Legoland

What can I say, the kids had a great time the 2 days we were in Legoland.  2 days was great -- we did the whole park, and the kids could do repeats on what they liked. We didn't feel rushed, lines weren't too long, and the thrill was right for our kids.  All in all a good choice.

Favorites included frogger, a small-kid drop-you-down ride.

Amazingly enough, Silas was just big enough with shoes on to ride the adult version of this.  It was in the haunted house, and both kids loved it, despite Maeve having some anxiety beforehand.

The kids most loved the rides, although we also quite enjoyed looking at Mini Land. Silas went on his first roller-coaster.  The spinning cups were also a  bit hit, and Maeve, Silas, and Mike even stuck them out for one ride in a short downpour.

Oslo architechure

My favorite 2 buildings in Oslo:  one new and one old.

1. New: Oslo opera house.  It's on the waterfront.  There is tons of construction still going on around it as Oslo has put a highway going next to the port underground, which has opened up lots of land for public spaces.  We walked up and down on the roof of this awesome building.  Amazing views and just great feeling -- one side has a ramp that goes down into the water and there are tons of folks just walking around on top of the building.

This first picture is of Maeve and Silas walking down the ramp from the top of the Opera.  I didn't get a really good photo that shows how cool it was to walk up, around the top with views, and then the kids galloped down.  Just tons of fun.

This is a view of the Opera house from Ekeberg park. 

2. Old:  Stave Church.  The kids and I spent about 5 hours one afternoon in an open-air museum in Oslo with buildings from all over Norway.  Several houses had actors/educators in period costume who answer questions.  We'd been to a similar museum in Bergen, with just Bergen houses, so the kids knew the most fun was to go where the actors were.  The highlight for me was a stave church from the 1200s, that was moved to Oslo a while back from its original location a bit inland.  By some stroke of luck, this church never rotted and was used as a church until the 1800's when it moved to Oslo for the museum (most had no foundation and the pine got wet and rotted).  It was incredibly dark inside, with a lot of intricate wood carving inside and out, very viking-looking with dragons. The kids got very good at spotting the dragons in the carvings around the doors.  See how many you can find!

The staves mean the columns -- the interior of the church was built with single pine trunks -- very tall, very straight.  From back in Viking times, folks would inherit trees their ancestors had identified as good for being a mast, hull etc and 100 years later would cut them down to use. Same for the columns for this church.  The highest part was built around single tree trunks, then a short ambulatory around that, and then the front porch was the shortest.  Very nifty and  very dark, especially after being treated with tar as a weather protection, again Viking technology. But most people apparently were very used to the dark, as poor houses at that time still had a fireplace in the center of the room with a hole in the roof and that was their only light.  This church was built a little over 100 years after Olaf "converted" Norway to Christianity.

I think of the roof as a cross between a Chinese pagoda and the prow of a Viking ship. From the front it just looks like a 4+ level roof, but from the side, the dragon heads are very distinctive. 

The kids' favorite parts of the folk museum were either the playground, getting ice cream, or grinding coffee in one of the houses.  Silas also enjoyed running around the Stave church on its porch. And they liked trying to lasso the reindeer in the very small Sami section.  I'll try to get them to make a best-of list and post it.

Our family in Oslo

We've been travelling around Denmark and Norway for a month, and are on our way to Madrid tomorrow for the rest of 2014.  I haven't posted at all, but on this our last day of a wonderful time in Scandinavia, I just had to post.  Mike missed most of Oslo, travelling back to the US to get our Spanish visas, so the kids and I had seen much of the town and got just a bit off the beaten track today.   This afternoon, we went to Ekeburg Park, a large park with sculptures throughout the grounds.  I would highly recommend it, especially for active kids.  One of the sculptures was of a Moibus, which Mike wanted to see.  In this photo, Silas is climbing on the sculpture and Mike and Maeve are looking at a model moibus so she can understand how it can have only one side when a strip of paper usually has two.  All family interactivity with art. This is so our family!

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

... and it's the produce.  On multiple occasions we bought fruit or vegetables that went bad quickly, such as carrots browning and tasting bad after a day in our refrigerator.  Some of the food seems fine, but it's hard to predict which ones, and we've had the problem at multiple stores.  Maybe Danes are accustomed, like many Europeans, to go grocery shopping frequently, eating whatever they buy within a day or so.

Here's another difference we noticed.  Cat had to visit a doctor for what turned out to be a subcutaneous infection that required antibiotics.  Cat was trying to learn more and, midway through the examination, the doctor asked, "Do all Americans ask so many questions?"

We are going on sabbatical

In a few days, we will leave the country for a year.  We will be in Europe (based in Madrid) from August through December, then in South America (based in Buenos Aires) from January through July.

