California Baby-Fest 2008!

I used a free ticket and went home for the Presidents' Day weekend. After the airline seriously testing my patience, I finally landed in San Francisco. Never mind that I was supposed to land in Fresno, sometimes you need to take what you can get. Kim let me crash at her house for the night and then drove me to Santa Cruz so we could visit our Grandma, who's not doing so hot right now. After the visit, Kim, who is running a marathon (!!) did some training, while I rode my bike to New Leaf to buy 6 packages of soyrizo. Oh my Gawd, I can't get enough of this stuff. Apparently there aren't a lot of vegan Mexican food aficionados in New York, and you can't buy this stuff. Seriously, if you come out to visit, bring me some, I'll be forever grateful.

Anyway, on the way home, I tried to stop by Paradise, but it was closed, so I biked on past the old neighborhood. I ran into Jeanne across the street, who still invites me to their annual Christmas party, Richard, the contractor who fixed up the old bathroom at 38th Ave, and was now working on our neighbor Loretta's house and Debra, across the street, who's as talkative as ever. The old 544 is down, and a giant monstrosity has taken its place. No more fire pit, no more ivy mushroom, no more hammock. The old house is officially dead.



After Kim left, it was Baby-Fest 2008! That night, I spent the evening with the Griffiths. Violet rolled onto me a couple of times, and as always, Katie and Alden cooked me a lovely meal. It was really good to see them, as always, and I realized again how much I missed the old Santa Cruz crew.

The next morning, I got up to surf and got totally worked because I'm out of shape and it was well overhead at the Point. Yikes, I need warm water in New York so I can get back out there. Then I headed up to UCSC to visit the Mangel Lab where, strangely enough, babyfest continued because Marc is a new grandfather! It was so wonderful just to sit up on campus in the sun.

I met up with Kim M. and Jenn later in the afternoon. Then Eric and Greg joined up. Babyfest continued since Jenn's got about 3 weeks until she pops! It was really good to see her again. Such a difference from her shower back in November! But Jenn's the ultimate trooper. 3 weeks to go and she was out having pizza, laughing, and seemed to be doing great for someone who was carrying around a fully baked baby!


Kim picked me up on Saturday to go to Fresno for Chinese New Year. This is the first year I've to give out the red packets. I really need to marry off some of my aunts and uncles, because this is getting ridiculous! Then the kids started showing up and babyfest continued. Shannon showed up with Addison (hardly a baby) and Thomas, Stasia and David brought Marec. Heather, Paul and Sadie were there to keep me sane. It was great. I've never seen 4 year olds dominate the siap game before. Sadie was a good sport too and put together red packets for the kids and Heather and Paul.

On Sunday, the final day of Baby-Fest 2008 Heather and I met up with DeAnna for John, Heidi's husband's, birthday. Heidi had Claire and Ellie there. De brought Ali, Michelle, who's really pregnant brought her son Ethan, Heidi's brother brought his infant daughter, and I think John had about 5 cousins with kids under 1. I was exhausted! Four days of babies and nearly hatched babies, and I was done. I don't understand how people do that full time!