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Yosemite or Bust – Day 3

August 18th, 2010 Posted in General | No Comments »

Woo! Day 3!

This was our big day of vacation, because we planned to go to Glacier Point again, stay till dark and watch the Perseids Meteor Shower. This, in fact, was our whole reason for going to Yosemite when we did. Dad had read about one of the lodges there that actually offered a Perseids package, where you go stay there for a couple nights and they bus you up to Glacier Point. We thought that would be awesome until we realized we could just do it ourselves for less money – and still go during the peak week of the meteor shower.

But, before all that, we had to do some stuff during the day. We decided to head to Yosemite Valley, the most “touristy” part of the park, so we could see some different scenery than we had the day before. The drive there is very pretty (duh, like everything in the whole place), with lots of interesting elevation changes and neat things to look at. The road there takes you past the Tunnel View, which is the “Oh my gosh, this is unbelievably beautiful” view of some big rocks including El Capitan and Half Dome. You drive through an actual mountain tunnel, and when you come through on the other side, you pretty much stop breathing for the awesomeness. We stopped to take pictures, of course…which all still have to be posted, but I did get this cute one of Hannah:

Yosemite Village (in the valley) is pretty nice, actually, and a good oasis in a giant national park…with actual restaurants, and bathrooms with running water and electricity, and a grocery store and other amenities that those of us who do not care for “roughing it” tend to appreciate. We stopped for snacks, wandered around the visitor’s center and some of the other areas, and took in more great scenery. We bought postcards for Hannah to send to her grandparents and her friends, and she dictated what she wanted me to write and then signed them all – and we could mail them right from the post office in the village! That was pretty cool.

Late in the afternoon, we started making our way back to Glacier Point, which is quite a drive from Yosemite Valley. (It’s funny – on the map, they look very close to each other…but the valley is low and Glacier Point is high, and the only way to get from one to the other is to drive a long way around. Or hike, if you are completely insane or just very physically fit.) I drove so Dad would have a chance to look out the window at more than the road. We stopped off at Bridal Veil Falls on the way. (I think I mentioned before that we were pleasantly surprised that all the waterfalls were actually falling, since it’s so dry out there right now.) The falls were beautiful, of course, and it was pretty cool because we could walk right by the creek or stream or whatever that they feed into. I’m sure in early spring when the snow first melts, it’s full and rushing – but in August, it’s not. Dad was able to find an easy way down to the water so we could all go and touch the water, which Hannah was enthralled to learn was really melted snow. And, as much as she hates water, I think it’s a testament to her interest that she actually went so close to the water AND put her finger in:

After that stop, we drove the rest of the way to Glacier Point so we could be there in time to watch the sunset. We got our warm clothes ready to go, grabbed some snacks, and headed out to find a good seat. On the way, we noticed a sign that said the Peninsula Astronomical Society was hosting a “Star Party” at Glacier Point that night! That was a cool bit of luck – basically this group came from the Bay Area, bringing their impressively powerful telescopes with them, and volunteered to let people look at the stars and teach them about the different things you can see in the night sky. They also did a little talk before it got dark about the types of things we might see (not just the meteors, of course, but also constellations, different types of stars, satellites, the Milky Way, etc.) so we’d know what to look for. Wow! We really enjoyed that. (They also brought lots of red-filtered flashlights with them, which maintain the darkness and also helped us tremendously when we were trying to get out of there in the pitch black, with me carrying a passed-out Hannah, at 10:30 that night.)

Obviously, we couldn’t take any photos after it got dark, but I do have this nifty picture of Half Dome at sunset:

Sunset and watching the stars at Glacier Point is a MUST if you ever go to Yosemite. It is hands-down the coolest thing I have ever seen. I said I couldn’t find words to describe how beautiful it was, and I still can’t, so you’re just going to have to trust me that it was spectacular. All of us agreed this was our favorite part of vacation. I’ll never forget the three of us lying on our backs in the dark, with Hannah in the middle saying, “I can’t believe this! It’s so beautiful!” and smacking her forehead in disbelief. It was truly almost too much to take in. We saw some truly amazing meteors in all different colors, and Dad pointed out several constellations, and we watched a numer of satellites cruise by. We live in one of the most light-polluted areas there is, and I really just didn’t understand how much of the night sky we CAN’T see at home until I saw how much of the night sky it’s POSSIBLE to see in some areas. Just amazing. If you go, you must do this.

