End of July

It was sad to see July come to an end. Our trip home to see family was over and I had to start thinking about going back to work. Keira and I tried to enjoy our last lazy week together in SF... going for walks and hanging out at home. Check out some of her new tricks.



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DP

Our first weekend back in SF was a lazy one. We walked around the city and enjoyed the sunshine. Dolores Park was packed (as usual). Naveen got some great shots of the city... oh yea, and the baby is cute too.

Tour de Keira, Stage 6: Chicago

Tour de Keira came to a close this week. Naveen had to head back to SF on July 20th for work, however, this is where being a teacher has its perks as Keira and I were able to stay in Chicago for a few extra days. With all the craziness of touring family in Wisconsin, it was nice to be able to just hang out. Keira loved watching her cousin Aiden and he in turn was quite interested in the fact that she was doing all the things he used to do. We have some cute pictures of Aiden trying to re-live his baby days. In addition to all the fun we were having, it was great practice for us to try and get out of the house with a baby and a toddler. With Jessie expecting Baby #2 in January, this was a little sneak preview of how flexible you have to be as a mom! Keira also enjoyed some quality time with her great grandmothers this week and found out just how silly Uncle Andrew can be. He sure knew how to make her giggle. I was a little apprehensive about flying solo with a baby but Keira did great. She fell asleep before I got on the plane and slept through the entire flight (and many crying kids). Although we were sad that our trip had come to an end, it was nice to be back at home with Naveen and Nip.




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Walton Island & Gail Borden Library

Located in the middle of the Fox River, Walton Island is a beautiful oasis in Downtown Elgin. This 4.5-acre park has a walking and biking path, beautiful perennial flowers and a Prairie style shelter. Walton Island is a great place to take your stale bread and feed the ducks. As soon as the ducks see you, they start coming in from all directions. This has become a favorite afternoon outing for Aiden and we were happy to join him, even if it was a little rainy. After going through several loaves of bread we headed over to the Gail Borden Library. Growing up we spent a lot of time at the library. My mom took us to the library on a regular basis, encouraging us to have our own library card and check out books. Since I have moved away from Elgin, the library has been renovated so it was nice to see the finished project and know that my nephew now enjoys Story Time there!



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Randall Oaks Barnyard Zoo

Kids and animals, animals and kids... it's always fun to take little ones to a zoo. We thought that the Randall Oaks Barnyard Zoo was the perfect outing for a summer afternoon. After spending some time at the park, Keira enjoyed checking out all the animals (until she fell asleep), and Aiden thought feeding the animals was great fun. I'm not sure that having kids feed animals is such a great idea as all the animals look a bit overweight. The highlight of the afternoon was when Grandpa Moyer was helping Aiden feed the Fallow Deer and the eager eater grabbed the entire brown paper bag and ate the bag (with the food inside!) Enjoy the pictures!



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Tour de Keira, Stage 5: Wisconsin, Mt. Horeb - Menasha

Still playing catchup so this is also a back-dated post...one of these days we'll be up to date ;)

We made our way from Mt. Horeb to Menasha Wisconsin taking country roads and seeing more fantastic Wisconsin country side. We were going to visit Uncle Pat, Aunt Mary, and Bugsy Duke the Dog. I had visited Pat and Mary about a decade ago for a weekend when Crystal and I were still in college and just had started dating. Hard to imagine that so much time had passed so I was looking forward to hanging out in Menasha for the weekend. To make it all the better, Dale was flying back into Appleton (only 8 miles away) from his business trip to LA, and the Seattle Baers were planning on joining us as well.

To make it all the more special, we were also celebrating two occasions, Mary's 35th Birthday and Keira's 100th Day!


On Sunday, We were so inspired by Alberto Contador's amazing mountain top finish during stage 15 of Le Tour, that Crystal, Pat, and I went on a ride through some country roads and even got to see the Wisconsin Alps. This coupled with some grilling, drinking, and badminton made for a great weekend to wrap up the Wisconsin stages of Tour de Keira.

Enjoy the pics...

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Tour de Keira, Stage 4: Wisconsin, Christmas Mountain - Mt. Horeb

Having spent a couple of days up at Christmas Mountain, on Wednesday July 15, we were once again on the road. Dale unfortunately had to head out to LA for a last-minute meeting, but we marched on fearlessly into the hilly farmland of his childhood to visit (Great) Grandma Moyer and family in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin.

Mt. Horeb is exactly what I imagined a quintessential small town (population ~6000) tucked into Wisconsin's dairy and cheese heartland to be. Surrounding the charming town is quite literally some of the most beautiful farmland I have ever seen, with acres and acres of farms tucked into rolling hill sides, with picturesque barns and grain silos popping up sporadically on the horizon.

In addition to visiting with family, we also had a great time visiting University of Wisconsin in Madison, checking out the local Mt. Horeb Brew Pub the Grumpy Troll, and a special treat...

(Great) Grandma Moyer was gracious enough to take us down memory lane to visit the farm that was her first home here in the United States. This was the Moyer family farm that Grandpa Moyer grew up on before going to the war and the one that he returned to after marrying Grandma Moyer from England. Seeing the log-cabin style home located on Moyer Road was a pretty awesome experience, especially given that part of little Keira's roots could be traced back there over a half-century ago. In addition to the log cabin, we also drove over to Twin Valley Acres which was the farm that Grandpa and Grandma Moyer bought and farmed for a good portion of their lives.

As I was writing this entry, I was curious about whether I could find some aerial imagery on Google Maps, and good old Google did me one better...they actually had driven a Google Street View Car through both farms, the Log Cabin as well as Twin Valley. Note that you can click on the 3D Street Views below to move around in the scene, and also the 'View Larger Map' link to see a full screen view of the map.
Moyer Family Cabin

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Twin Valley Acres

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Enjoy the rest of the photos...

