Yoshi is growing like crazy. Right now he's 5 months old and 51 pounds
and has had a great year!
Carlos's class read the Little House in the Big Woods and when they
finished they had a themed party.
Carlos is 8 years old and decided to to go on an over night backpacking trip to Big Basin with his school. We went and had a great time. A few notes to help my memory for next time. Just the facts! * Carlos weighs 65 pounds and we wanted to limit his pack, gear, food, and water to weigh less than 12% of his body weight. That's around 8 pounds. Yep, that's super small so I ended up carrying a lot of the stuff. * We rented a pack, tent, stove, and youth sleeping bag from REI. The rest of the gear we had or borrowed. We ended up buying new sleeping pads. I was under 20% body weight, but can't recall the exact number. We ended up bringing too much food, but it all got eaten. * When we got there the normal trail was closed so ended up taking an alternate path that was slightly longer than the normal one. I think it was 6.5 miles. We started at the park HQ and ended at the camp site. * The trail back was very easy, but it was closer to 8 miles to the parking lot. We started at the camp site and ended at a parking lot near the coast. * The camp site had trash cans and a very smelly outhouse with toilet paper. The water was a short hike away down to the waterfall. We slept in a tent and sat on the ground, one of the few logs, or a ground sheet we brought. * The kids all brought food (that I saw) -- things like cup of noodles or instant oatmeal. Only a few brought enough water or a stove, so we ended up using all our remaining fuel and water by the time we left. * Carlos did get poison oak that showed up after we got home. Fact: It was very fun!
After looking for a new house for many, many years we finally found the right one and moved.
The new place is about a mile from the old house, but is much sunnier without all the coastal fog. (We still have fog of course -- just not so much.) It's also one level (which is great for Ollie) and sits on 5 acres of land. Perfect for Marghie, Carlos, and the dogs.
Call for the address if you don't have it.
We had a great year at Wilkinson School. Carlos moved from the local
public school and went to the ultra-small Wilkinson for second grade.
We're going to turn on the Way Back machine and publish some old
postings that never made it out. Stay tuned!
A new puppy joined our family. Yoshi is an 8 week old Chesapeake Bay Retriever:
The first couple uploads were busted, here's take 3 that works.
Cheers,
Chris Dean
Carlos had a swimming accident -- a brief encounter with a kickboard shooting out of the water -- and the impact caused his two front teeth to pop out prematurely. The dentist says they would have been lost soon anyway... (The bottom tooth came out after two weeks of careful wiggling about a week ago.)
