New Bikes and Enjoying the Great Weather

Last year we tried to take the training wheels off Riley's bike, but he had a really hard time and wanted his training wheels back on. Marci and I agreed the problem was the bike. It looks like a motorcycle, specifically a chopper with long front forks. It's really cool, but hard to balance on. We decided we needed to get him a new bike. Since the weather was so fantastic, we decided to see if we could find one. He picked it out because he liked the wheels. It's maybe just a tad big for him, but by summer he'll be taller and able to ride it without any problems.







Maddie also got her first bike. Like Riley, she picked it out. She wasn't too sure about it and didn't ride it that much, but she does like it and loves to sit on it in the house. She can ride the tricycle just fine (which surprised us because we didn't know she could do that!) so we're sure she'll be riding her bike soon.













We've also had some incredible weather for the last several weeks. It has been sunny or partly cloudy with the highs between 58 and 63! Talk about Spring fever! It was so nice one day that we decided to head to one of the kids favorite parks and play for awhile. They really had a lot of fun.












Oh, and as you can see they have new jackets. We were at Sears, the kids saw these and just HAD to have them. That's ok, the one's they had were getting to be too thick and heavy. They both loved them and were wearing them everywhere. In this photo I asked Maddie to smile. You can see she is definitely Riley's sister. LOL!

Riley's feeling better!

He had 3/4's of a grilled cheese, a big bowl of vanilla ice cream, some cookies, lots of Squirt, and is feeling a LOT better. Earlier in the day he needed me to carry him to the bathroom, and just a little while ago he walked there. Now he's telling me he's bored and wants me to play with him. I think after a good nights sleep he'll be fine tomorrow. Whew!

Poor Riley

We've had this cold thing going through the family. Last night on the way to dinner Riley said his tummy hurt. At dinner he just wanted to curl up and lay his head on my leg. Then he fell asleep. When we got home he went right to bed. He's got a fever and doesn't feel good, but he's resting nicely and drinking fluids.

Poor guy. Hopefully he'll feel better by Monday because he really loves going to school.

Flight home from Boston

LONG flight back. A big head-wind made the trip 30 minutes longer, so 6 hours!

As they were pushing the plane back from the gate in Boston, we heard a "bang" and the plane jerked a little. Found out they broke the push-back bar. Had to push the plane back to the gate so a mechanic could make sure the plane was ok. We all sat there with our fingers crossed and after about 10 minutes, everything was ok. Whew!

When we were about an hour and a half into the flight, the pilot gave us the "Welcome and thanks for flying with us... blah blah blah" speech. At the end he said, "And right now in Boston it is snowing heavily and visibility is down to less than a mile." Oh man am I glad we got out before that hit!

It was a uneventful flight, which is always nice. One odd thing for this whole trip was I had the entire row to myself on each flight! That was soooooo awesome!

I rented one of the movie players Alaska Airlines offers for $10. It has a bunch of movies in it as well as tv shows, sports, music video's, and a bunch of other things. I watched "3:10 to Uma" and "The Seeker: The Dark is Rising". Both were really good and they certainly made the flight go faster. I started watching "The Darjeeling Limited" but ran out of time. It was a bit odd, but I was into it enough that I wanted to see how it ended. Oh well, maybe I'll rent it sometime.

Overall it was a really great trip, I got lots of great ideas for the users group and had fun chatting with friends. I just wish I would have gotten more sleep. My body is still not recovered and not fully functional.

Rich's Trip to Boston

Oh man, what a wild trip. I'm in Boston (actually Bedford, a suburb of Boston) for a meeting with all of the Progress Software North American Users Group Presidents. I do this every year about this time. Had a great first day and a super steak dinner.

Normally we meet in mid-January, but this year we had to change it. I usually fly out on Alaska, there's only one flight out (Portland to Seattle to Boston) so I fly out the day before. I couldn't do that this time because Riley and I were going to the Monster Truck show Sunday (yesterday). I found a flight that took me from Portland to San Francisco to Boston (on the red eye) which allowed me to take him to the Monster Truck show and still get me here in time for the meeting that started at Noon.

Everything started fine, got to PDX on time, plane left on time, simple no problem flight to San Francisco. Then the problems started.

First, I had to leave the security area to go to another terminal and go back through security. A minor hassle, but it was made a little more of a problem because I had a Sprite in my backpack from Portland that I forgot to remove. TSA wasn't happy about that. They weren't rude or mean, just not nice. Sprite got thrown away and I was on my way. Found the gate only to see the plane was delayed an hour and a half - instead of leaving at 11:30pm I was leaving at 1am!

Great.

Downloaded the photos from the Monster Truck show, looked at some other photos, was going to get online but SF wanted $9.99/day and I wasn't about to pay that. Why can't everyone be like PDX and have free wireless?? Then I started watching Family Guy on my Playstation Portable. That was fun but I had a hard time staying awake.

Finally we boarded. Luck was with me, no one else was in my row so I had all three seats to myself. I stretched out and slept. Next thing I knew I heard the pilot saying we were getting ready to land. I remember some bumps, but mostly I slept really well. A bumpy landing, but nothing bad.

I made my way to the shuttle area and of course the transportation I arranged wasn't there. I figured it wouldn't be. Called them and was told I gave him the wrong flight number. I told him that's the number that was on my ticket. Whatever the case, he couldn't have someone there for another two hours. I couldn't wait. Found a taxi. Asked if he knew how to get to the hotel (showed him the address) and of course he said, "Sure, no problem!" After we get on the freeway he's calling his dispatch asking how to get there. ARGH!!! I ended up showing him the way when we finally got closer. He was nice, just clueless on driving. I swear I thought we were not going to make it, that we'd end up in an accident the way this guy was driving. I really was surprised I made it.

Got here and my room wasn't ready. ARGH #2!!!!! I told them I just wanted some place to shower before my meeting started. She was nice and found me another room that was perfectly fine. Got my shower and got to my meeting on time. From there on everything was great and I had a super day.

A major pain getting here, but I stayed calm and kept a cool head, and left plenty of time to get here, so everything was fine. I get to leave tomorrow, my flight gets in at 11:44pm. A long couple days, but worth it. Now I'm going to get a good nights sleep so I'm awake tomorrow. :)

Chocolate Festival

Sunday we went to the Chocolate Festival. Last year was so much fun we had to go again this year. It didn't seem like there was as much chocolate as there was last year. But this year they added a 3rd building, so maybe there was and just wasn't in the main building.

One thing they DID have was the worlds largest truffle. After it was made and weighed, they took ice cream scoops to it and gave out samples. WOW! It was AWESOME!! We hit there first, had a bunch of other stuff, then hit it again before moving to the other buildings. And they gave us HUGE samples. We tried a few other chocolates in the other buildings, but nothing was really all that exciting. A lot of places had flavored chocolate, very few had just simply chocolate - milk, dark, etc.

We had a great time and left feeling like we had eaten our years worth of chocolate in one day! haha Pictures will follow sometime in the next day or so.