This is the Sinaia Monastery, which is still in use by monks from the Romanian Orthodox Church. It was a short walk from our first night's hotel. Romanian is a romance language, descended from Latin, so most of the words are familiar if you know Spanish or French. Hello is "Salud". They also say "Merci" and "Da" (yes) "Nu" (no).

There's my boss, Fil Alleva, standing in front of the Peles Castle. It's an amazing 19th Century palace built for the first King of Romania, who was actually a German appointed to the position when the Romanians decided it would be a nice way to make peace with Bizmark.

My first night in Romania was spent in the resort town of Sinaia. Several people from our local Microsoft subsidiary brought us there to see the Romanian countryside. It's quite pleasant, but reminds me of the rural poverty in other East European countries I've visited like Hungary or Lithuania.

Richard at Dracula's Castle

Here I am, not far from Transylvania, about two hours' drive north of Bucharest at the castle of Vlad Dracul, the original Count Dracula. The site is now part of the Romanian National Museum Complex in Targoviste.

(I'm here on a business trip. If you'd like to see more photos and information, check out family web site, or see my work blog. )

 

 

Bike riding Richard is on a business trip to Portugal (9/5-9/10), Romania (9/11-9/13), and Dublin (9/14-9/16), so the family went on a long ride together

This is a satellite image of the shopping center a few blocks south of Gary's house. Google Maps claims this photo was taken between Aug 31 and Sep 2. The red dot is a grocery store across from the drive-through Starbucks we visited frequently when I was there at Christmas.

Gary's house in New Orleans

Richard's brother, Gary and his family live in Kenner, Louisiana but were fortunate to evacuate last weekend before Hurricane Katrina.
They are safe in Houston, but we don't yet know the status of their house. You can see a satellite image of their house before the disaster, but of course we really want to know how the house looks right now. Over the past few days, NASA and others have been releasing updated images so we hope to have an update soon.

Meanwhile you can see the latest news about the disaster on Richard's public blog.

The road to our house is under construction for the next few days, which is a pain because we have to park our cars up the street and walk.

Martha flies a kite See Mommy, I can do it too!

Kite Flying The beach gets pretty windy, so it's perfect for kites.

Playing in the ocean. Not too windy, neither too cold nor hot, so the kids spent the day --- the entire day -- on the beach.

Vacation at the beach We're here in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Such a nice place! The tide pools are just amazing, so the kids are having a ball.

Crime and punishment. When Leah and Nathan disobeyed mommy's instructions to never play with water in the bedroom, the resulting spill soiled the carpet and demanded a punishment. We made them write a book about the episode so that other children will not make the same mistake.

Praying Mantis Eats Hummingbird (Bird Watcher's Digest)

Oh boy, Nathan will be interested in these photos of a Praying Mantis eating a hummingbird /a>

Vacationing at Mt. Rainier

Mt. Rainier is an impressive mountain visible on clear days from Seattle, so we took the grandparents there last week for several days of hiking and exploring. It's the tallest (14,000 feet) volcanic mountain in the U.S. but except for some shaking in the 1960s hasn't had any serious action for hundreds of years. The real volcano around here, of course, is Mount St. Helens, which is not too much further so we spent an afternoon there as well.

Rather than fill your inbox with more of the pictures we took, you can see more of our trip by clicking on our family web site.

By the way, if you're tired of these "HeyStowe" emails in your inbox, you can unsubscribe at any time.

Our always photogenic Leah pauses to smile beside a rapids on a creek near the Ohanapecosh River.

Nathan views Spirit Lake, from the Windy Ridge vantage point near Mount St. Helens

Richard and his dad at the foot of Mt. Rainier.

The kids pose on a rock at Snoqualmie Falls.

Martha enjoys building in the sand at Discovery Beach (Seattle).

Blue Angels, little angels

The Blue Angels are performing this weekend:

Martha plugs her ears as the noisy jets fly over Mercer Island.

Playing for tickets

Leah celebrates her 8th birthday on August 2, with Nathan, Leah, and 12 girlfriends at the noisy arcade/pizza party at Chuck E Cheese

What kind of turtle is this?

This is Nathan's week to care for his school's pet turtle, Ernie. Unfortunately Ernie comes only with the word-of-mouth care instructions received from the previous host family, which by this time I'm afraid has been hopelessly twisted from months of playing a long game of telephone. So I brought the kids to PetCo, where we immediately identified him as a red eared slider, a popular acquatic turtle that spends about half its life swimming. Ernie came with a small water dish, good for drinking but certainly not swimming - a situation the PetCo staff person describes as "borderline animal cruelty."

But the school kept him this way for at least the past year, and if he likes water so much how come he doesn't like it when we make him sit in his waster dish? Anybody know what kind of turtle he really is?

We enjoyed a private ride on a 35-foot boat in Elliott Bay, courtesy of some fellow Mercer Island hosts we met through a church auction. The kids played at home with a sitter while we relaxed from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and back.

Richard and Stowe enjoyed a great afternoon on Elliott Bay with new friends/hosts on their boat. Stowe had purchased the afternoon ride at a church auction. We boated from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and back.

