Office Shed!

Yesterday construction began on Brian's new office shed. Yipeee!!!! After 3 years of working out of our "spare" bedroom, he's finally getting his own private, quiet(er) space to work. He is excited. We are excited.

  And in only one day they got the whole thing up!!! Roof shingled, windows installed, and everything. It still needs interior finishing - insulation, dry wall, electricity. But it's in!

Sweet Ride

Last spring we bought a ride-along bike for Erin - you know, the one-wheeler thingie that attaches to the back of your bike so your almost-bike-riding kid can trail along after you. It has been awesome, but it's left Robin relegated to the Bike Trailer. The Bike Trailer is not fun for anyone, really. We used it, with mild success, a long time ago.

After some brief trial runs, this Bobike Maxi+ is SWEEEEEEEET.

Thank you, Dutch Bicyclist Parents. 

Robin Rides, Erin Instructs

There's so much going on in this movie, I won't spend time talking about it. Just will tag it with a bunch of things and let you enjoy!

The apple doesn't fall far....

My dad is a cancer survivor - he had Hodgkin's lymphoma 11 years ago.  It was diagnosed, basically, on our wedding day.  When he was undergoing treatment, the only things that were remotely interesting/tasty/palatable to him were doughnuts and hot dogs. 

Guess what Robin ate for lunch today? 

Looking for a good home (long and wordy again, sorry!) 10

We're 3 miles from home after a medium-serious drive of 4 hours coming back from Tahoe when we see a lollygagging, happy, alone Golden Retriever standing alone on a corner of a busy street in downtown Orinda.  There's N*O*O*N*E nearby.  He has a collar but not a leash.  I quickly pull over, the roady is very, very busy and we lost two cats to it a couple years ago.  Brian hops out and hooks the dog.  No tags.  We hem and haw a bit over what to do, looking around all the while for a search party.  No one emerges, we pile the dog into our car and head home.

I imagine the scenario where the dog escapes from the yard unexpectedly and is wandering about, maybe the family is out, maybe they're not paying attention.  But they're missing him or soon will be and will soon mount an all-force effort to relocate him and bring him home.

The dog is old, with a greying face and a big lump on his back.  On the sage advice of dog owner and all-around-good-guy Uncle Jim, we looked for a vet to take him to. Being Sat, all the vet's offices are closed by now, but I find one emergency clinic, call them and they say to bring him in.  I do.

He's thirsty but otherwise happy and friendly, as all Goldens are.  He's got no microchip.  They take him in, telling me he'll get picked up by animal control and taken to the closest shelter.  After a waiting period, he'll be put up for adoption.

The receptionist says he looks *just* like a dog that was there yesterday, brought in by a family who said they'd take care of him, but then might have changed their heart and dumped him by the side of the road.  My heart sank that this sweet, elderly dog would ever find his people again.  And it sinks even lower that this dog might have been abandoned by a family no longer able to take care of his needs.  Likely having cancer or another virus, his care taking needs have certainly changed since he was a puppy 10 years ago.  And maybe the family'd ability to take care of him has changed too.

I leave, thinking we've done the best we can, saving the dog from the treacherous road, and B and I consider maybe taking in the geriatric dog to give him his last year or two surrounded by adoring little girls. I feel a responsibility for the animal, having plucked him off the road and trying to get hime to safety.  However, introducing an older dog with health conditions.... am I ready to teach the girls such an immediate lesson in loss? Can I just leave the sweet pooch to his fate?

(P.S. this is a backdated post, so if you're on pins and needles check in on 4/10.)

TAHOE!!!!

We were invited to spend part of Spring Break with 3/5ths of the Upper Orinda McF's. They'd rented a cabin in Tahoe with a pet-friendly policy (they have a dog), a hot-tub, 4 bedrooms, lovely surroundings, and a cozy potbelly stove at a super last-minute bargain. How could we miss this opportunity.

Erin was an old-hat at snow, and quickly got into it.  Robin, not so much.  No good footage but the kiddo wanted to touch it, but hated the cold, wanted to explore then slipped and fell unexpectedly.  It was classic toddler new-experience freak out.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.  

But, everyone enjoyed the unique pleasure of a hot tub in near freezing temperatures!  So glad we're here!

Induction cooktop: New Kitchen Review 1

*kitchen nerd alert* this is a detailed perspective on 1.5 week usage of our new cooktop.  If you're not interested, check out the next post.

We splurged on a few things in the kitchen, one of them being a cooktop/oven versus a range.  The difference is kinda subtle, but the combo allows for a bit more choice over what appliance you want.  Also, when it's all finished, it looks a bit more polished to have a built-in oven and countertop cook surface rather than a combo.

We didn't like the gas range we put in our last house, and we were ho-hum on electric.  Then we learned about induction.  Woah ... cooking with electromagnetic energy?!  Are we living in 2010 or what? Oh wait. . .

 We were lured by pictures like this: a raw egg spilled over a sliced-in-half skillet, one side perfectly cooked the other still clear and runny.  Or here where the butter is slowly melting in the pan but the butter on the cooktop is still intact.  We've got two little kids and two exploring cats, who wouldn't want a little extra protection from burnt fingers?

