Lisa is mastering the jungle gym with ease.

Tom with a balloon

A successful trip made us all need to slow down for a while. We stayed at home for the two following weekend -- that is, at least in part. Tommy has been further practicing his swimming on and below the surface. Lisa has continued to swim "mayor's-wife" style, making sure there's not even a drop of water splashing on her head. One morning I had sent the kids with granny to Pump It Up - an indoor playground full of jumping castles and jungle gyms. I was glad to not have to be there with them for once, as it is a noisy madhouse. It seems that granny had enjoyed it at least as much as our kids did -- she only got surprised how much workout all that jumping represents. The children weren't surprised at all -- they appear to operate on some secret supply of energy, as they did not even start breathing faster -- not to speak of any tiredness at all.

Tommy begged and begged until one weekend, we granted him a trip to Fremont Peak. It's so great that Tom already knows what he wants, and better still that he longs for things we approve of -- we, too, like to do road trips with hiking, and have much understanding for his obsession for the highest hill with a view.

Then a ballooning get-together at Prosser Lake became imminent. Last year we did not manage to get there on account of Sid's job duties; this year we had planned ahead in hope to fit it in our schedule. We drove out on Friday morning -- wanting to avoid a traffic jam in Sacramento, and thus reach the campground in time to get the kids to their beds. After all, we adults needed early bedtime as well -- since we would get up before sunrise.

Ballooning congress is a treat for the camera.

It is an art to not dip the crew.

Sacramento lived up to its infamy -- a large north-south interstate had been CLOSED in this capital city, which seemed to cause substantial chaos. Sid diverted aimlessly into the city streets, and we crept for about half hour through back yards. My offers to ask for directions or perhaps turn on the computer with navigation, were strictly rejected. It's a wonder we have not been lost in Sacramento till this day -- for we had eventually found a way out somehow -- and finally headed for the mountains.

Jeanne a Tom had been holding the location since Thursday, accompanied by their neighbor Barbara a their dog, Mariah. I worried a bit how our children would respond to a large black Labrador (similar to the scary, barking monster in our street), but Mariah is well behaved and neither barked nor jumper our kids, therefore she became the center of their shy attention.

After dinner everybody began to get ready for their respective bunks -- aeronauts are decent people -- they don't really have much choice since they have to get up at five a.m. We have conducted an experiment -- placed the kids and granny into our large tent, and Sid and I took the small tent like when we used to be younger, so that we would not wake up the rest of the family in the morning. I had a relatively bad night -- Sid's snoring, coyotes howling, dogs in the camp replying to them, and my shoulder that caught some cold from the car air conditioning hurt me like hell. After several hours I gave it and stumbled across half of the campground to the parking lot and our car for ibuprofen, to be able to sleep for at least the remaining sliver of the night till early morning.

Dawn arrived like a pounce in the head, but in the end we got up. Before we all loaded into Tom's truck and reach the launch site, a whole queue of balloonist's trailers awaited some free space there. You cannot unfurl your balloon on the coarse desert bushes, and the area of the parking lot allowed launching for approximately six to eight aerostats at the same time. It takes about forty five minutes to transform a giant bag from its dormant shape of a textile clot stuffed in a trailer into an airy envelope soaring in the skies.

Humpty Dumpty

Roasting marshmallows

Naturally such situation demands a steady hand of a woman. Jeanne had taken to organizing the launches and ordered us, her crew, to assist struggling pilots with little (or sometimes, no) helpers, to make everything happen faster, and to let everyone get their turn before wind picks up. I must say that I rather enjoyed it. After all those year we tend to have met most of the people and we feel among friends there. And we know what to do, which is often better than uselessly gaping or feeling like a dummy.

Eventually we got to build "our own" balloon, Tranquility. Sid went into the basket, while I still hoped for our children and granny to appear at the far end of the meadow. We did not want to wake them up, and the kids are afraid of the balloons (or more accurately, the noisy burners), although Tommy had claimed the other day that he was looking forward to the balloons and that he would not be afraid. I had thought that at the respectful distance from the edge of the campground across the meadow, they might actually like it. Alas, time had come to chase our balloon; Tom drove back through the campground and so I spotted the kids with granny as they were just getting up. Apparently our journey of the previous day had thoroughly tired both juniors and seniors.

I got to fly in the basket on the second hop, accompanied by Jeanne's grandson Cory. He fancied the way other balloons played with the surface of Prosser Lake, and asked for our own dip. Sadly, wind did not cooperate and we never got above the lake properly. On the other hand we thus had a beautiful view and managed to snap many pictures of aerostats reflecting in the water.

Balloons taking off in smoke.

We mostly helped build the balloons up on the second day.