We wandered out to the car around 10:30 (Hannah had long since fallen asleep on my lap, wearing several layers and wrapped in a blanket, sporting Dad’s hat to keep her ears warm). Dad navigated the twisty road down the mountain to get us out of the park, which took well over an hour – it was actually about 2 hours from the top of Glacier Point to our hotel. It was completely worth it – our favorite vacation day ever!

Mom

Yosemite or Bust – Day 2

August 16th, 2010 Posted in General, Vacation | No Comments »

Ahh, day 2. So much more fun than day 1!

Needless to say, after our travel adventure, we slept in for our first morning in California. We really needed it! After a free continental breakfast (ALWAYS look for a hotel with free breakfast!), plus some SpongeBob viewing for Hannah, we were ready to tackle our first day in Yosemite.

We piled into the gold (we actually decided to call it “neon beige,” which is a weirdly appropriate description) RAV-4 and began the twisty trek to the park. (It seems like every road around there is twisty, and designed to make you feel like you are driving in a car commercial. You just turn the wheel back and forth, back and forth, exactly the way people pretend to steer when they’re miming driving. Except that you’re actually driving. And a deer might run across the road any minute.) Props to Dad for realizing a stop at Starbucks was a good idea, because an uncaffeinated Mom is not a happy Mom.

The first thing that happened is we tried to go to the ATM, and it was broken. We wondered, sadly, if our bad luck from the day before was continuing…but we found another ATM. (Don’t you just love all this riveting detail? I have a very good memory.)

The next thing that happened was that we made it within the boundaries of Yosemite (but before the gate), and got stopped by…wait for it…road construction. In Yosemite. Which was a little funny, considering that when Dad and I went to Yellowstone 8 years ago, long before we were Mom and Dad, we also spent a significant amount of time stopped by road construction. Makes me wonder if August is road repair month for national parks. Anyway…we spent quite a long time waiting to move, but luckily we’d gotten our first glimpse of the scenery and it was awfully interesting to look at.

We finally made it to the gate, paid our $20 for a 7-day pass. (Not only are national parks a brilliant idea and truly a national treasure, but they are a BARGAIN! We can’t even go to a movie for $20). We’d thought we might try to start the day by visiting the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, which is only a couple miles from the entrance, but the parking lot was full. So then we thought we’d drive over to the Wawona Store, where our guidebook told us we could ride a free shuttle to the sequoias, but we couldn’t find a place to park there, either. So THEN we thought we’d just go ahead and drive on to Glacier Point, where we planned to watch the stars at some point in our trip. First, we stopped for snacks (or, more accurately, I ran in for snacks while Dad and Hannah looped around the parking lot, where there was nowhere to park). It was at this point that we began our daughter’s slow transformation into a Dorito. (Seriously, the kid ate SO MANY Doritos on this trip…but that’s what vacation’s for, right?)

Honestly, Yosemite is perhaps the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. It takes about an hour or so to drive from the South entrance of the park up to Glacier Point, and the whole way I just didn’t know where to look. The weather was absolutely perfect: 84 degrees, sunny, with a bright, deep blue sky. We tooled through the park with the windows down on our neon beige-mobile. Because the whole place is full of pine trees, it smelled awesome. I can’t even tell you what a peaceful, wonderful place Yosemite is. And I got all this just from riding in the car. (One of the things nobody tells you about Yosemite is that you spend an amazing amount of time in the car, just trying to get from one place to another. It is the prettiest road trip you will ever take.) We saw mountains, and big trees, and even waterfalls, which surprised us because we thought they might be dried up at this time of year. We stopped here and there, checked out the scenery, and were happy. Turns out Hannah likes that sort of thing, which was even better – I’m not sure how many 5-year-olds would be that consistently interested in mountains and trees. We got our first glimpse of Half Dome, the famous rock formation, and took lots of pictures.

