Smurfy's Blog

Our boat cruised Glacier Bay. At Glacier Bay, there is this huge solid ice that has been there for thousands of years.

It might be hard to see in picture but the picture shows how far back the solid ice covers the bottom of the mountains

Solid ice still breaks off onto the bay. Some solid ice are small and some are pretty big such as this one

Here are some videos of ice falling onto the bay

The boat cruised to another glacier called John Hopkins Glacier

While I was taking pictures, Nathan was sitting comfortably and playing a game on the iPad. At times, he wants to see the view but most of the time he wants to run around everywhere. I can’t have him running around as much though because I am afraid he might fall off the balcony. While we enjoy the view from the public balcony, he says ‘Hi’ to everyone that walks by…. ‘hi’…’hi’…’hi’… Even though the people have already walked 20 feet away from him, he is still saying ‘hi’!

Later on, I decided to go back to the public balcony. I was curious as to why there were so many people with binoculars and taking pictures. When I looked, there were humpback whales swimming near the ship! I got my camera out and recorded the whales swimming

We arrived about 1 hr late at Juneau. But we get to leave much later to make up for the late arrival. Weather at Juneau is kinda bad. Rain is on and off but it isn’t strong rain… mostly drizzle. Juneau is 1 hr behind. If it is 4pm back home, it is 3pm at Juneau.

There are a lot of shops at Juneau. I bought some things for my family back home. Since I love chocolates, I bought milk chocolate with almonds for myself at the Alaska Fudge Shop.

A lot of the stores have to have a bear statue in front

Cable car at Juneau that takes them to the top. At the top, there are trails where you can go hiking. But since Nelson felt it was too expensive to take the cable car at the top, we didn’t go. It cost about $27 per person.

Near the town of Juneau, there are these waterfalls that start at the very top of this big mountain. Not sure if you can see in the pictures, but there are 6 of them.

Is this the town’s movie theater? I hope it isn’t their only movie theater because this building is old! If there is no tourism at Juneau, I think this small town would be so dead… nothing happening… no big crowd. So if I were to watch Fright Night right now, I would be the only one in the theater! I doubt this movie theater gets completely full. Of course I wouldn’t watch a scary movie by myself!

Pic of our cruise ship. We tendered to Juneau where we took a small boat to go on land.

There is a bus that goes from Alaska to Las Vegas? Nelson and I will be going to Vegas after the cruise, but we are certainly not going to take the bus to Vegas from Alaska!… and why did that guy had to walk into my picture!

IDIOT OF THE DAY!
While my family and I were in line to get back onto the boat, this grumpy old man was fussing about getting wet from the rain. Instead of asking us nicely if he can go in front of us so he can get out of the rain, he was bossing us to move over! My father in law told him there is a line and he just can’t cut in. But the old man kept talking and talking. So I got pist off and told him off. The guy kept saying something. So I told him to not say anything else to me because I will mouth him off. Why did this idiot take a cruise to Alaska where the weather will not be hot and dry like the caribbean? If he didn’t want to get wet, he shouldn’t have gotten off the boat!

So here is the pic of the idiot of the day:

There are so many grumpy old men on the cruise. When we went on the European cruise, there was this old guy getting mad at the kids for splashing water in the pool. If the old guy didn’t want to get wet, why hang out at the pool! So I told the kids to continue to play… after all their parents spend so much much for this trip and the kids should continue to have fun. Gee do men get that grouchy when they get old? hehehe

While at sea, we pretty much relaxed, walked around and watched some shows. The ship has this big screen at the top deck. Around 8pm and 10pm, a movie is shown on that big screen. The other night, I watched TRON Legacy.

Here are some pics of our room. We didn’t get a balcony this time since it would be too cold to sit in the balcony while sailing to Alaska anyway.

Since it would be best for Nathan to sleep on a crib, we asked our steward to put one of the bed on the side and put a crib at one of the corners. Having a crib instead of another twin bed gives us a little more leg room.

Our dining table number 160

There are five of us on this 7 table dining table. Me, Nelson, Nathan and my inlaws. There was a very nice elderly couple who sat with us on our first night but they changed to a different table which is located at the front entrance. They couldn’t walk too far back where our table is located. I like the location of our dining table because it is cozy and there isn’t anyone sitting behind us because of the wall. Plus if Nathan makes a fuss, no one can really hear him since we are all the way at the back 🙂

My first cigar on my first cruise trip!… Actually it is just a breadstick! 🙂

We boarded Sea Princess before 12pm. Once we got on board, we had a good lunch. I was so hungry since I only had yogurt for breakfast. Once you have a baby, there isn’t much time to feed yourself in the morning. So I made sure I fed Nathan first before we left our house around 8:15am.

