I just love when the days are long and it’s warm outside. I got some good pictures of Little Miss last night as we enjoyed the evening. Here she is on the bench on our front porch.
We also spent a bit of quality time with JB and the pooch, Shadow. Here she is cuddling with Dad.
And the kid that is obsessed with beads decided to share them with her dog.
Need I say how sad I am about the fire raging in South Lake Tahoe right now? I search for news updates on it practically hourly. Lake Tahoe is such a natural treasure. I have felt so lucky to live close to Lake Tahoe, and enjoy summers swimming in the lake and hanging out on the beach, and winters where I ski with amazing views of the blue water.
Tahoe has been extremely vulnerable for fires, especially because of environmental restrictions on thinning the forrest and conducting controlled burns. Looks like this fire is going to have a much more disasterous result than what the restrictions have prevented.
Our plan for this weekend was to spend one day at the beach of Lake Tahoe. I absolutely love spending time up there. But now, I hear there is a layer of black soot on the lake… Perhaps our plans should change.
I also worry for all of the people who have lost their homes. Yes, there are some filthy rich people living in Tahoe, but there are also the casino workers that are just struggling to make it by. If you’d like to help, you can donate money online to the Northern Nevada Red Cross.
I also found the below article very insightful.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Community leaders have long warned of the possibility for catastrophic wildfires that would jeopardize the decades-long effort to restore Lake Tahoe’s famed clarity and forest ecosystem.
As black soot settled on the lake Monday from a massive blaze raging out of control near the south shore, authorities and environmental activists took no pleasure in the fact that their predictions had come to pass.
“This is really a disaster,” said Coe Swobe, a former Nevada state senator who in 1969 authored legislation creating the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a bistate agency charged with regulating the region’s development. “The cinders and the smoke are polluting the air, which in turn pollute the waters. It will take many years to recover if this continues.”
The fire began Sunday and quickly burned nearly 2,500 acres and more than 200 houses and other structures. The winds died down Monday, slowing the fire’s spread, but it was just marginally contained by mid-afternoon.
All parties agreed the amount of fuel in Tahoe Basin forests had reached critical levels following years of wrangling among environmentalists and government agencies over a plan to thin forests and reduce the fire threat.
Environmental groups were wary of causing air pollution through controlled burns or jeopardizing the health of the forests by logging. Meanwhile, public officials argued among themselves over how best to address the wildfire threat without harming fragile forest ecosystems.
Plan was drafted only recently
In April, the U.S. Forest Service finally settled on a 10-year plan to thin and burn 38,000 acres of forest to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. But it may have been too little, too late.
“This fire didn’t wait 10 years,” said South Lake Tahoe City Manager David Jinkens.
Ironically, the failure to thin the forests and reduce the fire threat is likely to have a far-more serious impact on the environment than controlled burns or logging, environmentalists and public officials agreed.
“The time has come to make some tough decisions to avoid more catastrophic fires,” Swobe said. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to wake up some of these people that are against moving fast. This may be the awakening.”
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Extensive logging during the late 19th century clouded Tahoe’s crystal blue waters, and rampant development in the popular mountain resort area during the 1960s caused soil erosion and algae growth that furthered its demise. Visibility dropped from more than 100 feet to an average of a little over 70 feet today.
A catastrophic blaze like the Angora fire can damage the watershed for years, said Rochelle Nason, executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, also known as Keep Tahoe Blue.
“This is that event we’ve all dreaded,” agreed California state Sen. Dave Cox, who represents the area.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, acting as governor in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s absence, called the wildfire a “devastating situation, one that’s going to go for some while because not just the fire, but then the recovery and the potential environmental problems that will result from this fire.”
10th anniversary of Clinton summit
This year marks the 10th anniversary of a summit held by then President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to draw attention to the restoration of Lake Tahoe, an effort that raised $1 billion from federal, state, private and local government coffers, more than half of which went to projects aimed at protecting the water quality.
About $50 million of that has been spent so far on forest thinning, brush clearing, and prescribed burns. About 462 acres burned by the Angora Fire had received some fire prevention work.
“Everyone in Lake Tahoe has been so aware of fire,” said Julie Regan, spokeswoman for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. “We knew it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’ we would have a fire like this. But when you actually see it happening, you actually see the smoke rising above your own neighborhood and you have friends that are in its path, it really hits home.”
Source: MSNBC (view original article)
Sorry I’ve been absent from the blogosphere this week. This has been an absolutely insane week with work. Our fiscal year end is Friday, so there is a mad rush to get all open items closed immediately. I’ve been double and triple booked for meetings that are back to back every day. Calgon, take me away!