And THEN we got to Glacier Point, which is nothing less than unbelievable. A view like you’ve never seen in your life (unless you’ve been to Glacier Point), and lots of rocks to climb on, which apparently makes 5-year-olds very happy. This is really a hard vacation to describe, because we spent so much time just looking at stuff. But it was really, really spectacular stuff. I think this was about the point in the trip where Hannah decided she wanted to be a mountain climber when she grew up!

(One important note about Glacier Point: they have a snack stand. And bathrooms. Both very welcome things when you have been in the car for a long time with nowhere else to stop.)

We spent quite awhile walking all around Glacier Point, planning our trip back to check out the stars. We got ice cream at the snack stand, which was a little bit of a challenge because it was all prepackaged stuff and it was tough to find anything Hannah could eat…but she seemed happy with her strawberry popsicle until it melted off the stick and fell on the ground, at which point she announced she’d been done with it, anyway. And then she called herself Strawberry Shorts because she’d gotten popsicle on her shorts, and we marveled at her continued great attitude.

By the time we’d had our fill of Glacier Point, it seemed like a good time to try to go back to the Mariposa Grove (because the guide book told us that the crowds start to lessen very late in the day). So we drove another hour and, lo and behold, the parking lot for the grove was open! Woo hoo! Dad did have to make a couple of loops waiting on a space to open up, but he was able to park and we were all able to get out and stretch our legs. Hannah loved the big trees – we all did. Dad and I were impressed because we’ve been to Muir Woods before, near San Francisco, where we saw giant redwoods. Turns out redwoods are just babies compared to sequoias (while redwoods get slightly taller, sequoias get MUCH bigger around). Many of those trees were well over 1,000 or 2,000 years old, and just thinking about something alive being that old is kind of mind-blowing. Sequoias are really, really cool.

We decided to walk the short trail past the most famous trees. First, there was the Fallen Monarch, where Hannah and I got our picture taken in front of the bottom of the tree. It looked like a piece of modern art or something – so awesome! Then, there was the coolest tree we’d ever seen: the Grizzly Giant, a tree that is over 2,700 years old and more than 30 feet in diameter. One branch of the tree is 7 feet across – bigger than most other mature trees. One branch! You could really stand and ponder that tree for a long, long time, but I wouldn’t recommend trying that when you’re walking a trail with a 5-year-old who’s just having fun jumping over the rocks along the way. (She pretended to be a mountain T. rex, and we had to follow her tracks through the woods. If you’re wondering what a mountain T. rex is, it’s a T. rex that lives in the mountains. Duh.) The Grizzly Giant quickly became one of our favorite things from vacation. And finally, there was the California Tunnel Tree, which is a sequoia that had been tunneled out. You can walk through it, which is pretty neat but kind of sad, too, because you just know that tree’s probably suffering from having a big hole in its trunk. Sometimes people just can’t leave well enough alone, I guess.

The short trail actually forms a loop, so we decided to follow the loop back to the parking lot so we could see some new scenery on the way. (Someone advised us that when hiking with children, it is best to always go for the loop so they don’t get bored looking at the same stuff on the way back that they looked at on the way there. This seemed like very sound reasoning.) I don’t think many people elect to walk back that way, because while we’d seen about a million people on the way to the tunnel tree, we didn’t see anybody walking back. This was both a little creepy (we’re suburbanites; we’re never ALONE) and pretty awesome, because the three of us could walk, talk, and not worry about any other people. I gave Hannah the first of what would be several piggy back rides on this trip, and we taught her how to go down steep hills by taking very small steps. We saw two deer in the woods on our way, and even had to walk across a couple of spots where the path was a little flooded. I, for one, felt very outdoorsy, probably because I’m not at all outdoorsy, so it wouldn’t take much.

We made it out of the Mariposa Grove around 7:30, as the sun was just starting to think about setting, feeling happy and satisfied with our first day. Beautiful vistas, beautiful big trees, and no thoughts of work or other worries. What a great day! We capped it off with pizza at a local pizza place, then headed back to the hotel, where Hannah and I promptly fell asleep and Dad went outside to watch the meteors.

A very good first full day. And a nice recovery from the day before!

Mom

Yosemite or Bust – Day 1

August 15th, 2010 Posted in General, Vacation | No Comments »

We are already home from our vacation, but since we were running around late every night, I am just now getting around to posting about it. (My apologies to those of you who were anxiously awaiting these updates.)

