Friday evening we drove up to Grandma's place, after I left work at about 3pm. Well, to be accurate, Daniela, Tricia, Eve and Arjun left at about 1pm and Jan and I left at about 3pm.

The drive was good with us talking about education in the US, politics, Jan's background in Anthropology and his project observing a football (Soccer) team's fans for one season. We got to Ukiah at about 6:30pm.

Grandma had an awesome pot roast ready on the table with potatoes and carrots. So good. Jan and I had been warned against picking up a snack en route. And yes, these warnings had dire consequences.

After we put the kids down, we sat and chatted for a bit, but Jan and Daniela were still feeling some jet lag. That is when grandma played her trump card. Her lemon pie. Holy cow that is some lemon pie. All of it is home made. She has lemon trees in the backyard and the crust is home made. It is to die for. Now, grandma is one smart cookie. She made not one, but two pies. We sat down and pretty much polished up one pie. All of us slept well after the pot roast and pie. Who wouldn't?


The next morning I awoke to Eve saying "Ok, I'm awake now. I need to go to the park. Baba where are you? Mama where are you? Arjun? Are you gone?" and it was repeated quite a few times. So, I brought her out of solitary confinement. She spent about 5 minutes kissing her brother who finds the who experience quite amusing.

We had a quickish breakfast and I asked everybody to get ready to head out. I then commandeered Grandma's computer to create a plan for the vineyards we should visit in the Healdsburg/Russian River area. For some odd reason all the applications decide to go into update mode, including the anti virus, firewall, the OS, the IM clients and to top it all, the AV and Firewall decided to scan EVERYTHING. With 512 megs of RAM, it was really cranking away. After 20 minutes, I got annoyed, killed all apps and got the maps ready.


We headed off to J Fritz with me as the designated driver. Eve met an English Bulldog called Ann, who was very friendly. The two of us went for a walk while Daniela, Tricia and Jan tasted wine and Arjun lay quietly in the stroller. Outside, Eve saw a lizard and said, "Lizard. I want to eat it." Aha, time for a snack. After that place, we went to a few other vineyards, where I sat in the car with the kids as they slept. We did lunch at a very mediocre Chinese restaurant in Healdsburg. After heading to two other vineyards, we headed home and picked up 3 boxes of strawberries en route.

It was a little early, so Jan and I headed to the street to throw the Frisbee. It's been a long time and we were all over the place. After about 5 minutes we our throwing improved considerably. Daniela joined us for a bit and then we headed inside for dinner at about 6pm. We opened a bottle of wine and sauntered into the kitchen. Today, grandma had ribs. Yeah baby, ribs. Another great dinner finished off with more lemon pie. After dinner we sat down to convince grandma that she should come with us as we head to the Avenue of giants to see the giant redwoods the next day. She decided to sleep on it. Before we headed to bed, grandma told me that she had something for me to see. Curiosity piqued, I watched her put the VHS tape into her VCR. It was video of grandpa with Tricia and Donald about 20 years back. He was standing with a garden hose on the front lawn as little Tricia and baby Donald tried to splash him too. It was hilarious. Kids playing with their grandpa. I have so many happy memories too.

Sunday morning all of us were up early courtesy Arjun/Eve and we got to work figuring out food, drinks clothes etc we needed to head to see the redwoods. Grandma said that she decided to with us. We packed a large picnic bag to have lunch at a state part en route. Lunch was at Richardson Grove State Park. It was quite picturesque, but the wind was really annoying Arjun, so I helped him sleep in the car after Trish nursed him. We had a good lunch of sandwiches, strawberries and home made cookies. Of course I managed to spray myself in the eye with a pickled jalapeneo. Jan was very happy. Schwein. During our honeymoon in Kerala, Jan, Daniela and many other friends were there. They saw me eating chillies with each meal, so he decided to take a big bite, well two big bites of a little green Indian chili. And then rubbed his eyes when he was crying. I was laughing at him. The tables were turned yesterday.


We drove further to head out to Humboldt Redwoods State Park to drive through the Avenue of giants. It is spectacular each time. I pulled over to the side of the road so Daniela and Jan could explore the trees. We took some pictures and were walking around when we heard a loud snap and saw a branch fall off a very tall redwood tree on the other side of the road. The branch was as big as an average tree.

After walking around for a bit, we decided to start heading back and stop at a few other attractions on the way home. First we stopped at Confusion hill. This place is meant for kids, but we didn't know that till after we walked in. It had a house built on the side of a hill with claims that gravity effects this place differently. As far as I could see the slope on the house created the visual trickery. It was interesting none the less.

We then stopped at the Tree House which has a little home built into a redwood tree. It was to reopen before Memorial Day so we were 2 weeks too early. We then stopped at the "Drive Thru Tree". And the ugly minivan actually fit through the tree. It was very tight, but it fit. We headed over to the park area so Eve could run for a bit. I took her over to go see the ducks, which impressed her incredibly. Jan and I spent more time throwing the Frizbee to loosen up for a bit and get a bit of activity into a day full of driving. Eve ran between the two of us while we were at it.

Tricia drove on the way back, with Jan and me in the back seat with Eve. It was super tight fit. I'd rather drive. Arjun got hungry so we used the bottle warmer to warm his milk. The crazy device made it too hot to drink. Now why would a simple device like that ever heat it till it's too hot to drink. It makes no sense. I gave him the bottle and after half, he was a happy camper and smiled all the way home.

Grandma decided to do KFC for dinner. I had my doubts that $19 bucks would feed 5 adults and one kid. I was wrong. We had leftovers. I quickly headed over to make plans for today. They wanted to drive through Napa and stop at a particular restaurant (Taylor's Automatic Refresher) for lunch and a few other nice vineyards before heading home for dinner. Eve was in her crib in the same room while I was working and she decided to stand and stare at me while I worked on the plans.

We then had our usual Lemon Pie, some good beer and headed to bed. I set my alarm to head out around 3:30am. Today was back in San Mateo around 6am, after which I took a short nap, breakfast, neatened up the house and headed to work.


It was good weekend. Wine, Lemon Pie and the Redwoods.



What about the diapers? Well, Jan rightly pointed out that this trip had plenty of diaper changing, which was something Daniela picked up in a few minutes.

Labels: Avenue of the giants, daniela, jan, redwoods, Ukiah