Here are some pics of San Francisco from the Sea Princess:

Pier 35 where the boat was docked

Our ship and a cargo ship going under the Golden Gate Bridge

Goodbye San Francisco!… well for now until Aug 28.

We are almost done packing… well actually I have been packing for all of us (me, husband and my son). Tomorrow, we will board Sea Princess (www.princess.com) which will be docked in San Francisco on Pier 35. The ship will take us to Alaska. We have been on an Alaska cruise before back in 2003 but there are new places that we haven’t visited yet like Haines, Alaska and Victoria, BC.

Here is our itinerary:
Cruise Day
Aug 18: Board Sea Princess in San Francisco, California (departure 4:00 PM)
Aug 19: At Sea
Aug 20: At Sea
Aug 21: Juneau, Alaska
Aug 22: Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska (Scenic Cruising)
Aug 23: Haines, Alaska
Aug 24: Ketchikan, Alaska
Aug 25: At Sea
Aug 26: Victoria, British Columbia
Aug 27: At Sea
Aug 28: Disembark Sea Princess, back in San Francisco, California

Here is the Sea Princess Bridge Cam. You can see a live view of where the ship is currently sailing. http://www.princess.com/bridgecams/cp/sea_bridgecam.html

On board, we are thinking about putting Nathan into a children’s play center that they have on the ship so he can interact with other children his age. Since Nathan isn’t shy at all and always curious about everything, we will have no problems leaving him at the children’s play center for a while.

Only thing I have concerned about is the dinner table in the cruise ship’s formal dining room. The dinner table is always set with dinner plate, salad plate, bread plate, two sets of silverware, 3 different types of glasses, etc. Like I said, my son is always curious. If he sees all those dinner settings, he will grab everything on the dinner table. So I will have to let our waiter clear part of the dinner table for our son every time we have dinner there.

Las Vegas
On day we arrive from cruise, my husband and I will fly to Las Vegas. Our son will stay behind with my inlaws. There is a VMWare conference my husband will be going to in Las Vegas. As for me, I will just take it easy… probably hang out by the pool then walk around do some shopping during the day. At nighttime, have nice dinner with my husband and probably watch a show. The conference will be held at the Venetian hotel (http://www.venetian.com/). Venetian is actually my one of my favorite hotels in Las Vegas because all the rooms are suites and my favorite opera ‘Phantom of the Opera’ is playing there. I think I watched this same opera at least 4 times now. I even have Phantom of the Opera movie and soundtrack. 🙂 Also, Venetian hotel has Bouchon Bakery (http://www.bouchonbakery.com/) which is located near the Phantom of Opera theater. Hey, I already know what I will be having for breakfast. 🙂

My husband has been to the VMWare conference in Las Vegas before which was back in 2007, I think. The conference was also held at the Venetian hotel. When we stayed at the Venetian last time, I remember hearing Phantom of the Opera music in the hotel’s grand hallways. The music just sounded really good to me because it felt so relaxing. But when I go into the elevators, I remember hearing an irritating song from the show ‘Jersey Boys’ which is also playing at the Venetian hotel. The Jersey Boys just sounded like they were screeching.

Nathan had his second appt with his speech pathologist today. Before we saw his speech pathologist, a UCSF staff took pictures of Nathan’s face (front and left/right sides). With our meeting with the speech pathologist, we told her how many words he is able to say even though they are not quite clear but at least it is a good start for him. But he can say ‘Hi’ well. When he says hello, he says it ‘a-lo’. When he says apple, he says ‘ap’ leaving the rest of the letters out. The speech pathologist made an evaluation of him and she believes that since he is starting to pick up some words, he can start going to a regular speech therapist. There is a speech therapist near us but we still have to find out if our insurance covers it. There are other speech therapy offices in other cities as well but we still need to look into these places more and get more information. After speaking with the speech pathologist, another UCSF staff came into the room and spoke to us and asked us other questions about Nathan. After we talked to her, we went into another office where nine UCSF staffs (including the doctor who performed Nathan’s surgery) took a peek at Nathan’s palette to see how well it is developing. As usual, his appt went over 2.50 hrs. Nelson was getting worried about our car because most of the parking spaces are only up to 2 hrs. But good thing we didn’t get a parking ticket.

