Your picture, name appear in article

You've made the web once again, Kieran - this time in an article at the Brave Ski Mom blog. It includes a picture of you when we went hiking in April 2011 at Vasquez Rocks (the famous "Kirk rocks" with "Gorn Rock" behind you), and you in arms at the Vetter Mountain lookout tower in August 2009, as well the "Hikes with Tykes" book covers that you're on. The article also mentions you a few times! I've printed a copy of it for you. Can't wait for us to be together ahead so we can do some great hikes!

My journals that you may inherit...

The last couple of days I typed entries about you from my journals of October 2009. As someone who's loved to write since he was in second grade and to make up and tell stories even before I went to school, I have a lot of journals and folders - both paper and on computer - containing my writings. Many are just loose notes and descriptions of places and items, done more to practice and master the craft of writing. Some are short stories, with quite a few of them in desperate need of a rewrite and others waiting to be finished. You'll also find inthere three or four novel manuscripts, some poetry, a couple of starts to plays, and lots of outlines, especially for essays.

I've asked your grandma to keep all of them for you should anything ever happen to me. The writings probably are of limited monetary value, but they do contain my thoughts going back decades before you were born, so in some small way they will provide a connection to me. She will give them to you when you are old enough; should she pass before them, Uncle Chris will keep them for you.

I do imagine that one day you'll become a writer - not out of my personal vanity - but because you have all of the makings of a good writer: an active, creative imagination; a love of stories; a way with words. Should you come across some striking image in my journals that would fit your story or decide that you know exactly how to finish one of those many stories, feel free to use it as your own. It is my small gift to you, my way of being there for you though the fates have conspired against us.

A description of you sleeping in my lap

Looking through the journal I kept from autumn 2009, here's another entry about you, dated Oct. 10, 2009. You were only two at the time but closing on three:

This afternoon you slept in my arms as I sat in the living room recliner, reading Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead." Though the time for me to begin dinner had passed, I could not bear to rise and wake you; you looked so peaceful with your head crooked into my arm and side tucked against my waist. Regardless, we will not have too many more days like this, for you already are just a bit too long to fit comfortably on my lap in that chair, but you're still able to manage it with the bending of legs and slight contortion of the torso.

Upon finishing a section of the novel, I gazed down at you to relish the sweet moment, only to find sweat beaded upon your temple and bove your upper lip. You could not have been hot, for a cool breeze swept through the open windows on this mild autumn day. "He must be having a bad dream," I thought, and this worried me for there really was no way to make the dream stop other than wake you, and - perhaps more worrisome to me - I had no way of knowing what frightened you so in your sleep. You are beginning to imagine the world in way I cannot fathom.

I gently brushed the beaded sweat away with a finger, first the temple, then above the mouth, and finally along your sideburns where new drops had formed. You twitched, but it wasn't enough to wake you, though I must have broken the dream for you did not sweat again.

A description of us spinning around

Found an old journal entry I wrote about us, dated Oct. 9, 2009, and thought I'd share it with you today:

We spin around, my arms stretched out, yours close to your sides, and golden sunlight streams through the window across us. First there is the dining room table then the doorway into the kitchen, then the window, then the bright glint in your eye, and you giggle - most likley from the deleriousness that spinning brings, but I also like to think from the gleam of sunlight in my eyes.

Then I deliberately collapse - in part, I tell myself, to ensure you do, too, so you don't fall from dizziness and bump your head against the oak bookcase or a table leg. As I lay on the floor, the ceiling above twirls, and for a split second I close my eyes to stop the motion. You're still spinning with a child's constitution - or maybe you just don't know the danger that total inebriation from such spinning can hold, Or maybe you're fully aware of it and inviting it, testing your limits as children are wont to do. You've become too complex for me to really know the answer. I guess you're finally becoming your own person.

Then you're atop me, collapsing acros my stomach, bracing your fall and laughing heartily, and the slap of your torso against mine breaks me from my reeling as my eyes shoot open. "Do again? Do again?" you shout, and we rise back into the sunlight, my arms stretched out, yours close to your sides, and spin again.

Remember 'War Between the Vowels ...'

This certainly had to be among your three or four favorite books as a preschooler: "The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants." In addition to the wonderfully colorful pictures, it was the kind of story that even an adult could enjoy reading over and over.

The book centers on two classes of letters - the stuffy vowels and the rough and tumble consonants - who don't get along very well with one another. Their differences soon spiral out of control into a war. The y's are a house divided.

Eventually, though, chaos appears on the horizon. The vowels and the consonants alone can't stop chaos. But working together, they form words and sentences and tell chaos to "STOP". The youngest y came up with the great idea.

You loved the book so much that it was one of the few I made sure to save when forced to move back to the Midwest. I can't wait to read it to you again!

Visiting Mojave Space and Air Port

Remember our many trips to the Mojave Space and Air Port? Every month they held a fly-in in which we could get a close-up look at planes and sometimes other vehicles. We usually went to seven or eight of them a year; photo albums of them are posted on my Facebook site (Here's the last one we went to.).

The space and air port was a unique facility where a lot of research into going into space occurred. It's best known as the airport that launched SpaceShip One, the first non-government craft to carry a civilian astronaut into space. And it was just 20 miles from where we lived in Lancaster/Palmdale!

We started going to the fly-ins in 2009, so here's a list of some of my favorite memories of the fly-ins over the years:
10) Watching the robot battles during a special competition there
9) Touring the hangars and research facilities on the flightline
8) Getting to ride a garden train a local club set up one weekend
7) Seeing SpaceShip Two up close
6) Eating at the diner (and later Denny's or McDonalds) after visiting all of the planes
5) Playing in an APC on display there one year
4) Getting our names and pictures into the newspaper (This occurred many times  - and I have all of the copies!)
3) You getting to sit in the cockpits when owners were near their planes
2) Taking tram rides around the airport
1) Meeting Michael Dorn, who played Worf on "Star Trek" (He autographed a Worf action figure for you!)

One day we'll get to go to air shows together again - I can't wait!

Drawings found in my backpack

Was cleaning out my backpack - the one I used to carry all of our stuff in when we went on weekend trips after we gave up the stroller - and found some neat things of ours tucked in an interior pocket, both from our time at Disneyland last winter.

First were two puppet bats that we could color when we visited Woody's ranch house. They were both ones I colored - a Captain Kirk and a Mr. Spock bat! The wings are the colors of their uniforms and have their rank braids on the tips.

Second was a color picture you'd drawn there of the three stars in our cowboy adventures - Sheriff Jack, Lone Ranger and Bad Bart. They're stick figures, but I notice you colored Bad Bart in a black clothing. The picture is dated Feb. 5, 2012 (I always dated your pictures!); that would have been the Sunday before Jane came out to visit the first time (You met her later that week at Barnes and Noble and we spent a couple of days in Santa Clarita).

I need to get a new printer/scanner as my old one doesn't allow me to scan pictures into my laptop (my laptop's operating system is too advanced!), but rest assured, I have the items in a tote for you to look at one day!