#12 - Palo Alto duck pond

Ruth was a bit scared of the ducks and geese to start with, but she was soon waving and saying "birdie".  The duck pond is part of the Palo Alto Baylands nature reserve with an "interpretive center" (Alex refused to go to this).  It is close to our house, and very close to the airport where Pippa flies from, so we could see little planes coming in and out.  The weather was beautiful.  Pippa is planning to plant a geocache there.

#11 - Cooking with gas

We achieved another major milestone in the American Lifestyle Experience yesterday with the purchase of a large gas barbeque. Obviously we have a long and colourful history of barbequeing, with the Emsworth influence, but we have never cooked with gas before. However, we thought that this would be the way ahead out here so we can have bbqs after work easily. We visited "Barbeques Galore" in Palo Alto, where the salesman soon spotted an easy upsell opportunity and talked us into a larger model than we had planned. It took us* two hours to put the beast together, but finally we were able to christen it last night with a pair of big steaks. We think February 6th is a new record for the first Smith barbeque of the year**.



* i.e. Pippa
** although we did cheat by moving to a warmer continent.

The blog of new things

Hello all

Sorry we have been a bit rubbish at updating this blog. I was struggling to work out what were interesting things to write about. I've now decided to structure it around new experiences and adventures we are having out here. So here are the latest few:

New Experience #10 (we must be up to about that): Trip to Sonoma

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/gawley/1RichardSVisit?authkey=Gv1sRgCNb7gYTb75GQ9wE#


We visited the Sonoma wine region with our friend Richard. Although the weather was not great we found this quite conducive to indoor wine-tasting. We enjoyed Sauvignons at the Dry Creek Vinyard, and Pinots at J Winery (really good).



















And just enjoyed the nouveau-riche italian-themed villa and grounds at Ferrari-Carano. The pig statue was quite special.

We stayed in lovely Healdsburg, in the Inn on the Plaza which was a small period-style ("quaint") B&B. They had a great feature of a spacial "carpe diem" rate if you book on the day which worked out well for us. We really liked Healdsburg - Ruth went to sleep in her stroller two nights in a row as we sampled their excellent restaurants. We especially recommend Zin.

Stanford & Museum of Computer History

We also went to Stanford University a few times while Alex's mum was here. In fact we got quite into it, with tours of the Rodin sculptures at the Art centre, a student-led tour of the university highlights and lunches at the campus coffee house. It's a really beautiful campus, with lots of sandstone buildings with terracotta roofs (I've since been lucky enough to fly over the university and it looks like a lovely old mediterranean village from above). It has a very sad history - the wealthy Stanford family founded the university over a hundred years ago (making it a pretty historic place by American standards) to honour their son who died aged fifteen on a european tour. Stanford University is very wealthy and influential in the area, it owns over 8,000 acres adjacent to Palo Alto including a shopping mall.

We also went to the Museum of Computer History which was absolutely awesome. Lots of old computers and alpha geeks.

http://picasaweb.google.com/gawley/12StanfordTrips#

Trip to Carmel and Monteray

Finally catching up on posts from the end of last year...

We took a trip to Carmel in December with Alex's mum Carol. We had a wonderful time, we stayed in a place that looked like somewhere Snow White would honeymoon, and to boot it had a free wine and cheese reception, so Alex was happy too. We stumbled across the most amazing Italian restaurant, and Ruth was a very good baby who slept in her pram despite the raucous surroundings. The highlight was a visit to the Monteray aquarium, which was just the most lovely place. We loved the jellyfish room, which had huge backlit tanks and ambient music.


More photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/viewAlbum?uname=gawley&aid=5413817583678096593&pli=1

Happy New Year!

More Christmas photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/gawley/Christmas2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCLnyqYyqubvgwgE#

Hello all

We've now moved into our new place and have mostly unpacked.  We really love the house and the area, we've been enjoying walking around finding nice little cafes and parks.

Our first Christmas out here has been great - our first Christmas together just the three of us, starting our own traditions.  We started off with a big breakfast and marathon Skyping, followed by a long walk around the Baylands park near our house.  This is a big marshy flatland at the south end of San Francisco bay, which looks a lot like Chichester Harbour in places and even has Brent geese.  The weather was incredible, very bright sunshine, there were people (braver than us) walking along in shorts and t-shirts.  Then Ruth had her nap while we got started on the champagne and grown-up presents, so we could focus on her presents when she woke up.  She has got a little play room in our new place, which is now filled with all her new toys - thank you everyone.   We had our big meal in the evening - chicken with lots of pigs-in-blankets, Paxo stuffing (from the British shop) followed by Pippa's yule log.

On Boxing day we set off to Tahoe, the nearest big mountains and ski resort about four hours away.  We stayed with some friends in a little chalet, where we ate lots and played silly games, and had a hot tub under the stars (not so good for the carbon footprint really).

We've just celebrated New Year's Eve at home, and we are looking forward to all that 2010 has to offer (first flying lesson tomorrow! :D ).  Here's wishing you all a very happy and healthy new year - looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Love

Pippa, Alex and Ruth xxx

In case you wondered what Alex did all day...

Today Alex had a product launch which made it onto the official Google blog, which is a big deal:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/11/get-mobile-coupons-through-local-search.html

Tomorrow, the world....