However, I hope to find more time for blogging again.

Since it has been a while, this post will cover a lot of ground.

Andrew has been playing with a couple of bands and starting to make some money here and there. He is a lead singer and plays guitar and bass guitar. His band has had a couple of out-of-town trips with the most recent to Arizona where they played at a bar and Utah where they played at a wedding. Celeste had a chance to see him play at a local bar/restaurant near home while I stayed home with the girls.

Bethany has started the SAT/ACT testing process. You can definitely tell a motivated teenager when they are willing to PAY to get up early on a weekend and take a grueling test! She is especially looking forward to getting out of school. The day after her last final, Beth is off to Norway to visit Ina and her family for three weeks!

Hayley has continued playing volleyball. She moved up a level and has real coaching instead of just me now. Her skills have definitely improved with her specialties being serving and setting. Hayley is about to graduate from 8th grade and become a freshman at the high school.

Hayley and I went to see the latest Shrek movie last weekend while Bethany was taking her SAT Subject Tests. It was fair, but not as good as the first one IMHO.

Hayley continues to be my last hope for playing my board games. Bethany is not into them at all, Andrew will play some when he is around, and Celeste will only play a few. Hayley has really enjoyed quite a few of them and occasionally I pull out an old classic. The most recent classic was Battle Masters. This is close to minatures, but still on a game board. Granted the game board is around 4' by 5' and with lots of cool plastic pieces to move around (knights, orcs, archers, beastmen, etc.). We pulled aside the dining room table to have room to play and kept it around for the weekend. Lots of fun pulling out the old stuff!

As I write this, I am in the Toronto area for work. I am outside of town without a car since my hotel is across the parking lot from my customer. I can see downtown Toronto in the distance from my hotel room, but no time on this trip to visit. I've posted some pictures from there. Also, when I checked in they were out of regular non-smoking rooms. Rather than moving me to smoking (Yuck!), they upgraded me to a suite with a Jacuzzi and Sauna. Despite all of my trips to Finland, I have never tried a sauna. I did try out the Jacuzzi, so maybe I have to give the Sauna a try tonight. Maybe. I posted some pictures of that too.

I did take a nice walk last night and found a local geocache. I was disappointed to see the the geocoins that were supposed to be there were not. However, when I read the log today I see that a new geocoin was dropped off. If the rain stays away, I may go get that one.

My hotel is very near Pearson International Airport, so I can see planes in the final approach to landing from my room. The hotel is soundproofed nicely, so it is cool to watch. This is obviously a very international destination. Here are some of the airlines that I can remember seeing from my hotel this week:

* Air Canada
* Jazz
* Continental
* United
* American
* Korean Air
* LOT (Polish Flag Air Carrier)
* AlItalia
* Lufthansa

OK, that is enough for now. I'll try to post shorter blurbs more often for a while!

Here is the Toronto skyline as seen from my hotel window:

This is the jacuzzi and sauna in my hotel room:

Here is the jacuzzi in my room when I prepared it for use:

I found a geocache in that small tree behind me:

Labels: Andrew, Bethany, Blogging, Family, Games, Geocaching, GPS, Hayley, Ina, Movies, Rob, School, Travel, Volleyball, Work

I received a text message this morning from Ina that she was back in Norway. Her parents met her in Oslo and she is on her way home with them now (from Oslo she still has a ~1 hour flight and then ~2 hour drive to get home).

Ina Therese Alvaeren is an exchange student from Norway who lived with us from last August through yesterday. She attended our local High School as a senior. Due to a family event, she finished the school year early. We dropped her off at LAX yesterday afternoon and have been watching the British Airways updates on her flights since then. Now that she is with her parents, our responsibility has been passed back to them.

Ina's visit helped us have a fully packed year of family activities! A few examples:
- San Francisco
- Monterey
- Yosemite
- Las Vegas
- Sea World
- Hollywood
- Universal Studios
- Knotts Berry Farm
- Disneyland Annual Passes
- Attend a taping of America's Funniest Videos
- Visited more beaches in 1 year than we have in the last 10 years!
- Purchased a new family Christmas Tree (we go the artificial route - Ina talked us into the new tree that we bought)
- Our version of holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.

I am cutting the list very short, but this provides a good sampling of the things we got to do with her.

More importantly, she got to be a member of our family. She got to know a number of American kids her own age and see what we were like. She got to tell us and our friends about Norway. She walked to school with Bethany daily. She gave her extra US and European coins to Hayley and answered Hayley's questions about how to say things in Norwegian.

This is not the end of our story with Ina - just the closing of the first chapter.