Martha goes to a Spanish-speaking day care during the Summer. She refuses to speak Spanish herself, but she clearly understands everything. And when they annouce la hora de la merienda (snack time), she's the first in line.

Light sabers!

Father teaches son important lessons in self-defense. Father is exhausted. Son continues to request more lessons. (Repeat)

Unlimited blackberries in the field next to our house. The kids love to pick them, so we end up with so many that we throw away as many as we eat.

We walked in a parade at the Mercer Island Summer Celebration this weekend. One of us had a hard time concentrating on the moment at hand, instead of the new rugose stag beetle we found in our front yard a few days ago.

Leah's reading fluency

Watch short video clips of

Leah reading in Fall 04
Leah reading in Jun 05

See if you think she's improved.

Just like her mother Martha requires a peaceful few moments of newspaper reading over breakfast.

Nathan is proud of his bugs. After finding and pinning a new one, he'll stare at his collection for hours.

Leah-Daddy Morning

[This entry is from Leah Sprague]
This morning I went on a special outing just with Daddy. We went to a new coffee shop that Daddy likes and we talked about things we have been doing so far and what we have been thinking about. It was a really good cafe and we hope to do it again. It was quiet and peaceful at the time, 7:00 in the morning.



then we went shopping at the Uwajimaya Japanese market. The fish there are very fresh.

The Milkman Cometh

One of the best things we found on Mercer Island is access to this wonderful milk delivery service. Smith Brothers Farms brings us fresh dairy products every Thursday morning, for roughly the price we pay in the grocery store. The milk comes directly from the farm, (presumably that means happier-than-average cows ?) and in a blind taste test our kids preferred it to the store-bought stuff.


(here's the milkman bringing his delivery down our driveway)

Nathan cross-examined by the World Martial Arts Grand Master, as part of his yellow belt test. We were proud of how loudly and clearly he responded to the teacher's questions. The boy on his left is Nicholas, his best buddy.

Martha's guardian angel works overtime

Nathan surveys the damage to his room after Martha pulled out the drawers from his dresser, causing this collapse. Fortunately everyone escaped just in time and nobody was hurt.

Martha happily climbs Daddy's shoulders but not the mountain.

Fathers Day Hiking on Mt. Si. It's a four mile climb, and we were pleased after 90 minutes to hike almost one mile, and nearly a 1000-ft ascent, before turning back. Leah would have easily made it the whole way, but Martha's little legs were wearing out. Meanwhile, Nathan captured two clown milipedes in his bug catcher.

The bus to downtown Seattle takes only 10 minutes from Mercer Island, and it's free on weekends. That's big excitement for our minivan-spoiled family.

Glassblowing video

I uploaded a short 2-minute video of our glassblowing class.

The final results!

Our Glassblowing Afternoon

For a real change of pace, Richard and I signed up for an afternoon (4 hour) class of glowblowing at a Seattle glass studio. For me -- a person who has always loved glass -- it was a great experience to handle glass, learn about which techniques are difficult and how results are achieved. I think Richard got a lot out of it as well -- he certainly was more proficient than I. The real key is constantly spinning the rod EVENLY at different tempos and at slightly different angles. One's constantly working with and against gravity and centrifigal forces to "dance" with the liquid glass. It's also neat to know that many times, it can take much longer to add colors and spin/shape the colors into patterns, than it is to form the actual piece.

Richard and I both made paperweights. I then made a bowl, and Richard made an espresso glass. We did "blow" the glass, and during the making of my bowl, one did have to inhale -- believe it or not -- to invert a bubble. However, the instructor did the inhaling as it takes lots of practice to do it safely.

The pieces need to cool overnight; when they are molten, they are over 2000 degrees, and our small pieces take 14 hours to cool. The lens on the Hubble telescope took a year to cool.

Can't wait to see the pieces!


blowing a bubble to form my bowl.

Richard "heats" his glass blob

Richard forming his glass

This is actually our first time handling glass...we tried out the different tools to pull, snip, and squeeze molten glass.

.

The whole family watched Lemoney Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, which is based on a book series that Leah enjoyed about three young children (older sister, middle brother, baby sister) who find themselves suddenly orphaned and in the guardianship of an awful Count Olaf. They survive through cleverness and by sticking together, which is a nice theme for the kids but the movie was too dark for Nathan especially, who covered his eyes regularly through the frequent scary parts.

Leah was excited about this invitation to a sleepover at her friend K's house. Something about it seems a bit strange, though: a sleepover starting at noon?

UpdateK's mom doesn't know about the sleepover! "I knew that if I asked her, she would say no," says K.

We took a two-hour ride on Lake Union in an electric boat. The kids loved it and we'll definitely do it again. The boat is big enough to fit everyone comfortably, including a nice table for lunching on the lake.

Nathan's Preschool Play

Nathan and his buddy Nicholas were frogs in the MIPC production of "Noah's Ark".



(click on the photo to watch the video)

Nathan's latest masterpiece is this illustrated short story. Excuse me, I'll be right back -- I think the Nobel Prize committee is on the phone.