You inky!

As I read blogs, I have found that vacation posts tend to be a little more boring. People write them because vacations themselves are interesting, but the posts are not usually. I'm sorry to tell you that this is a vacation post. But I hope it won't be too boring, because it wasn't a very touristy vacation. And because I don't post pictures of food.

If you read my last post, you know that I was in the Bay Area of California, visiting my brother David and his wife Ya-ping. But really I was there to visit my nephews, Preston Xiang-an, Franklin Ze-an, and Nathaniel Qi-en. I actually don't know how to spell Nathaniel's Chinese name (it's pronounced chee un), and no one calls him Nathaniel. It's such a cumbersome name that we all just call him Baby.

My last post talked about going to the Golden Gate Bridge and Muir Woods. The only other touristy thing we did was on Sunday (yes, we were apostates) we went to a beach. It was a chilly beach, but still enjoyable. I'm ashamed to admit that I took my shirt off to go swimming for the first time since June 9, 2001. We did also explore a Chinatown or two, since Ya-ping is from Taiwan.

The weather felt more like September or October, which is good because I hate August. But overall I was unimpressed with the state. Everyone always complains about Utah drivers, but I don't think they're any worse than California drivers. And California roads are ridiculous. Lanes end and merge all over the place and roads don't make sense and it's all very confusing--which is not helpful when there is such a continual stream of traffic. Also, Preston's school gave the parents a list of things they have to buy for school. When I was in elementary school, the school gave us our crayons and our pencils and our glue. Not so in California. I thought public education was supposed to be free.

Another thing I was not impressed with was Ikea. I have heard everyone rave about the store, but I'd never been until this trip. Frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I found it to be a terrible store, so terrible that I want it to go out of business. I don't know what things are like in Sweden, but in America we like our stores to make sense. My opinion of it went down even further when an expensive couch that had been purchased there just a month and a half ago broke, and Ikea would only give store credit that couldn't be used on food.

One day we were just sitting in the living room when the house started shaking. A large truck had driven past and apparently caught the overhead telephone line and ripped it from the house. Not only did it rip the phone line, it ripped the rain gutter half off:

How does that happen!? Unfortunately, we weren't able to catch the truck.

Mostly we just stayed home with the boys. Baby seemed to be most open to me. Isn't he cute?

His two-year-old speech is adorable. In June, something happened so that the boys started calling my cousin Peter (who's now, oddly enough, living with them) Stinky Pete. I'm not sure why--a Toy Story 2 reference perhaps? Baby has held on to that more than anyone, and he has also extended it to more people. If you look at him for long enough, he will proclaim, "You inky!" He leaves off a lot of consonants, and the cluster st of stinky is no exception. He says it to Peter, to me, and sometimes to others. Sometimes he even says, "I inky!" He likes to ride his bike. But he mostly rides it only if he's on the pavement in the back. Otherwise he just likes to walk the bike, with his helmet on.

(Thanks to Ya-ping for the picture!)

One day Franklin and Preston were playing with homemade play dough. I made a jack-o-lantern with the orange dough I made, so they were inspired to make Halloween-themed Angry Birds. Then they made green pigs and Preston even started using a spoon to hurl the bird at the pigs. (I've actually never played Angry Birds, but pop culture has given me an idea of what it is.)

Baby likes to have people pretend to be slides so that he can slide down them. Once he even made me slide down him. On another occasion, Baby and Franklin took turns being slides for each other.
 I got exposed to some culture. I got to watch Citizen Kane because my brother's a movie nerd. I rarely watch TV, but one night after the boys were in bed I was able to watch some Get Smart which I've never watched on TV before. Then one night we watched some YouTube videos and I was exposed to this hilarious video:
 But Saturday eventually came and it was time to say adieu and come home. I was hoping to be able to finish Moby Dick on the way home but the plane ride was too short. The train may have been more comfortable than the plane, but the plane made up for it because it was about 1/18 the length.