Our little olympian

Cute little helpers

Jace is at that fun stage where he wants to do everything the older folks do. This includes such things as turning on the dishwasher, putting away dishes (okay, mostly taking them out of the cupboards he can reach), typing on any available keyboard, sitting in chairs, standing on chairs, falling off chairs, putting things in the trash, taking things out of the trash, eating things taken out of the trash. Yup, all the things we do.
Here's a video of him helping us out with pumpkin carving. As you can see, he's already a big helper! Love that little guy.

New Developments in the Land

It's that exciting time of year. The weather is starting to turn chilly. The corn mazes are in full swing. Haunted houses are starting to appear. Leaves are starting to turn colors and will soon be falling off trees. Teeth are starting to fall out.

Yup, it's fall! A perfect time to concentrate on traditional American Holiday characters. Like the Great pumpkin (Halloween), the Magical Flying Squirrel that guides ships to safety (Columbus Day) and the tooth fairy (Oct 14th, the day Kate's first tooth fell out).

Never satisfied with doing something fun just once, she pulled out her second loose tooth today.

The Tooth fairy visited last night, and Kate ran in this morning to excitedly tell me that she got some loot! We even went and opened her first bank account today in honor of the occasion. The only drawbacks we've discovered so far are that she'll need her sandwiches chopped up really small (her request), and that she now talks with a slight lisp (my observation).

Also, she kept asking hard questions, like "Dad, did you put the money under my pillow."

My response? "How much money did you get? What do you want to do with it?" (that's right, skillful misdirection). She's starting to question the reality of imaginary Characters! I think we'll rent the movie "Tooth Fairy" soon just to reinforce these obviously beneficial delusions.

Anyway, what you've all really been waiting for, a picture:

Other stuff

Kate "I sure like to ride my bike in the Gut" - Gutter

We were talking about where Kate learned to play "ghosts in the graveyard" (basically hide and go seek with a different name). She happily informed us that it was at the grill. I was a bit confused at this, and asked if she meant a restaurant?

She clarified, "No daddy, remember where we had the bouncy house? The GRILL."

Suzy figured it out. It was the BBQ (Neighborhood BBQ).

It's funny what kid's pick up on, and it's fun when they begin using phrases they hear without complete understanding. Of course, who doesn't do that?

Monterey vs. Taiwan

So I had another business trip last week. However, instead of the usual Asian tour, this time it was stateside. In fact, I even traded one of my Asain adventures for a kicking it in Caly. This was for "Bacus" aka, SPIE Photomask (http://spie.org/x6323.xml). It had exciting topics and presentations such as:

Mask blank material optimization impact on leading-edge ArF lithography

193-nm radiation durability study of MoSi binary mask and resulting lithographic performance

MegaSonic cleaning: possible solutions for 22-nm node and beyond

I stayed at the local Marriott, which luckily was offering a discount to all conference attendees (quite convient since there was a direct connection to the conference center via a walking bridge). There were also multiple sessions in the Monterey conf rooms (including our lunch and dinners).

If you know Monterey, you know that it's famous for it's aquarium. One of the dinners was at the aquarium after it was closed to the public. They have lots of exhibits talking about how too much fishing is going on in various places, depleting the ocean's fish population. And yes, they did server fish at dinner.

Here are some pictures of a really weird looking fish (it looks even weirder in person). I think it was a sunfish.

Here are some of the seahorses they had on exhibit

Here's a picture of the bay from the pier. If you can believe it, the last day I even walked around some after the conference finished!

Girlites

It's always fun getting a different perspective. Suzy was at some women's celebration deal with Kate last Saturday, so Faith, Jace and I got to spend some quality time together Sat. morning. I had put Jace down for a nap, so it was just Faithers and I. After racking my brain for what to do (we had already colored, eaten and played a game), I came up with a great idea! We'd make paper airplanes and fly them.

Faith was just as excited as I was, even running to get the paper. We worked together until we had 2 beautiful airplanes. I immediately jumped up, and said, "Let's go see how they fly!".

Faith wasn't quite so ready, "Daaaad! We haven't even decorated them yet!". How could I forget the most important part? I called mine "the electric tornado" after completion. Faith's was "Diamond Pearl Rose" after the beautiful flowers and jewels that she drew on hers.

What is one difference between Faith and Kate? Have you ever read those books that say you should always give your kids choices? Kate and Faith were ready for a before bed snack. I was willing to shell out some crackers and cheese. I asked Kate, would you like 4 crackers? Response, "Sure dad."

I asked Faith (knowing she was a bit harder, and thus deciding upon a stratagem), "Would you like 3 or 4 crackers?" Faith's response? 5. This is quite typical of our little negotiator. Although negotiator would imply compromise at some point.

Three Wishes

On occasion, we play a game where we pretend that a genie is giving us three wishes. We were in the car, and I was the genie in this case. We let Kate go first. She was conflicted, since she really wanted two things. A castle, and the ability to fly. Suzy offered to use her wish on flying for the whole family (a very nice thing for her to do, also a common wish for the family).

Kate was able to get her castle, with an elevator. It replaced our house.

What did Faith wish for? A magic flying cactus. That's right, a cactus. We're still not sure why. Maybe so we can having something nice, natural and green to be around while we fly?

If we ever find a real genie, Faith DOES NOT get one of the wishes at this point. We'll keep practicing though.