SPL's Blog

Sorry for the dearth of blog posts – -we’ve been very busy doing, and not so busy bloggin’ 🙂

Here are some photos from the last few weeks:

Public Safety Fair in Sunnyvale: October 13, 2007 — This is the annual event that Sunnyvale (our city) hosts at one of the local fire stations.  Rides on , in police cars, and opportunities to explore and all the gear that protect the police officers/firefighters etc. abounded.  The best part was that , Scott and the trio were there too so we hung out with them for awhile :-).

: October 19-21, 2007 (Make sure you scroll through the photos by clicking the arrows under the "Kathy’s Photostream" @ the right.  We had a quick but fun visit with Al, Lori, and their almost 3 year old son, AC.  He and SPL share some characteristics: curious, funny, like trains.  SPL had fun showing AC all of his toys and books and AC was understanding that SPL was still learning to share. 

Some Hawaii Photos: October 24-28, 2007 — we had a fun 5 days on the Big Island.  John was attending a conference and SPL and I tagged along.  We also had some friends who attended the conference too — one of SPL’s friends from — so that was an added bonus.  She and her parents were on our outbound flight to Kona too so that made that trip a little easier (5 hours each way — and we got the non-stop, direct flight :-).  SPL loved the footwash @ the beach the most, I think.  Plus the toys he scored at the conference’s family BBQ on Friday afternoon. 

While dad was @ the conference, SPL and I went to check out a sea horse sanctuary.  Did you know that all 34 species of sea horse are endangered?  Neither did we.  And SPL got to see them up close and personal as well as feed them *tiny* red volcanic shrimp (which are also becoming endangered).  This couple opened up the sanctuary and started selling sea horses directly to consumers a number of years ago and all their techniques are proprietary.  It was amazing to me to hear they are animals who demonstrate many different emotions as well as depend on a partner throughout their lives (they have to be sold in pairs — if they’re separated from their life mate, they eventually die 😦  Fascinating stuff.

As a family,on Saturday, we went to see the Volcano National Park which houses Kiluea.  No lava flow, but vents were very active and we walked on the flow from the most recent eruptions. The eruption from 1954 took 36 days to finish and 36 years!?!?!  for the lava to dry.  Amazing. 

And a lava tube too — very cool.

And for me, the best part, besides spending time with John and SPL, was seeing green sea turtles up close and personal (theyon the beach by our hotel — we saw 17 one night!!!?!) and swimming with them for 20 minutes on Sunday morning before our flight home (best, most relaxing 20 mins of recent memory — and it was literally 50 feet, or so, from the shore).  I also saw incredibly diverse and colorful fish and even an eel!  I can’t wait until SPL can swim so we can do this together.

And a shout out to mom and dad who completed their!  Double w00t w00t!