Bonus footage

These pictures didn't really fit with the Christmas theme but I couldn't wait to post them.

Kate doing a surf pose in the wetsuit Jenny and Kendal gave her for her birthday. I love it.

This picture is just... well what do I need to say you can see it for yourself.

Check out my new wheels. In reality this is my friend Kevin's car and I am just baby sitting it. It is hands down the best baby sitting gig ever, so much fun.

A Christmas Story in Pictures

Leaving a note "with" Mimi for Santa on the Eve

Aunt Sarah (with Mike and Annabels help I'm sure) came through again this year with another super cute rain coat and accessories. Kate loves the boots and the umbrella the most.

Singing, joke and story telling, sneezing and dancing Elmo does it ALL. The adults got almost as big of a kick out of this one as KDG did.

Dad did pretty well with this one. Kate's first helmet. If I would have known she would get that excited about it I would have gotten her one months ago.

Kate and Mom checking out their new UGG boots. The question is will Kate wear moms or her own more?

Modeling a new outfit from Gigi and Gramps

Santa doodle.
I hope you all had a great Christmas or whatever you celebrate, wherever you are in the world.
Have a Happy New Year.

It's been a while

Doing Pilates with mom
Playing with dad after Reece's party.



Well it has been a while since I posted anything, and while I don't really have much to say right now, I thought I would at least throw a few recent pictures of Kate up here for you all to enjoy. KDG got her first haircut a few weeks back, that was fun. She is no longer a mullet head.



Since the last post Kate turned two. We had a small party out at Mimi's house in Marin. Aunt Cincie and Grammie Beth came to visit and we had a great time together. Kate has also been to two other birthday parties recently, and even got her face painted at one of them (Kate loves to sing happy birthday and wear birthday hats). Halloween was a blast, Kate didn't really take to trick or treating all that well, but she had fun anyway. What else can I tell you about Kate? She loves to wear hats, hers, moms, dads, it doesn't matter (she looks good in all of them too). She likes to wear mom and dads shoes, and she still loves those rain boots she got last Christmas. Kate takes swimming classes (surfing is just around the corner), gymnastics, and music classes. She loves to play musical instruments, and has quite a collection of them already (pass the aspirin please).
Now Christmas is upon us, Gigi and Gramps will visit for a few days, and that will be fun. Kate is fired up about Frosty, Rudolph and Santa already. As for Angela and me, we are having a blast watching Kate grow up, every other day Angela says this is her favorite age for Kate yet. Let the good times roll.
Ok that's it for now, I'll try not to let another 6 months pass before posting again.
See ya!

The 4th in Florida

News Flash - Florida is very hot and humid in July. Angela Kate and I just got back from a long weekend in Florida helping Pam (Angela's mom) get ready for her big move back to the bay area in August. We had a lot of fun, got a lot done to help and... got to go swimming at one of Pam's friends house. Swimming with KDG is soooooo much fun, and I finally got the chance to use my new water proof camera that I bought specifically for this blog. Of course the idea was to take pictures in the Ocean surfing and windsurfing, but a trial run in the pool was fun. Anyway as you'll see I clearly need some practice with the photography side of things but, I have the "artistic" side of things down (sort of). That's it for now stay tuned for another post soon with more pictures of the trip taken in dryer settings.
Cheers.

Tahoe 2008

We made our annual summer trip to Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago and stayed in the same house at Squaw that we did last year. This year our Friends Stephen and Lucero joined us for a few days. Little did we know that there would still be snow on the mountains (in June?) but that didn't stop us from having a good time. Dudley got to go for a swim in the lake, we drank margaritas and sat in the sun on the deck. We also chased Kate around the house quite a bit. Note to self, a four level house has a lot of stairs. Kids like to climb UP stairs, but they are not so good at getting DOWN. We made it unscathed but it was a bit of a work out following Kate up and down, up and down, up and...

Pre-Programmed Cute

Hi everybody long time no blog, hope your all enjoying the summer so far. Kate, Angela, Dudley and I are all doing well, staying busy with all the fun stuff that life throws at us on a daily basis. Kate is now involved in all kinds of activities gymnastics, music class and swimming. She has become quite chatty as well and now repeats the last word of pretty much every sentence that she hears.
It is amazing to me how she learns new things, some of which almost seem pre-programmed. For instance one morning a few weeks ago I was getting ready to leave the house for work and she walks up to me grabs my hands and proceeds to stand on my feet. So we walked around the house like that for a little while, and it has now become a daily routine before I leave in the morning. Oh and have you ever seen a kid walk up to a pair of shoes that are like 10 times to big for them, slip their feet in and start to walk around? Kate is doing that now, all of the time. How many times have you seen a kid do these things, countless times right? But who teaches them to do it? I didn't Angela didn't she just did it. Pre-programmed cute!
The other day one of my colleagues who has a daughter a few months younger than Kate asked me what new things she was doing. At first I thought not much really, she is just doing the same cute stuff she always does in between throwing little tantrums, sticking her bottom lip out (even further) stomping her feet and saying "NO, no, no". Well that is kind of new actually. Here are a few other new things:
Running (seriously the other day I put her down and she just took off into the crowd)
Dancing and singing (so far thankfully she has a better voice than Angela and I put together)
Every night at bath time as soon as the last piece of clothing is removed and before we can get her in the tub she takes off streaking around the house giggling with Dudley chasing after her licking her naked butt.
I think that is the image I will leave you with for now.
Until next time,
Adios.