When my son has an appt at UCSF, boy his appt is usually very long. At times, we wait in the waiting room to be called for an 1hr. Nathan still has plenty of UCSF appts in the future. Because of work and all, we haven’t made other future appts for him yet.

After UCSF, we drove to Pier 39 to take a look at Princess Cruise: Sea Princess. We will be going on a cruise to Alaska next week. The boat will sail from the Port of SF. Glad we don’t have to worry about taking Nathan onto a plane since the ship sails from SF. So today, the Sea Princess docked at Pier 35 to sail for Alaska as well. Then it will come back next Thurs Aug 18 which is the date we will be going on our cruise… it will be Nathan’s first cruise (well he won’t actually remember anything since he is still very young). We went on an Alaskan cruise before (I think back in 2003) but it was a 7 day cruise. This time we will be going on a 10-day cruise and we will be visiting two cities that we have never been before (as well as return to the other cities that we have seen already).

So on the day of our cruise, Nelson wants to check-in early, have lunch on the boat then walk for a while at Pier 39 before leaving the Port of SF. For me, I can’t wait to see the coast of SF. I have seen the coast but viewing it from a plane. It will be a different experience to see the SF’s coastline from a boat.

The Sea Princess is not as nearly as big as the cruise ship that we took last year to go to the caribbean (Royal Caribbean: Liberty of the Seas). Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas is 160,000 tons. Princess Cruise Sea Princess is only 77,000 tons. But to me, a cruise is a cruise… I won’t have to cook for 10 days!!! Actually 14 days. After the cruise, I will be accompanying my husband to Las Vegas for his conference. So once we arrive back to Port of SF, my husband and I have to hustle to unpack our dirty clothes and pack clean clothes then head for the airport. We won’t be bringing our son to Vegas though. My inlaws will watch him.

On Aug 18, this will be Nathan’s first cruise:

After taking a peek of the Sea Princess cruise ship that was docked at Pier 35 in SF, we went to Pixar Child Care to take a tour of their facility. Nathan will be 2 this October and we want him to start going to a day care before he turns 3 yrs old. Pixar Child Care has 4 sections: Infants (6 weeks to 1, I think), Jr Preschool, (2 – 3), Preschool (3+) and Pre Kindergarten. The thing that worries me is that what if Nathan is not completely potty trained yet? Will the Pixar Child Care not accept him? Glad to know that even though Nathan is not potty trained yet for Preschool, the Pixar Child Care will train him for us! Woo-hoo! I don’t think I can be in the toilet room all day waiting until Nathan uses it. Breakfast and afternoon snacks are provided except for lunch. If Nathan is accepted, we can either bring him his own lunch or have the child care provide the food (which is $4 a day).
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Our guide showed us different classrooms. The classrooms (well since it is a Pixar Child Care) are named after Pixar characters like Colette, Jesse and so on. I think one of the rooms is Jack-Jack. I forgot. But I know that one room is Boo which is a room for infants.

Here is Nathan playing with toys in one of the classrooms:

We wanted to put him into Jr Preschool but our guide told us that there is a long waiting list for the Jr Preschool. Since there is pretty much no waiting for the regular Preschool, Nathan may have a better chance of getting in… perhaps sometime next Spring 2012 or when he turns 2 years and 8 months. We already put his name down on the waiting list plus gave a non-refundable fee of $25 to keep Nathan’s name on the list.

We went to the Cal Expo and State Fair. I have never been to the State fair but I have been to a County fair such as Solano county many years ago. My husband has been to the State fair when he was very very young. It was a good day to go to the fair but it was too hot.

The State fair was very big. They had livestock shows, concerts, exhibits, carnival rides, lots of eating areas and so on. The admission for adults is $12 each. Our son was free. The parking was $10. If you want to ride the carnival, you can either pay for each ticket which is $1 or pay $30 for unlimited rides. We didn’t go on any carnival rides. Instead, we went to see the livestock show and petting zoo as well as look at some exhibits. The State fair also had shopping expo which housed all different retailers selling clothes, house products, outdoor products (kinda like the Napa Home and Garden Show).