So…day 1. Day 1 wasn’t so great. Here’s how it was supposed to go:

9 a.m. Central: Leave home for airport.
11:55 a.m. Central: Plane leaves for LAX.
3:56 p.m. Pacific: Connecting flight to Fresno (airport code, amusingly, FAT)
4:53 p.m. Pacific: Land in Fresno, pick up rental car and drive to hotel in Oakhurst in time for dinner and a relaxing evening of planning our first day in the park.

Hmm. Not so much.

We got the first step right. We left home at 9:07, which for us is excellent because we are not a “morning family” and have a hard time getting out the door as a group. However, we were motivated and made it out on time. Probably the first indication that the day wouldn’t go as planned should have been when we got stopped by a train on the way to the airport. A loooooong train. But since we’d left on time, we were good. No problem. Dad drove us smoothly to economy parking in plenty of time. We were all excited! Hannah chanted the family vacation cry, “Woo! Vacation!” in the car. Life was good.

Dad dropped me and Hannah off at the train station in economy parking with one suitcase and our backpacks, and said he’d go park the car and bring the rest.

He was gone for a long time.

When he finally made it back to the train station, he was sweaty and out of breath. This is because he had to park apparently miles away, and I’d left the big suitcase for him (dumb), AND the wheel on said suitcase broke when he got it out of the car, so he had to lug a 50-lb. (right on the weight limit!) suitcase all the way across the parking lot on a bum wheel. Suitcases with bum wheels do not roll, and make the poor person dragging them expend a lot of extra effort. Which, for those keeping score at home, makes two little hiccups so far on the trip.

Still, we managed to get our three bags, three backpacks, and three people onto the train and to the terminal. We checked our bags and made it through security. At this point, we were cutting it a little close on time, but still doing fine, and still excited. We stopped to buy Hannah some Earplanes in hopes they would help her ears on our flights and make for a generally more pleasant traveling experience than we had last summer, when she flew for the first time and screamed throughout takeoff and landing because her ears were so bothered by the pressure.

We boarded the plane on time. Hannah put her Earplanes in. We were all excited.

At approximately noon Central time, hiccup number three happened. The airline’s “director of customer service,” whose job you could not pay me enough to do, shared with those of us on the plane that, well, the pilots had gotten off the plane. The reason they’d done this was because the plane had mechanical problems and, in fact (surprise!) should be grounded…so they really shouldn’t have let us board the plane. But gosh, they were going to get another plane here for us just as soon as possible, and we shouldn’t worry, because this is Chicago – a United hub – and it should be simple enough to get another plane.

Hannah took her Earplanes out. We all got off the plane.

Our new plane arrived from somewhere at 1:00 p.m. (We passed the time eating snacks, watching people, and playing games on our phones. We talked about how it was good we were a generally laid-back family who could deal with things like this without freaking out. How prophetic…) We all got on the new plane, in our same seat assignments. Hannah put her Earplanes back in and we got ready to rock. While we were waiting on everyone to board, our captain shared with us that the previous plane had about four major things wrong with it, including an “unknown issue” that sounded pretty ominous…I mean, shouldn’t you be able to at least figure out what’s wrong, even if you don’t know how to fix it? So we talked about how glad we were they’d figured that stuff out before the broken plane tried to take off with us in it.

The first exceptional news of the day came when we realized that Earplanes are truly magical things that kept Hannah’s ears from bothering her at all, and made all of us much happier during our flight. Hannah said the “ear popping came in through the window, hit my Earplanes and bounced right back out.” Sounds like a good explanation to me.

We passed a perfectly calm and lovely flight playing the DS, reading, watching “Oceans,” etc. We knew there was a good chance we might miss our connection to Fresno, but the flight attendant advised us to just run for the gate as soon as we landed and see if we could make it. She also said there were several other flights to Fresno that day, so we’d get out of LAX one way or the other. We decided not to worry about it, and do the best we could.

Our connecting flight was supposed to leave at 3:56. We landed at LAX at 3:50, but we were in row 21 so (as any remotely experienced air traveler knows) there was really no way we were going to be able to get off the plane in time. By the time we made it off the plane, our connecting flight wasn’t even on the board anymore. It was gone. There was no gate to run to (though Dad and I both admitted to being secretly happy we didn’t have to try to run anywhere). Hiccup number 4.

