My email to you for May 18, 2013

Here is my email to you for May 18, 2013, in case you do not receive it:

Dear Kieran,

How are you doing? I’m doing fine, although I miss you very much and wish we could spend every day together. The good news is that we get to see once another again in just six days, on the afternoon of Friday, May 24! I can’t wait to see you again!

I put together the Star Trek transporter Lego kit for us to play with when we get together. It’s really cool. One side is the transporter room. You can put your Lego guy on the transporter pad; when you press a button, a blue light flashes, and the pad spins around to the back side, which is a scene from the planet he just beamed down to! There are some more Star Trek Lego characters I can pick up at the toy store, so I will make sure that we have some of them to put together and play with on the transporter kit!

We used to have lots of great Lego kits to play with when we lived in California. A few were from Harry Potter, a couple form Pirates of the Caribbean, and most were from Star Wars. Not only were they fun to put together but to later incorporate into our playtime with all of the neat Lego figures we had. I still have most of the Lego figures and will make sure to get them out for you once we’re back together again.

How is school going? You’re almost done with kindergarten and will soon be a first grader! What interesting books have you read? What are you learning about in math (I was so impressed that you could add 52 and 5 to get 57 when we were last together! I couldn’t do that in kindergarten!). Are you still studying oceans or have you moved on to a different topic in science?

I don’t remember too much about was taught when I was in kindergarten, but I do remember playing a lot. We also got to do a lot of arts and crafts stuff (like painting) that I didn’t have the materials for at home, so that was a lot of fun. I recall that for “aprons” to keep the thick paints from getting on our clothes, we wore our dad’s used shirt backwards so that the button side was on our back. It worked! Most of my friends and I had paint all over our dads’ shirts – but not on our good school clothes!

Have you read any good books lately? I have. It was called “Who Was King Tut?” by Roberta Edwards. The book is the nonfiction (or about real people and events) story of the famous Egyptian pharaoh King Tut. He also is known as the “boy king” because he ruled all of Egypt even though he was a boy. The book told about the mummy’s curse – it was said that bad things would anyone to who disturbed King Tut’s tomb (where he was buried). So did bad things happen to the scientists who found King Tut’s tomb? You will have to read the book and find out! You probably can find the book at your city library or a bookstore – be sure to look for it when your grandmother or mom take you there!

Well, that is all for this letter. I shall see you in just six days – on May 24. I love and miss you very much!

Love,

Dad

Remember our Busytown game?

One of your favorite games to play was Busytown. It was a neat game, based on the Richard Scarry characters and books, in which we actually "cooperated" help one another.

First we had to put the board together! It was very long, stretching six or seven feet across the floor.

Then we'd spin to see if we drew a card or if the pigs got to eat picnic food. If we drew a card, we had to find the object on the card and place a "magnifying glass" over it; when the hourglass timer was done, we'd stop and count how many of the objets we found - and that's how many spaces we got to move.

The object of the games was to reach the picnic blanket before the pigs ate up all of the food!

Your name/pic is in the newspaper!

Your picture and name appeared in Wednesday's (May 15's) St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper! The newspaper ran article about my recent hiking book, "Headin' to the Cabin."

The article included a picture of us when you were just two years old when we were hiking Red Rock Canyon State Park in California. It also describes how to came to write my hiking books because of our experiences together and notes that the book is dedicated to you.

In just a couple of weeks, I'll be reading a hiking essay, which includes you in it, at three bookstores. The stores are in Stillwater, Minn., and Hudson and Menomonie, Wis.

I've saved a copy of the newspaper article for you to have one day. But the article also appears online.

Our hike along Monte Cristo Creek

Four years ago today we went hiking in the mountainous Angeles National Forest on the Monte Cristo Creek Trail. Temperatures were in the high 90s in the desert where we lived, so I thought the mountains would be a bit cooler.

It was cooler, and we were helped in that the trail paralleled a creek. Still, the terrain was at a low enough elevation that it still was desert, so we didn't walk too far before having to turn around.

We parked at a campground near the trailhead, and I remember that when you saw the ash from a campfire ring you got all excited and wanted to play in it (see picture at left). I stopped you just in time by giving you a snack of dehydrated ice cream!

Unfortuantely, the area we hiked no longer looks like it did then. Later that summer, a horrible forest fire swept through the area and burned up the campground and surrounding woodlands.

Here's a whole bunch of pictures from our expedition!

Attending Fire Appreciation Day 2011

Trying on the U.S. Forest Service's
firefighting gear.

Two years ago today, we went to Los Angeles County Fire Appreciation Day in Lancaster, Calif.! Though a little hot, all of the great fire, police and ambulances vehicles on display there were worth it!

We got to go inside a real station and see what it looked like. After that, we made the rounds, stopping at (and climbing into!) all of the great fire trucks, ambulances and police cars that we could.

There also were demonstrations of firemen putting out fires and "rescuing" people, but usually they were very crowded, and with the heat we decided to skip them. I think you got a new fire hat there, too, if I recall.

Here's a whole bunch of pictures from our adventure!

Remember your Scooby Doo game?

One of your favorite games to play as a preschooler was the Scooby Doo haunted house game. We bought it at Toys 'R Us.

We could be any of the Scooby Doo gang, and a spinner would tell us what to do. Sometimes when we landed on a square, we had to push down a ghost, and that would set in motion all of these traps. If our character got caught in a trap, we had to start over!

The game was really hard to keep together! It was made of cardboard and plastic, and when pressing the ghost, sometimes some of the traps on the board came apart! Still, we had lots of fun with it.

At above right is a picture of what the game looked like.

Remember your Batcave playset?

One of your favorite toys to play with when a prechooler was the Batcave by Imaginext.

The playset unfolded, had two levels (four if you count the floor and the cave roof), boasted an elevator, a chamber that could be closed, and several entry points. We bought a bunch of accessories with it, including the Batcopter and some of the Batman villains.

We used the playset for lots of fun besides playing Batman. I remember on many occasions it became part of the rebel base for our Star Wars character or somehow was incorporated into other storylines using our other action figures.

Above left is a picture of the Batcave playset we had!