The Taber Family Blog

Well, let me start off with yesterday actually. We started the day in Roseburg, OR and drove through the Umpqua Valley looking at beautiful valleys, mountains, farms and rivers. This is such a pretty part of the world and if you have the resources and time, living out here would be wonderfully private and peaceful; not to mention gorgeous. There are quite a few Pinot Noir wineries around this region, but they all open at 11am, so we weren’t able to pop into any of them as we passed through.

We found our way back to I5 and headed north toward Portland and on to the Seattle area. As we entered into Washington, the skys turned darker and we started to get some rain. The variation in weather was dramatic from Vacaville’s hotness, to the mild late September weather in the Pacific Northwest. It began to get a bit chilly and the forecast for the entire week included the chance of rain every day. We stopped off for lunch in the little town of Centralia, WA at a great little beer pub called McMinimen’s Olympic Club.

We stopped later on at the giant Cabela’s outdoor store in Lacey, WA and finally made the final drive into Port Ludlow and to my parent’s lodge. Cloudy skys, sprinkles of rain, but nothing bad enough to spoil our arrival.

And then today we woke up, had a yummy breakfast in Chimacum at the Chimacum Cafe. Fantastic comfort food! And the scenery around here is simply beautiful and the people are so nice and friendly. We took a brief tour of some nice properties for sale in Port Ludlow and finally headed back to the house to get ready for the trip into Seattle for the A’s and Mariner’s game tonight.

My parent's wedding location

In front of the B&B

Inside the Black Sheep Pub

Denise and I left this morning on our week’s vacation to Seattle. We’re spending time with my parents at their Port Ludlow home and some other cool things around the area. One of the highlights for this week is our planned attendance at the Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariner’s baseball game on Tuesday night at Safeco Field. I’m stoked!

Anyway, we started our drive this morning and made it into Ashland, Oregon for a nice lunch at a great little English style joint called the Black Sheep Pub. I really enjoyed the pub styled interior and the food was great. They even had a live performance by a group of players, enchanting us with some Irish melodies.

Ashland is such a pretty city, and this time of year is particularly exciting because of the world renowned annual Shakespeare Festival. So many theaters around town, all playing various plays by the festival’s namesake. We’ll have to come back through here and catch a few of them and see some more of this beautiful little hamlet.

Our evening ended as we pulled into the city of Roseburg. We’ll stay here for the night and head out in the morning, possibly making the rest of the journey into Port Ludlow.

More to come..

Elizabeth and Rose (and friend)

Denise, Lauren and Elizabeth traveled to Stockton on Saturday to attend a 4-H event. Although there were so many other rabbits entered into this event, Elizabeth’s mini rex rabbit Rosalina landed a first place ribbon for “Variety”. She was extremely excited about this and told me her rabbit would most likely get a “leg” for this. I had no idea what this meant so I had to look it up. Below is what I found:

“Leg - a leg is earned by winning in an ARBA-sanctioned show as long as there are three exhibitors and five rabbits competing for the win.  For example, first place in a class of five or more bunnies showed by three or more different exhibitors would earn a leg.”

Lauren will be getting into raising a rabbit very soon as well. Her future mini-lop is to be born this week and soon after she’s weaned, we’ll have another rabbit in the house. I believe her name will be Daisy!

Doomed Pinata	Wyatt
Taking a swing	Elizabeth
Elizabeth	Lauren taking a swing

Two weekends and two swim day birthday parties. Wyatt’s 16th birthday was on the 19th and he had some friends over last weekend for a great birthday party. They mostly swam in the backyard, but it’s 2009 and almost all boys his age have laptops now, so there was a lot of networked online gaming between all these boys too. They really enjoy World of Warcraft. We got a nice pinata for Wyatt and everyone did very well smashing it to pieces and raining down the candy.

And then this weekend, we had Lauren’s 11th birthday party. Even though Lauren’s 11th birthday is on the 1st of Sept, Saturday was a great Summer for a party and swimming. It was quite warm (102 actually), so we set up the shade room in the back yard for the kids to find a place out of the sun. Lots of Lauren’s school friends came and the whole rest of the day was filled with swimming, eating, birthday cake, presents and lots of fun for kids and adults alike.

Gran Torino

Wow. We saw a really good movie last night. I’ve been wanting to see Gran Torino for quite a while, but it’s been difficult because I know it’s not suitable for kids, which means Denise and I can only watch it when the kids are not with us. Well, last night we were kidless again, so we set aside some time and decided to finally watch it. We both really enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of a crusty, racist Korean War veteran living in a working class neighborhood that had long since evolved into a multicultural melting pot. You really want to hate him for his outdated and close-minded ways of looking at other people and life, but by the middle of the movie you begin to root for his eventual transformation.

The movie is quite heavy and has some very course language and violence, but the overall message is what’s important. And that message is that we all have to live together, protect each other, help others even when it feels wrong and just get along. The ending of the movie was quite unexpected for both Denise and I, but it totally made sense and worked perfectly. It had us both in tears. Awesome!

