Mule Days in Bishop

I think it was Carl interest in Mule Days that originally got us thinking about June Lake for Memorial Day weekend. He has been talking about it for a while and has always been curious so we decided to stop on our way. Me, I didn't think it would be that great, but thought it was worth checking out since we were heading up there.

We get there and parking is free and the "shopping" area is free, but that is all that is there. You can walk around looking at the animals, pay a fee to go to the grandstand, but it was seriously boring. It was about 1/4 the size of the Ventura County Fair, the small one in Southern California, and besides looking at Mules there was nothing to do. Maybe if we went when there was a major event going on we would feel differently, but for the general public, eh, I could have done without.

For us it ended up being a good rest and run around pit stop for the boys before heading to June Lake. We ate lunch, pizza, drank LOTS of lemonade and just basked in the sunshine.

Then while we were having a popcorn treat Grandma and Grandpa mysteriously showed up, well not really it was planned, but we surprised the kids. So we walked around seeing what Mule Days was all about and said thank goodness we checked it out on the way up the mountain because we would have been mad if we drove down from June Lake to visit it.

In case you were wondering, here are the mules which are a cross between a donkey and horse and they don't reproduce.

June Lake and the Eastern Sierra's

This Memorial Day weekend my in-laws invited us on a trip to June Lake. When my mother-in-law first asked I had visions of swimming in the lake, lots of hiking, fishing and just romping around in the woods with the kids. We even planned on going camping. Then we heard about how cold it "might" be and changed our plans to a cabin and took a chance.

Well it turned out that you could still ski in Mammoth that weekend, so you get the picture of the weather conditions. I had no idea it was still that cold in spring/summer in the Eastern Sierra's, but it did provide me with an amazing photographic opportunity.

One of the first things you notice about the Eastern Sierra's, especially if you a girl like me who grew up in Northern California and going to places like Lake Tahoe, it is that the landscape is very barren. Seriously, there are hardly any trees and most of the trees are on the mountains or very close to lakes, but the general landscape is treeless. It is almost desert like, but when you go in spring it is absolutely breath taking as you can see clear across the landscape for miles with snow capped mountains.

As you drive through Highway 395 everywhere you turn there seems to be a majestic view that just takes your breath away. So instead of being inspired by the details in life, which I so often photograph, I couldn't stop taking pictures of the view. I had visions of printing it out and decorating my kitchen wall with all these landscapes, who knows maybe I will.

The place I took the most pictures was of Mono Lake. This is a salt water lake in the middle of all these fresh water lakes. It has no fish and only contains brine shrimp who have somehow learn to adapt in those conditions. The water is absolutely stunning and almost looks like the Caribbean in his green, blue hues and I couldn't stop taking pictures of it from almost every angle I was.

Mono Lake (on a road to Bodie)

Mono Lake

Mono Lake

Mono Lake (at vistor center)

South Mono Lake (tuftas)

South Mono Lake

Mono Lake (on our attempt to hike to Parker Lake; never made it)

They call Minnesota the land of a thousand lakes, but June Lake just reminded me of that saying. I have to say I had a rude awakening on this visit. When you look at a map, at every turn there is a lake that you could hike to in the mountains, not to mention the 5 lakes that were visible within the June Lake driving loop. I was amazed and disappointed that we couldn't swim, but maybe we'll come back in August so we can really take advantage.

June Lake Loop (the view from my cabin balcony)

Gull Lake

Here are the majestic Sierra's in spring and basically what you see everytime you turn your head driving through the 395.

Unfortunately we had a bit of weather problems when we were traveling. On Saturday it was gorgeous, a bit windy, but gorgeous which is when I took a majority of these pictures. Mid-day with lots of clouds make great overviews of a landscape. I also give credit to my inlaws. Everytime I asked to stop and take a picture and apologized they both said, we don't care please take as many as you like and keep telling us to stop, so I did! Unfortunately on Sunday we had some snowy and overcast weather which is great for portraits, but terrible for landscapes, not even the interesting rays of the sun peaked out for me to capture an interesting shot. I even went to photograph a waterfall which I thought was exciting and the light was so flat I knew the pictures wouldn't work the moment I started taking them.

So more to come on our adventures because we had many more stops, but I wanted to share the beauty of spring in the Sierra's because that is what captivated and inspired me the most on this vacation.

Elliot and the terrible twos

I can tell at this point Elliot's terrible 2s are not going to be that terrible. I am not saying that Elliot doesn't have moments of breaking down, but his tantrums are so far and inbetween it seems like it is mostly going to skip us.

I have been thinking and thinking lately why this might be the case and have come up with a couple explanations. The first is personality. Elliot is just more of a laid back kid and eager to please. He doesn't seem to take a stand as much as Erik, but he definitely knows about to stick up for himself.