Labels: Bethany, Family, Hayley, Ina

Once again, work and life activites are keeping me busy. It shouldn't be that hard to write a few lines once in a while, but I obsess over my postings. Usually. Not this one. I will keep it free flow and let it go no matter what warts it may contain. My goal is to post something despite not having a lot of time. I am also not checking what I have written before, so apologies in advance if there is any repeat material here.

My customer in Sweden has gone live with our software. They have been using it for a few weeks now and so far, so good. There are still issues to resolve, but nothing that is stopping use of the software. This customer has operations around the world. The next step is planned to be Germany in September.

Last week I was in Finland working with another customer. They plan to go live with the software in January 2010. I have 2 more planned trips back to Finland during the process.

Hayley is in the middle of volleyball season. I had to miss our first game against another site last week. I understand that the team won 2 and lost 1 game. This is a co-ed league and not very competitive (no playoffs for example). However, the kids really like to win and try hard. My team is in the 11 - 15 age bracket. I happen to have all 7th grade girls. The one team that they lost to was mostly boys on the older side. From what I hear, they made a respectable effort against them (the score was something like 25 - 15).

Ina (our Norwegian exchange student) goes home next week Tuesday. This is before school gets out, but she is getting home early for a family function. She has finished her finals and is going through her last week of school. After school on Friday, we are going to a beachfront hotel in Oxnard to let her get one last California beach weekend. It has been a great experience having her here, but after this weekend we need to give our budget a break from all of the travel and activities!

Bethany is taking French as her language in school. She plans to take it all 4 years and is finishing her second year. She was invited to join a French student honor society and had the ceremony last week. I missed it due to being in Finland. I really, really don't like to miss things like that, but had no choice this time. At least I take solace in knowing that I attend way more than most dads (based on my experience when I do attend). My job requires a lot of hours, but it gives me a lot of flexibility most of the time to attend events like this.

Andrew has gone back to school and is almost done with his first semester. He seems to be more serious this time around and in some of our conversations has recognized that he has lost a lot of time. On the other hand, he has gotten some real life experiences. He still performs a lot: singing, guitar, some keyboard. He has had a chance to play in a few for-pay shows which is good experience. However, they have been places that are not "family friendly" so far. We really want to see him perform sometime, but need to wait for a venue that he thinks will be ok for the girls to attend.

Damn. I couldn't resist. I just went to paragraph 1 and made a correction. I caught myself and stopped before doing any more. It's like an addiction!

OK, back to work. I think I spent about 10 minutes typing this up, although I really didn't time myself. In any case, it was significantly less than I usually spend!

Labels: Andrew, Bethany, Family, Hayley, Ina, Work

We got home from vacation which went very well. I'll have to post more about that another time.

Back at home, work is very busy. My customer in Sweden is in the process of going live on our software. That means very long work hours at unusual times right now. However, it should be behind me by the middle of next week.

I'm still finding time for family even with the work. Last night I took Andrew, Ina, and Hayley to an Angels Baseball game. The Angels lost, but it was still an exciting game. Lots of hits and the score kept going back and forth. Unfortunately, the Angels were on the "back" side at the end of the game.

Tomorrow we are taking Bethany and her Girl Scout troop on another college visit (have I written about that? Need to check.). We are driving up to UC Santa Barbara. Between the drive and the on-campus time it will be a very long day. The girls need lots of hours to apply to their Gold Awards, so that is a good thing. However, it also means a Friday away from my projects so I have to figure out how to keep everyone busy when I have very little way to communicate with them.

Volleyball season started last week. Hayley is doing it, but Bethany has gotten to old for the league. I am coaching Hayley's team again. They picked their team name: Fergilicious (need to confirm that spelling). I told them that it could not be a dull name and it had to be family-friendly. Beyond that, it was a team vote. The name Caliente Loco (Crazy Hot) came in a close second.

I'll close with a couple of pictures of Hayley from the end of our vacation. We are at my aunt's house. The house is by a private runway and has a hangar attached to it. For car fans, you can appreciate this. My aunt has owned a Shelby Cobra since 1972. It is in great shape and is often taken to car shows. For those that are not car fans, this is a very expensive car by a renowned designer and is personally signed by that designer (see the "glove compartment" area in the photo showing the dash). The girls had fun taking photos in the car and in the (not seen in this photo) airplane that is also in this hangar.




(by request) ... and now you're all caught up!