Mike is on sabbatical (he gets a year off every 7 years without losing his job).  He will work at IMDEA Software in Madrid, then at the University of Buenos Aires.  Cat will quit her current job, though Literacy Source hopes she will re-join them when she returns to Seattle.  While in Madrid, she may also do some work at IMDEA, and she is confident about finding work in Buenos Aires.

Maeve and Silas are registered in the Fernández Moratín public school in Madrid.  The school instruction is in Spanish, which is what we wanted since our whole family speaks Spanish.  We are looking for an apartment that is near the school and has enough space for visitors to stay with us.

We haven't yet figured out our school and housing situation in Buenos Aires.

We have rented out our house for the year.  It has been a good opportunity to get rid of a lot of things we don't really need, and we will be packing quite lightly for our year abroad (one checked bag for the family).

It will be quite an adventure — and this blog may become more exciting as a result.

MacGyvering open a locked bathroom door

On Friday night, my son locked the upstairs bathroom door with the whole family (including him) on the wrong side of it.

No problem, I thought:  this happens sometimes with the ground floor bathroom, and I just poke a screwdriver or Allen wrench into the small hole on the faceplate to release the lock.  But, there was a problem:  when I did so with the upstairs bathroom, the Allen wrench met no resistance, just empty air.

I disassembled the main-floor bathroom lock and determined that there are two ways to reassemble the two halves of the lock.  The intended orientation permits the door to be unlocked from the outside, because the hole in the outside faceplate aligns with the lock release mechanism.  If you rotate the outside half of the lock upside-down before screwing the two halves together, then there are baffles that prevent access to the lock mechanism.  I took off the outside knob and faceplate of the upstairs lock, and I could see the ends of the screws:  the lock had been assembled with the screw heads on the inside, so I couldn't disassemble the lock.

The door opens in, so I couldn't just remove the hinges.

A molding and a firm door fit prevented using a credit card, or even a more flexible card, to card open the door.

I could not pick the lock, because there is no keyhole.

Eventually, I did what MacGyver would have done: I opened the door with a piece of paper, dental floss, and an extension cord.  I tied the floss to the paper, slipped the paper over the top of the door, and lowered it to the bottom of the door where a half-inch gap let me retrieve the paper.  Now, the floss was running from the top of the door to the bottom, on the inside, while I controlled the ends from the outside.  I untied the floss from the paper and tied it to the middle of the extension cord.  I fed the extension cord under the door, making a loop on the inside of the bathroom (with the floss tied to the middle of that loop).  Then I yanked up on the floss, which looped the extension cord over the handle.  By pulling on the cord, I could turn the handle, which unlocked the door.

As soon as the door was open, I disassembled and reassembled the lock so that next time I can easily unlock it from the outside with a screwdriver or Allen wrench.

(A tip of the hat to hakzorz at Instructables for the idea.)

Spring hiking

One weekend in April, the kids and I took advantage of good weather and went hiking both days.

On Saturday we climbed Mt. Si -- an impressive feat for a 4-year-old at 8 miles long and 3150 feet of elevation gain.  At the top, clouds rolled across the ridgeline, but we got a peek through them:

On Sunday we climbed Rattlesnake ledge, an easy and rewarding hike (4 miles, 1150 feet of gain) that we do one or two times a season.  Here are the kids still full of energy at the top:

Silas's 5th birthday party in Meridian Park

Silas's 5th Birthday party in Meridian Park

6/15/2014

Mike and Granddad Paul enjoyed the swings.

Silas had a dinosaur cake.  A T-Rex was chasing a stegosaurus that was calmly eating a fern and there were lots of fern around and water underneath.

Silas an Will, his best friend from pre-school.

José Alvarez Serna in Seattle

José Alvarez Serna is a teacher from Columbia who spent a year as an intern at Maeve's school, McDonald International School.  Both the students and the teachers loved him, because it's great to have another teacher in the room to help managing 25 squirming, excited pupils.

We were even luckier.  José shared our home for three months, from December to March.  We had a wonderful time sharing our lives with him.  Here are a few of our memories.

José experienced snow for the first time, and we built a series of snowmen in our back yard, front yard, and in the park.   They started out small, but some of the later ones were taller than we are!

José celebrated Christmas with us.  There were always extra little hands to help him unwrap -- whether he needed the help or not.

José cooked traditional Columbian cuisine for us.  He even made it vegetarian.

José joined us for eagle-watching on the Skagit river.  We had the good luck to see 5, including 2 on the wing.


José returns to Columbia next month.  We will miss you!

Double rainbow

This was the view from our house on Thursday evening.

Spain: It's a whole other country out there

I was recently in Madrid for a workshop.  Here are some impressions from my trip.  The photos are of the royal palace, which I could see by crossing the street from my hotel.  Walking along its facade was all the tourism I indulged in.

