Hello! And welcome to January, 2012, a month in which we celebrated many birthdays belonging to friends, enjoyed a meatball cook off (which we did not win--but, hey, they were our first ever homemade meatballs), and made efforts to go out more often. Now that the month is over, I can see by the calendar that our efforts were feeble, but we did see some good friends, which was very nice.

So, on to February, which brought more birthdays of friends, as well as a company ski trip for dave, where he encountered this snowboard decorated with art by Rich Jacobs, whom we'd happened to meet at a dinner a week or so before. That was exciting. The highlight of the month, was a family trip down to Thousand Oaks, where we celebrated Hannukah with Dave's folks and Julie. We had a great time hanging out, playing games, checking out the botanical garden and park, opening presents (lots of presents), playing the A-B-C of what you see along the side of the road game, and snuggling.

Leah, Ron, Gus, and Wylie came out to SF a few days after we got back into town, and we had fun hanging out at the farmers market and rocket. There were also a number of big celebrations at Ada's school, one of which included this display, and the other which took place at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center, where we saw Abraham Lincoln's andirons and some fabulous drummers, all gathered to raise money for the school.

Those were the highlights. Otherwise, just the usual assortment of pictures of Ada and Asher.

Happy PI Day! So much for our resolve to post more often. I'll be back with more news soon--working on sorting and uploading photos--but I couldn't resist the opportunity to mark this day with a celebratory post. 3.14!

Happy New Year! You can guess our New Years Resolution... blog more frequently! Yes, it's been months since our last entry. It's unclear if that's a measure of how busy we are, how uneventful our lives are, or how wiped out we are, but it's probably a combination of all three. We'll let you be the judge of that based on our... Fall blog!

Let's start off with a bang - Ada's 5th birthday! We celebrated at the children's pleasure palace, the inflatable party zone, Pump It Up! The usual suspects, including Grandpa Roger and Grandma Myrna, gathered for an afternoon of sliding, bouncing, batting, eating cake, and Ada adoration.

Next up, Halloween! The two girls in the middle are our neighbors Barbara (10) and Cindy (2). Halloween also marks the birthday of Ada's old friend Emmet, which was celebrated with mustachios. And, we went to a real performance, hosted by evil clowns titled Shevil Dead. It was an all-woman parody of the Evil Dead movies. As stated in the ad for the show... "Unlike other theater companies with blood shows, we do not charge extra for sitting in a blood section. Everyone will be covered in blood... although there will be a small Dry Seats Section." Good times. Good times.

October also held a visit from our friend Jen S. from New York, a visitation from Ada's friends Aine and Olivia, and Ada's new friend Ryder's birthday... also at PUMP IT UP (the inflatable party zone)!

Onto November, where our house was party central. November began for me with a trip to Sao Paolo where I did a training on SAD online which does deforestation detection in the Amazon. The weekend after I got back, we had a big fiesta with Ada's friends and family where Asher got a lot of love.

Then it was Thanksgiving. Grandma Eve and our nephews came, as did Aunt Lenore and Uncle Ali, as well as Grandma Vera, Grandpa Bob, Aunt Julie, Grandpa Roger, and Grandma Myrna. There was much feasting by all, and sundry. And then came digestion.

And that's November! Onto December. We had some holiday parties - Google's and the Grotto's, and then... vacation! Yes!

We went to Kauai! The plane trip over was relaxing, the condo we stayed in was lovely, the beaches were magnificent and profuse with cocks. We drank many, many, many fruity drinks, and saw many, many, many, many rainbows. We visited caves and showed off our San Francisco beach style. We also ate very well - a special mahalo to the Fish Express where we had incredible poke and macadamia nut encrusted ahi. Ono!

And that brings us the the year's end, which we spent thanking ceiling cat for a splendid 2011, and closing out the year with a trip to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

So, welcome 2012! We look forward to writing about our antics within your span. And of course, let us not forget additional
pictures from the lives of Ada and Asher.

Happy Fall! Soon, Halloween will arrive with all its dragons and princesses, but for now, we're enjoying summer weather, warm light, and a few consecutive weeks in which dave has no trips! But, I see that he last wrote over a month ago, so I'll start back then, with our sleepover at Children's Fairyland...


