Four Months and Engineering Fun

Guess who is 4 months old!

Let's see. What else is new? Hmmm...

A few weeks back I got to tour JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Jonathan works). It was incredibly cool. I saw things that will be rocketed into space. For real. And Jonathan works on those kinds of things every day--designing, playing with, and figuring out stuff that will--no joke--blast off into orbit or to other planets or millions of miles away to "deep space". We got to see the control rooms where they communicate with those far off satellites, probes, rovers, etc. 

Jonathan's office.

Outside the door is a huge playground shop full of all kinds of cool engineering tools and work benches and prototypes and crazy stuff like that. 

Here's one of the huge bays where they actually construct the big stuff (like the mars rover).

They have all these cranes and pulleys to simulate zero gravity.

So, next time you come visit, make sure you request a tour! Definitely worth seeing! And you can't beat the private tour with your own expert tour guide! 

Speaking of nerdy engineers,

Jonathan has a new toy. 

The neighbors were having a garage sale...

What a find, right? 

(yeah, I'm not sure exactly what it's for either, but I get that it's cool!)

One more, just for fun!

That hat, right? Too cute!

My little buddy and I have all kinds of fun! We've gone to story hour a few times at the local library. We like to go on walks, like yesterday we went with a friend and her little cutie pie and pushed our strollers around the Rose Bowl and while the kidlets slept we enjoyed some exercise, fresh air, mountain views, and great conversation. Eddie and I play a lot. Okay, I play with his toys and he giggles and laughs. We do patty-cake, peek-a-boo, this-little-piggy, tickles, singing, reading books...all kinds! 

Jonathan and I have been having fun too! The other day we left Eddie with the surrogate grandparents and went to a few academic talks at Cal-Tech. Fascinating stuff--the first was about body language and was incredibly interesting ranging from the universal facial expressions to signs we're lying or telling the truth and how to hold yourself in such a way that increases confidence, or how about how crazy it is that if our body language doesn't match what we're saying, our brains believe the body language first. The second talk was about the future of human spaceflight. Whoa! Did you know NASA has plans to send a robot out to literally bag an asteroid and bring it back to orbit around the moon so we can send people out to study it? Crazy, huh? Three astronauts led the discussion, two shuttle fliers and even a guy who was on Apollo 9. 

We do other less academic dates, too, in case you were worried. We've tried out a place called The Pie Hole, which was pretty good! And in our hunt for a Local Yoke replacement, we've discovered a cute little place within walking distance that serves coffee and pastries where we hope to become regulars!

Meanwhile, it's been super hot all week! Here comes summer! Woohoo! It's a little warmer up here than it was at the beach. 

Okay, I'll stop boring you now with my random stuff, but hopefully I've given you a picture of our lovely little "normal" life of the past few weeks. And anyway, I'd better go, someone's awake and calling for attention!