Then followed an extensive late breakfast; Jeanne with Tom made pancakes, which made our kids especially happy. We declared this meal a lunch as well and drove off to Donner Pass, where, according to Sid, railway tunnels could be found. Well, the tunnels may be there and accessible, too, but there are no more rails running through them. In time we managed to find the new railroad line and spot two trains. Tommy was ecstatic on account of a noisy railroad crossing, and so perhaps our parental pride did had been thus saved.

We had a plan to go swimming in the lake by the afternoon. It took Sid almost half hour before he finally decided to get in the water -- and this while boasting how well developed his sub-dermal fat layer is, and how not cold he was. Yes, he swam in the end, while the kids were long out, and I had crisscrossed the lake so much it would have counted as a training for the English channel. Despite his apocalyptic rumbling, even my Hippo had to admit that washing the dust away had been refreshing.

A communal balloonist dinner took place in the evening, but we did not have the patience (getting up at five makes the day quite longer), and so we stuffed ourselves by five o'clock with food of our own making. Hence we just nibbled at the official menu. When we finally chased our kids in their respective beds, Jeanne and big Tom set up a campfire. Of course neither Tommy nor Lisa could miss such a beautiful thing, which pushed their curfew by another hour. I think that even later back in the tent they continued chattering with granny when I had long been asleep.

Jeanne is checking the crown line. You can spot the Ellie, the Coffee Fairy, next to her.

Lisa has celebrated her third birthday.

The next morning had brought us smoke from this year's widespread forest fires, and subsequently an extraordinary, colorful sunrise. And also Jeanne's friend, a coffee fairy named Ellie, who, having been living nearby brought from her home an industrial sized thermos full of hot coffee. Even Hippo would confirm that I am a much more bearable person when I don't deviate from my morning caffeine schedule.

On that day, Jeanne flew with Ellie and Barbara, while Sid and I kicked around the launch area, chatted with people and took pictures of Humpty. Humpty Dumpty is an English nursery rhyme about an egg-shaped person who fell off of a wall and broke into thousand pieces so nobody could ever put him back together. Humpty Dumpty is the name of a fun hot-air balloon in the shape of the frightened, egg falling upside-down. We could not miss the launch of such rare novelty -- although the pictures came out poorly due to the smoke.

Well, another solid breakfast followed, then we packed -- and drove home. We tried to catch up with all the missed sleep hours (a great plan, but execution somewhat lacking -- we had to select the best of our five hundred pictures taken, and quickly post them in our online gallery, so we could brag about it). Before the trip, we had considered leaving the kids home with granny -- after all, balloons are more or less an adult hobby, but in the end we were glad to have taken them along. Our granny and the balloonists are good friends, and she is not shy to try to communicate with them in English; our children had enjoyed many little adventures like sleeping in a tent or roasting marshmallows on the campfire. Not to speak of tossing stones into Prosser Lake and their careful play with the large black dog (Mariah). So perhaps we all had enjoyed this trip.

It is important that the brother also likes the new toy.

Granny took this picture, hence finally one where we all can be seen.

Right after coming home, we organized Lisa's third birthday. This year it was just the family circle -- as we had spent weekends surrounding this date out of town. Lisa took her celebration very seriously and kept a very focused face, so we may not even have a picture of her smiling. Even so the party was a success. Tommy felt compelled to assist with everything (and since then he keeps harassing us about how soon his birthday should be), and came up with suggestions even before Lisa's party what kind of present she should get (a water tower for his trains, an express train engine etc. -- all the things he longs to have).

We knew Tom was going to be disappointed. Lisa got as the main thing, a family of toy mice with tiny clothes, beds and a matching bathroom. Lizzy is still very fixated on mother-baby relationships and pairs her stuffed animals according to this system -- who is whose mother and who belongs to whom. In retrospect, the mice were probably a good choice -- there are four of them, and Tom can play along. We were surprised how well Lisa suffers her brother playing with her toys, and then we realized that this may be exactly the thing that makes it interesting. A respect from her older brother becomes the very important condition in a toy for Lisa to appreciate it as well.

In her three years of age, Lisa is 37 inches tall and weighs 28 pounds -- she continues to be skinny with long legs. She's incredibly strong-headed, sometimes quite cheeky -- we had to give her some very strong talking-to a few times already. She tries to harass granny and our visitors, simply anyone who would get fooled by her looks of a cute, harmless, little girl. Tom is a frequent target of her very womanly tricks -- pretending to be clumsy, excusing laziness with too-little hands and feet, to make her brother help out with something, and so on. Fortunately, Tom is rather patient and a gentleman, but often he does not let her wipe the floor with him and then he pays her back with interest. Overall our children complement each other well and treat each other nicely, making us happy.