It's been so long since my last post that I actually had some problems remembering how to post an article... Twitter is leading to the slow death of this blog...

Anyways, I've posted some pics from our vacation to Cabo in the first week of May.  The Yans were able to join us on this trip and we had an awesome time hanging out with them on the beach and by the pool.

Dex enjoying his first taste of Mexico

Scenic hike at Emerald Bay

My first post about our trip to Lake Tahoe only covered the first four days of the week-long trip, and I only now got a chance to post about the remainder of the trip.

We had planned on doing three separate hikes over the last three days of the trip but it suddenly became extremely windy, making it too cold and uncomfortable, even in the sun.  We drove out to the hiking sites and could not last more than a few minutes in the wind before retreating back to the warmth of the car.

The wind finally died down on Saturday and we were able to make our way to Emerald Bay and hike down to Vikingsholm Castle.  Unfortunately it is off season so they did not have any tourist guides or information set up, so we didn't know too much about it, but it was nice to look at.  :)

The castle itself is really more of an old wooden mansion than an actual castle, though it did have some rock-based exteriors.  Due to it being offseason, the castle was all locked up so we could only wander around the grounds.  Cam and Popo took a look into the castle through some boarded up windows, and Cam got spooked out - he was scared and I had to hold him as we left the castle courtyard.

The hiking path to the castle starts near the top of a mountain and runs just over a mile til you get down to the shoreline where the castle is located.  It's a pleasant hike down with a few stop points to take some shots of the scenery.  The hike up is a completely different matter, as you're battling a climb that is much steeper than you realized on the way down, and of course you're tired from the initial hike down.  We had to take a couple rest stops and Cam only lasted about 20 feet before he was sitting in the stroller for the rest of the hike out.  We struggled our way out and then rested some more at the top before heading back to the hotel.

During the cold and windy days, we spent some time just hanging out in the hotel room.  At one point, Sara's mom was messing around with Cam and asked him "Are you Dexter?" to which Cam would respond with "No!  I'm Cameron!!" and that evolved into "Who's Dexter, who's Cameron" with Cam responding correctly, and then Sara's mom threw in a "who's Jim?" and lo and behold Cameron said "dada" out of nowhere.  We were absolutely amazed, and followed up with "who's Sara?" and he said "mama"!!  Holy cow Cam knows our names?!?  That's crazy!  We tried various different ways of asking who we were and he correctly identified us, either calling us "dada/mama" or even "Jim/Sara" - nothing's cuter than hearing your two year old refer to you by name.

I tried asking him our names again recently and it looks like he's forgotten our names.  I'm guessing that Cam picked up on the name association during Sara's mom visit but since she's left he hasn't heard 'Sara' or 'Jim' nearly as often so the association to us is not being reinforced and has probably worn off.  It was pretty cool while it lasted.

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All in all, it was a great time at Lake Tahoe.  It's too bad that we lost two days due to inclement weather.  I wish we had headed out for the hikes in the first half of the week when the weather was nice, but this just means we've got a couple of hikes waiting for us on our next trip to Lake Tahoe.

I've added lots of pictures to the Lake Tahoe album, new stuff starts at picture 71, right after 'Dex got to enjoy the great outdoors'.  Enjoy!

It's been over 2 weeks since my last post - almost half of Dexter's life!  It's been very busy the last couple weeks; I'm typically up at 6:40am, get myself and Cam ready for the day, then out the door at 7:20am, drop off Cam at daycare, head to the office, back home by about 6pm, have dinner, bathe Cam at 7pm, get him in bed and asleep by 8:30-9, usually fall asleep with Cam and wake up at 9:30, then do whatever household cleanup/chores, then it's usually past 10pm by the time I get to get on the computer, and the past couple weeks that time has been devoted to doing work rather than blogging or posting photos... but anyways, enough about me.

We're in the middle of a one week vacation to South Lake Tahoe right now.  We're staying at the Marriott Timber Lodge which is a ski resort and is located in a little ski village centered around a big gondola that heads up the mountain to the ski runs.  It's not yet ski season, but past the summer tourist season, so it's pretty dead out here.  The ski village feels deserted but it's actually kinda nice - we've got the run of the place and there are no crowds anywhere.  Cam has loved climbing all over the rocks and jumping everywhere, and he yells out "Ah-bot!" (his word for 'robot') when he sees the gondola.  Sara and I were here three years ago (gosh I can't believe how young we looked before our kids) and enjoyed riding the gondola; too bad it's closed til ski season starts this time, we were looking forward to taking Sara's mom and kids up there.

