Taking the Scenic Route

Zach just received word that his dad died tonight. He had a massive heart attack. He just turned 63.

We don’t know anything more at this point.

eta: He had a heart attack while planting a tree. He loved landscaping, so, at least he was doing something he loved to do. He was alone, his wife (not Zach’s mom, btw) found him.

Zane wanted to play with the camera. We first tried to give him the old camera, but he kept putting his fingers over the lense, so we let him use the good camera.

Please ignore the lawn. Before Zach mowed it like a normal person, he mowed a spiral path/maze into the lawn. Our landlord would be mortified, but Zane adores mazes and will spend a while out there navigating it.

behind the scenes:

Happy Happy Birthday,

That’s what we’re here to say

Happy Happy Birthday,

May All Your Dreams Come True!

Happy Happy Birthday,

From All of us to you.  HEY!

Yeah…too many years waiting tables…this is the song that goes through my head now days. lol.

After long conversations with each of his parents on the phone (they each live several states away), my folks invited us to Carabas for Zach’s Birthday.  Much to our suprise and delight, Steve and Joy were there too.  Joy looks a lot better and even treated us to a glass of some decent wine.  Yum. 

So very appropriate for my guy.

Zora’s first cannoli. 

She was pleased.

We are still working on getting used to this sleeping schedule.   It is getting better, but dang, I am tired!  We are such natural night owls and this is taking some getting used to.  I need to go to bed, but I expect to have some photos tomorrow, so I thought I would post the stray photos taken over the last week here.

Climbing all over daddy after work.

Making a “snake” from an egg carton from his Animal Habitats book.  (self initiated…I was playing with Zora and he brings me three eggs from the carton, not knowing what to do with them.)

My daredevil hanging from the top of the tornado slide at the church.  (on a cool note, Zane finally figured out the motor planning to climb the rope net that leads up to the slide this week without help.  He has been bravely working at it for a few weeks and was rightfully very proud of himself.   Zora followed him up on her own too, but she is without fear, so although it was a bit scary to see her little body scaling the thing, I better get used to it.)

A sight I never thought I would see…Zach in a hardhat.  He was touring the new warehouse they are building for the company he is working for.

These first four are the “official” photos that were taken by a contractor for the school.  If parents, ect, want a copy of it, let us know and we can link you to the website.

The rest of these were taken by our friend, Robert.

The other people there were my parents and Robert & Dori, our friends.

Log in for a short protected post here:  http://www.xanga.com/Jennifer_Z/657769727/sprinkler-fun.html

I didn’t want to wait any longer for other people’s photos to see if they had some better ones, so I will post some of what I have.   I will post more later, possibly a video.

Attempting a family photo in a busy lobby.  Zora just woke up and Zane was ready to GO.

Flexible Autonomous Robotic Task Scheduling using Advanced RISC Machines.

or

FARTS using ARM

Zach finished his programming and was planning on running a test on the robots this afternoon after he taught his class.  If all went well, it would be an hour at the most.  Once he was done testing them, he can start with the actual writing part.  (he has copious notes, so it is more a matter of arranging everything in the correct format).  He went to the Robotics lab and the Robots were gone.  He couldn’t get in touch with the thesis advisor/professor, who is the person in charge of the Robotics lab, but after a search, found another one of the grad students.  He discovered that the advisor decided to take ALL of the robots to a conference to do a demonstration with them.  He won’t be back until Friday.  He didn’t tell Zach he was going (he got the impression it was a last minute thing, and it was just an oversight, not intentional). 

If he waits for the robots to return, he won’t have time to write the thesis and defend it before next Wed (9 days from now).  That means he has to write his thesis assuming that it works, then revise as necessary after the robots return on Friday.  Ugh. 

Zane accidently broke his snow globe tonight.  It has always been in his room and was a baby gift from one of my coworkers at the last job I had, when I was pregnant with Zane.  He really loves his snowglobe and was just heartbroken.  Much more heartbroken than we were anticipating when we cleaned it up and threw it in the trash.  So, Zach came back up from putting him to bed and pulled it out of the trash to see if he could fix it. 

Tomorrow we will have to either find a way to get the glass shards still glued to the base off, or we are going to just put a huge glob of silicon gel over it so that Zane can’t get hurt with it.  (or, we will figure out another solution). 

What a great daddy.