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Bonus Video from St. Louis

3rd kiss, not so charming

Tour de Keira, Stage 3: Chicago - Wisconsin, Christmas Mountain

So we have a bunch of old posts to make up for here, so keep in mind that many of these upcoming posts will be back-dated.

After spending a couple of days in Elgin (Chicago 'burbs), we made our way to Christmas Mountain Wisconsin for Stage 3 of Tour de Keira. The entire Baer clan was to gather in this remote mountain (well more like a hill) retreat, just outside of the Wisconsin Dells for a grand, multi-day celebration for Grandma's 80th Birthday. Keira was super stoked to be there and came ready to party for a couple of days with her cousins, 2nd cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and great grandma. She even got so crazy and decided to make her first foray into the aquatic world.


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BBQs, Bags, & Baby Showers

Tour de Keria spent a couple of days in the Chicago burbs enjoying some unseasonably pleasant weather while meeting a bunch of family and friends. This 2-day stretch included 2 BBQs, Nick and Michelle's baby shower up in Beloit, WI, and of course some serious games of Bags. For those not familiar with the sport of Bags (aka Cornhole), it's basically the latest in invented excuses for guys to drink with their buddies while playing a game that is reluctantly, but socially accepted by the wives...pure Midwest brilliance strikes again (in all seriousness, it's actually a highly addictive game that your truly received a schooling in by Andrew, Dale and Brandon). As expected, we had a great time visiting with everyone and are looking forward to the upcoming week touring various places in Wisconsin. Enjoy the pics...

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Tour de Keira, Stage 2: St. Louis - Chicago

So we're hanging out in the Moyer house and just caught the replay of today's Tour Stage, pretty exciting, although we're still not sure whether Contador and Armstrong will end up fighting it out or if there are any other serious challengers in the field. I finally got some of our pics up from our last days in St. Louis which included Keira watching her first Team Time Trial, an evening concert at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, and a visit to the St. Louis Art Museum. We had a great time in St. Louis and it was sad to say goodbye to Ajji and Thatha, but the week was packed with many happy memories and Keira's already looking forward to her next visit. Enjoy the pics:

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Tour de Keira, Stage 2 LIVE: St. Louis - Chicago

Today we left St. Louis for our 6-hour drive to Chicago with my parents. Keira was very sad to say goodbye to her new friend the ceiling fan, but I assured her that she'd make many new friends with various appliances on her journey. I'm actually writing this blog on highway 57 as we drive through the great corn and soybean belt of Illinois (ain't technology great). BUT, this also means that my crappy EVDO connection on my wireless card can't upload pics. I'll update this post with the latest photos tonight as we're watching the Tour de France stage replay at the Moyer House, but in the mean time, here's a map to chronicle little K's tour through the midwest so far:


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5th of July BBQ

That's right, the the 4th is for amatures, the real die-hards BBQ on the 5th and that's what we did. Had awesome weather, not hot, not humid, just right for a BBQ at the Harris house. Keria got to meet the St. Louis gang for the first time and her cute smiles and awesome pooping power surely impressed everyone. Kevin, Raj, Chris, Angela, Arbus (pictured below) and Bell all came out to enjoy the festivities. Burgers, dogs, St. Louis Beer, some excellent vegan potato salad, pasta salad, and peach cobbler rounded out the menu. Big thanks to Chris and Angela for hosting!

Arbus the dog introduces himself to Keira


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Tour de Keira, Stage 1: SF-STL

So Keira has started her first big see-all-the-family-and-friends-we-can-in-3-weeks tour, and because it coincided with another big "Tour" going on right now, we figured it to appropriate to follow that theme for these three weeks of her whirlwind adventure. Little one was great on her flights from SFO-LAX-STL and that made two nervous parents very happy. It wasn't too long ago that we would board a flight and shudder when we saw babies sitting right next to us. That having been said, I'm sure every parent has to earn their stripes when flying with babies so we're expecting that our time is yet to come. We've been hanging out at my parents' house in good old Ballwin, MO and it's been really amazing having two extra (and very enthusiastic) helpers, not to mention just the detachment from work-life back in SF. Naturally, I managed to fire off a few pics in our first couple of days here so enjoy:


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Father's Day: Sun, Surf, and Sushi

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So I have to thank my wife and daughter for what was sincerely the best Father's Day of my life. Dad got to sleep in while Crystal (and Keira) prepared some tasty bananna-chocolate-chip muffins. We had a busy day ahead of us as Crystal had planned for us to go down to Santa Cruz to let Dad catch some waves and chill in the sun. But first we opened presents and sure enough little K had something very cute in store for dad (see the pics to find out). After catching some mellow waves, having a burger and a beer, and walking around Capitola with Keira and Crystal, we headed home and topped off the evening with a Sushi dinner...ahh the three S's of Father's Day, right on.


Video: Keira in Santa Cruz on Father's Day
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Random Bonus Videos

So Dad dropped the ball on this one. It's been a while since I uploaded any videos. Excuses include: They take a long time to upload, they hog up our crappy Comcast broadband which makes Crystal mad because she can't do her Facebooking, and mainly I have been pretty busy at work. Well now that I'm back on leave for a couple of weeks hanging out in the good old Mid-West, I got lots more time so I was going through our video library and realized that I had uploaded a bunch of videos to Flickr that never actually made it into a blog post. So, enjoy some random videos from the past (likely more to come):

Video: All Babies Like Swings
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Video: I've Discovered My Vocal Chords
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