Enjoying the firepits

We've had fun so far; the weather's much cooler here compared to San Francisco so we've enjoyed sitting beside some firepits at night while munching on smores.  We walked to a beach which was completely empty - it was so quiet and peaceful, I could have gone down for a long nap in the sun - which Cam did.  We've also gone on a nice hike through the woods, and we saw salmon attempting to swim upstream to spawn!  That was seriously cool.  Spawning season runs from mid September to the end of October, so we only got to see the tail end of it - the resort concierge described it perfectly: "you'll probably see more dead than live fish."

We're only halfway through our trip so far.  Tomorrow we're hiking to some waterfalls, so I'd better get to sleep and get some rest.  Enjoy the pictures!

We flew to Orlando to hang out with Chuck for a couple days prior to our cruise.

Sara, being the seasoned traveler that she is, booked the end seats in a row of three.  When we got to the airport, they said the flight was full so we figured we're out of luck on having an empty seat between us, but lo and behold, nobody showed up to claim that seat and we had a lot of room available for Cam.

Goofing on the flight

We took full advantage of the seat - of course when Cam was napping he was laying across the seat, but when he was awake and started to fuss, we sat him upright and buckled him in.  He loved playing with the buckle, and once he started to lose interest we gave him the earphones and he enjoyed hanging them off his head and looking like a complete goofball.  We actually left Cam buckled in the seat for the landing and a couple flight attendants passed by and didn't say anything - either Cam looks legit or they were just too tired to bother.

On a side note, he plays with my earphones at home and he actually tries to put them in his ear.  I wonder where he learned that from - I've never used the earphones in front of him.  He must just be naturally brilliant.

Anyways, back to Orlando.  It was great fun staying in Chuck's great condo for a couple days.  He's in a very nice area that has many amenities within walking distance.  There also happens to be a lot of senior citizens in his area, as evidenced by the numerous Seniors crossing signs.  :)

We spent the day at a nearby park with a very nice kids playground and Cam had tons of fun on the slides.  At the end of the slide, he'd just lay there on the bottom with a huge grin on his face.  In the evening, we went down to Downtown Disney and Cam was totally in awe over all the shiny flashing lights everywhere.  He got a little scared at the TRex cafe when the big animatronic dinosaur started to move and growl, but he loved the Lego store's gigantic lego creations.

Overall we had a lot of fun hanging out with Chuck in Orlando.  Take a look at the pictures.

We spent a week in Cabo San Lucas at the beginning of September.

This was our first time using our brand new timeshare, and we had a fantastic time.   more »

Fun in Cabo

I'd been meaning to write a big post about our trip to Cabo San Lucas, but it's dragging out so I'll forgo the nicely written bit ("nicely written" is in the eye of the beholder, of course) and just go with some bullet points of interest from our trip.

- wasn't sure what it would be like to vacation with Cam.  Turns out it's relaxing but not restful - not much sleep for us, but we didn't do anything so we just relaxed.
- we went on a whale watch cruise for free, courtesy of attending a timeshare presentation.  Didn't see many whales, but it was nice to sail on the water, especially when they cruised right into Land's End with all the big rocks and the famous arching rock - El Arco
- it was on the cool side there.  Daytime temps in the mid 20s which is comfy but not hot as we were expecting for Mexico. Our resort was a big wind tunnel so it was always cold walking around the resort
- Sea of Cortes was freezing cold... not that it stopped me from swimming in it.  It was also ridiculously salty; I had trouble diving down deeper than about 3 feet and there were white salt stains on my trunks once I dried out on the beach.  I've never seen that before.
- it was great fun with Cam in the kiddie pool and on the beach, and everybody loved him
- Cabo itself is a weird mix of ghetto run-down Mexican town with big money luxury stuff for tourists: the tourist Golden Zone right on the marina featured swanky open-air lounges and restaurants right on the water and a beautiful (and expensive) mall, while right across the street was scary back alley-type buildings housing seedy looking shops.  Great restaurants over there, though
- speaking of restaurants, we had some really great food, including taking a freshly caught fish to a restuarant and having them prepare it four different ways for us.  We didn't catch the fish ourselves; it was given to us by the timeshare seller who hails from Edmonton
- we had a good time there, and enjoyed it so much we actually ended up buying into the timeshare at the presentation - maybe that's why he gave us a fish.  :)  Now we have a great vacation destination every year at a good price

Check out the pictures of our Cabo trip.