On the Saturday after Ada's first week of school, she, Asher, Dave, and I brought our tent, sleeping bags, and one (ultimately unused) pack-n-play into the Land and set up camp. It was cozy camping; our tent was so close to our neighbor's that I thought the dad in the tent two yards south of ours was actually snoring *in* our tent. Asher was one of the youngest guests, but he slept like a star (perhaps the only one in the whole park who made it through (most) of the night. The night was a lot of fun. We all had a fabulous time hanging out on benches, meeting some new friends, sailing the seven seas, eating al fresco, riding rides late into the night, watching puppet and magic shows, and hanging out with even more new friends.

The next week our friends Jill, Gideon, Kali and Milo arrived. I'm sorry to say that we were having too much fun to take photographs! Henry was also visiting from London, so we had a full house. In fact, we would probably have suffered some sort of empty nest syndrome after their departures had not Sven stopped by to visit. We also had some fun times with Ellen, Keith, Julia, Amy, Kai, Al, Marco, Heather, and Jon.

Ada started gymnastics and swim classes, both of which she claims to enjoy. While she tries out the trampoline and cartwheels, Dave and Asher wander around San Francisco taking pictures of interesting houses.

And suddenly, it's September, with Back to School Night and a volunteer-to-clean-up-the-school-garden day. The highlight of Labor Day weekend was Lainey's tie-dye party, where everyone got dressed up and dyed shirts. Asher spent most of his time off-roading.

September was also when Dave went to Indonesia, where he rated the bathrooms and spent hours in what appears to be the most beautiful airport in the world, complete with butterfly garden. He was there for the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force conference, which took place in Borneo.

While he was away, my mom and I hung out in San Francisco. I helped serve on the faculty of the Spend the Day at the Grotto School, which was a fundraiser for 826 Valencia.

And suddenly, October, time for the school fund-raising walk-a-thon, where Ada surprised us all by walk/running 5.5 miles. I was awed. We all were. Lots of fun was had by all.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is the sand castle contest, which was awesome. We didn't participate, just admired the castles and tomb-like structures, and giant turtles and such.

Well, the sand castles are not the very last thing. I couldn't sign off without first linking to some pictures of Ada and Asher.

Well, it's been a long time since our last post, but we've been busy! Much and more has transpired this summer, including a great deal of travel. Let's just start with a list of the places I'll talk about here: Santa Cruz, Vienna, Rwanda, Monterrey, South Dakota, Big Bear, Children's Fairyland, Portland, Shasta, and… Scandia! You can see why it's been so long between posts.

Life started peacefully enough with a trip to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and Ada's dance recital. Ada's the third from the left in the "recital" link. If you can't tell, the teacher is stage left, giving the girls tips. The first half of June also marked the maiden flight of the baby collared dove who was born at our threshold.

Soon after that, I started my next round of travel. It started with a meeting at IIASA in Laxenburg, which is a suburb of Vienna. The meeting was about validating global land cover maps - exciting stuff. If you want to learn more, here's the program for the meeting. I gave a talk there, and as a side benefit got to see the first lunar eclipse of 2011.

From Austria, I went to Rwanda. First, to the capital city of Kigali, where I presented at a conference on forest cover mapping in the Hotel Rwanda - the focus of events described in the excellent movie of the same name. The hotel, it turns out, was not the ostentatious hotel in the movie, but it was beautiful, and had a fantastic restaurant. I only spent a day in Kigali, so I didn't get a very good sense for it. One thing that surprised me was how clean the city is. One contributor to this is Umuganda, a long standing tradition held the last Saturday of every month during which everyone 18 or older spends from 7am to noon cleaning up public spaces and doing other public works.

After my day in Kigali, I hopped on a bus and drove two hours past teams of people, small towns, and houses to Ruhengeri. The main thing that brings tourists to Ruhengeri is Volcanos National Park where people can go on treks to hang out with the rare Mountain Gorilla. I did not go on a Gorilla trek, but I did trek into the park to measure trees with a group of people from the workshop (and our armed guard). The workshop was organized by the Woods Hole Research Center and was a great success.

