Bike

After we got home from a free They Might Be Giants concert in San Francisco, and had our dinner of ice cream from Sweet Retreat in San Jose, the kids were out front, and EJP decided he wanted to ride his bike, and with a little help from his sister and mom, he did it.  At first, he was getting "starters" from SKGP, then we told him how he could get going himself, he was able to do the whole process from start to crash all by himself.  Perhaps it isn't the most graceful biking, but it's a great start.

Hooray!

Bike

Today, RCP made us all go outside.

Once we forgave her, the kids spent a little time with their bikes.  We took off the training wheels, because it is time for them to learn how to ride.  EJP made some progress, but gave up pretty quickly.  SKGP was a bit more focused, and pretty quickly she could roll when pushed.  After a few more ups and downs, a few tears and frustrated storm-offs, she could get herself going and keep going, and now she is excited to keep practicing.

Next up, she has to ride up and down the hill to the end of the cul-de-sac.  After she survives this, she'll be a real bike rider, and perhaps she can have a real bike.

Vids Galore

This post is probably mostly for grandparents and other family members who want minutae about the kids...

I take a lot of pictures.  I've got nearly 20,000 in my pictures folder.  Its hard to organize this many photos, but for the most part, Google's Picasa is doing a good job.  I wish I could share them all, but online sites don't make it easy to deal with that many photos.  I'm using Picasa's web site now for most (especially the "Starred Photos"), although pictures taken from my phone go to Flickr.  Both sites have RSS feeds, if you'd like to stay up-to-the-minute current.

However, neither of those sites deals with videos, which my camera also can create.  So, I've turned to YouTube (which also has an RSS feed).  I currently have almost 50 uploaded, with another 150 or so to go.  I need to label and categorize and delete some of them still, which I'm working on.  Feel free (please!) to add comments on what the videos contain to help me get the titles and such correct.

If you spend much time watching the videos, you will learn the value of the steady cam feature, which I don't have.  Sorry if I make anyone carsick -- I tend to move around a lot.

A Brief History of My Grandfather

Last night on our way to Gonzales, the radio in Dad's car stopped working.  So, I learned some of my grandfather's life story.  The brief version I got goes something like this:

Born in 1897, Eric Pace was the son of a butcher in Nova Scotia, Canada.  He dropped out of school in 8th grade to help with the family business.  He would drive cattle, run meat to the city, and all the other stuff involved in meat.  Sometime in his twenties, he moved to Boston and got a job as a meat cutter for a hospital in Waltham, MA, a Boston suburb.

In the hospital's freezer, he got pneumonia, so he returned to Nova Scotia to die.  Then he got better.

Using saved money from the Boston days, he bought a grocery store in Hackett's Cove in the early 1930's, where he worked for many years, with his sister Rae helping run the business.  He was dating someone for many years, but he dumped her when my grandmother, Louise ("Grammy") Ayers, from Newfoundland came to visit her sister, Elizabeth.

Years and a couple kids later, he sold the grocery store in Hacketts Cove (6 miles from famous Peggys Cove) and bought another one in nearby Seabright.  Then, in the early 1950's, after a couple heart attacks, Eric sold that store and moved to a house on MacDonald Street in Halifax, the big city.

He got a job as a government inspector, checking immigrants to ensure they did not illegally import merchandise.  He rented out the lower part of the house.

Then, he sold that house and bought a house on Walnut Street in Halifax, where they lived at least until my father graduated college and got married in 1962.

Eric was also, at various times, an alderman and a coroner.  He did not drink or smoke, and wouldn't play cards.

He passed away in 1994, at the age of 97.

Please add comments to correct or add to this post, people who know.  Yes, this means you.
Thanks to GMP for his corrections.

Movies

Tonight we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's still a great movie, and I think the kids mostly enjoyed it. However, I expect that EJP is going to be completely freaked out tonight. The melting Nazis got to him, just like they did for many of us a generation ago.

Last weekend, EJP and I watched Spiderman. He really enjoyed it.

Yosemite

Last weekend, we took the kids to experience snow for the first time. RCP booked a "cabin" in Curry Village (with heater!), and I scoured the South Bay to find snow chains that fit the Hyundai. We got in the car on Saturday morning, put in an audio book of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and off we went. We had some good burgers in Mariposa, and reached Yosemite mid-afternoon.

