Diedrich Discourse

Great America - Still a great deal?

Mark and I have figured out that it ends up only costing us about $5 per visit with the family season passes to Great America, given how much we go each summer. I figure we have about 2 more years before the kids finally outgrow this, but what a great way to spend a half day or day in the sun!

Shall we dance?

It's been a long time, but Mark and I finally got out dancing Saturday night to celebrate my birthday, our anniversary and just for fun. check out the pics from Shall We Dance at the Menlo Circus Club with our friends from the Menlo Park Marriage Team, Bill and Linda and William and Stella.

Taylor the Latte Boy

One of the things I love about Jessica and Kristine is that they constantly come up with stuff that keeps Mark and I amused. Some of our favorite evenings are spent playing charades are watching Jess and Kristine perform their favorite bits in the living room. Here's Jess with part of her audition piece for the Woodside High School talent show - Taylor the Latte Boy. Yeah, I know - it's weird, but really funny. Think Disney on acid.

Kristine turns 12!

Time keeps on passing by. Kristine celebrated her birthday on Saturday (at Great America of course!) with her friend Courtney. Mark keeps wishing they would stay the same age! But frankly, I'm having a lot of fun with the girly grown up things - hair, makeup, nails. Maybe he's feeling a little left out?

Video from Jess graduation

Finally got the video edited. Take a look!

Jessica graduates from 8th Grade

Jess (seen here with one of her favorite teachers Mr. Frederick) graduated from Corte Madera on Friday. I can't believe how grown up she is! After partying Friday night (and getting 3 henna tattoos) she got back to work on Saturday with the final soccer game of the season.

Barney and the dentist

Poor Barney - Not only does he hate the vet (I always think he's going to have a nervous breakdown before we can get there), but he had to have dental work done yesterday and, surprise surprise, 5 teeth taken out! I don't even want to think about how much money we have spent on him over the past 8 years, but I wouldn't trade a second of it. He's definitely one of the great loves of my life. You know it is sad when you have a picture of him on your watch!

Some time in cow country

When Mark and I first moved to California, I was looking forward to doing some drives around this big state. And we've been lucky. Going up to Tahoe for a summer weekend, out to Yosemite for hiking and even down to San Diego for the beach and SeaWorld. (Our favorite vacations have been to Hunewill for a week of horseback riding. If you ever get a chance, it is absolutely the best place I've been where the horses seem the happiest, out in the fields at night and working during the day.)

But two of the more interesting ways I've gotten to see some great places have been through my Team in Training runs with my good friend Vanessa and Jessica's soccer tournaments.

One of things I most enjoyed about Team in Training was the fact that we didn't do all of our weekend runs in the same place. They were scattered all over (within a 30 minute drive anyway) and it gave me a chance to see some of the coolest places in the Bay Area, up close and personal and mostly unspoiled. So with runs every where from Golden Gate Park to Crystal Springs down to Santa Cruz, I was able to really get into some of the beautiful areas.

With Jessica's soccer tournaments, we've had some 3-4 hour drives to some out of the way places, each with their own charm. This last tournament was in Visalia, CA. In the San Joaquin Valley, you won't miss it as you're driving. The cow smell hits you first. Not that I minded too much - I love dairy! But what I found interesting was the busy downtown, which we hit on both Friday and Saturday night. Just in time on Friday to catch a bit of the Blues and Brews outside with some live bands after dinner. There is a great little antique store (with the owner's pet bird talking to you!) where Jess and I tried on some really old, cool hats. As we left on Sunday, it struck me again as we passed through miles and miles of dairy farms, orchards and produce growers how easy it is to think of California as San Francisco, LA and Silicon Valley, forgetting that this state leads in production of milk for the whole country.

New Year's Resolutions - going greener

It's everywhere now - green is in again. For anybody concerned about the environment and what we do to it, it's funny to me to see all the marketing campaigns suddenly popping up about touting how this company or that company is green.

I've been what you call "middlin'" green (yes I'm from the south - if you don't know what middlin is go hang out in Ga and listen to people tell you they are fair to middlin when you ask how they're doing). Anyway - my thoughts are I want to be green (and do the right thing) but it needs to make sense and be somewhat easy. I recycle, but I don't compost (we don't have a garden so there's not much point). I don't use plastic bags at the store unless I've left my cloth bags at home. Although this year, I've made a commitment to use the bags at least 98% of the time - are you listening Mark? I drive a Hybrid, but I bought it as much for the gas savings and commuter lane advantage as I did for the environment. But solar is still not cost-effective although I'd love to see my power bills go down and electric cars are still pretty impractical. And yes, it will affect my vote for President on their environmental policy. I'm pretty tired of excuses. If I can haul out the recycling, how come we can't pass a decent emissions policy? So it seems to me that if we all were just middlin, maybe it would drive us to make it easy to be a little fanatical about it. After all, if we can all go nuts about a little .mp3 player that's also a phone, I think we can get companies to pay attention and make it easy for all of us to be green. Customers can drive product development and policy when we all band together.

Jessica's play

Congrats to Jess! She was killer last night in "Twelfth Night" as Olivia. For an 8th grader, she's got a maturity in her acting that you wouldn't normally expect (and I'm not just saying that because she's my stepdaughter!). Pictures to come later.