There was very little grass to be found.  Even in public parks, open spaces were often level, bare dirt or sand.  In other cases they were concrete, or sometimes end-on cinderblocks (occasionally with bits of grass growing through the holes).  Wild spaces had scrubby growth in a desert-like ambiance.  Even where there were trees, there wasn't necessarily green grass.

As expected in Europe, especially in a city, I didn't see obese people as I do in the United States.

The colors of clothing were very muted:  dark colors and largely shades of black and brown.  There were no light, bright, or bold colors, though my green Gore-Tex jacket and red sweater were a notable exceptions.  On my way home, I could already see a significant difference in the Paris airport.

The people were friendly and game to talk with me.  Although my complexion didn't fool anyone into thinking I was a native, I felt it was successful -- one day I had about 4 hours of Spanish conversation, which eliminated my feelings of inadequacy about my Spanish.  (I continue to use my Kindle with a foreign-language dictionary.)  Most of my professional interactions were in English.

One night I was eating alone at Yerbabuena restaurant (which I recommend) and an Australian helicopter pilot, hungry for English conversation, started talking with me and moved to my table.  Another night, when I was eating with other American researchers, there were no English menus available and I was able to help with translations.  My first night in Madrid, I was tired and hungry, so I went out to eat at 9pm.  The first thing the waiter said to me was, "Why do you want to eat dinner so early?"

I was very pleased to see that there wasn't much smoking.  This impression changed one night when I was walking back from a restaurant at 12:30am -- an hour at which the restaurant itself was still completely full.  Then I saw quite a few people smoking on the street outside clubs.  I found the streets were empty around 8pm-9:30pm or so, and then filled back up when it became time to go out to eat at 10pm or so.

Another night, I happened across a gang of 40 or so men holding up a huge, misshapen blob of an object, singing and swaying in unison.  They were practicing for the upcoming Easter (?) procession, and their float was covered in plastic to protect it.  There were a couple of police watching the whole thing.  I found that there seemed to be an unusual number of police visible everywhere I want, but maybe it wasn't excessive given the high density of housing and shops.  The city felt safe, though not pristine -- it's a city where people live.

Stairway to heaven

Maeve and Silas want a treehouse.  "It doesn't have to have beds," they say, "it just has to be big enough to play in."  We told them they may have one when they can design and build it.  In the meanwhile, I nailed 2x4s to the trunk of our walnut tree, making it easier for the kids to reach the branches.  That's where I found Maeve yesterday afternoon, reading a book.

Umtanum Creek October 11, 2013

Untanum Creek Canyon
between Ellensburg and Yakima
October 11, 2013

We took a Friday off to go desert hiking.  This is a lovely creek that feeds into the Yakima River.  They say you can see lots of wildlife here, but we only saw a snake, a few birds, and the bushy tail of something darting into the bushes.  We also saw a very cool beaver dam as well as remains of several others.

Mother's Day 2013

May 12, 2013
Mother's Day
Westburg Trail

For Mother's Day, we took a hike on the dry side of the Cascades, in the desert out from Ellensburg.  In a wildlife preserve, it's a four-mile out and back trail up a canyon to the ridge line. It's 1800 feet gain, and there was a fair amount of complaining in the first mile, but then the kids settled down.  It was pretty much up the whole way, with a couple pretty steep stretches.  Silas is just awesome  - not even 4 years old and made it the whole way.


  It was supposed to rain in Seattle, but hasn't, but we did get rain for about 30 miles around the pass. No rain where we were hiking, but pleasently overcast so we're less sunburned and it wasn't too hot.  Just a perfect day for hiking.


The wildflowers were amazing.  The first photo is from near a cairn at the top the ridge.  There were tons of wildflowers.

The second is walking on the ridge, with great views of the Yakima Valley.


The third photo is of a caterpillar nest.  We saw quite a few of the these caterpillars attacking the poor blooming shrubs.  Not sure what they are, but they sure were cool to look at.


 I need to learn the names of the desert wildflowers.  There were flowers of every color, and from the ridge you could see some sides of the canyon that looked like they were snowed on because of the complete coverage of the white flowers.  At one point, we could see white, 2 shades of yellow, orange, red, pink and purple flowers.

Winter Break 2012 X Country Skiing in the Methow

 Skiing in the Methow
Christmas 2012

With my family, my sister's family and my Mom.  Thanks to Mom, Noell, Gary, Elliott, Winnie, and Hugh for making this such a great trip.


The first photo is one afternoon Noell, Mike and I went skiing, and the sun briefly came out!  The conditions and weather were wonderful all week.


Silas and his cousin Hugh had lots of fun in the snow.
































My mom enjoyed snow shoeing.  We broke trail (with Mike) one afternoon around the lake outside our cabin.  Really beautiful.










We also did some sledding and general goofing off.