We lugged our bags to the cabin, and put on our "snow clothes." We ran around in the snow and threw a few snowballs. We took the shuttle around the park, visited the Ahwanee, and eventually had dinner near the Yosemite Lodge. Unfortunately, sometime on the excursion, my wedding ring fell off, and disappeared. (DAMNIT! -- That was the new one!)

Since our cabin had no bathroom, we were disappointed when SKGP had to go in the middle of the night. All in all, it was a pretty restless sleep, but not too bad.

The next morning, we suited up, got some hot coco and breakfast, and played in the snow. We made a snowman, we had a snowball fight, we made snow angels, and we admired the incredible beauty all around. Yosemite in white is amazing.

Then we packed up and drove home with little trouble. We had lunch in downtown Merced.

I was very nervous about driving in snow, since I have no experience with it. And I wasn't certain I could figure out how to put on the chains if I needed to. Luckily, apart from the lake that formed in the parking lot, there were no troubles with driving, and I didn't have to deal with the chains. It appears that I broke a thermometer in the car, since it now says the temperature is 140 degrees outside.

Pictures of our expedition are available.

Year of the Rat

We got a rat. She's cute.

We're looking for a name; your suggestions are welcome.

Disneyland Photos

Pictures that I took at Disneyland.
Pictures that Aunt Erin took at Disneyland.

Dineyland Astro Blasters

Eva's Song

PS: EJP: "Mom, after I take a nap, if I'm a good cooperator and I don't fuss, can I
watch Eva on your computer?"

Aunt Mycki is moving back to Morgan Hill

Jott:

Aunt Mycki is moving back to Morgan Hill. Hooray!

Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

She put an offer in on a place fairly close to my parents house. She has buyer's remorse right now, but my father tells me that is very common for her. Growing up, Aunt Mycki and Uncle Jim moved a bazillion times, and I guess she always second guessed herself.

I think its cool she's coming back, after being in Santa Barbara for quite a few years.

Crabby Dance

Admire Uncle DMP's fancy video skills.



We call this the Crabby Dance.

Memphis

RCP went to Memphis to give a talk this week. I was in charge of the kids, and we all survived. We went to Costco, and we had spaghetti with Uncle DMP.

Her talk went well.

Picnic Day

Picnic Day is the annual open house at our alma mater, UC Davis. Yesterday, we packed the kids in the van and made the trip back to Davis. It rained. A lot. On the road and on campus.

Highlights include the Doxie Derby, the race of the wiener dogs. Also, lunch at the Coffee House is still very good. EJP got to pet a tarantula, some snakes, and a scorpion. We tried honey based on several different plants. We saw cockroaches race.

We met up with Jon and Jessica, and it was, as always, a pleasure to see them. The twins are coming! It seems I'm really missing out by not watching Battlestar Gallactica.

We had dinner at Dos Coyotes. Yum. Then we drove home in more rain.

Ant Farm

The ants for the ant farm finally arrived on Thursday. On Friday, the kids got back from spring break in La Canada. So that night, we opened the tube of ants and dumped them into the life sustaining gel that is the heart of the ant farm.

A pile of rolled up bugs plopped out into the colony. I quickly put the lid on, so none would escape. After a few minutes, several of the ants were crawling around confusedly. At the center of the space was a pile of carcases. I remained hopeful that they were in some sort of ant suspended animation. One of them twitched.

A day later, only 5 ants were moving. The twitching one twitched occasionally, but no real motion. Today, I removed the "sleeping" ants, since they slumbered very deeply.

Five lousy ants! I thinkI sent a check for $6 for shipping, back in January. And I get 5 lousy ants in April.

These ants don't seem to want to dig the fabulous ant tunnels that the box promises, either. They just congregate at the end and try to climb out.

They better get organized and do some tunneling, or they might get to meet some local ants and see which are the better fighters.

Princess Battle

Wired just added a blog called GeekDad which has fun posts about things to do with kids that use some geek skills. One of the posts was about stop motion movies.

(Another was learning how to say your name backwards, which I'm working on.)

