Kaitlyn's 1st Birthday Party

Today, we had Kaitlyn's first birthday party at our house. 35 friends and family showed up to party with the princess - and what a party it was. Kaitlyn had a great time playing with her friends and showing off for the adults. She did lots of talking, walking and modified crawling (she had a hard time crawling in her dress, so she lifted up her knees and crawled on her hands and feet).

Kaitlyn had a huge mound of presents and even opened a few before becoming bored with the process and started playing with the ones she already opened. Mommy and Mindy (friend from daycare) opened the rest of the gifts. She got a lot of cool stuff and now needs an extra room to keep it all in.

Of course, the highlight of any first birthday is the eating of the first cake. We gave Kaitlyn a chocolate cupcake and let her go to town. At first, she wasn't sure what to do and just licked the frosting off her fingers. After she got a taste of the cake, however, things stated to get a bit messy as she grabbed the cupcake with both hands and squeezed. It ended up all over her hands, face and hair by the time she was done, but I think she liked it.

After several hours of having fun, things started to wind down and Kaitlyn was very tired. After everyone left, we gave her a bath (she definitely needed it after the cake), fed her dinner and gave her her nighttime bottle. She fell asleep drinking the bottle and was in bed at 6:45pm. By contrast, her normal bedtime is around 8:30pm, but she was having so much fun during the party that she missed her afternoon nap, so we knew it was going to be an early night.

Shawnna and I enjoyed seeing everyone and Kaitlyn certainly had a blast. We appreciate all the gifts and they will all be thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks to everyone who took the time to spend the day with Kaitlyn and make this a day to remember.

Monterey / Carmel Trip - June 17-18, 2008

The Monterey Peninsula is one of our favorite places to visit, so we decided that it was time to take Kaitlyn there for the first time to experience it with us. We drove down Tuesday morning, checked into the Monterey Beach Resort and headed to Carmel for the day. We ate lunch at Casanova which was excellent and Kaitlyn tried a new food - bread. We pinched off small pieces of bread and tried to get her to eat it. At first, she was skeptical and had to watch Shawnna and I demonstrate that it is safe to eat. After a little encouragement, she tried it and loved it. She ended up eating quite a bit of bread during lunch and at all the subsequent restaurants we dined in.

After lunch, we walked around all the little shops in Carmel-by-the-Sea and then headed to Carmel Beach. This was Kaitlyn's first time on the beach and we brought some sand toys to play with. As usual, she was cautious at first, but once she got her hands and feet in the sand, she had a ball. We walked down to the water and even got our feet wet - brrrrr. Next, it was time for a nap, so we drove back to the hotel and Kaitlyn slept off the excitement from the day while Shawnna and I watched "Peter Pan" - we're re-familiarizing ourselves with the kid's classics :-). When Kaitlyn woke up, she explored the room for a bit and then we ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. The food was so-so, but the ocean view was outstanding. After filling up, it was back to the room and off to Neverland.

On Wednesday, we spent the day in Monterey. We ate breakfast at First Awakenings which is a great place for breakfast. Then, it was off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We were excited to show Kaitlyn all the various sea life and when we entered the aquarium, one of the greeters told us that we should probably visit the Splash Zone first, before it got crowded. We didn't know what the Splash Zone was, but we took her advise and headed that direction. As it turned out, the Splash Zone was an area for kids of all ages to have some "hands on" fun and Kaitlyn certainly had fun. The biggest hit by far was the water feature where babies and toddlers could get their hands wet and play with the plastic floating fish in the water trough. They even provided little smocks so the baby's clothes wouldn't get wet - yeah right. By the end of it, Kaitlyn was completely soaked from head to toe (good thing we brought an extra change of clothes), but most importantly, she had a huge smile the entire time - pictures and video below.

After that fun adventure, we toured the rest of the aquarium and Kaitlyn got to see all kinds of things that live under the sea. When it was time for lunch, we headed to The Fish Hopper for some great seafood in an amazing location overlooking the bay. With that, our adventure was coming to a close, so we took one last drive down Ocean View Blvd. and headed back home. We made a stop in San Jose to have dinner with my Mom at The Cheesecake Factory and saw Mike Ricci as we were leaving. That was a great way to end a fun vacation.

Little Drummer Girl

Today, we went to lunch with our friends Amy & Dawn and hung out at their new house - congratulations homeowners! Kaitlyn had fun hamming it up at the restaurant and eyeing the two ladies at the table next to us. The real fun came when we went back to the house and played Amy's drums. Kaitlyn was a total natural and immediately knew what to do with the sticks. She banged the snare and played the maracas like a percussion master.

Amy and Dawn, we enjoyed hanging out with you two and your new house is awesome. Now that Kaitlyn got a taste of the skins, we'll definitely have to play again (better your house than ours ;-)

Father's Day Fun

Like most years, we spent the whole weekend celebrating Father's Day (one day just isn't enough). On Saturday, we (me, Shawnna & Kaitlyn) got together with Great Grandpa & Grandma Schmidt, Grandma Cutforth, Uncle Dan, Aunt Kelley and Cousin Andrew. We hung out at Great Grandpa's house in Oakdale and ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant in town. Kaitlyn had fun waving at all the patrons in the restaurant and smiling at the waitress while the rest of us stuffed our faces with some good food. We went back to Great Grandpa's house to open presents, eat cake (we were also celebrating my and Great Grandpa's birthdays) and Kaitlyn played with Cousin Andrew's toy cars and tried on his baseball cap. A fun time was had by all.

Today, Grandma & Grandpa Pride came to our house for a good BBQ lunch. Kaitlyn demonstrated her walking ability (while holding onto her walker), her vocabulary (it makes sense to her) and her smothering ability (Grandpa was not seriously harmed). A funny moment happened when we were watching golf (there were no other sports on) and Tiger Woods made a birdie putt on the 18th hole to force a playoff. The crowd went wild and Kaitlyn lifted up both of her arms and yelled, "Yeaaaaaaaah!" The rest of us followed suit and it became a fun game. Check out the video below.

Thanks to everyone for making my first Father's Day special and memorable.

Hot Air Balloons Attack

We live near the airport in Tracy and on weekends, hot air balloons take off and land there. It's pretty neat to wake up in the morning and look up at these huge balloons making their way through the sky. This morning, the wind apparently wasn't cooperating and two balloons ended up landed in empty fields near our house instead of the airport. The vicinity to our residences brought several neighbors out to their front yards to watch the descent. I'm sure the pilots knew what they were doing and weren't as close to the houses at it appeared, but it made for good neighborly chat. Here's a couple of pictures:

Rockin' and Bowling

Over the past few days, we have visited a friend's new baby in the hospital, attended a 5th birthday party for the daughter of another friend and I took Kaitlyn bowling with my brother and Andrew while Shawnna attended Kelley's baby shower. It's been an eventful and fun few days. Below are some pictures that tell the story (mouse over each one to view the description).

Kaitlyn has a rocking chair in her room that usually holds some stuffed animals. I have put her in it a few times and she can actually rock it by herself. Below is a short video showing the rocker in action - very cute.

Web 2.0 in Plain English

Web 2.0 has been all the buzz lately and basically means any web-based technology that is geared toward information sharing and collaboration (Web 1.0 is thought of as static web pages). Below are 4 "In Plain English" videos that should quickly get you up to speed on some of the main Web 2.0 technologies in use today. The videos are created by Common Craft and are just 3-4 minutes each. So in 15 minutes, you should have a good understanding of what all the buzz is about.

There are several other "In Plain English" videos on YouTube.

Blogs In Plain English


RSS In Plain English


Twitter In Plain English


Wikis In Plain English