The next reason is food. When Erik was two he almost never ate. He lived on crackers, string cheese and yogurt and we struggled for every bite. I have a theory that Erik was cranky a lot because he was hungry and he refused to eat. Hindsight on that one that I can't prove anyway. With Elliot he pretty much eats everything, even the occasional vegetable and lets me know if he is hungry. If I give him two choices of food he will always pick one of those choices and not go hungry so we never have tantrums because he is low blood sugar.

The last reason is vocabulary. Elliot was an early talker, but he is talking in full sentences and multiple sentences. He can very clearly tell me what he wants and express his needs and there are very few times when his vocabulary hinders him which is a pretty big deal in two year old land.

So with these three major factors I think Elliot's second year might be a little bit easier than Erik was. Add to it a constant play companion in Erik and you have yourself a pretty low key two year old.

BPEC Messy Art

I will admit that when I first started going to BPEC, Burbank Parent Education Center, I just did it to get out of the house. It was when Erik was a baby and at the same time I was taking a class at the hospital. I love the instructor at the hospital so much that BPEC just couldn't compete. Also the girls I friended in the BPEC class were "too cool" for it and stopped going so I dropped out for a year.

Then when I had two kids I started going back, once in the multi-age and then I started taking Erik to the two-year old class and I fell in love with the program. The class I take with Erik, had several mom's I had known from the hospital class and other mom's I had met along the way; I felt like I was home. It was a place for me to get one-on-one time with Erik, but also a place where I connected with other moms.

This year I am going twice, one class for Elliot and one class for Erik, skipping the multi-age class. Its fun going through the program with Elliot because I have met a whole new group of mom's and kids Elliot's age and have connected with some new and wonderful people. So from a girl who was unsure about BPEC, I really like the connections I get with other parents in the program and my kids absolutely love it too.

The program follows the school year and is closed all summer, but we are in the special activities round right now. First up was messy art which I took Erik too last year. Erik did maybe one or two projects and was done so I hesitated to take Elliot.  I eat my words when I say Elliot doesn't like art.

Elliot literally moved around enthralled by almost every project. From painting to gluing to stamping he just liked it all. He especially liked the rice and digging around in the bucket. By the last room though I knew he needed to just play and didn't even ask him to do an art project, but it was really good while it lasted. 

At the end of messy art it reminded me again why I love BPEC. My friend Tracy went with me to messy art today and we decided to hang out at the playground until I had to leave to pick Erik up from preschool. At the park there was a friend from Erik's BPEC classes whom I love talking too, another girl I know from several classes and one other mom I took a semester with in the multi-age class, not even sure if she remembered me. We were all sitting around minding our own children when the topic of camping comes up and then everyone just connected had a great conversation and just had good mom, and family talk while our kids play. This is why BPEC is great, just the instant connection and the good information I get from everywhere. You never know when someone will have some good insight for you.

Elliot One Year Old

It's done and I forgot to post it. Here is the final book!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Room Parent Responsibilities and more

I worked as a graphic designer, and I did that and marketing for 8 years until I had one too many bosses that annoyed me. So when I got pregnant I was thinking of looking for a new job and instead made the decision to focus on photography and stay home. So here I am 4 years later, and I very rarely use my graphic design skills. I often wonder if I had a job I loved, would I have still stayed home. I will never know that answer.

Lately since I have been working a lot for Erik's school, I keep forgetting about the bad bosses and the unreasonable deadlines and all the other opinions that come with projects and was considering contacting my old boss at CB Richard Ellis to see if she had anything part-time. The office is about 10 minutes from my house and I miss some of those people and the challenges. Then I thought of putting my babies in daycare for even a couple hours and stopped the email before it started.

That is why when I have been asked to do a few projects for Erik's school its has felt good. Design is a muscle that needs to be stretched but once I get going I like doing it and don't like to stop. This being the end of the year, there have been so many design projects and opportunities and I always make them better than what they need to be.

For example, in Erik's preschool I am room parent. All this really means is that I send out emails occasionally, collect money if we are doing a group gift and I needed to coordinate the artwork from the kids and make the end of the year present for our teachers. The concept is simple, there are binders that hold the artwork the children made, and the room parent had to make a sheet to put in the clear plastic cover so it didn't just look like a binder. Being a print designer, not just web, for so many years this was right up my alley.

At first I was going to do something with all the kids pictures, but the other room parent had created a photobook with all the pictures and I decided one book with pictures was enough, but I still wanted to do something to incorporate all the names. So I came up with the idea of an apple tree and put all the names of the students in apples along with the year they were in class. I really liked how it turned out. I did a different color for each teacher, and printed it out on my new high end printer and they looked fabulous. I wish I could show you the printout because that is just as big of a deal, it looks almost like an offset print I was that happy with it.

