Too much Lollu (mischief?) . . .

The kids have now discovered email.

Jr. always had an email account. Now that the little one has an email account they are way too into communicating by email.

This has led to some ridiculousness in the house with the ipad (with keyboard) being taken over by the kids to check email every 5 minutes!

Apparently the keyboard is easier for email typing than the swipe on screen keyboard.

There are also some funny conversations like this one..

Jr. : Why did you spill your food on the carpet?

LO : I will let you know by email!!!

Me and San : WTH !!!

This takes the cake..

Jr. from Computer room : I have sent you an email ! have you received it yet?

LO from living room (literally 6 feet away) : I am checking it right now. I will send you a reply soon..

Or this one :

LO : Daddy, I have no new emails. Can you send me one please?! (she is sitting 5 feet away!)
On the bright side the house is quieter with the kids on the computer but at this rate their social skills will take a nosedive in record time.

It is also truly amazing to watch a girl who has just turned 6 figure out email, use the features, ask inquisitive questions which would give some valuable feedback to email providers and get totally engrossed in it to the point that she checks email every 10 minutes!

Tomorrows technologists in action !

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The See Saw continues

First it was the infected hand followed by a course of heavy antibiotics with side effects.

That ended just on Thanksgiving day to give me some time to recover, shop, go see low tides, spend a few days with the kids and be happy and then. .

things turn again with severe pain in the left foot that got to a point where I could not even step on it.

The doctors at my hospital are very happy to have a regular repeat customer. The family meanwhile is accusing me of poor work life balance, putting other things above doctor visits, pig headedness (if there is no such a word, there is now!) etc. etc.

To their credit the doctor was visited today and after many x-rays and tests they declared that a tendon has been damaged and continued use of the tendon has damaged it further.

Now it has come to resting the leg, some more pills and walking with crutches for a couple of days.

My days of staying off pills with yoga are long forgotten now. Praying to all the gods I know and all the gods I don't know to make this go away as fast as possible so the hot room can be visited again!

Going without yoga is turning me into a man with PMS and that is not a good sign..

Here's to a better tomorrow...

ps. On a slightly brighter note, the Shutterfly photo album from the trip was delivered. It is fantastic. Next time we go on a family trip, we are definitely going to make an album..

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Negative tide day

Friends notified us that yesterday was "negative tide day" and a rare occurrence that coincided with sunset time!

The weather was perfect and there were more than 2000 people in Half moon bay to walk the tide pools and show kids the little critters that are found in the few hours where the water recedes far back (things which were 6 feet underwater come to within a foot of water levels during a 2 hour period)..

We walked 2+ miles with the kids on slippery sea weed, kelp, gravel and barnacle covered rocks to see some amazing little ecosystems!

Here are some photographs..

The pelicans and gulls were enjoying the critters as well, albeit differently! They celebrated tide pool day as early dinner day!

When the water receded there was a 500 feet stretch of sand that was almost a marsh glistening in the sunlight..

Snails and mollusks everywhere in all kinds of colors, trying to hide under the rocks, but not fast enough.

This fish was well camouflaged in a very small tide pool. An older experienced tide pooler?! pointed it out to us as we were asking him "there is nothing there! what are you photographing?"

What looks like an ugly bag is a living creature which shrinks to the touch and supports a zillion other organisms that are piggy back riding on it..

We saw four different starfish, a chocolate brown starfish..

A red and gray softer starfish (softer to touch)..

An orange starfish

and a pink starfish

We also saw some sea anemones that were simply gorgeous!

We made our way back out of the tidepools towards the rocks to enjoy what was definitely  one of our best sunsets to date!

When you have a whole bunch of kids on a beach all excited and hyper the energy level of the place is up a few notches and that adds to the experience.

Just wished that the tripod which was in the van had also been lugged around to capture the colors post sunset. Another day, another time!

This is the best I could get with a high ISO sin tripod.. It was too wet and slushy with kids and dogs running around to place camera on anything and try a timer shot.

The time spent at the beach and the tide pools was worth it. It took us an extra hour to get to the beach because of traffic and we also spent one hour getting out of the parking lot to the freeway! So if you do plan on doing this next year (or the next negative tide day), get there at least two hours before the low tide starts and make dinner plans in one of those beach side restaurants and drive home with less traffic later.

If you have kids in the under ten age group, the tide walk is strongly recommended!

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