One-derful

Today was our baby girl's first birthday. There has been a lot of learning and growing over the past year and oh yea Zara did some that too. Our little girl has gone from being that tiny curled up ball in our arms to a happy bundle of energy. She continues to amaze us each and every day and we look forward to year 2 and continuing to grow with her.

For her birthday, we had a big (mostly adults) party with some great barbecue from Bay Area Meat Market and wonderful cake and cupcakes from Erin. Zara held up really well and loved all the people that came to visit her. Not only was today her birthday, but she has been walking holding our hand well for several weeks and this afternoon near the end of the party we even coaxed her into taking her first few steps all by herself. I believe it is truly official, we have a "toddler" on our hands!

Opening Presents:


Our first bite of birthday cake:


Having our cake and eating it too:


It's not a good party unless you are so tired you lay down under the table to rest.

Ultra-cool Urban Living

Growing up in the wonderful Pacific NW means a lot of cultural icons, Space Needle (of course), Tacoma Dome (largest wooden dome stadium), and other things like ferry systems and totem poles. One of the other buildings in Seattle that is a landmark is Smith Tower. I looked this up, but it was one of the world's first skyscrapers built in 1914 and was 6th tallest when built. But I had no idea that a remodel in 1999, turned the pyramid atop the tower was a private residence that a family lives in. Apparently, it used to have a water tank in there as most tall buildings also used to double as water towers. I think this is probably the neatest place I've ever heard of to live, especially in an urban environment. Go to the link to see the slideshow of the residence.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/20/garden/21WHOss.html?ref=style

Small Fry

Today was the Booz company picnic which is actually pretty good. We have a small office, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 people-ish, so we have a good time and it is pretty tight. The funny thing is that over the last year we have had a gazillion baby emails sent out for everyone's new arrival, ours being one of those. So in addition to older kids, there are A LOT of 6-18month olds. We are coming up on Zara's first birthday next week, but it is kinda funny to see her around all the kids. She is the same or older than many but easily smaller. But she is ridiculously cute, so who cares. Incidentally, I only got an Honorable Mention in the dessert baking contest at the picnic today. The "winners" were the single guys that made jello shots. LOL, next time apparently, we need rules, like "must actually be baked" or some better judges. I didn't get a picture at the picnic of Zara but here's a recent one of her helping with the laundry.

Hale-storm

One of the links on this blog, over there --> that has been here for awhile is that of Wayne Hale's NASA blog. Wayne was one of the longest serving Shuttle Flight Directors and moved into program leadership and has been a big influence around the agency for years. While at NASA the last few years he kept a public, official blog with great stories and philosophizing about the agency. He retired a couple months ago and now works for a small space consulting company, but I just found out he now has a personal blog out there to continue the storytelling as he promised.

Here is the link http://waynehale.wordpress.com/. I am very excited about this blog because no longer being an official government blog, he is ...umm... more at liberty to talk frank. He generally was before, but I think it is even better now to have the shackles off.

Tour d'Houston

Last weekend my sister Mona and her husband Shaun came down for a long weekend visit. Little slow getting pictures up, but it was great to have them down and we got to have a lot of fun all weekend. They got to play with their niece a bunch and she got her first 1st birthday present. And since Shaun had not previously been to Houston, all the "Texas" things were on the agenda. In order of accomplishment, this means cream gravy at breakfast, a NASA tour, true brisket barbecue, and a purchase of cowboy boots. I think we hit all the big ones. He also requested a fried twinkie, but we told him he'd have to come back on March during the rodeo to get one.

They did enjoy the NASA tour and here we are in the Apollo Flight Control Room. Don't tell Shaun the phone doesn't go anywhere anymore.


We also went to the shuttle simulator in building 5 soon after the days run was complete. It happened my friend Lia had been filling in as pilot for the day and she let them try some of the leftover astronaut food from the day. Mona and Shaun are now experts in space food service and are ready to fly.