So…we proceeded to customer service, where we learned we’d already been rebooked on the next available flight to Fresno, which was at 9:11 p.m. You know, in 5 hours. FIVE HOURS! There weren’t enough seats for us available any earlier. We were bummed, but decided to roll with it. What else can you do? We went off to find something to eat (at Baja Fresh, my typical LAX food stop). Hannah played in front of the moving LAX sign for a loooooong time. We hung out in the gate area for awhile, just reading, playing on the computer, playing games, coloring, whatever. I was feeling pretty proud of all of us, but especially Hannah, for being able to deal with the challenges so patiently. Hannah is a rock star. Don’t let anybody tell you differently. (Speaking of rock stars, one of my constant pet peeves about flying to LAX is that I never see any famous people. I’ve been through there probably dozens of times, and never one famous person. This time, we spent 5 stinking hours hanging around, and still no famous people. What’s a girl gotta do?!?!)

A little while before our flight, we got up to wander around a bit, stretch our legs, go to the restroom, etc. We were feeling very happy to finally be leaving, since 5 hours is an awfully long time to spend in an airport, and the United terminal at LAX has shockingly little to do. While Hannah and I were waiting outside the restroom for Dad, I got a voicemail on my phone.

It was a friendly recorded voice from United, informing me that the 9:11 flight to Fresno had been canceled. CANCELED. After spending 5 HOURS in the airport.

At this point, I started to lose it a little bit. We went back to customer service. I talked to an agent there, who told me the plane was broken. For those keeping score at home, that was our SECOND broken plane of the day. But, we’d been conveniently rebooked on the next flight, which was at 10:25 or something ridiculous like that, and hopefully that one would go out because it was the last flight to Fresno for the night and every single flight the next morning was full.

I informed the agent that this was our second broken plane of the day, and we’d been stuck in the airport for 5 hours with a 5-year-old (she didn’t need to know it was the world’s most patient and wonderful 5-year-old), and that I was getting desperate to get the heck out of there. She was super-nice and sent me lots of emails with free stuff for all of us to choose from, for BOTH flights on Wednesday. Props to her. And again, I guess it’s better to know the plane is broken before it tries to fly somewhere with you in it. But seriously. That’s just insane.

Then it occurred to me that our new flight was supposed to get in at 11:30, and the Hertz rental car desk in Fresno closed at 11, and so I asked the nice customer service agent how that worked. She told me I should call Hertz, because 1) this was a regularly scheduled flight and 2) usually they’ll stay open for people who are coming in late.

At this point, Hannah was massively tired (we all were) and starting to get a little cranky, but I was still so proud of her for soldiering through. Dad assured her that usually flying wasn’t like this.

So. It was 9:00 at night. We’d been in the airport forever. We were all tired. And our bodies were still on Central time. And we knew we had an hour’s drive ahead of us once we landed (if we landed) in Fresno, assuming we could get a car. None of us were in a particularly good mental place, if you know what I mean. Time to call Hertz.

I had actually already called Hertz once that day, back when we thought we were getting in at 10:00. Now I needed to get them to stay late for us. So I called the reservation number and talked to someone there who told me she couldn’t enter our new flight information because it landed after the agent closed, and that I would need to call the agent directly to ask them to stay open. She gave me the number of the Fresno agent. I called it.

It was the wrong number.

Feeling more frustrated all the time, I Googled the number on my phone (thanks, iPhone!) and finally got the right one. I talked to the person at the desk, who told me that all I had to do was have reservations enter the new flight info, and then they would stay open for us. She was happy to transfer me.

Feeling a little hopeful now.

And then it went bad.

I got a new reservations agent. I explained our situation for the third time. She tried to enter the new flight information but couldn’t because it was landing after the local agent closed. I explained that I knew all that, and I’d already called the local agent and the local agent had transferred me to her.

She put me on hold for a looooong time.

When she finally came back, she told me that, gee, they just couldn’t enter the information, and they’d been trying to call the local agent and couldn’t get through. “Two supervisors have been calling,” she told me, but they were just having no luck at all.