That covers June. After Rwanda, we had a quick trip down to Monterey for 4th of July weekend with the cousins, and Ali and Lenore. We hung around the Monterey aquarium, drank wine, and read books.

Next, it was back on a plane for me, this time to exotic South Dakota. There I sent some time with Matt Hansen and his team at the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence, and then headed to the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center. EROS was amazing - it contains the largest civilian archive of remotely sensed imagery in the world. This includes recently declassified spy satellite data, and racks and racks of terabyte tapes. It's also where much of the satellite data are collected. We were lucky enough to be visiting the control room when two satellites were beaming down their data. EROS also houses a large number of scientists, many of whom were interested in what we had to say about Earth Engine. After that I had a quick little visit to the musty Northwoods Resort in Big Bear to present at the Society for Conservation 2011 Annual Conference, and I've been home ever since. Hooray!

The end of July brought an exhausting visit to fairyland, and a visit from cousin Donovan, Grandpa Bob, Grandma Vera, Aunt Julie, and Doris, who was the person who originally introduced my parents to each other.

And now we're into the first two weeks of August. They were big weeks! August 5th was Ada's last day at Big City and on following day she had her graduation ceremony where she said goodbye to her teacher, Miss Evelyn, partied hard, and cleaned out her cubby.

Right after graduation, there was a party at Claire's house, and then into the car to drive up to Portland (with a quick night in romantic Weed). There we stayed with silly Grandma, played with water at the Portland Children's Museum, and splashed around city fountains.

On the way back home we spent a few days around Mount Shasta, staying at our favorite inn there - the Railroad Park Resort where every room is a cute caboose. There's lots to do around Shasta. There's a nice (though somewhat gothic) park in Dunsmuir where much romping occurred, the original Black Bear Diner, the awesome Sisson Museum near Dick Bliss Park which houses old firetrucks, creepy dioramas, a fish remote, and a nearby hatchery swarming with trout that we fed pellets from little fish food vending machines. We ended our trip with a quick visit to Scandia where we spent most of our time in their extensive house of tubes.

Finally, we made it home in time for Ada's first day of kindergarten! What a big girl! And as usual, we end with copious pictures of Ada and Asher.

Happy May folks!
Although this blog is mostly about May, a little April creeps in due to the 44th San Francisco Cherry Blossom festival. We had yummy Udon from Ada's soon-to-be grade school and bounced around inside Hello Kitty. Most of the rest of the month was spent swinging, sliding and sleeping (or not).

The most auspicious event of the month was egg painting with Rossana and Julian, followed by a big egg hunt. Kirsten developed a complicated set of rules which captivated the hunters. Considerably less auspicious, though interesting, was Google I/O where I mostly lurked, but helped out a little during Geo office hours.

And that, my friends, wraps up May (except for pictures of Ada and Asher). Hope yours was as (relatively) smooth as ours.

Happy March! And happy birthday, Asher! Hard to believe that the little guy is already a year old. Here he is in his birthday hat, and here is his special birthday cake, made by his first babysitter, Allison. What can I say? We had much family, much wine, and much fun.

In honor of Asher's first birthday, we converted my office into his bedroom, a place where no one can ever slam the door closed to keep him out (at one point, he was going to move into Ada's bedroom...). We hired a painter to cover the walls (paper intact) with joint compound, then paint, and I spent a couple days moving my things down to the basement while dave moved his things to make room. A huge project! But well worth the time and effort. Asher loves his new room, and we've all been spending a lot of time hanging out there.

This month's highlights include a trip to the NASA Super Special Space Event Day (um, not the formal name, but that's the gist of it), where we got to hang out in a space station capsule; a trip to Fairyland; hanging out on the beach; bike rides in the neighborhood; the bay Area Discovery Museum, where Asher hung out in a cave and Ada made prints; Piggyback rides; more piggyback rides; trips to our local parks; some sidewalk art; and a visit from Al and Marco, who dressed to match our house.

Ada also got her official school portraits. Three different poses!

That's pretty much the news. Dave, too, celebrated a birthday... we went out for a protein-rich Brazilian BBQ at Espetus Churrascaria. The kids stayed home, but you can see pictures of them here and here.