Family Movie Night

Last night, we decided to have a family movie night. We popped some popcorn (which RCP laced with mini-M&Ms) and put on Cars. We watched it upstairs on the kids' small TV, since our family room TV has the habit of collapsing into a sigle line.

It was a nice experience that would make a nice recurring event.

Citizen Kane II: Rosebud's Revenge

"It's the Citizen Kane of talking pig movies. " - Review of the (great) movie Babe.

Over the holidays, we took the kids to see the new Charlotte's Web. It was really good. I had recently read the book with SKGP, and the movie was pretty faithful (except the addition of a couple of funny crows that worked well). Your kids will love it.

Not much to say; I just wanted to tell everyone my movie review quote.

Family History: Eric Pace

My Uncle Eric sent the book Glen Margaret by Anita Crathorne Legalley (Glen Margaret Publishing, 2004) to my dad.

It has a short chapter on the Pace family, including a family tree back to Thomas Pace, born in 1775. The Paces originally came from England to the USA and then on to Nova Scotia.

Thomas begat Ebenezer Pace [b. 1/28/1809]. Ebenezer begat William T. Pace [b. 1834] . William begat Joseph Lawson Pace [b 6/9/1863]. Joseph begat Eric Bleasdale Pace [b. 1897]. My grandfather (who we called Granddad) had (Uncle) Eric William Pace and GMP (who is now known as Granddad), who had DMP and yours truly, who had SKGP and EJP.

Here is a passage that talks about my grandfather's life:

Eric Pace was born in 1897 in Glen Margaret. He left school at 13 to help his father and brother run the meat business in Halifax. I don't think they had very much of a childhood; there was no time to play as their father was very strict and they had to work very hard as times were tough. Eric would drive a team of horses with the wagons filled with meat along the old road by Woodens bridge and out to Hubley on the Bay road. Their father would go to Antigonish and buy carloads of cattle and ship them to Richmond station in Halifax. I cannot imagine those boys driving the cattle through the streets of Halifax, ducking trolley coaches, dogs and heavens knows what else to get them to the Bay road and home. In 1921, they bought a truck and said goodbye to the old horse and wagon.

When Eric was 29 years old he moved to the United States, first to Walthrom and then to Taunton, where we worked as a meat cutter for four and a half years. He returned to Nova Scotia in 1930 and bought out the Dauphinee business in Hackett's Cove.

Eric's brother Bruce continued with the butchery business in Glen Margaret and had a truck that delivered meat to this area from the Head of St. Margaret's Bay to Dover. I remember going up to the butcher shop to buy meat for my mother and stopping to talk to Mrs. Pace; she made the best sugar cookies I've ever eaten.

There is a picture captioned "Hon. Leonard Pace, Nova Scotia Attorney General (1974)".

The book also has a chapter about the Crathorne Dance Hall, where my parents met. For the benefit of Google Earth version of my family history, it was "located across from #10369 Peggy's Cove Road."

My mom (you know, Nana) has done lots more research on the family tree. Mom, you should start a family history blog, and tell all the stories you know.

I wanted to copy this section of the book, in case this book goes out of print and becomes lost to time. Apologies to the author.

A Fun Day

Yesterday, we had a nice family day.

We got up and lounged about for a while. We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We went to SKGP's gymnastics. We came home and had lunch, and EJP took a nap. There was a minimum of fussing, yelling, and screaming, which makes any day a good day.

We went to the 4:00 PM showing of The Jungle Book, performed by Children's Musical Theater San Jose. The kids, aged 6 - 13, were very good and the sets and costumes were high quality. This production was the exact opposite of a Little Mermaid show (which completely blew -- we were very happy SKGP chickened out of joining) that we saw earlier this year put on by a Gilroy group. Both troupes ensure all the kids have a part in the play, so it must be the adults who make the difference.

After the show, we went to our favorite restaurant Aqui for dinner, which was excellent. They are opening a Campbell restaurant next spring, so watch for it. I just sent an email to them asking them to open a Gilroy restaurant -- A man can dream, can't he?

After dinner, we went to Sweet Retreat (which I found when RCP was convinced I was going the wrong way) and had really big ice creams. Then we drove past our old house (which is still a work in process), and home, listening to a song about a skunk over and over.

Let's do that again sometime.