A Sunny Summer Vacation

At the end of the summer our family took a much needed vacation to California. Here are some highlights.

Best Trip Gear: Double Stroller, GPS
Best Restaurant: In-and-Out Burger, Oceanside
Best Road-Trip Entertainment: Disney Music CD's, AquaDoodle (thanks Bren)
Best Sunset: Torrey Pines State Park

San Diego Zoo: At the San Diego Zoo the kids got some up close and personal experiences with wild animals. One of the most unusual things we saw was a tortoise race where the tortoises were actually tucking their heads in and ramming each other.


Sea World: It's hard to top Shamu. The kids did enjoy feeding the flamingos.


San Diego Harbor Cruise: A steady stream of cheese and cracker to the kids and we were able to enjoy a slow 2 hour float past all the notable ships and bridges in the harbor.


Beach: When I asked my brother who used to live in Southern California what we should do on our vacation he said--"you go to California so you can sit on the beach and watch the sunset." This was by far the family favorite.

2009 Harvest

Our blog has been unchanged since our backyard harvest began in early June. It seemed like our yields were much larger this year than last year, but I had no hard data to compare it to. So I decided that it might be fun to start collecting data on our harvest each year. Here are the results of our 2009 harvest (excluding items directly consumed and items given away to others).



It is interesting to note that the primary factors varying the cost of each item included (1) the size of the jar I used--if I used a smaller jar I had to buy more lids, (2) the type of pectin required by the product--liquid pectin in most jellies is more expensive than powdered pectin, and the amount of sugar required--making the jams and jellies significantly more expensive than the other products.

Precocious

Recently, Tom taught Emeline about privilege and responsibility. Emeline will often tell me that "with privilege, comes responsibility." One of Emy'e newest privileges is a designated 10 minutes of reading time just before she goes to sleep (after brushing teeth, having a story read to her, and having a song sung to her). Although bedtime is quite the routine now, this new privilege has awakened in Emeline a renewed interest in letters, reading, and writing. She started reading Easy Reader books from the library (she says, "I'm an Easy Reader Girl!"), playing Princess Presto's Spelling Bee on the computer, and writing simple words. When Grandpa Howell told us that Emeline was "precocious," Tom said, "What does that mean?" It's obviously not from the genes. Here's a short writing sample from our girl.

A Seasoned Veteran

As April came to a close I tidied my office and ambivalently returned to my bookshelf my Tax Code and U.S. Master Tax Guide, pages curled and filled with sticky notes. Since the middle of February these books have been to me like a lasso to a cowboy. This was the first year in my life as a CPA in which I actually prepared taxes during tax season. The urgency and intensity in the office made each day fly (even though my hours nearly doubled!). Last week I ran a report that showed I did about 100 tax returns, including 1040s, 1041s, 1120Ss, and 1065s. My easiest one took only 15 minutes and my hardest one 15 hours. Not too bad for a part timer doing it for the first time.

So I return to the steady pace of auditing. I have such a dream job!