I explained, as patiently as possible (which wasn’t very at this point), that I’d called the local agent myself, and had gotten a live person on the first try, so I absolutely knew there was someone there to answer the phone. I suggested nicely that they keep trying.

She put me on hold again. At this point, Dad was bribing Hannah with Doritos. She was very, very tired.

When the Hertz “customer service” agent came back, she explained to me that they were not able to reach the local agent, and that all I could do was run for the Hertz desk as soon as our plane landed and see if anyone was there.

And then I lost it for good, and there was no going back. Here is a rough transcript of our conversation:

Me: If the plane is landing after they close, how will it help anything if I run there after the flight has landed? Because they’ll be closed.

“Customer Service”: Ma’am, it’s just the best we can do. We can’t get through.

Me: I know there’s someone there. I talked to her. She transferred me to you.

“C.S.”: Ma’am, we’ve had two supervisors calling and they’re not getting through.

(Here I should have asked if they were using the right number, since they’d given me the wrong one before, but that seemed too smart-mouthed even for me.)

Me, officially starting to cry: So. IF I run to the desk, AND there’s no one there, WHICH there won’t be because they’ll be closed, what are my options?

“C.S”: Well, you’ll just have to come back in the morning.

Me, now fairly hysterical: If I don’t have a car, WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO GO?

“C.S.”: Ma’am, I just don’t know, but that’s all you can do. It says here they will stay open late for regularly scheduled flights only, and with a minimum of four hours’ notice.

Me, completely gone: Look, I know this is not your fault, but I have been stuck in the airport all day with my family, and I need a car when we land. I need you to help me! (If I knew how to punctuate this with the sounds of my crying all over my phone, I would.)

“C.S.”: Hold please.

I went back on hold. Hannah, looking very worried, came to give me a hug.

When faux-customer service lady came back, she transferred me to her manager, Nicole, probably realizing that she was no match for a hysterical woman who’d been trapped in LAX all day. Nicole put me back on hold, but came back fairly quickly to let me know she had spoken to the woman at the local agent, Rebecca, and that Rebecca would be there to meet us when our plane landed.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked Nicole profusely. I probably should have also suggested to Nicole that she have a stern conversation with her subordinate, who gave me perhaps the worst customer service I have ever received in my life. In what world is it acceptable to tell a customer that her best bet is to run for the desk and hope that somehow the space-time continuum will break, thereby making the agent stay open after closing time just because someone like my poor, tired family might happen to arrive late? UNACCEPTABLE. I was furious at that woman. I wish I’d written her name down, but it was probably for the best as it would have ruined my opinion of anyone else with that name for the rest of my life. So it’s better that I don’t know it.

So, that taken care of, we walked to our gate, and I called the hotel to tell THEM we’d be late (a nice desk clerk named Luann was very helpful and sympathetic, and suggested we get something to eat if we needed it because everything in Oakhurst would be closed by the time we got there). At this point, it wasn’t much longer till we’d be ready to leave on our last shot out of LAX.

Dad got up to walk to the restroom…and then he came back and said, “Uh, they’re boarding that other flight right now. The one we were supposed to be on at 9:11.”

At this point it was 9:30, and we didn’t know what was going on but we ran down to the gate and I got in line at the desk. Turns out they’d fixed the plane. I admit to a moment of misgiving where I thought, “What could be wrong with a plane that they could fix so fast?” But really, we just needed to get the heck out of LAX. I got our boarding passes switched and we cheered as we got on the plane. And then the plane took off, and it landed in Fresno at 10:50-something, and we made it to the Hertz counter by 11:00 after all.

Rebecca turned out to be very nice.

We got our car, an obnoxiously colored gold Toyota RAV-4. The electronic adjustment thing for the passenger side mirror was broken, but whatever. We got everything loaded up (including Hannah, who was passing out at that point), and drove off into the dark. An hour later, we were in Oakhurst.

It was exactly midnight. It had taken us 17 hours to go from our house to our hotel room. It was a horrible, awful travel day…but my family came through it like champs. Hannah was unbelievable in her patience. I was very thankful for our little trio and how we’d rolled with the punches. After all, the only one to totally lose it and go crazy was me, and I happen to think I was quite justified. I was pretty impressed that we all kept our spirits up for the majority of the long, long day. Hannah was our savior, I think, keeping her excitement and enthusiasm, even getting really jazzed about flying on a plane in the dark and making us smile up to the end. And after all, we made it safely…just a lot later than we’d expected.