Labels: Andrew, Bethany, Hayley, Ina, School, Scouts, Vacation, Volleyball, Work

Ina wanted to get a chance to see the taping of a TV show. We finally got around to that last weekend and joined the audience of an episode of America's Funniest Videos. We ended up towards the back of the room, but we had a couple of intros recorded with host Tom Bergeron in front of us. We might show up a few rows back. We also were behind him (several rows back) when he had to re-do a segment from a prior show.

So, Ina and I will potentially be on TV in the audience for a short segment of a showing on March 22nd. We are in the audience for the full showing of the episode that will be on March 29th. We may show up in the background at some point.

Part of the reason that we waited until now is that the show has a minimum age of 18 for audience members. Due to that, Hayley and Bethany did not go with us. However, once we got there the audience included several younger kids and a BUNCH of high school kids. I need to figure out how they got in when it was claimed that we would not be able to.

Anyway, attending the taping was a lot of fun. Tom Bergeron is funny between takes and was very personable with the audience. We actually watched the videos in the order that they will appear on the show and we got to vote. I can't publish who won. I can say that Ina and I voted for different videos and we both picked wrong.

Labels: Ina

As Lee pointed out, I have another large gap in my blog. Rather than waiting to get pictures, here is a summary of some things that have happened since I returned from Finland.

- Uneventful trip back home - as it should be! No serious delays, the entertainment system worked on the plane, and I had an aisle seat instead of the middle seat for the London - LAX flight!

- Celeste's Suburban needed some major repairs. We are not ready to downsize the car due to school and Girl Scout transportation requirements, and we are not ready to purchase another large vehicle. So we fixed it.

- Joined Hayley with her Sea Scout ship (the one she will officially join when she is 14) in the Newport Harbor 100th annivesary boat parade. The boat had problems, so we dropped out of the parade early. However, that let us watch the parade close up from the deck.

- My brother and his family (the "Colorado George Family") arrived for their Christmas visit. They stayed with my mom for a week before visiting the other family in San Diego.

- Semi-annual teeth cleaning and check for Celeste & I. All is well.

- For the second year, I got a work break around the holidays. This year, the company closed down (with pay) from Dec 24 to Jan 2.

- The girls (Celeste, Ina, Bethany, Hayley) and I visited Knott's Berry Farm with the Colorado Georges, my mom, Andrew, and Ina.

- Christmas celebration with Colorado George family, my mom, Celeste's mom, Andrew, and the family at home (including Ina) on Christmas Eve.

- Christmas Day celebration with Andrew, Celeste's mom, the the family at home. Ina was somewhat homesick, but she got a lot of gifts from both the Norway family and her American family. She made Celeste cry on Christmas Day (in a good way, that is a story for another day). We went to see the movie Marley & Me which was very different than the ads led you to expect. We generally liked it. Andrew claims that the movie made me cry. He can't prove anything.

- Celeste, Bethany, and Ina went out for day-after-Christmas sales with Celeste's mom. Hayley and I stayed home to play games together. Hayley and I were lured into having lunch with everyone at the new Ruby's that opened at the Irvine Spectrum and then we joined them for a little bit more shopping.

- Celeste, Ina, Bethany, Hayley, and I went to visit Hollywood for a day. We stalked some movie stars homes and then visited the area around Hollywood & Highland. This turned out to be one of the highlights of Ina's visit to America due to the brush with fame and lots of photo opportunities.

- New Years Eve was pretty low key. Bethany went to a dance at a local church with some friends and had a great time. We played some cards with another family at home. We popped some streamers at midnight and then I picked up Bethany and a few of her friends from the dance.

- New Years Day was an outing day, but it was cool and foggy. Celeste, Ina, Bethany, Hayley, Rachael (Bethany's friend), and I went to Corona Del Mar State Beach ("Big Corona") to let the girls play and take pictures on the rocks and jetty. I think that the last time that I was at this beach was with Shoo and Lee when we used to meet there by taking the Route 57 OCTD bus from each end (Lee and I from Costa Mesa, Shoo from El Toro). We stayed about 2 hours and left when we decided that the fog was not going to clear. We went to see the movie Bedtime Stories which got mixed reviews from the family. Andrew was not there to accuse me of unmanly emotions.

- Hayley and I have been playing the Xbox game Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliances together. We spend and hour here and an hour there. At one point we lost our save and had to start over. However, we finally finished it. It was a fun experience and I am proud to be raising a Gamer Grrl! Now I need to find a cheap copy of the sequel so that we can take the next step.

- Jan 5 was back to school and back to work. A general sense of dread was felt by all at the loss of freedom.

OK, now I need to go find some pictures to better document some of the events listed above. I will not wait 24 days for that.

Labels: Andrew, Bethany, Family, Hayley, Ina