So far so good

Roaring Camp Railroad with Grandpa

As I mentioned in the last post, we are having a very busy month. We had a wonderful visit with my Dad and Laura, including a trip to Alcatraz and a ride on the Roaring Camp Railroad. We had absolutely beautiful weather the whole time which is especially notable since it rained right after they left. A week later, I happened to be close enough to San Francisco to know that it was too foggy to see the Golden Gate Bridge. But our trip was absolutely lovely.

Enjoying the forest while waiting for the next train (1...2...3...swing!)

I had a great conference with the North American Association of Environmental Educators (aka NAAEE). Because it was in Oakland my coworkers and I were all able to attend so we drove up for the days we attended. I attended the conference on Friday and Saturday and I also participated in an excursion to Muir Woods and Muir Beach on Sunday. The boys are definitely not used to me being gone so much but the conference happened to have a family event where members of the public were invited to participate in activities provided by the conference attendees. And eat popcorn.

Alex eating popcorn at the NAAEE family event

This weekend got off to a...different...start. Because I worked last Sunday I needed to take a day off during the week. It just so happened that Chris was given Friday off for his work on a recent project. While we didn't make BIG plans, we were looking forward to a little time to ourselves with the boys at school. That didn't last long. About 20 minutes after dropping the boys off at daycare we got a phone call informing us that Alex had a fever and needed to be picked up. First, let's be clear: he didn't have a fever when we dropped him off. And actually he didn't have a fever when we picked him up either. Other than the fact that he cried when we dropped him off he has had no other symptoms of anything amiss. But we were there and Alex had been told we were coming to get him so we picked up both boys and went mini-golfing. We had been talking about going mini-golfing ourselves and the boys had never been but we figured it would be pretty empty and a good time to try it out. We were right. We all had a good time but it was definitely not the day we envisioned!

First time mini golfing

It now appears that Alex is getting molars so I am feeling more confident that he is not getting sick. I'm a little paranoid right now about anyone in our house getting sick. I'm not usually the one bathing in Purell because I touched a doorknob. But I am scheduled for surgery in about two weeks and if I get so much as a cold I will have to reschedule. We have set up a lot of logistics to make this work so I just can't even imagine rescheduling. So there is lots of extra hand washing and, yes, Purell, in our lives right now.

Also this weekend, a friend from our Georgia Tech days is visiting. It's been a rather low-key visit as his brother also lives in town so he has been splitting his time between there and here and he didn't really have anything he wanted to do while he was in town (other than visit of course). Tomorrow it is supposed to rain for real and there are several more days of rain in the forecast in the following week. It is still strange to me that that warrants an "extreme weather" warning on weather.com.