Seth got baptized at church today. The pic is him reading his testimony. I (Dad) got to baptize him and say a few (highly encouraging and no doubt motivational) words to him first. I thought that was a pretty cool touch on the part of the church. Hey nice one, Seth! (As the Big Guy said when His kid got baptized, "This is my son, with whom I am well pleased!)
This hike was an Indian trail complete with a guide to trees and history. It lasted a mere two hours with 700 ft. of climbing on switchbacks to the top and then back down. It was fine until I had to carry the baby on my back. Did I mention that Andrew forgot the baby backpack! Twenty-two pounds makes a difference! That wont happen again!
Seth had to say this about the weekend. This weekend I went to Kernville. I enjoyed hiking the Unal Trail and shooting BB guns. I also enjoyed hiking other trails. I played legos, shot aliens as Dr. Cockroach Ph. D. (Monsters vs. Aliens), and played army. I really enjoyed it up there.
The second hike was Salmon Creek and we felt like we were in the middle of the forest. We went across a beautiful meadow and looked for Bambi (no luck), then we followed a trickling creak with little waterfalls. It was breathtaking. We wanted to go to the big falls, but Andrew figured out that it was a nine mile hike or so. WHAT! Maybe, next time. Our hike ended up taking three hours, again with Andrew and I sharing the load of Levi. It was really fun getting out in nature and learning about the Indian trails and trees that grow in our area.
Spent Saturday at Huntington beach with the gang. Pics are of my beautiful wife and levi, and four boys in a hole. Pulled the trailer down, filled with everyone's bikes. We rode up the boardwalk to Bolsa Chica and back,that tooks us from 10 to noon. Then from noon on we bodyboarded off of lifeguard stand 19. Got there early enough so parking was easy. About 9:30. The baby bike trailer had a missing part so I ended up renting one from one of the myriad rental facilities along the boardwalk. Super great day. Punctuated at the end with a couple pizzas from Jo-Jos. Great day.
Friday my awesome cousin Steve and his wonderful bride Kim popped down from Seattle to help us ring in the 4th for the weekend with our folks and Sis/Sonke/Sophester. We BBQ'd and once the sun started to dip down behind the horizon, we blew stuff up. It was great. Steve and I had popped over to Chino (home of federal penitentaries, air shows, and SoCal's last known seasonal fireworks stand) to pick of a bag of little beauties to light off. 
Wednesday was my 37th birthday. I started the day off right -- bike ride with my kids. I took them as far up Telegraph Canyon in Chino Hills St Park as we could get before they started dropping from the heat. A friend twittered me to watch out for snakes, but we didn't see any - the snakes were too smart to do something retarded like try to go up Telegraph Canyon in July. Anyhoo it was still a great ride w/ the boys, and we made it back to the house just in time to throw a pile of New Yorks onto the bbq for lunch. This is a great pic of Sophie right after she and I conspired to like TOTALLY get fourths on the awesome cake. Costco, I don't know what kind of Faustian deal your baker struck to produce the best cakes in the world, but give him a squeeze for me.
Tuesday we packed up the mules and made it down to Crystal Cove, a wonderful beach once you're able to finally establish basecamp. The ladies -- my wife and sister -- LOVE this beach, no doubt because they're not the ones fording streams, catching buses and walking through drainage pipes to get all the stuff from the van to the sand. No, they get dropped of at the "Queens and Kids Drop Off Zone" where muscular slaves cart them off like little Newport Cleopatras to their shady beach zone. The husbands, on the other hand -- me and my brother in law -- we pop twelve Tylenols and get to work unloading the mules. All in a day's work. A beautiful beach with one claim to fame that no other beach on earth can claim -- the magic staircase to the Shake Shack on the bluff overlooking the beach. I've been hitting up that shake shack since I was little more than a wee grommet grabbing the 43A bus w/ a Morey Boogie Mach 7 tucked under my armpit. Of course back then it was the actual Shake Shake, now it is a Ruby's, but whatever. They still serve up the Monkey Flip, ask for it by name. The tide pools on the south end of the cove provided much fascination.
Well I was hoping to post pics as the vacation materialized, but yeah right. How about two weeks after the fact. My sister and her beautiful family arrived over the weekend, and we cruised over to Bracket Airfield on Monday for a delightful little picnic. Fortunately I was able to arrange for a few helicopters to take off and land right in front of us over the course of the afternoon to entertain us. I was also able to book the "freaky bunny that doesn't run away" to scamper out of a tree for the kids to play with -- the bunny's handlers assured me in the contract there were no bizarre bunny diseases involved, so I can only assume they had the poor thing narcotized. All in all a wonderful day. Afterwards we bowled, because that's how we do it in the 909. I swear.
Had a grrrrreat time at the Angels game last night with Seth, Channing and Chase. It was jersey night, so the boys got jerseys. The Angels rallied to win in the eighth. Yeah, rally monkey! And lest I forget ... I snagged a foul ball. Yes finally I was "that guy" -- the guy that gets the foul ball. It was pretty cool. Held it up for all to see, felt the cheers, and handed it off to Chan for safe keeping. The boys had a lot of interest in the game, had a ton of excitement, cheered their hearts out, and we had a terrific time. If you can tell, I was pretty pumped about the night. Poor Chase was just about falling asleep in his chair by the ninth. But Seth wanted to stay 'til the end, which filled my heart with pride, so we happily stayed. It was easy to stay for the other boys, such a great game. Noone complained. We smuggled in animal crackers and apple slices. Had a "preferred parking" pass, so got to be big important people and parked in the big important people lot.
On our way to Kernville over the weekend we stopped at Red Rock Canyon and tromped around. Did a nature trail, learned about, let's see, the Golden Cholla cactus (gold, fuzzy), box thorn (tiny leaves, thorny branch), creosote bush, and Joshua Trees (look like pineapples.) This is the boys goofing around on some cool sandstone formations (I'm on top with Levi) at Ricardo campground.