 

This project took maybe an hour or 1.5 hours total with print time. It was fun to put in the effort to make something creative yet professional looking. Oh yeah and make something for the teachers. I am sad that I won't get to see their reactions or anyones reaction when they see this, but such is life sometimes. I am proud of it regardless.

The other MAJOR project I did was for Erik's mommy & me class. For the last couple years I have created a photo yearbook from images that I have collected of the kids throughout the year. This year I knew I was going to create this book so I actually took a ton of the pictures myself throughout the year. I probably brought my camera to class four different times, but on the last day before I created the book I made sure to get images of those who were missing.

Photobooks are fun and I of course make them my own personal challenge. I create them using InDesign and then I export each page as a JPG and then upload it in Shutterfly. I am insanely anal and organized, years of practice in the industry and handling hundreds of image files have made me this way. So this project might take someone hours and hours, and I will confess it took me three hours to finish it. I did it on a Friday and Saturday night and was done.

In order to get all the images for a project this size, I have the philosophy that people can email me or give me a cd over the course of the week and that's it. Give people more time than they they forget. It seems like the less time I give people the faster they respond because they knew they have to do it now. Sometimes this backfires, but I think people forget when they have too long to do a project I know I do with my two kids and everything else going on.

Here is the photobook. I am not too proud of the design. I couldn't think of anything creative that day so I just went with similar colored backgrounds and a small theme. It worked and the parents loved it. Again I didn't get to see the teacher's reactions since Elliot was sick and I couldn't bring the boys to school, but I heard they cried and loved them. So worth it, and Erik and I will look at this book and talk about it for ages. Maybe next year I'll offer to create one for Elliot's 2 year old class too.

Click here to view this photo book larger

The Perris Train Festival

I will be the first to admit that I never dreamed of having children. As a matter of fact when I was in high school I use to make fun of my mom's friend who I loved dearly and who was a stay-at-home mom, oh the irony I know. Its very funny to me but now that I have children I just enjoy spending my time with them. I would rather be spending my time with my kids than drinking at a bar in the middle of the afternoon, going out til 4 in the morning, or just doing adult things. I think of all the things I miss the most its the long hikes, kayaking and athletic things I can't do right now, but it will come in time. I have grown accustomed to the having children lifestyle and I like it.

So when the weekends come I don't plan a lot of activities with friends or other families, although I should be better about that, I just like to spend time with my little family. In true Gotlieb fashion I am not a planner and when we do an activity it is usually because I am the one up early with the kids, I seem to always have the most energy when I get up early instead of sleeping in, and then I push Carl out of bed and we head out on an adventure. Today he was mad and told me how long its been since I haven't plan something for his sleep-in day. Sorry honey, its just the person you married.

For years Carl has been talking about the Perris Train Festival and my boys like trains, not a love affair, but like them. Since Elliot is recovering from a cold and they boys don't seem to mind a 1.5 drive we just hopped in the car and drove the 80 miles to Perris this morning. Part of me was just curious about the area. I had never driven out there before and wondered what it was like.

The train festival was pretty neat. They had many old fashioned trains all running all in different styles. They boys had the opportunity to take more than one train ride, we took three, and got to climb all over the seats and run around. What I would think is a dream come true for two boys.

 

Window lighting from trains is some of my favorite lighting. It is like a giant light box with beautiful diffused light and interesting backgrounds to provide texture. Too bad Erik got mad, or maybe he was tired and decided he wasn't interested in pictures today. This is seriously the first time he directly said to me, mommy stop I don't want pictures. I snapped a few before I realized what he was saying to me. A moody edgy picture today.

I even got some cute moments with both boys today. I love it when I can get pictures of the two of them.

Erik even got annoyed when the guy was talking and told us how the line worked. This was his response.

Maybe its my old days in marketing, but I love looking at old ads. I wish I could find these for myself and put them in my kitchen. This is exactly what I am looking for in there.





Playing made everyone happy and Erik even cheered up enough to let me take pictures again. There were wooden trains for the kids to play in through the museum and Erik liked those even more than the trains themselves. Go figure.

They even had an elaborate model train set up for the boys to observed. Carl made his usual comments about wanting to set this up in my own home. I smiled, but inside I cringed, maybe in the garage, maybe...

We ended the day listening to a blue grass band, snacking on $2 hot dogs and dancing together as a family. This is why trips like this are worth it. My favorite moment of the day, Erik cuddling on my lap eating a hot dog and us swaying to the music. I treasure all those cuddles for what they are worth.

 

Then because Carl can't control himself, I would have said no, they boys got a mini train ride. Like the three they had for free wasn't enough. *eyeroll* Erik had fun, Elliot wanted off after a few times around.

So my take on the festival. It wasn't crowded at all, it was cheap since we didn't have to pay for the kids, but it was just ok. There was a ton to do and it was fun, but I am not sure its worth the drive back out there. Probably a one time thing for this family unless we are super bored one weekend again.