And Little Miss is trying to help matters. Three days this week, she woke up early and pissed at the world, throwing tantrums at 6:30 in the morning. I’m not a morning person, people, and man is this hard to deal with when I’m not fully awake yet either.
I have to be at work tomorrow at 6am, and I’ll be dealing with multi-million dollar contracts. Good golly, they better be serving up some strong coffee, as I’m feeling the pressure of having to perform at such an unGodly hour!
This past weekend, we tried out our new bike trailer for Little Miss. I got on my road bike for the first time in like three years. I was wobbly at first, but got back into the feel of things pretty quick. We rode through a beautiful area of Reno that I had never seen before, and is really close to our house. Within minutes of leaving our house, we were in winding country-like roads with cows, horses and tons of trees. We turned around at a park at the top of Windy Hill, which had a great view of the entire city.
Could someone let me know when it’s the weekend? I really can’t wait for a break!
Here are a few videos I took recently. Enjoy!
Little Miss has discovered her belly button, and likes to lift up her shirt or dress periodically just to check that it’s still there. This video just melts my heart. View Video.
She also learned what a Lion says, but it’s not a big “ROAR”, it’s a little, quiet “bwoar”. View video.
Note: The interface between Drop Shots and WordPress seems to be quirky. Sorry I’m just offering links.
It has just been a crappy day. First I broke my blog. Then my watch broke at the gym and a piece of it fell in the toilet. So I had to stick my hand in the gym toilet to rescue it.
Work has required stupid red tape all day, and oh, my blog images are still broken.
I had thoughts of just quitting blogging all together.
But you all know that I couldn’t do that, as I’m addicted. But it REALLY gets to the perfectionist in me that my images are all broken. Gah!!!! If anyone can help, please email lynnettebellin at hotmail dot com. I’m willing to bribe you…
I just couldn’t handle the gazillion comment spams I was receiving every day any more. I was deleting many real comments as I tried to purge all of the spam from my account.
Upgrading Movable Type is a painful process. A friend recommended Word Press, and voila! Look at me, I changed my blog platforms ALL BY MYSELF! OK, with only a few emails for support. But anyway, it’s done!
Now, I just need someone to help me with some style sheets to make this site look less lame. Anyone looking for a small freelance gig? Let me know in the comments if you’re interested!
Updated to add: CRAP AGAIN!!! I went from breaking half the pictures on my site a few days ago, to breaking ALL of them (including video and slide shows) when I switched platforms. See, there is a reason I don’t screw with the platform very often. Someone help!
Darnit. In my quest to remove people’s names from my site, I broke about half of the pictures on my site because names were in the code for the pictures.
*muttering explicatives*
Way to create work for myself… Darn search and replace feature…
It was a really dry winter for us here in Northern Nevada, which means our fire risk is very high this summer. Check this out:
Shot out of rough starts 20-acre fire
RENO, Nev. – A golfer’s attempt to get out of the rough and back on the fairway started a grass fire in Reno, Nevada, that burned about 20 acres near a golf course, officials said.
The golfer had knocked his ball into dry grass beyond the course on Monday afternoon, officials said. When he tried to play back to the fairway, his club struck something that created a spark.
“He was totally honest about it,” said Reno Battalion Chief Curtis Johnson.
About 50 firefighters responded to the blaze as it spread through tinder-dry grass, and engine trucks were brought in to protect nearby homes.
No buildings were damaged and no one was injured, officials said.
I had a dream the other night that child predators used my blog to track down my daughter. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, and decided to take the initial step of protecting her privacy by removing her name from my blog. From now on, my daughter will be referred to as Little Miss on this blog.
I am also considering making this site private, accessible only through a login. I’m not sure I want to do that, though, as this site has only brought positive contacts to me, and has reunited me with all kinds of people from my past.
So as I mull this over, Little Miss makes her debut. I am also changing references to family members, using their first initials when at all possible.
Little Miss is in the process of moving up to the toddler room at daycare this week. Each day, she’ll spend a bit more time there, and by Thursday, she’ll be moved there full time.
This is a big thing for my little girl. It is exciting for her. I see her light up when she enters a room where all the kids are walking around and playing. She now gets to go outside and play on a play structure twice a day. They’ll have structured activities throughout the day, with music, story time and arts & crafts. This is a big change from hanging out with the babies.
I can tell that she has been bored in the baby room for about the past month. She has a great bond with her caretaker, which is sad to let go, but as I’ve learned in the past year, my outgoing little girl will soon bond with her new caretakers, and she won’t miss a step.