While it's been less than two weeks, I'm so far really happy with the induction cooktop.  1. it boils water in about 90 seconds.  I'm not kidding.  It's got a special setting marked "H" that cooks the %&*)(@ out of water.  It also turns off after 10 minutes, in the event you forgot about your water.  It senses when a pan is on the burner, and turns off if a pan is not sensed after a given amount of time.  Tonight, I was being the sloppy cook and spilled things all over the cooktop.  Rather than be rewarded with that acrid, lingering smoke that typically rewards such carelessness, the spilled food did nothing. It lay there, inert, cooling, waiting for me to clean it up. And it was directly on top of the "burner".

One downside is it doesn't work with all pans.  Aluminum pans don't work because they don't participate in electromagnetic hoobiedos (yes that's the technical term).  Also, cast-iron skillets are not recommended as the metal may scratch the glass surface, damaging the cooking capabilities.  I love, love, LOVE my cast iron skillet. I've cooked with it nearly nonstop for about 18 years now and it's only recently becoming properly seasoned.  I can't imagine not cooking with it. But maybe I'll make a few adjustments for the convenience this cooktop offers. Or I"ll still use it and not swish it around too much.  

Goodbye Stove!

Today as I was cleaning out cabinets in prep for the kitchen demo, I found the original manual for our range. I tried to figure out what date it was installed.  The most recent manual I could find online was from 1984, and it was a later model than ours.  Judging from the canning tips and very slender, well manicured ladies' hands in the drawings, I'm guessing early '70's.  

As funky as this range is/was I will not miss it.  We stopped using the two right burners a long time ago as we would frequently get a sharp electric shock when cooking with them.  Brian and his dad figured they weren't grounded but try as they might couldn't fix it.  So we removed the knobs and stopped using them. So we've been cooking with 2 burners for nearly 2 years.  And the larger of the 2 working burners only works about 60% of the time.

I look forward to a stove and oven that work and will let me live till dinner.

Robin's first day at nursery school!

Robin missed the cut-off to start at Erin's preshchool this year by about 6 weeks.

 But she seems so engaged and interested, we thought she would enjoy getting into some peer activities.  So yesterday was her first day at nursery school.  She was there for 1.5 hours, the longest she's ever been away from family.  And she did great, only cried just before I picked her up.  And I think the only reason she was upset was that she was hungry.

Here is the art project she brought home:

Stealing candy from a baby.

Erin got lots of See's lollipops for halloween from Grammy and Papa. She gets one "treat" per day after school, and she usually chooses one of these.  On this day, she abandoned the chocolate confection for a packet of Pez she found.  Her sister, practicing her newly found mobility, took advantage of the situation.....





.... and Mommy learned not to try to put her down for a nap shortly after she'd been sucking on a mondo chocolate lollipop for the first time.

August Absence

Uncle Jim commented tonight about the absence of updates on the McMiller blog lately.  Well, folks.  I'll sum it up with two words:  Summer Break.

Erin's preschool takes the month of August off. Remember this?  That was one week with a 2 1/2 year old and sleepy sleepy 2 month old.  We're now week 4/5 with an almost 3 year old and very alert, very busy 6 month old.  So it's spring break times about ten.

We'll be back to our regularly scheduled family updates and gratuitously cute baby pictures in a few more weeks.  In the meantime, for your amusement, here are some pictures Erin took recently:

End of Younger Twos group.

I'm backdating this post by one day.  So today is Erin's last day in her Younger Twos group at her preschool.  The school year officially ended in June, but today is her last day of summer camp .  When school resumes in the fall, she will be a bona fide (if not official, quite yet) Younger Three.

Here she is on her first day of school this past year.


And here she is on her last day.  She dressed herself. And refused to brush her hair.

Someone smart once said, "Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop to look around once in awhile, you could miss it."  Considering how much little E has grown this past year, I'd have to agree.  

Where the junk goes to die

After a moderately successful garage sale and a dismal response from the freecycle community, I bit the bullet and took a load of stuff over to the Goodwill drop off center.  It took a few days of me staring at the neatly lined pile of McMiller flotsam baking in the sun to realize that really, it was all just junk. (I'm writing this on Tuesday but will be back-dating it to Sunday....)  It now dawns on me that I was looking upon the mounds of stuff and seeing every item as I used, enjoyed, and valued.  Not as it appeared to others gazing on it for the first time: used linens, mismatched glasses, bags of screws and doorknobs, a broken subwoofer, a manual typewriter.  A typewriter for goodness sakes!  So off the girls and I went to the neighborhood Goodwill drop off center, where probably even they will reject 75% of what we "donated".  But at least I didn't have to do it. We've one more load to take, and it does feel good to get this stuff gone. Maybe I'll even try to purge a few closets.

Oh, and I did keep a few things to try to place in loving homes again .... anyone want a manual typewriter?

Pool Party!

Dr. A, Erin, and I are just back from the pool. It was sweet!

Instead of creepy people, there were totally normal people. Lots of kids, maybe seven families. We all got to meet people, and Erin liked jumping from the edge of the pool into my arms. I guess that's how we parents roll on Saturday night in Lafayette, yo.

OK, Lafayette, you've won this round.

p.s. Erin pooped twice in two hours while swimming. Twice. Three swim diapers, people.