Tyler Feeds Himself

Tyler has grown up so quickly in so many ways. Especially at meal times, we are reminded what a "big boy" he is as he pounds down an incredible quantity of food in no time at all - all on his own. With two self-feeding kids, we've definitely turned a major corner at meal times!

Like his big brother, Tyler loves to "cheers" with his milk. It just gets more and more fun capturing him on video. The only snag is that our Flip camera has little images of cars on it, and every time I start to film him doing something cool, he gets distracted by the little cars and starts pointing at the camera, exclaiming, "Car! Car!"

Russian River Weekend

After the crazy Dreamforce week, we were in need of some serious R&R. Eunice found us a great house to rent up on the Russian River, and we decided to escape the week before Thanksgiving along with the Canadas.

The house was great-- huge deck with a hot tub, vineyard in the front yard, and just a hundred yards from the river. We had a ton of fun with the Canadas, including some tasty home-cooked meals, relaxing in the hot tub, wandering down to throw rocks in the river, skuut excursions into town, Persimmon picking at a local organic farm, and a killer game of chess, played with shot glasses that were consumed as the game progressed (we lost by a pretty big margin, but everyone comes out a winner in a game like that!).

The house was outside of Guerneville, which has quite a reputation (which we were not aware of). Mostly, we just noticed a very large transient population... some of the happiest, friendliest homeless guys we've ever run across. We'd walk over this big pedestrian bridge on our way into town (oftentimes through huge clouds of pot smoke), and the guys hanging out would tell each other to "watch your language, kids passing through" and would let Ryan know that he's the "luckiest man in the world" to be with family.

Our last day was probably our favorite-- after a lazy morning we had lunch at the beautiful outdoor cafe at Korbel winery. We drove up Russian River while the boys napped, stopping at one of our favorite vineyards, Hop Kiln. We then headed to the coast by a little town called Jenner, where we found a path out to a deserted beach at Russian Gulch. It was a calm, warm November afternoon, and we had the beach to ourselves as we played with the boys and watched the sun set. The boys started to melt down in the car since it was way past dinner time by the time we left (complete disaster was staved off only by a raucous sing-along of popular Christmas carols), but a little restaurant in Monte Rio saved the day. It was called Cafe Les Jumelles-- totally kid friendly, great steaks, outstanding homemade mac and cheese, and Lagunitas IPA on tap. Heaven.

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Dreamforce

Dreamforce is Salesforce.com's annual user conference, and is the biggest week of the year for Appirio, Ryan's startup-- this year 18,000 customers and prospects descended on Moscone center, and Ryan was fully occupied for the week with the booth, the speaking opportunities, and of course throwing the best party at Dreamforce-- a VIP event at the historic San Francisco Mint.

Since Eunice's non-profit is a Salesforce customer, she was also up at the event-- although she spent most of her time at the fancy hotel where Ryan's company put him up, catching up on the 4 years of sleep deprivation she's endured since our boys were born. (Ryan was only at the hotel a few hours a day, so Eunice had to make sure the room was put to good use!)

One highlight of the week was Ryan's 15 minutes of fame on stage with Appirio's customer, Avon. It was flattering to be asked by Avon to get on stage in front of 10,000 people and help demonstrate the application we'd built for them while Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff bantered with our client.

Then Marc turned to Ryan and asked some questions about how the app was built. The only problem: that wasn't in the script, and Ryan didn't have a microphone! Ryan gestured grandly to indicate that the customer was supposed to do the talking, but Benioff came back 2 more times with questions, until the client said "Marc, he doesn't have a mic!"

It was definitely one of Ryan's most frustrating professional moments-- to have the opportunity to share a cool story but to be unable to do so! This video captures a little bit of the absurdity/humor of having a 6'5" guy pantomiming on stage.

Another highlight of the week was when Adam (who works at Salesforce) hosted a panel.... with Ryan as one of the panelists! The Nichols boys rocked the house (as much as possible given that it was a 7:30am session after the night with all the big parties). With Eunice in the audience showing her support, it was definitely a family affair to remember. You can catch the audio here, and learn a little big about what the Nichols boys are up to these days!

And where were the boys through all of this? Po Po to the rescue! Terry came out for the week from St. Louis, taking care of Spencer's pre-school drop-off and pick-up, entertaining Tyler, cooking up a storm, and putting the boys to bed at night. The boys had a great time hanging out with their grandmother while their parents were a world away up in San Francisco, and Eunice got 3 glorious days and 2 nights away from the kids - the longest stretch she has ever been away from Spencer and Tyler!

Train Hopping in San Francisco

Another one of KB's fantastic days in the city, this time entirely on trains! It really was Spencer's dream day-- Ryan brought him up to join KB, Lee, and Charu for this adventure, while Eunice spent some quality time with Tyler back on the home front.

We started in the Castro, catching the F train all the way down market street to the Ferry Building. We grabbed brunch at Cane Rosso, checked out the transit museum, and then continued our ride along the Embarcadero. We hopped off in Fisherman's Wharf, and then walked through Fort Mason to Grandpa Nic's house for an afternoon nap. Then we took the 22 Muni all the way back to where we started, just in time for a late night burrito at a Castro Taqueria!

I hope Sencer remembers this one-- it really doesn't get any better than this for a 3 year old... or for a 30-something year old!

Click here for a slideshow....

Light at the end of the tunnel

After months of largely ignoring each other (or worse, competing for our attention), the boys are finally starting to really play with one another - and we're starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel for the craziness that has become the norm for our family life.

All four of us playing together is still a rarity-- we've definitely decided that the "divide and conquer" strategy works best for now, but every once in a while we capture a moment with all of us together that is very happy indeed.

Whether horsing around in bed in our pajamas, or the magical stretches when the boys entertain each other outside or in our new playroom, it's the moments below that keep us sane during what's a pretty crazy time in our lives!