Stay tuned…after this, the story gets a lot more fun.

Mom

Good taste in music

August 10th, 2010 Posted in General | No Comments »

I hope Hannah continues with her great taste in music. Here is what happened this morning when we were on our way out the door.

Dad: Hey Hannah, can you turn off the radio for me? Then I think we’re ready to go.
Hannah: But daaad… it’s Weezer!

Then this evening she was singing along to 21st Century Breakdown (by Green Day). Who says you have to be forced to listen to Disney or the Wiggles just because you have kids? :)

Detailed Imagination

June 7th, 2010 Posted in General | No Comments »

A post 2 days in a row! Can you believe it? ;) It won’t last, but as of right now, I’m up to 2 days in a row.

This evening Hannah was drawing some pictures of castles, pirates, dragons, witches and other various things. I came in to ask her about the one she was currently working on. Here’s what she was drawing:

Here is her description:
On top of the castle is a witch who is trying to get inside. The princess and the king are stepping out to go to a wedding. The dragon is flying to the wedding since he was invited too. The princess left her crown there since she’s just a kid and might lose it. The king is wearing roller skates so he can get to the wedding on time.

-Dad

Toothless and other stuff

June 5th, 2010 Posted in General | No Comments »

Hey everybody! I didn’t realize it had been so long since we had posted anything. I guess I should at least throw out a quick update on what’s going on in Hannah’s life at the moment.

The big news is that Hannah has lost her first 2 teeth! Both of her bottom front teeth are gone. It looks like the 2 new ones are already working on coming in. Of course, the space that’s there looks like it’s only big enough for 1 tooth… I guess we’ll see how crooked her teeth end up being since there’s not a whole lot of room in there.

In other news, Hannah is quite the reader. She sat on the couch this morning and read her entire collection of Frog and Toad books. It must have taken her an hour or 2 to get through all of them. (I think there are like 15 of them.) She still amazes me with her ability to concentrate on things for a long time.

We’re also getting ready to go to the kindergarten graduation for her friend Anthony. Next year at this time, Hannah will be graduating from kindergarten!

So anyway, there’s an update for you. Maybe it won’t be another 4 months before we post something else…

-Dad

Naptime

January 30th, 2010 Posted in General | No Comments »

The scene: Lunchtime. We are discussing the fact that she got up really early.

Mom: Hannah got up really early today. I think she needs to get a nap today.
Hannah: Why do I need a nap?
Dad: Because you got up really early and will end up being really tired later.
Hannah: Aww come on man!
Mom and Dad both try very hard not to laugh.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

December 25th, 2009 Posted in General | No Comments »

Dad, Hannah and I all agree that this has been the best Christmas ever. No question, no contest. :)

Hannah has been excited for Christmas for awhile now, putting magnetic ornaments on her Countdown to Christmas calendar, reading Christmas stories and dancing to Jingle Bells every night since the first of the month. However, the fun really started yesterday, when we all went to Navy Pier to Winter Wonderfest. We went a couple of years ago, when Hannah was two, but couldn’t go last year because the weather on Christmas Eve was bad. This year, it was just rainy, so we drove downtown to check it out. This time was SO FUN because Hannah is big enough now to ride most of the rides, and she loved that! I took her on her first Ferris wheel ride, which she loved, and she rode lots of other rides, too. We all loved looking at the Christmas trees and the lights, and spending time together. There were so many fun things to do there, and it was just perfect for little kids. Hannah insisted on wearing her Santa hat the whole time.

After we came home, we made cookies for Santa, and then some friends came over to drop off some gifts, so we got to visit with them for awhile. They have a son Hannah’s age, so the two of them were having a great time. They’re both super-smart, so it was fun listening to them talk to each other. :) After they left, we had our traditional “snack dinner”; every year on Christmas Eve, we eat snacks for dinner and play games. This year, Hannah was big enough to play the games, too, so we played Kids of Carcassonne and Horton Hears A Who while we ate chips and guacamole, stuffed celery, pizza, and cheese and crackers.

