Family Stuff
We did not do as much traveling this year: our
schedules, broken ankles and a desire to reduce our carbon
footprint all held us back.
Of course our handy dandy Highlander handled our
driving trips, even when it was extremely well packed, with the
four of us, dogs, and bikes.
We got to spend some time up in the snow, skiing
at Sugarbowl with good friends and camping near Gold Lake in the
Sierras.
This summer, while Steve was working hard and Lisa
was recovering from her injury, the kids had fun trips:
Justine went to Mongolia with Nan, Don, and Anne and Eric went to
Burning Man for the second time.
We all got our VERY FIRST pedicures to celebrate
Justine's birthday.
Lots of fun with the friends and family who still
tolerate us.
And as always we spent lots of time outside:
eating, hiking, camping, and even riding horses.
Lisa arranged two nice beach excursions, one to
see the Odyssey
on Angel Island and one up to Sea Ranch for a long weekend.
We hosted another Austrian student this spring,
Raphaela, and had a wonderful time showing her around California.
We had two exciting additions to the Schmidt
house;
a cute little blue electric
car named Po for Justine, and a spinning mobile in our
entryway that Steve made from 80 old CDs.
Breaking news: We just came back from a third
Christmas RV adventure!
We drove all the way to Texas to visit Nan, Loyd, Don and Anne for
Christmas.
We stopped at a whole bunch of parks (including the Guadalupe
Mountains, the Grand Canyon, and Palo Duro Canyon; see the full
route here).
It was lots of fun and nice in cozy in the RV.
The puppies are still doing very well. They play
like puppies and sleep like dogs.
And we reduced our carbon emissions to a new
record low this year!! Less than half our peak in 2005. Wuhoo!
Conversion
factors used:
1 kWh of PG&E electricity = 0.524 lbs
CO2e
1 therm of natural gas = 13.446 lbs
CO2e
1 gallon of gasoline = 19.6 lbs
CO2e
1 passenger mile of air travel = 0.42 lbs CO2e
1 unit of water in Bay Area = 2 lbs CO2e