I am fighting the urge to leave work and go observe my daughter as she explores the new world of the toddler room. I picture her running around with a huge smile plastered on her face.
Yet this transition doesn’t come without worries. The teacher child ratio is now 1:8, down from 1:4. She’ll take one nap a day at a scheduled time, and this child has never followed a strict schedule with her nap time. And I can only bring a cold lunch (i.e. they won’t refrigerate or heat up any food), which now makes packing her lunch more challenging for me, as she has a typical picky toddler palate.
But overall, I think it’s good. My little girl is growing up. And it’s really fun to watch.
An 11 year-old boy was killed this past weekend in Utah by a black bear. This is what I was envisioning last weekend when camping in close proximity with bears. My brothers thought I was silly, as these were “just black bears and not grizzly bears”.
Now I’m even more paranoid.
We had a completely lovely day today. To celebrate Father’s Day, we headed up to Squaw Valley USA for the day. We rode the cable car up to High Camp (8,000 ft), and then we hiked up from there to the top of the mountain (1.75 miles up). We had a snack at what I like to call the top of the world, and then came down to have lunch and then swim in the pool at High Camp.
Little Miss took a dip in the pool today, and did a bit better than the last time. She didn’t wail the ENTIRE time. She still needs a lot of work at the pool this summer. I got her a kiddie pool for the back yard this weekend, so hopefully that will help.
Oh, and Little Miss was wearing her shirt that says “My Heart Belongs To Daddy”, which received a lot of comments from people. A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!
Anyway, today was just an amazingly beautiful day, and I couldn’t take enough pictures. JB joked that he felt like the paparazzi was following him today. So enjoy our pics. Happy Father’s Day, everyone!
Even though he rarely reads this site, I’d like to send out one big virtual wish of a Happy Father’s Day to JB, and also to my Daddy, and my Father-In-Law!
Updated to add: JB’s sister made a comment about how TALL Little Miss looked in this pic. She was standing on a rock!!!
Here is my baby sleeping on the beach of Sand Hollow Reservoir (which I like to call Parasite Lake) in Southern Utah over Memorial Day weekend.
I’m trying out a new video posting service here. First video captures one of Little Miss’s SCREAMS for the fun of screaming, before I ask her to demonstrate her new trick.
Photo Sharing – Upload Video – Video Sharing – Share Photos
Here is Little Miss’s first taste of watermelon. I am a complete watermelon freak, and am glad to report my daughter will continue the tradition.
Photo Sharing – Upload Video – Video Sharing – Share Photos
And here is some fun with Daddy.
Photo Sharing – Upload Video – Video Sharing – Share Photos
Please let me know if you have trouble viewing this video. I’m still searching for the one video/photo posting tool that is compatible for everyone.
This past weekend, we finally took Little Miss on her first camping trip. The trip was with my brothers and their families, so it was a Cook Cousins reunion of sorts.
Little Miss dealt with her aversion to dirt pretty well. There were times that she would realize she was standing on dirt, and would freeze on the spot, wimpering. The whole weekend was one big adventure to her, and she didn’t want to miss any of it by napping or sleeping. She stayed up late and woke up at the crack of dawn (5:45am). Of course, when she woke up early, she started screaming at the top of her lungs because she thought it was funny.
I personally didn’t sleep well because of the prevolence of bears in the area. Every noise had me wondering if a bear was right outside my tent. I think it was the Momma Bear in me, feeling the need to protect my little girl.
I got to do some nice open water swimming on both days, and the rest of the time, I caught up with my nieces, nephews and brothers and sister-in-laws. Little Miss loves roasted marshmellows and graham crackers, so we have a S’mores lover in the making.
Here are the pics I took this weekend. Unfortunately, my youngest niece, Cousin K, is missing from the photos, mainly because she was napping as I snapped pics of the rest of the cousins playing in my brother’s boat (as it was parked at the campsite).
According to this article, if an infant receives multiple courses of antibiotics in their first year, they have a 20 percent increased chance at having asthma.
Little Miss went through several courses of antibiotics when she was 3 months old to deal with the sinus infection that resulted after an accident we had where her nose hit the ground, and she had to have surgery to repair her septum. Each course of antibiotics was stronger than the last. I have to wonder if that is having long term effects and is one of the causes of her asthma.
I’ve also read that children can have lung damage that lasts up to a year after having RSV. Little Miss had RSV this past February, and coincidentally, that is when she was diagnosed with asthma.