Hannah finally got to bed after 9:00 (it had been a very big, very exciting day). Sometime around 10:00, when I was wrapping her last gift (we got behind on wrapping this year, and didn’t get any of hers done ahead of time), we heard her talking in her room. Dad went to check on her and was gone for quite awhile. When he came back, he was chuckling…he said he’d gone into her room to find her up and out of bed, with her Santa hat on. She said, “Is it morning yet? I looked outside, and it looks pretty bright out there to me!” We both thought it was the sweetest thing – the perfect story about a little girl completely beside herself with Christmas excitement. Dad did convince her to go back to bed, but it’s a good thing Santa didn’t come early last night or he might have run into Hannah!

This morning, I woke up to the sounds of a little girl padding down the hallway…at 6:18 a.m. Who knows how long she was up before that – I imagine she waited about as long as she could possibly stand! At any rate, she was just quietly standing in the doorway to our bedroom when I whispered, “Merry Christmas, Hannah,” and then she RAN into the room giggling and shouting, “Merry Christmas!” She was wearing her Santa hat and was VERY excited. She managed to wait for me and Dad to get up, which took awhile because it was really early. She was thrilled to see Santa had eaten all the cookies and drunk all the milk she’d left for him, and that the reindeer had eaten all their carrots.

Hannah must have been very good this year, because Santa brought her lots of fun gifts. I think her favorite gift from Santa is her “bouncy ball,” which is one of those plastic balls with a handle that little kids can sit on and bounce. She bounced all over the house on that today. A close second would probably be her dinosaur Legos, followed by the big dinosaur play mat with lots of plastic dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

I think her favorite thing from us was her “tying shoes”…she’s been really wanting shoes with shoelaces, so we got her some and told her she could practice learning to tie them. She put them right on and wore them around with her pajamas all day. She was just so excited about everything, and couldn’t figure out what to do first or do anything for very long. It was wonderful to watch…it just made us think that this is one of the best things that Christmas is about: a little girl, happy and excited and so joyful! Hannah even gave us a present that she’d made and wrapped at school, and she even kept it a secret! It’s a photo of her with “Happy Holidays, Love, Hannah” written around it, and she drew a picture on the back of the three of us and the cats. It is awesome.

We spent the day in our pajamas playing with Christmas presents…Hannah had gotten lots of fun toys, of course, plus Dad got a Nintendo DS and I got new games for the Wii, so there were plenty of things for us to do. It was just so much fun watching Hannah…she was excited about every single thing that happened today!

Such an awesome day…and now, I’m looking forward to getting some sleep. It was an EARLY day, too! :)

Mom

What is “it,” anyway?

December 11th, 2009 Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Tonight Hannah had some ice water to drink while she was watching Frosty the Snowman. (No idea why she wanted ice water when it’s freezing cold outside, but whatever.) When she finished the water, I asked her to go put her cup by the sink, and she said, “But I don’t want it [the ice] to melt!” I told her that was okay, and that she could go put it in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t melt as fast.

Well, hours later, after tucking Hannah into bed, I went to get a drink from the fridge, and what did I find? A little, half-melted ice cube, sitting on the top shelf! She had put her cup by the sink, just like I asked, and put the ice cube in the fridge. I guess I should have been more specific that “it” was the CUP with the ice cube in it. :)

I thought it was really adorable. I put the ice cube back in the freezer…

Mom

Educating Dad

October 22nd, 2009 Posted in General | No Comments »

Sorry for the lack of updates in pictures and stories lately. It’s been more than a bit chaotic around here lately.

So anyway, I did have a funny story that happened when I was tucking Hannah in tonight that I wanted to share.

The scene: Hannah has been pretending to be a pteranodon from the show Dinosaur Train for like the last week. Tonight I go into Hannah’s room to tuck her in after mom has read a story and given hugs and kisses. Hannah is sitting on her bed with 2 of her stuffed dinosaurs.

Dad: Hey! There are 3 dinosaurs on the bed!
Hannah: No, dad. I’m a pteranodon. Pteranodons are NOT dinosaurs.
Dad, feeling a little sheepish: Oh yeah. I guess you’re right.
Hannah: They’re pterosaurs.
Dad: You’re absolutely right. I guess there are only 2 dinosaurs on the bed.