The south-eastern end of the Bay consists mostly of former evaporation fields for salt mining.

We had come up with an awesome plan for our first February weekend. We would stay at Frank's house in Truckee, put our kits on skis a bit, and on Sunday morning we would go ballooning. Our situation, however, has developed in the usual way -- weather forecast kept getting worse, while the situation around my permanent common cold and children's sniffles and snots kept getting much the same. It was supposed to snow on Friday, and we did not feel like skidding with our bus up the dark slopes of the mountains, and alternatively try to put on snow chains, in cold, snow and darkness. There was a similar forecast for Sunday afternoon -- i.e. for the moment of our planned return. We had simply chickened out and did not go anywhere. Instead, we had invited Tezaurs for a visit and a dinner.

Family walk in the Wildlife Refuge.

Tom was looking forward to showing the boy his trains. In the end it was Matýsek who played most with the toy trains (I hereby name him the best behaved child of the day). Tommy, Filip, and surprisingly Lisa managed to run up and down all the time, playing evil bugs, good "batteries" (bacteria) and ever hungry "microphabs". It would seem that the Tezaurs, too, have been lately enjoying the popular French series Once Upon a Life. I was puzzled for a while by Lisa's activity and fearlessness -- but then I have noticed that she was following Filip everywhere, provoking him -- her first crush, perhaps?

Lizzy enjoys our hikes.

Valentine was approaching and we had received a printed list of children from our pre-school. I bought greeting cards, thinking I will just put names on them and that would be it. Tommy, however, grasped the opportunity and a pencil, and started to write on them. He really did -- he would spell out the name, separated the syllables and wrote -- ALX (Alex), LRN (Lauren), ERKA (Erica), ASTN (Austin). Then he declared that Jimmy is written with double em and with a "why" -- they are friends with Jimmy, and he must just have picked it up. I must say my jaw dropped -- over his matter-of-factness, with which he insisted he could write, how he dealt with English spelling, and how he was not disturbed by me showing him what the actual spelling should be. And by the fact that he had spent two evenings poring over the greeting cards -- our ever impatient Tom, who gets upset whenever he does not get things right the first time. Tom, who enjoys all the arts and crafts for about five seconds.

Many California trees and bushes set to bloom in February.

I made an appointment with his teacher and started to quiz our neighbors, what's going on. Czech is a phonetic language -- every letter has an orderly assigned sound, each sound has an orderly assigned letter. Words can be constructed and deconstructed. I've had the impression that English is learned by the kids practically memorizing every word's spelling. It made me worry quite a bit, how well would Tom cope with something like that -- a logical (phonetic) grammar is much easier to understand for him, and apparently that's what they have been using in the pre-school, and Tom's been having fun with it. I would only need to learn something more about this method, to know how to deal with my boy at home. If his wants to write and read, I intend to support him, as long as he's interested and enjoys it.

We made small greetings from particle board shapes (e.g. an airplane) for the school employees. Teachers received little wooden treasure chests, colored by the children. It was amazing how, while both having identical colors and paints available, Lisa's creations turn out pink-violet, or pastel blue. She painted a little horse in blue and white -- according to a Cinderella horse. Brother's authority could not be doubted -- the horse sports blue hooves and mane. Tom chose his colors to be primary -- full blue, read, green, brown, orange. We simply have a boy and a girl at home. It cannot be changed by a fact that Lisa talked Tom into playing a prince for her and dance with her. Once our prince was done dancing, he rushed off to run his trains again.

Treasure chests decorated by our kids.

A somewhat worse Valentine surprise came from our heater. On one pretty morning we woke up and our house smelled like a fossil fuel power plant exhaust. I put on my jeans and went to rouse our good neighbors (yes, some of our neighbors have children who sleep easily past eight o'clock). Not that we would not be able to pick up yellow pages, stab our fingers in a random heating repair entry and call them, but we really prefer somebody with a reference. Alas, a heating expert is not someone a household needs frequently; nobody knew. Then our neighbor Ina recalled her neighbor Guillermo being a contractor, and perhaps he would know. I remembered Guillermo inviting us one summer day to his yard, where our kids admired his new fountain with real fish. Still I was feeling mildly guilty, when I was ringing his door bell, gazing at his curtained windows. In the moment I was ready to turn on my heel and leave, thinking that this friendly geezer is either soundly asleep, or gone to work, the very man stopped his car in his driveway. I explained my problem, Guillermo grabbed his phone, and invoked his heating man Tom.

Herons, ducks and geese give us a careful company in bay wetlands.

Tom the heating man said to call gas worker, who perform free inspections -- and they would tell us what is required. This avoids paying three hundred dollars for a service technician, who would come, shrug, and tell us to get a new heater. An inspection can prepare us for what's coming -- a repair, an adjustment, a depression of a forgotten button, or a complete replacement. It was a marvelous plan, yet we are obviously not the only ones with a heating problem -- the gas people said they could come in a week. We called Tom again, and told him he'd have to come sooner.

Hummingbirds are relatively common here, although they are more easily spotted on leafless bushes in winter.

Tom came, adjusted whatever there was to adjust, ran around the house with a tester to confirm there were no nasty gases and declared that we should consider a furnace replacement. Well -- the furnace was an original since the house was built (1964), and we had been worrying about it giving up one fine day for the last seven years. Still we were kind of hoping to last till next summer. Our hoping lasted altogether till next morning. We were emerging from under our comforters into sixty degrees, the furnace dark. After many attempts with many flames blasting around, the furnace began burning again and we were heating. Till five p.m. that is, when it went off again. A phone consultation with our heating expert gave us two options -- fixing one faulty burner for five hundred, or a new furnace for sixteen hundred. Given the age of the furnace, it looked very much like a full swap.