I look forward to discussing my unprofessional Internet fueled opinions with the Pediatric Pulmonoligist that we’re seeing next month.
Antibiotic Use in Infants May Up Asthma Risk:
The drugs might kill off bad and good bacteria, study suggestsGiving antibiotics for a non-respiratory tract infection to an infant younger than 1 greatly increases the odds that the child will develop asthma, according to new research.
The study found that the risk was highest for those infants who received multiple courses of antibiotics and those who received prescriptions for broad-spectrum antibiotics. Broad-spectrum antibiotics tend to kill a wide range of bacteria — both good and bad.
“Asthma is a multi-factorial disease, and we’ve found evidence of an association with first-year-of-life antibiotic use and asthma,” said the study’s lead author, Anita Kozyrskyj, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
One hypothesis, Kozyrskyj added, is that broad-spectrum antibiotics are killing off too many good bacteria.
“It may be that you need the presence of good bacteria during the first year of life for the immune system to develop normally, and the antibiotics are killing off some of the natural microflora in the gut,” she said. Read entire article.
You know you’re old when you opt for a quiet evening instead of a party at a bar called the Glo Lounge with an open bar. I tell you, 10 years ago, I would have been all about a bar lit by black light and an open bar. Last night, is was completely unappealing to me.
Instead, I returned to the hotel from my booth shift, took a nap, and then went to the pool. Upon my arrival to the pool, it was bliss. I had the place to myself, and for a hotel pool, it was pretty decent for laps, despite being really shallow (and making me be very careful with each flip turn).
That lasted for about 2 minutes. Next thing I knew, I group of European men clad in Speedos got in the pool, and two of them decided to do laps width wise. In other words, they couldn’t figure out how to swim parallel to me, and started swimming in a complete collision path with me. Then, about 10 mintues later, a woman showed up with her – count them – SIX children, and I knew my laps were over.
After the pool, I had a relaxing dinner at the hotel with a good girl friend, and then turned in early. It was quite lovely. And yes, I’m now officially old.
I’m almost done with working this conference, and will be headed home tomorrow. I can’t wait to hug and smell my sweet baby again!
I am kicking myself. I just assumed what time I needed to start working the booth this morning, and managed to show up two hours before my shift. Considering the shuttle from the hotel takes 45 minutes, I have no choice but to stay put. Argh. The days are long enough at this conference without adding 2 hours that are not required.
Last night, we had a great dinner. We ate at Emeril’s, where I got the scallops on a bed of butter noodles. Yum. I must hit the workout center for a long workout today to try to undo the damage that dinner did to my waistline!
I’ve talked to some interesting people here. That’s a nice way of saying strange. Like the guy that told me about the 4 foot long alligator living on his property that he has named Smiley. He said he’s waiting for Smiley to get bigger so that he can shoot him and make gator kabobs out of him. And did you know the cheek meat is the most tender on an alligator?!
Ah, the things you learn…
I’m off booth duty at 3pm today, and am hoping to catch some time at the pool. I’ll just have to ignore the strange looks I’ll get as people stare at my parasite marks!
I’m currently in Orlando for a conference, where I’ll have the extreme pleasure of working a booth every day I’m here. It has been a while since I’ve taken a longer flight, and let me tell you, that flight from Las Vegas to Orlando seemed extremely long, but perhaps that had to do with the horrible stench of the woman’s feet beside me. She just HAD to take off her shoes!
Anyway, my hotel is a nice resort that is supposed to be a replica of a small Italian port town. The staff all greets you in horrid Italian, and to someone that has been to Italy, this resort just comes off as hokey.
The conference I’m working requires me to wear a long sleeved shirt with long pants. IN FLORIDA IN JUNE. I am actively seeking the person that decided this dress code so that I can smack them over the head. I had to walk about 1 mile from my parking space to the convention hall today, and showed up with sweat stains all over my long sleeved shirt.
The man to woman ratio seems to be about 10:1. That would be a good thing if I was single and the men were my type. But neither is true, so it’s just something of note.
I’ll write later. Tomorrow night I’m going to a party at a bar called the Glo Lounge, where everything is lit by black lights. That just sounds too cool. The next night, a party at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville. The goal is not to be hung over for my booth duty during the day.
Ciao! (Ha! Fake Italy talk there!!!)
Setting the scene: Little Miss is eating her breakfast, and is screaming at the top of her lungs in between bites. This is happy screaming. It’s screaming for the sake of screaming and to see just how loud she can yell.
JB: When does the screaming phase end?
LB: When she’s 18.
