Last weekend the Zillabyte Team and the ZillaWives and Tyler & Jean's ZillaDog ventured out into the great wide open for some good old fashioned car camping.

In the foreground it appears I've captured one of the rare species garbagium dumpsterium, right next to the pavedroadialus (in Latin). These are the things one sees out in nature, you see. There were real toiletia and hotshoweria very closeby too. But hey... you can see more traditional symbols of nature here too - like tress and stuff. Plus we slept in a tent. And went on a hike... to a lake!

Very pretty. Just check out that sky! (I really like nice skies.)

Jake and I made tacos for dinner and we had that traditional camping favorite, Choco Tacos, for dessert (dry ice really works). Jake made his signature peach camping cobler as dessert #2 and we had s'mores as dessert #3. Then Tyler made us fresh oatmeal for breakfast, and we stopped at a local pizza joint for lunch on the way home since we had such a loong (well, 1 hour) journey home. Yeah, it was basically really rough. But we toughed it out.

I also learned that if you throw an empty wine bottle into a campfire, it doesn't take long at all to melt and collapse. But it doesn't look very pretty afterwards, either. Now I know.

Go ZillaTeam!

One nice thing about living in the Bay Area is that we have family nearby! So once a month, we meet up with Beth for "Family Night." This month Beth prepared a feast of veggies and steaks (ok, Jake grilled those). And there was cake, lots of cake. I looove family night!

I'm so lucky. Next month I'll get a brand new baby cousinette. My cousin Andy and his wife Donna are expecting a baby girl around October 28th. So! Aunt Cheryl was kind enough to lend her home to my mom and me for a few hours last week while we held a baby shower for Donna.

She had guests from St. Louis and beyond, all excited to pamper her with presents and love.

There were a number of onesie artists who didn't even know they were artists...

Lots of great food from sandwiches to cupcakes...

Games... well actually just one game, Bingo for gift opening (congrats to Aunt Nancy!)...

And of course lots of gifts for Donna and Baby Crow...

Happy Baby Shower, Donna! I can't wait to meet my new cousin.

Robin and Josh got married in Washington, DC on September 18th and so we flew to DC for the occasion. Since Tamar and Clea came too, we had a bit of a mini moose reunion as well. We met at Robin and Josh's welcome dinner on Saturday night, we brunched at the Tabard Inn Sunday morning while Robin brunched with her family, and we joined Robin as she got dressed on Sunday afternoon.

We had champagne and laughed a lot. For her "something borrowed," Robin wore my bracelet that I wore when Jake and I got married. It was an extra special time all around.

The ceremony was beautiful, mostly Jewish and performed by the judge Robin clerked for a couple years ago. It was outdoors in a park and the temperature was perfect. Just a gorgeous day.

One of my favorite parts was the "parade" of guests, complete with a "Just Married!" banner that Clea and I carried and noisemakers scattered throughout the crowd, walking from the park where the ceremony was to the reception venue a mile away, right through the middle of DC. Cars stopped to honk at us and people hung out the windows of their apartment buildings to shout well-wishes to Robin and Josh. It was awesome.

We partied late into the night on Sunday night, enjoying cakes and bread that Robin herself baked and dancing to possibly the greatest playlist ever until late. Then I got to see their new house at the Monday morning breakfast. It was a fantastic weekend. 

We're so happy for you Robin and Josh! What a fantastic weekend in every way.

The primary reason we moved to Silicon Valley was for the benefit of Jake's business. With his co-founders Tyler and Peter, they're building a big data analysis platform to help analysts discover the data they want and run the analyses they need.

They're still working on a prototype, but they've already been accepted to the AOL Ventures program which provides them with free office space (really nice office space too!) and they got a great article in TechCrunch last week entitled "Ex-Googlers Debut Zillabyte To Let Business Users Easily Analyze Big Data." Things are happening!

Although they're still in stealth mode and their product is still several weeks from even an initial release, they are accepting signups at Zillabyte.com. By the way, don't miss the monster animations easter egg when you fill out the form, hopefully ZillaBob isn't too scary for you readers out there. Personally I love how he tucks his tie into his pants, soo classy. Jake and his team have also got their big data blog up and running, so check it out next time you're in the mood for some good reading about big data processing ;)

Jake's goal is to learn a lot from this experience and just maybe build something that will prove useful to people along the way. We're both looking forward to the adventure ahead. To adventure!

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary just 3 days after we moved into our new place in Menlo Park. So, we ran away to Monterey for 24 hours of just enjoying each other.

We had a nice brunch, walked around town, gave each other presents, and had a feast of crab and lobster for dinner. Oh, and of course we got some flan too.

Happy Anniversary to Us! It's been one of the best years I can remember. Now on to year Two...

Goodbye, Boulder! On August 20th we said goodbye to Boulder with a final dinner at Japango (one of the very first restaurants we encountered in Boulder; Gnip gave me a gift card there as my going-away present). We made sure to order the Boulder roll and the California roll to set us on our way.

The movers came on August 21st and helped us load our humongo Uhaul for the drive. We loaded up Betsy and Harley-Chan and everything else we own.

That evening my parents showed up to join us. They brought other key supplies (specifically, trucker hats) along with them and we set out on our way!

We stayed overnight with Robert and Tracy in Salt Lake City and had a lovely time catching up with them. We also took the Quists to dinner and got to see our good friends Doug and Mickelle, *and* I got to meet Jake's high school buddy Phill and hear lots of stories of Jake as a high schooler (awesome!). Anyway, on we went from Salt Lake City to a whole lot of sky...

...before staying overnight with Beth and then finally arriving at our new front door here in Menlo Park.

Hello California! It's nice to see you again :)

Special thanks to Trucker Dad and Trucker Mom for joining us for the Big Move and providing such fun company all along the way.

As it was nearly time for the third of the Mooses to officially tie the knot, Tamar and I pulled together some of Robin's closest friends and planned a bachelorette weekend for her at her parents' weekend home on Eliza Island, off Washington state. We set out from Bellingham and took a boat out to the island (the only way to get there unless you happen to have a private plane).

On the way there, we stopped to pick up the crab traps that Robin's dad had set out earlier that day. You can keep crabs if they're male and larger than a certain size, so each crab was examined and measured. We ended up with several crabs this trip and a total of 18 when all was finished. Wow! And sooo delicious...

As a side note, Robin's parents were the greatest, planning meals for us for the entire weekend, cooking, taxi'ing us to the island and back, and making sure we had everything we needed and so much more.

We took a hike around the island (easy to do because it's not very big, less than 200 homes in all), we went kayaking in the sound, and we did all we could to celebrate Robin in fun, happy, and sometimes silly ways. 

The timing worked out beautifully, so we got to join Robin and her family for a shower and dinner at their good friends' house back in Bellingham right after the Eliza weekend. Here she is in the super-glam shower cap I got her (something important for a married lady to have, don't you think?).

We love you, Robin! Happy Bachelorette :)