I have a daughter who will be 13 in November. She spent most of the summer trying to set personal records for how late she would sleep. She would leave with her friends with hardly a backwards glance.
Starting 7th grade she is totally getting herself ready for school. This is a plus. And if just the two of us are walking down the street, she’ll grab my hand.
So I’m not complaining yet. She’s no longer my little girl, but she’s still a good girl…
Our Cape Cod vacation was awesome, as it has been for several years. I use Google Photos which always puts together a “story” when you go on a trip.
This year we had to put our dog in a kennel. They are great and always email pictures. Since I downloaded the pictures to my phone, they got added to our story.
For the next two weeks…
Vacation starts Sunday. No posts for a while…
I’m the youngest of three boys. I grew up in Wisconsin. After I went away to college, our dad bought a snow blower.
I asked him why he didn’t buy one a long time ago and his response was:
What did I need a snow blower for? I have three sons.
Today’s SMBC reminded me of that…
We just got back from a vacation on a Disney cruise ship, the Disney Dream. It was a very good vacation. Disney does cruise ships like they do everything, which is to say very, very well.
Of course there were princesses and other characters which my daughters loved. Disney has a private island in the Bahamas which was very nice.
The kids clubs are very well done, and there was a super cool water tube right at the very top of the ship. The shows were very well done.
Speaking of kids clubs, they have a great system for checking young kids in and out. The kids wear a wrist band with a tracker. The tracker is associated with our account and the people working the kids club can see a picture of the two people (me and my wife) who are authorized to pick up Victoria. And as an added precaution, prior to the cruise, I had to set up a “secret word” to be used to pick her up. So they would see my picture and ask for the secret word, then Victoria swipes her band to leave.
Nice.
Contrast this with the system to buy a drink. I hand the person my key card (which has all my info stored). They hand me a paper receipt with the total and 15% tip already added and require me to write five things on this piece of paper:
What a pain. Can we apply some technology to make this frictionless? Give me one of those wrist bands, bump the automatic tip to 18% and let me just swipe my band.
That, of course, is a tiny quibble over the entire cruise, which was excellent.
There’s a reason people have babies when they are young. We have clearly hit the stage in life where our older, independent girls work much better for us. A baby requires such constant attention.
Journee went home today. So our place is back to normal. We miss her, but we also like the return to normalcy.
She did get to have fun with Chuck E. Cheese…
Sleeping is probably the biggest issue because she normally sleeps in her parents’ bed. I’ve been relegated to the couch.
But she’s a sweet and good baby. And a very good eater…
Day one with our niece. So far so good. You forget how much constant attention a baby requires. But Journee is a happy baby, pretty easy.
Danielle feeding her tiny apple pieces…
Regular readers will recall pictures of our niece Journee, who is around 1. She is staying with us for almost a week starting Saturday. Danielle and Victoria are very excited.
I haven’t changed a diaper in six years. Wish us luck…
We had a very nice Christmas. Plenty of electronics, random flying things (Flutterbye and mini quadcopters) good food and family.
But our niece Journee was the main attraction:
With her cousin Alex:
Alex’s mom, Connie:
with Danielle (and her new GoPro):
Getting ready to walk:
and with Tori (in her new Giraffe PJs):
Journee’s first Christmas was a good one.
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 