Pete: New and Improved! Now even MORE geeky!

(A tale of ham radio)

So, because I felt that my geek-cred needed a bit of polishing, last weekend I took and passed my FCC exam for the Technician-Class amateur radio license. My newly minted call sign straight from the Federal government is KI6HAX. (That's Kilo-India-Six-Hotel-Alpha-Xray!)

The cool part of the story falls back a few weeks when I mentioned my new interest to my Mom and Dad around Thanksgiving. Strangely, instead of my Mom rolling her eyes and giving a quip about 'another new hobby', she immediately brightened and asked if I knew how much her dad loved ham radio. (My grandfather, Dr. Everett Dye MD, died in 1957, long before I was born.)

My Mom even remembered his call sign (from 50 years ago!): W5WV. Just for giggles, we punched the old call sign into Google, and what did we find? W5WV was now the call sign for the Plainview, Tx amateur radio club. Plainview is where my Mom grew up! Apparently after my grandfather's death, the club petitioned the FCC to keep his call sign for the club as show of respect. The old hams have a great euphemism for dying, they call it becoming a 'silent key'.

For fun, I sent an email to the Plainview club sharing this story, and emails started arriving from people who either knew or knew about my grandfather. One lady, who is a ham and belongs to the Plainview club was telling my story at the local grocery store and the checker not only remembered my grandfather, but my grandfather had delivered 3 of her children. Now that's a small world!

Here is a picture of my grandfather in front of his radios in my Mom's attic in Plainview from 1953 or so. See any resemblance?

Anyway, funny how things circle around.

73 de KI6HAX (That's ham talk for Regards from Pete!)

Thanksgiving at the Beach

After a delightful Thanksgiving feast at Uncle Ted and Aunt Emily's house, we made our way to Laguna Beach to let the Cooper, Allison and Cousin Nicholas burn off some of that turkey. Gotta love our California weather!!

For a few more pictures, click here.

Cousin Nicholas Turns 3

Its that birthday time of year, and Cousin Nicholas turned 3 and celebrated with an awesome Superman birthday party. Is my handsome nephew Mr. GQ, or what?

Check out some more pics from the Party here.

Cooper's First T-Ball Game

Cooper played in his first baseball game last weekend! Jack's dad, Peter, is the coach of the 'Yankees' (who else!) and we had a great first game. Coop got two hits off the tee and played a mean left-center field.

Here are some action shots of Coop and his teammates!

Allison Turns 2

Allison Elizabeth Lunenfeld (who entered the terrible-twos several months ago) finally made it official and turned two years old on Saturday the 9th. The weather was perfect and the all of us enjoyed the 'secret park' with some family and friends.

See some more photos of the day.

(More) Rocket Science

"So do you like Rockets?" asked our friend Peter Austin a couple of weeks ago. He wasn't talking to Cooper. The "big boys" decided to go play out in Irwindale yesterday... and of course we took the little boys, Cooper and Jack, too. Even Allison got into it saying, "bye bye rock-et". Thanks to Cynthia for bringing water and toys, also the awesome rocket paint job!

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Fiesta!

We were invited to join The Bacharachs for the annual Children's Parade at Santa Barbara's "Fiesta" this year. It was the first real parade the kids watched and they loved it. It was a very full day with the parade, pizza, dancing near State Street, snake handling, kayaking, touring Montecito, and even a Mexican dinner! Whew!

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Beach Trip

The weather has been hot but cloudy, uncharacteristically humid for Thousand Oaks. So what to do? The beach! A tad bit cold, but boy do the kids love the water. And they love sand crabs. And they love dogs. Neither is a big fan of sand, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

Allison

It seems like forever since I whipped out the camera and took pictures of my own kids for a change. And sure enough, the bug struck me at about 8 o'clock tonight, just after the sun went down behind the hills. Too dark to get any great shots.

I'll try for some more this weekend, but until then here is the single usable shot of the evening: Ally.

Frog Blog

Every once and a while our lives are met with some randomness. And tonight our randomness was dressed in green.

A frog half again as big as my fist made his way into our yard this evening. I decided to bring him inside and surprise the kids. The kids weren't that surprised, but Amy sure was. Heh!

Allison immediately lavished him with choruses of "Froggy! Froggy! Froggy!" and proceded to try very diligently to poke him in the eye. Allison even managed to kiss the frog before I could consider the hygiene ramifications. Alas, he did not turn into a prince.

Cooper vehemently declared that he was NOT afraid of the frog, but when I asked if he would like to hold him, he politely declined. Cooper did pet him repeatedly and asked if the bumps on his back were what caused him to go "ribbit."

At about the time he peed on my hand (the frog, not Cooper), we decided it was time to let him back outside to enjoy the rest of his evening. Allison saw him to the door with a hearty, "Bye bye Froggy!"

Easter in The O.C.

We spent Easter in Orange County with Amy's family. Thanks to a generous visit from the Easter Bunny, the kids got their fill of candy and toys. Coop and Nicholas particularly loved the egg hunt. Thanks to Grandpa Paul and Grandma Janet for hosting such a nice day!

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Yosemite Vacation - Day Two, Three and Four

Day Two - We couldn't wait to get into "The Big Park"! We were a little surprised to find that once we got to the front gate, we were going to have to wait a bit more. The drive from the gate to the valley took us an hour, but it was worth it. On the way we drove through snow, then rain. When we finally got out of the car, just barely a drizzle. Our initial view of the valley was breathtaking... the rocks were flocked with snow and the waterfalls were pounding. The rest of the day was spent getting a feel for the layout of the valley and planning what we'd do the next day.

Day Three - Back into the valley with picnic lunches in the trunk. The weather was cloudy and cool but thankfully no rain. We spent most of our time in the meadow beneath Cathedral Rock and The Swinging Bridge. Coop threw every stick he could find in the stream. Allison went for a record number of "What's that?" We hit the indoor pool later that night. It was strange to see snow outside as we swam, but we loved it.

Day Four - Sun! We hit the Sugar Pine railroad after our third huge breakfast buffet. (no scales in the hotel room) We road the historic logging railway and learned all about that area's logging industry in the early 1900's. Of course Coop had a big time. After the ride we hit "The Big Park" for one last look and a chance to see Yosemite Village up close.

We had a great time and took in so many wonderful sights. We left thirsty for more and I'm sure we'll return.

Click here for photos.

Yosemite Vacation - Day One

Yea! It is Lunenfeld vacation time again! This time, our blog comes to you from beautiful Fish Camp, California, just outside Yosemite National Park. We arrived at the lodge just in time for the snow to start falling (and yes I know it is the middle of April!). Here are some pics of our litlle bit of snow play in the beautiful Sierra Nevadas. More to come!

Dora, Dora, Dora The Explorer!

Dora visited The Santa Barbara Zoo on April 2nd. Cooper was soooo excited to see Dora that he asked if he could give her a hug.

Click here for more photos!