The concern I had about the State fair was the bathroom! I thought they only had portable pottys. But they actually had restrooms… clean restrooms. 🙂

Overall, we had a good time. I especially liked watching the cooking demonstrations. There were other businesses there who gave free stuffs. Some businesses were Golden Credit Union, Walmart, NBC news, PG&E, so forth. At the Golden Credit Union, I won a backpack! All I had to do was spin this wheel and if the needle landed on any yellow number, I win a backpack. The NBC news provided free photographs. You get to choose different backgrounds and they take your picture for free. We chose the background that says California State Fair 2011. At Walmart, we got free smoothies. PG&E gave us a free battery powered fan.

Nathan had a very wonderful time at the fair especially when feeding the animals like goats, deer, etc. To feed the animals, it cost $3 for adult and $1 for the food. Nathan was free since he is only 21 months old. Nathan was kinda scared at beginning but once he got used to being around the animals, he would run up to them and pet them.

In the livestock area, a pig just gave birth that morning. She had 4 gilts (female swine) and 4 boars (male swine). I even saw the pig’s placenta. There were also other animals such as goats and cows that just gave birth. Now that I think about it, do the farmers purposely make these animals get pregnant so that they can give birth in time for the fair? In another livestock area, we saw rows and rows of cows. Some cows were actually getting their hair trimmed. The livestock area didn’t really smell as bad as I thought. The workers did a good job cleaning up the stanky poop.

Some exhibits were interesting such as the County exhibit.

In Amador County, you can actually ride on an open train while you eat and drink!

The fair also have their own monorail like Disneyland but you have to pay to ride it.

There were people in costumes entertaining everyone

Carnival area had roller coasters, bungee jumping and other usual carnival rides.

After the fair, we went to Wild Buffalo Wings which newly opened in Vacaville. The one in Vacaville is bigger than the one we go to in Fairfield. Since the one in Vacaville just opened, it was crowded. As usual, we got our wings with different spices such as salt/vinegar, spicy garlic. Nelson got the 3 chili cheese dogs with fries.

We took our son to the Jelly Belly Factory. It was very crowded for a Monday. The line to tour the factory was about 20 – 30 mins long. The factory tour is free but if you really want a more up-close tour, there is a fee.

Once we got into the factory to see how the jelly belly beans are made, taking pictures are not allowed. Also, we were told we had to wear the jelly belly paper hats. I thought wearing the jelly belly paper hat was optional. So before we walked inside the factory, everyone in our group including small kids put on our jelly belly hats. The first half of the tour was boring because there was no action to see. We didn’t see factory workers in the first half of the tour. But videos were showed to show the history of the jelly belly factory. There was more action during the middle half and almost end of the tour.

During the tour, we saw workers adding the jelly belly beans inside these horizontal spinning barrels. In that stage of the process, that is when they add the sugar or some sweet liquid that gives the jelly belly beans their taste. In the other part of the factory, we saw the jelly belly beans travel on the conveyor belt then get dumped into these rectangular baskets. The factory workers placed these baskets into a cart with shelves and they keep these carts into some room to dry. At the end of the tour, we went to the packaging side of the factory where the jelly belly bags were boxed for shipping.

The fun part of the tour was eating some samples of the jelly belly beans. We had kiwi, blackberry and other kinds of jelly belly beans. I am not a fan of jelly belly candy but the samples that we had were actually pretty good. Or perhaps I was just too hungry and I would just eat anything. 🙂 At end of the tour, each of us got a free bag of jelly belly beans.

The Jelly Belly Factory didn’t just sell jelly belly beans. They also sold chocolates. Since I love chocolates, I bought a few of almond clustered milk chocolate and I got Nelson his peanut butter cup chocolate. We also bought bottled brinks with different flavors like tangerine and cherry.

Mommy and Nathan on the slide.

Nathan, the spider boy.

Wow, Nathan could have actually held on longer if Daddy hadn’t pulled him out.

At 21 months old, what progress has he made recently?

He moves his head up and down to express ‘Yes’ and knows how to point to certain things like window, wall, his knees, etc.

The biggest progress he is making is creating different sounds with his mouth. Before, all words that he said started with letter ‘M’. Now he has been babbling different things. Some words are still not clear but I can tell he is saying the ‘Y’, ‘W’ and ‘H’ letters. One time, he was able to say ‘Da Da’. Lately, he has been saying ‘Hi’. When we are out grocery shopping, he says ‘Hi’ to every person that passes by! At times, he gets too carried away and can’t stop saying ‘Hi’! 🙂