Jackie, our most frequent author, was promoted to Chief of Staff for her boss, Assemblymember Pedro Nava, in December of last year. A wonderful opportunity, to be sure, but it came with the shared management responsibilities of a statewide campaign -- Assemblymember Nava is vying to be California's next Attorney General (insert plug to not only remember to vote on Tuesday, but Vote for Pedro! while you're at it). The holidays were their typical whirlwind, full of much fun, family, and laughter (and far too many presents to count -- Carter still has some in their boxes in his closet). We also found out we were pregnant with our second child in February, which has meant several months of exhaustion and nausea on Jackie's part, and double-duty household/Carter responsibilities for David.
Alas, we have finally resurfaced. The Primary is within sight, Sacramento has officially entered summertime (today it was 95 degrees!), and we have much to catch you up on.
We'll start by sharing pictures from a camping trip we took last month to Lake Comanche. This is actually a quite fitting post, when you think about it, considering the ane before was a wonderfully relaxing (albeit funny) camping trip with just the two adults. It should juxtapose nicely with this one, no?
We took advantage of the first warm weekend of the year to head to Lake Camanche (Amador County) for a three-day camping trip. While we've been camping with Carter before (see Easter 2009), he was not yet mobile. We figured that for this first real "camping with child" experience, we should stick close to home -- that way we could pull the escape hatch if needed. Lake Comanche was the perfect choice.
We booked a site in the Family Campgrounds, a little bit further from the water than some of those that were lake-side. Figured that would give us some lead time if Carter decided to take an impromptu swim. As it turns out, "Family" = non-alcoholic. This really wasn't a problem for us, but it had the strange benefit of allowing us to be the only campers in the entire vicinity. We could see lights and hear music (if it was loud) from the rest of the sites, but truly, it was though we were in our own little world -- which actually came in handy mid-way through Night 1.
Apparently the weekend we decided to go, there was a full moon. Probably wouldn't have noticed it elsewhere, but it had a strange consequence to those of us camping. Carter and the geese surrounding the lake woke up -- at 2am. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. David and I couldn't figure out why we were so tired. Until we left the tent to use the restrooms. Ha ha. Took us about 2 hours to get Carter back to sleep (although the birds never really seemed to get the message). Luckily, camping allows for late sleeping and no alarm clocks, so all was still well the next morning when we slept in until 9:30am.
We spent our two days there riding bikes, kayaking, and napping. The perfect combination for all of us, really. We (ok, just Jackie) were nervous about taking Carter kayaking for the first time, but really, I guess we shouldn't have been. He found it so relaxing, he napped. He is super cute in his life vest, though, and every time he sees it he says "mine" and "boat."
Kayaking with Dad
Some sort of condor or raptor we saw while kayaking.
And...done.Inadvertently, Jackie managed to wind up on the news during our weekend. While biking, we happened upon some news cameras who asked if they could speak to us. We agreed. Unfortunately, this left Jackie to do the talking, as David rode a little ways away to appease a cranky nap-needing Carter. I (Jackie) suspected the topic would be the "first camping weekend of the season." Sadly, I was mistaken, and caught only slightly off guard when the anchor asked me what I thought about "the park's proposal to deal with the geese 'overpopulation' problem by rubbing an oil on their eggs so they don't hatch." Sigh -- enter policy guru/animal nerd. Click here for your viewing pleasure/hilarity.
All in all, our trip was a huge success! We had a blast (including Carter). Although, we were mildly excited to get home to stop repeatedly using the question "what's that in your mouth?" with Carter.
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