McQuay

McQuay

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Rock climbing

In April Heidi asked me out on a date. To a climbing gym.

My head began spinning and within a minute I was salivating at the thought of being a "climbing family." Now, I hadn't gone climbing since my freshman year of college and before then practically never. But I had an epiphany that this is what we could do, something the whole family could love doing together.

Such strokes of excitement catch me from time to time. Like when you go to a friends house for games or a movie and you end up imagining this wonderful cruise trip that you all agree to plan for and save up for, yet is never discussed again. I can't imagine I'm the only one with these flights of fancy.

But this one, well, it's stuck. Heidi and I went on our date -- an intro to belay class, so we could be responsible enough to trust each other's life on a rope. We had a great time.

The flight of fancy intensified.


We determined we could bring the girls with us and go often, reasoning that a membership could make sense. We bought a set of passes as a way to test the water.

We brought the girls and it worked.

Now sometimes they climb,

Sometimes they sit.

But we're doing this. We're a few months in now and we're going as a family at least once per week, I'm going a couple more times per week. And we're loving it.



Turns out Evette's really good! All of the easier runs at our gym have bells at the top, which she loves to ring. It's going to be hard convincing her to transition to other runs...


Miriam doesn't weigh enough to use the belay system yet, so we've come up with an alternative: Climb high enough to "Sit on Daddy head!!", which is then followed by shrieks of laughter.

I've even taken the scouts with me once now, and I hope to do that again.


The tongue helps, right?

Come climb with us!

Family bike rides in April

Evette's pretty good at riding her bike. In April, we went on two very long bike rides. One 5 miler where we stopped at several parks along the way, in Foster City. And a 7 miler along one of my favorite running/biking paths of all time, the Sawyer Camp Trail up by Crystal Springs Reservoir.

The park-hopping bike ride in Foster City:


The 7 miler on Sawyer Camp trail. Note that we did that ride with only one stop -- at the halfway/3.5 mile mark. Yes, Evette is a boss.


At the stop we found a lizard to follow around.




Like a boss!!


After that 7-miler we came home, and made dinner on the grill while the girls played naked in the pool (photos excluded because the internet), then we had s'mores!






Lil' Nerd Day

I've said it before: my employer, Nerdwallet, is awesome. I'm seriously spoiled. So in early April they decided to spread the love and spoil my kids, too, with a "Lil' Nerd Day".

Not sure the girls have ever been this excited.

Laughs on the train.

Name tags upon check-in:

 


Breakfast.


Coloring.

Acrobatics: 



New back-packs filled with goodies.

Showing off their haul to a few of my co-workers.

Science demo, making gak.


A brief respite, watching a few Pixar shorts (while eating ice cream at 10:30 AM).

Then the kids went up to our video recording room... Enjoy.





Story time.

Wider shot of the set-up, after the acrobatics and science people left.

Two of my favorite co-workers, Jan and Megan, adopted the girls for a while.



 

The Lil' Nerd Day activities ended at lunch, where Heidi joined us and then took Miriam home. Evette stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon while I attempted to get some work done.

The we adopted my boss' daughter for a while so they could keep each other busy.

Having a very serious conversation comparing rules at their pre-schools.

She made pizza!

Meanwhile, Miriam conked out for a while.

Cannot wait for next year! I bring Evette to work every once and awhile, so I'm glad she knows this isn't normal -- but it'd be nice though. :-)