Memorial Park Camping Trip

Camping with 7 families and 13 kids. This time instead of going all the way to Yosemite, we stayed closer to home; right up the hill in San Mateo.
Each family was in charge of one or two meals which made packing and meal planning a little more manageable. Here's an example of one of our breakfasts -- the parents try to get a few bites of food in here and there while running around making sure the kids are taken care of.
Luke enjoyed hanging out with his friend Annelise.Luke manages to get dirty no matter what he's doing, whether it's playing in the dirt with his trucks...or picking berries in the mud... or (not pictured) jumping into the river and making his dad jump in after him so we had to hike all the way back to camp soaking wet.

Easter in Seattle

After returning from Austria I flew up to Seattle meet up with Natalie and spend Easter with Natalie's family. After breakfast at the Crumpet Shop, we met up with Nick and Steph at the Pike Place Market.
Natalie and Stephanie drove up from California a couple days earlier, stopping at Pat and Les' place in Oregon for a good night's rest on the way. Luke enjoyed riding the toy airplanes.He also enjoyed playing the piano at Pops' place.
Luke enjoyed searching for easter eggs in grandpa's backyard.
and he likes walking around with his friend Blake. This is my sister-in-law's sister-in-law and her daughter.
Luke and Grammy hanging out in the train at the Old Spaghetti Factory before Natalie and I started our long drive from Seattle to Sacramento.

Klagenfurt, Austria

I'm working on a home-use laser skin resurfacing device in collaboration with Philips, so I went to Klagenfurt to meet with the Philips engineering team. This is the conference room we were stuck in all week:
Got to see a beautiful sunset as I flew in over the Alps into Klagenfurt.Here we are getting on the little plane in Munich to make the short trip into Austria.This is what a plastic part mold looks like.
The hotel I stayed at was called the Palais Porcia.
It was located right in the middle of town on the town square. The gathering of people by the statue is a nice little outdoor coffee and ice cream stand; great place to hang out on a beautiful sunny day.
Klagenfurt was very clean, easy to walk around, and lots of areas like this to find food and people watching.
Here's the view of Klagenfurt in the distance from a lookout tower on the Worthersee. I didn't want to call a taxi for the ride back so I met a nice young couple visiting from Romania who drove me back into town.
Here's the small one terminal Klagenfurt airport as I walked out to the plane to head home...
This is a video of one of the machines assembling a lady-hair-puller-outer-device, see if you can understand the explanation in German:

Huntington Beach

Natalie and Luke took a trip down to Huntington Beach this week to visit Natalie's college friend Allyssa, her hubby Jason, and her son Kelly.
Check out Luke and his buddy in the VW bus.
Luke couldn't wait to run down to the water...

Snow Adventures in Salt Lake City

Visited Nick this weekend in Salt Lake City, and as usual, he had a bunch of adventures in store for us. First was snowmobiling on Friday up a big mountain.
It was a bumpy road, but we made it to the top and found a big flat lake bed to race in. My speedometer was broken, but I know we were going way too fast for our first time on snowmobiles. Here's Natalie looking cute on her snowmobile with a great view in the background. Here's the second time Nick crashed his sled. It took us about an hour to dig out, then we had to tow Nick and Cat all the way back down the mountain.Sunday we skied at Snowbird, an amazing resort with great terrain. We were hoping the Mormons would all be at ward and not on the slopes -- it was still pretty crowded, but at least we didn't have to wait in many lines.In between snow adventures we'd play Rock Band at Nick's house. We have look, now we just need to work on our skills...

Caribbean Cruise 2008 Day 7: Miami

Outta the way, I'm late for work!...
Just kidding, haha...After a week at sea, we took the afternoon to enjoy South Beach. We watched the kite surfers, took more pictures of Luke, and walked and walked and walked to find a good place to eat lunch. That night our hotel forgot to get a crib for us... again; so Luke slept with us and we got a free room. We flew out the next morning and Luke got to look at more airplanes...

Caribbean Cruise 2008 Day 6: Day at Sea

On day 6, Caleb, Andrew, and I took on the undefeated cruise worker team in a no-holds-barred soccer match. Caleb put us up 3-0 in the first few minutes so they put in their subs and beat us. We'll have to try harder next time. We got in a little miniature golf too... Nick won.
Then we just relaxed the rest of the day. Mostly in the various hot tubs around the ship.

Caribbean Cruise 2008 Day 5: Labadee, Haiti

Royal Caribbean's private peninsula in Haiti was surprisingly awesome. 5 or 6 pristine beaches with plenty of chairs, hammocks, and shade for everyone, free food, swimming areas, the longest zip line in the world, and drinks delivered. Here's a map.
Ahhh...
Back on the ship it was another dress up night. Check out Luke's cheesy grin:

Caribbean Cruise 2008 Day 4: Philipsburg, St. Maarten

Philipsburg, St. Maarten! Luke loved exploring the beach and we enjoyed relaxing with a couple ice buckets full of Coronas.
Luke spent a good amount of time running around the ship with Grandpa, especially deck 4...

Check out the slideshow for more pictures from St. Maarten.

Natalie and Lori singing on stage at in the ship's Irish Pub...

Caribbean Cruise 2008 Day 3: Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico! Some of us made the 20 minute walk to the fort. It was beautiful at sunset.
Natalie did well on the flowrider, she got up to her knees pretty quick and only fell when she tried the 360.
We met up with our friends Liz and Jesse who live in Puerto Rico; they showed us how the locals live and we had a great dinner with them before getting back on the ship.