McNear's Beach

This was a really nice weekend overall. It started in a relaxing sort of way with my company picnic on Friday. The picnic was held at McNear’s Beach Park near San Rafael, CA. What a beautiful location for a company picnic. The weather was spectacular and since we were on the beach (on the SF Bay), the panoramic views were amazing. Other than a moderate sun burn on my noggin, the picnic was a great way to start the weekend.

Saturday afternoon, Denise and I became kidless (girls with their dad, and the boys with their mom), so we decided to have a date night out. We enjoyed a great dinner at Los Reyes in VV and then saw the new movie called Funny People.  Needless to say it was pretty darn funny. On Sunday, I decided to finally build the raised garden for Denise I had always been promising. I found a great building plan on the Sunset.com website and we went out and purchased the lumber and other materials. For the rest of the day, I was cutting, drilling, driving screws and applying redwood waterproofing oil. The wooden box for the garden turned out amazingly well and looks fantastic. Now I have to sink it into place in the back yard and get some good soil to fill it up. After that, it’s all Denise’s!

Brief Encounter

And to finish off a great weekend, Denise and I had a wonderful dinner at my sister’s house. Our tradition of watching old time movies led to us enjoying an oldie from 1945 called “Brief Encounter“. The premise centers on a man and a woman who meet at a train station in England, fall in love and have to ultimately decide what to do with their improper relationship. They are both married to other people and have families. Sprinkled throughout the movie were musical moments from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. One of my favorites! The movie was filmed in England at the tail end of WWII, which meant the film crews had to find locations (like train stations) far enough away from London to avoid by the nightly blackouts because of the threat of bombing attacks by Germany. Interesting stuff.

Wyatt with muzzle flash

I’m lagging on updates these days, but there really isn’t much of a change day to day lately. I’m feeling better all the time, can eat pretty much what I want (gently though) and am back to work 3 days a week now. I still have a bit of the facial rash left and acne seems to crop up from time to time, but I really can’t complain after some of the other things I’ve been through.

Anyway, I forgot to blog about this last weekend, but the kids and I had a great time over at the local shooting range here in Vacaville. The idea came from Wyatt and I thought it would be fun to go shoot at some targets once again too. However this time when we talked about it, the girls became very excited about coming along and doing some shooting too. The reality of shooting a real pistol is quite a bit different than video games and TV, so I thought about it for a bit and decided that after a right gun safety review with all the kids once again, they would be well prepared for some target practice.

Grant with muzzle flash

After the gun safety class put on by yours truly, we headed over to the shooting range and we were almost there, when Elizabeth decided after some deep thought that this wasn’t really something we wanted to do, so she and Denise elected to go shopping instead. Lauren was a rock and said she would stay the course. Once at the shooting range, we rented our ear and eye protection and and were assigned a lane in the range. At this point you can clearly hear the loud explosions coming from deep inside the range and I could see Lauren was starting to get nervous, but still determined to join in.

I always forget how loud guns are when they are fired in close proximity. It never fails to remind me how silly TV and movies are that show people firing guns and not grimacing from the ear pain. Even with ear protection the loud blasts will always get your attention. So we set up our targets and took turns with my little .40 cal Glock pistol. The boys did great and drilled their targets very well.

Lauren is ready!

When it came time for Lauren’s turn, she decided she wasn’t quite ready and urged us to keep going. However after a few turns went by, I assured Lauren that I would be right behind her and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. Hearing this, she decided she would try shooting, as long as I was right behind her and even holding/bracing her hands. Easy enough. Lauren stepped up and fired off two rounds right into the target. I was so proud and I could tell she was proud of herself too for overcoming her fears.

4th of July in Vacaville

I love 3 day weekends! I get caught up on things around the house, things around the yard and on holidays like this one, we get to spend time with friends and watch the local fireworks. Except for the constant wind everyday, this has been a great weekend so far, and today we’re going to have our July “5th” back yard BBQ and hopefully do some swimming too. Not too sure about that because it’s ridiculously windy today and a bit on the chilly side outside (so far today).

Last night we all piled into the suburban and drove over to the Costco parking lot (one of the highest places in town) to watch the fireworks. Well I guess last year hundreds of people left tons of tailgater garbage strewn around the parking lot, that this year they closed it off entirely. So most folks ended up parking on the street or on the hill nearby, like us! We had a pretty good view of the event albeit a bit far away. It was nice.