In the middle of these joys, it began to rain. In its own way it was a reason to be glad -- we really need water here in California. It only makes entertaining the kids much harder. On one weekend day I left my Hippo alone to wrestle with our annual tax return and took the kids to the climbing gym. I apparently was not the only parent having such idea. The carpeted cave under the wall was already filled with a larger number of juniors, with their ambitious parents cajoling them into performing in the vertical. I did not urge them to anything -- my kids ran up and down, yelling and making friends with their peers, all this in a relatively fresh air (the gym is quite well "vented"). Eventually Lisa climbed half of one route -- she's quite nimble, which is no surprise, given her weight. Tom refused all climbing right away -- after I reassured him that I'd certainly not swing them on a rope -- given customers' density on that day, my kids' favorite game would probably end more like bowling.

Our winter is truly mild...

Our furnace behaved for the rest of the weekend and we canceled the replacement on Monday, hoping that it would last till spring. Swapping it in the fall would be more welcome financially and practically -- to turn off heating while one does not NEED it seemed much more reasonable. We had not canceled the gas inspectors though, wanting to know if the furnace was dangerous in any way. That may have been a mistake. A gas inspector came, declared that he could not be responsible, and disconnected our furnace from the gas line. He said to try cleaning the heat exchanger. Thus we returned to the original plan and now we have a new furnace. Fortunately, the whole swap took only an afternoon.

One can watch resting sea otters in Moss Landing.

The weather got better for a few days, and we hurried to catch up with our walks and outdoor activities. Kids behaved like released off a chain (and I fell that way, too). We invited Brehs and Jana with three boys. Jana of the twins stopped by (we did not know it then, but it was one day before her giving birth). Katka -- who is a nanny for our neighbor's baby -- joined in. Boys grabbed their tricycles and toy trucks, disappearing down the street. The non-pregnant Jana caught up with them and made them come back. I drew stop signs on the pavement -- and it worked! The boys would drive from one stop sign at our southern boundary to the northern stop sign -- turning their vehicles obediently. Then I caught Andrejka carrying water in a bucket from the house to the front yard, which I forbade like a properly evil host. Instead, I took the old sandbox and filled it up with water, letting the kids splash in it. We shall see if anyone is ever going to come visiting -- all mothers were rolling their eyes, for it was mid-February.

Tom and Lisa conducted a learned debate regarding the word spouse. Tommy said that spouses were mothers and fathers. He came to tell me that after He and Lisa marry, they shall be mother and father as well. I opposed him saying that he could not marry his sister. He wondered why. I told him that they would then have sick children; he has to marry some other woman. This seemed to frighten him a lot, so I corrected myself quickly that he must simply marry somebody who's not his sister, and began to list potential brides. Tommy considered them for a while and then he decided that he could marry Andrejka Breh. Content with having solved a question of his future, he ran off to play with his trains again.

Saturday wether was still so-so, and so we drove quickly to Moss Landing, to have a walk on a beach. We were glad to find a new and rather good Thai restaurant there, for our kids regard Thai food as a kind of "home cooking" and eat everything without resistance. Clouds moved in after noon, but it did not matter, for we were invited to a party thrown in a kid's gym by Jana with Kubík. Lisa was the only girl there, but she did not seem to mind. She is simply quite used to be surrounded by a pack of older boys.

Make sure you don't fall while waving to the camera!

Sunday was ugly since early morning, and I went to a yoga class; Sid called granny on the phone and the kids watched a movie. Tezaurs took us ice-skating in the afternoon. I have to admit we had never tried it here in California. I had even forgotten where an ice-skating hall was, although we had drove past once.

Lisa was sufficiently shaken, yet merry.

Given Tom's clumsiness and lack of patience, I gave ice-skating about half hour chance. Indeed, beginning had evolved according to the disaster plan. Juniors whined, jerked, and were totally scared by how slippery it was. Then Tezaurs showed up on ice, and their children let themselves being dragged around without resistance, which somehow lifted Tom's and Lisa's spirits. During an organized break in skating, an ice smoothing machine rolled around the field, watched by a great number of small, fascinated admirers. I used the break to change Tom's skating shoes. Originally, we were automatically issued some strange hybrid between hockey shoes and figure skates -- with a low shoe, which is hard to tie up tight, and with ribbed skate tip. I exchanged mine for high figure skating boots and immediately felt more secure on ice. Tommy and Lisa, to our surprise, continued skating with more gusto; influenced by Filip, who tried to skate unattended, even Tom dared to leave parents' arms. Lisa, with bulging eyes, was ready to cross alone only about two feet of free space, but they really tried hard. In the end they did not want to go home and whined that they wanted to come there again next Sunday. We shall see -- Sid's and my legs were aching, and Hippo suffers a sprained wrist, for right in the first seconds on ice he performed something resembling a pirouette combined with a somersault (a Hippo has an incredible momentum, and falls down in a complicated pattern, taking a long time, and across half of the arena).

Ice skating had surprised me in three aspects -- relatively decent price ($12 including shoe rental, with some child discounts, the whole family visit cost us $34), space on ice, so even though we were going in circles, there was enough room for trying things and having fun; and a wide range of skills observed among the customers. Beginning with a lady in a dress, who was circling pirouettes in the center, over little boys who obviously play hockey, amateurs like us, and ending with an Indian family (including a grandmother dressed in traditional sari), quite determinedly and very consistently advancing along the barriers, which they were holding on to with white knuckles. The sari-clad granny gave up after a single round, but the younger members were obviously in until the end. Anyway, ice skating has gotten our fancy and we hope to repeat it again soon.