Meeting Santa

We headed over to the old Goleta train depot (just a historical landmark now) to ride the "Candy-Cane Train" with the kids. Unfortunately we were too late and the tickets were sold out. There was a Christmas fair going on next door at the historical ranch-house and Santa was there. Both kids sat on his lap, Quinn only freaked out a little bit. I've added some pictures to the Xmas 2011 gallery.

Thanksgiving

Just a quick note that I've posted pictures from Thanksgiving over at Flickr. We had around 15 people over for dinner and then had a nice walk out on the bluffs.

Halloween

Another Halloween has come and gone. This year Xander was Perry the Platypus (aka Agent P) from Phineas and Ferb while Quinn was a Fairy (she thought of herself as Abby Kadabby from Sesame Street). We went over to UCSB Family Student housing to go trick-or-treating with Xander's friend Kellen. It worked out well but I got a bit of a stair climbing workout helping Quinn get to the doors on the second floor. Pictures are available over at Flickr.

Picture Clean-out

I finally cleared out my back-log of pictures. I've now posted pictures from Moab, The Santa Barbara Sol Food Festival and Phineas and Ferb Live. I also added a bunch of pictures to the Random Stuff Gallery.

Lotsa Updates

So I finally posted my pictures from Xander's birthday weekend over at Flickr.

I split the camping pictures out from the party pictures, the camping pics are over here.

And I also posted some pictures from the Lemon Festival last weekend. That nearly clears out my back log of photos, the rest will follow this weekend.

Touch a Truck

One of the local parent's groups in town had an ingenious fund-raiser last weekend: get a bunch of trucks and construction vehicles gathered up and then charge kids to com climb on and in them. We took the kids of course. Picture are at the usual place. I also added some more pictures to the random stuff set (mostly pictures of the house renovations we've got going on).

Zoo

Just a quick note that I've posted pictures from a trip to the zoo with Kellen's family that we took the other weekend. Everybody had a good time except when Quinn freaked out during the dinosaur show -- she lost it when the guy came out in the animatronic dinosaur suit. Xander also had a run in with a rose bush (nothing serious, just some scratches). I also made some additions to the random set.

The first day of school

Summer has flown by and Xander started first grade today. Yesterday he went over to the school and found out who his teacher was going to be (Ms. Goff) and met her. He's in a kindergarten/first grade mixed class with 13 first graders and 8 kindergartners. Unfortunately none of his friends from last year are in the same class, though the few behavior problems he had last year mostly involved those friends so things are probably set up for the best. He still gets to see them at recess and at his after school program. The mixed class should also work out well since the kindergartners go home about an hour and a half earlier than the first graders so the class size drops by almost half for that last hour. He's been tight-lipped about what went on today but he seemed to enjoy it. Some pictures from this morning are over at Flickr.

PH trip

My pictures from our recent trip to Pleasant Hill are now up at Flickr. It was nice little visit with a really fun trip to the Jungle, a place we will have a hard time not returning to on the next visit. At least Xander will be really unhappy if we don't go there next time. He's still talking about the ball pit (his favorite part) a week later.

I also posted some random pictures that I hadn't posted before in the random stuff gallery.

SLO Kids

We hit the San Luis Obispo kids museum a few weeks ago. It was a nice little day outing, the kids had fun and came home exhausted. Pictures are over at Flickr as usual.

UPDATE: I just added some videos to the gallery.

Father's Day Camping 2011

Just posted my pictures from our camping trip at El Capitan State Beach over Father's Day weekend. Only a month a half later, but then we've had multiple infections going around the house and lots else going on that prevented me from getting to the pictures in a more timely fashion. Plus I went a bit trigger happy with the new camera and ended up with 200 pictures. Anyway, the pictures are over at Flickr as usual. I've also made some additions to the Random Stuff gallery (that one is organized so that new stuff is at the top).

Note that the pictures are now public. I figured out how to hide pictures from the Flickr front-page and Google searches so that you have to have the actual link to get to the pictures (turns out I had this turned on the whole time) so now I'm comfortable with relaxing the security stuff and it should be easier to share the pictures. I had actually been looking at another picture hosting site that supported this option in a more explicit fashion but now that I figured out that Flickr offers the same thing I'll be sticking with Flickr. When I get a chance I'll be going back and making the rest of the galleries public as well.

Quinn 2.0

I posted some pictures from Quinn's birthday celebrations. These include pictures of Quinn with her birthday kitchen but don't include pictures from the celebration when we were camping over the weekend (those are on the way).

Mother's Day Camping

It's kind of late (especially since we just got back from our Father's Day camping trip) but I finally got the photos from our Mother's Day camping trip posted, their over at Flickr as usual. Note that you need to have a flickr account, be one of my contacts and be logged in in order to see most of the photos (Paul and Barbara: I have you guys listed as a contact under the Oglesby's Photos Flickr account).

The Graduate

Pictures from Xander's kindergarten graduation are now posted over at the usual place. They had the ceremony at the start of the school day on Friday. Each class sang a song, Xander's class sang "What a Wonderful World". One of the other parents got a video of the singing but I haven't been able to get a hold of it yet. After the ceremony we spent some time collecting all the schoolwork that Xander still had in the classroom including the "pancake nest" (they made ceramic bird nests but Xander wasn't happy with how his was turning out so he smashed it and dubbed the result "pancake nest").

Student of the Month

So a few days ago Xander was awarded student of the month for "doing a great job in math" (I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree). I think every kid in the class got recognized for something at some point in the year and this time it was Xander's turn (a couple of other kids got awards also). I just posted the pictures over at Flickr.

Also last week they had a sidewalk chalk festival at school. Here's Xander's rendition of a fish for the festival:

Seattle

I finally got around to posting my pictures from our Seattle trip in April. They're in the usual place.

Spring Break

I finally got around to posting pictures from the kid's spring break. You can check them out here. I also added some pictures to the random stuff gallery.

Julie and Dugan's visit

The Mobius project at work is finally done so I found some time to go through my pictures from Julie and Dugan's visit at the beginning of march. We did a little mountain biking, had a goign away party for a friend of ours and hit the beach. At the party I thought Xander's head was goign to explode since he had Dugan, Kent and Rudy there to play with. The pictures are here; I also added some random pictures to the beach set.

Holiday Photo Clearance

So I finally got through my backlog of holiday pictures between bouts of working on the crazy project for work. First up are the Thanksgiving photos featuring a variety of our friends and a trip out to see the butterflies. Next came the (what is becoming) annual Gingerbread Party followed by our trip to see the Xmas boat parade down at the harbor with some Xander's friends from school. Then we headed down to Temecula the weekend before Xmas followed by a trip to Pleasant Hill the weekend of Xmas. By New Years we were exhausted so we just put the kids to bed at their usual time and somehow Lisa and I stayed awake to watch the ball drop. We considered watching it drop live on the internet (9pm our time) and then going to bed early but in the end it was easier just to watch it on TV. No photos of any of that.

I also added pictures to the Random Stuff gallery and created a new Beach gallery that just has random shots of the kids at the beach.