Earlier today we drove to Walnut Creek and did some shopping and on our way home we stopped at Chevy’s in Pleasant Hill. I know, it’s a chain and often a roll of the dice as to the quality of the food, but we were very pleased with how clean the place was, how nice the staff was and how good the food was too. I had the fajitas that Denise and I shared and I was able to eat them pretty well. I also had my first Margarita of the year. I was worried about the possible sting, but it didn’t sting at all and tasted great. Now if only wine were as nice to my mouth, I’d be a very happy boy.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted and I should write something to keep everyone up to date. Probably the main reason I’ve been late on this blog, is that Internet access in France is spotty, so getting a reliable connect to the tools I use in the U.S. was frustrating at times. We get so used to how nicely the Internet works here in the U.S., but forget to think that from Europe, all access to sites in the U.S. has to route through network connections under the Atlantic Ocean, so there is dreadful lag at times. For instance, I was never able to browse to My Yahoo news portal page from France. The site would never come up at all. And Facebook rarely worked at all. Anyway, back here in the U.S., the Internet works great again and I’m back to normal.

Denise and I had a wonderful time in Brussels and Paris over the past two weeks. The weather stayed nice the entire time, except for the very last day in Paris when it started to sprinkle very lightly. While in Belgium and France, we elected to do most of the touristy type of things, like seeing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the D-Day beaches in Normandy, but we also really loved the change of culture too. The French are in a rush for nothing! Events like eating lunch or dinner could and should take hours in France and Belgium. Nobody is in a hurry. We really enjoyed that. One thing that was particularly interesting is that people eat at specific times, and if you miss the meal, you’ll find all the restaurants closed up tight until dinner time (after 6pm). And we also noticed that nearly everyone we saw didn’t sit down for dinner until after 9pm, and a lot of people would arrive for dinner after 11pm. They eat (and drink and socialize) late into the night. Very cool.

So my challenge was finding things I could eat while in Europe. I have recently begun eating soft things, so I had to make sure wherever we went to eat, they had something on the menu I was familiar with and could eat. This really wasn’t much of a problem, because once I became familiar with a handful of French words, I was typically able to find something to eat, like fried or scrambled eggs, or an omlette. I fell in love with a sandwich called the “Madame”. It’s basically a piece of toast with layers of ham, cheese and topped with a fried egg. Easy to eat, tasted great and almost every place knew how to make them.

I was able to keep my calories up pretty well while we were there, which is good because we did a lot of walking and stair climbing all over Paris.

Some of our highlights were:

1. Walking around in the old town area of Brussels and eating a real Belgian waffle.
2. Enjoying real Belgian beer!
3. Riding the high speed train from Brussels to Paris. Super fast!
4. Seeing the Sienne River for the first time.
5. Attending a full Sunday mass in French at the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris.
6. Walking up the Eiffel Tower at night.
7. Standing underneath the Arc De Triomphe and walking the Champs-Elysees.
8. Standing next to the Venus De Milo and paintings by DaVinci in the Louvre.
9. Walking and biking through the never ending gardens at the Palace at Versailles.
10. Standing in the surf at Omaha Beach and looking out from Pointe Du Hoc.
11. Reflecting at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer near Omaha Beach.
12. Visiting the Bayeux Cathedral and seeing the Bayeux Tapestry.
13. Walking up Montmarte and seeing a panoramic view of all of Paris.

Photos of our trip can be seen here:

Denise on the Grand Place

The Mannekin Pis

The Royal Palace

Parc Du Cinquantenaire

Milk Protest

This morning I’m sitting in our room at the hotel in Brussels, just of the Grand Place and getting ready to start packing to leave and take the high speed train to Paris for the next 6 days. Denise and I have had an amazing time in Belgium so far. The people here are so nice and eager to help and the quality of the food here is simply “off the hook”. We’ve enjoyed the beer, chocolate, waffles and cheese among many other things. I’m not sure I’ve tasted better chocolate anywhere. Fortunately we’ve had good weather the entire time we’ve been here so far, so going outside and walking around this beautiful city has been very enjoyable. Denise and have always loved going into really old churches and there are so many very old churches here. We’ve gone into nearly all the ones we’ve come across and they’ve all been spectacular on a grand scale. The Cathedral of St. Michael is probably the biggest in Brussels, but the Notre Dame du Sablon is also another beautiful church we visited. We also walked up to the Avenue Louise, which is a very fancy shopping district near the Royal Palace with stores such as you might typically see on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

The meetings I attended on Wed-Fri went very well and I was able to network with a great number of other IT-types from the Springer family of companies. And at night we were treated to some great food at a few local restaurants. This city is very friendly to the person who likes to walk around, especially the area near the Grand Place. Everywhere you look, there’s some new amazing thing to see. All the streets are made of cobblestone and musicians are everywhere playing guitars, accordions, saxophones and other instruments. Yesterday we took a taxi to the Parc du Cinquantiare. A simply breathtaking park crowned with a very large Arc de Triomphe of it’s own. There seemed to be a demonstration or protest by dairy farmers about milk prices going on in the park, but it was all very peaceful.

Today we leave Brussels and head for Paris, and we’re both excited about what we’ll see there. We got some great travel advice from one of the other IT attendees about what to look for and to look out for while in Paris too.