Busy Bee

I really wish that I could post more often but we've been pretty busy lately.
I remember my grandmother always calling me a "busy bee" when I was a kid. Then calling my little sister Sarah the same thing while she would be running around years later. I gotta say that the first thing that comes to my mind watching Kate run around the house these days is "busy bee". To give you a brief update things here are the same, we're having a blast.

Rain, rain and more...

Kate singing the rainy day blues
I don't think it has stopped raining since my plane landed at SFO last Wednesday evening. This is a really good thing for snow in Tahoe, but if you (more importantly I) can't go to Tahoe to take advantage of it-it really doesn't help. KDG has figured out that she can crawl faster than she can walk and so that is still her preferred mode of transportation. Every now and again she takes a few laps around the house in two wheel drive instead of four, but she won't be entering any field and track events for a while. With that being said, a new source of entertainment in the house is watching Kate push her dirty clothes basket around. With all the toys from various friends and family that have wheels on them for her to push around, doesn't it figure she would choose to push a wicker basket around instead? It really gets amusing when she goes from hard wood to carpet as she gets that determined look and squished up face and starts grunting as she heaves the basket up and sets back out on her way. Hilarious!
Here she goes with the basket

Today in history:
1912 Jackson Pollack birthday (a good day).
1959 Vince Lombardi was named head coach of the NFL's Green Bay Packers (a good day).
1986 Space shuttle Challenger exploded 72 seconds after lift off (a really bad day).

One of the couples I was very pleased to have met on my recent windsurf trip to Baja, Jerry and Janice Evans who live on Cape Cod, have been posting the daily weather report on the Vela-Baja web site. Being able to "check in" with the people and conditions down there has almost made it an extended trip for me which has been very cool (there is even a mention and photo of yours truly). As a result I have added a few links we like to the blog. Vela.com, Jerry's World (in case you are wondering what the wind is doing in Chatham, MA) and Angela's Pilates studio homepage (can't believe I didn't have that on there already).
I still haven't managed to sit down and figure out how to post video so these new pictures of Kate will have to do for now.
Ok thats it, take care wherever you are, and I hope to hear from you soon.
This one is for Mimi

Baja and Big News

Talk about heaven, look at all those sails and boards rigged on the beach ready to take sailing on the sea of Cortez
Two tents like this full of sails.

Sunset behind the Vela center with the croquet court lights visible on the right side
Why is it that just having your passport in your pocket makes you feel good? Just got back from a week in Baja and had a great trip (more to follow on that) and the big news is... Kate Dylan is walking! That's right she now stands up at will and takes off. In the time I was gone she is longer (taller) makes all kinds of new sounds and is definitely saying something, we just haven't quite figured out what language it is yet. The other day she just started taking steps on her own with a big smile on her face.
On less important news my passport has another stamp in it, another visit to Mexico and this time returning with out any broken bones. Baja was great. The wind didn't quite cooperate as much as I would have liked but I got a couple of days of amazing sailing, a couple days of marginal sailing and a few of days of absolutely no wind. I met a few people who qualify for the most annoying person in the world competition (if there is one) and I met some really amazing people as well. Had bonfires on the beach under a full moon, came in second in the Los Barriles international croquet competition (croquet is taken very seriously at the Vela windsurf resort at the hotel Playa del Sol and an international croquet competition is held almost every evening and twice on no wind days) and I also did some stand up paddle boarding, which I really enjoyed.
View From the Monument
You guessed it... The Monument

It turns out that Los Barriles is a world class mountain biking location as well as windsurfing and kiting destination. So with the wind not showing up a few days I decided to take a couple of rides. First trip was to the monument south of town, a decent ride with a fair climb (it's hard to tell by these pictures because the only camera I had was the Dick Tracey sized waterproof camera that Jenny let me borrow for my trip). the pictures show the view from the mountain looking north up the coast to towards where I was staying. The second ride was out the road to nowhere. I rode about 9k out before turning around, that's right 18 kilometres round trip which I realize is not much for some of you but for me that much time on a bicycle seat is almost worse than the way my legs felt from peddling. The road to nowhere was a multi million dollar highway that was started by a local politician and after getting about halfway to wherever they had planned they ran out of money and the road just stops! There is apparently a small village at the end but basically you ride through a series of climbs through these dessert mountains up one side down the other and then do it again for something like 50 km. I made it up the first hill which is 9km up hill with the angle getting steeper and steeper as you go. As I started to coast down the other side I immediately started to think that I couldn't possibly climb back up this hill again today and quickly turned around took a picture (with the tiny Dick Tracey waterproof camera ) and headed
Looking down the road to nowhere towrds Los Barriles
back to the beach.
The second day of good sailing I busted out the waterproof camera. I attached it to the boom on port tack (headed back to the beach) and snapped away at a few pictures hoping to capture some of the feeling of blazing through the big swell and choppy water that I was enjoying carving through at high speed. Unfortunately what I captured where embarrassing pictures of my ear and double chin. What is even worse is that this was the last big wind day of the trip so I never got a chance to play around with the angle of the camera. After seeing the results of my first efforts I think I could have gotten a few coll shots with the camera mounted on the mast for better a perspective. Oh well maybe next time. Anyway for your viewing pleasure I have attached a few of the less painful shots.


Nice chin!
As fast as vacation goes and as much as I cant wait to get back on the water or have a seat at an uncrowded pool side palapa bar to sip on a margarita after a draining day of windsurfing, hearing Kate's giggle as I tickle her leg and seeing Angela's smile as I walk in the door makes me very happy to be home.