Vacation - Monday, Pt 2.

 
 
 
More Monday pics, because they are awesome.

Vacation - Monday

 
 
 
  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.

Angels Game

 
 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.

Piano lessons and standardized tests

Been giving the top two (seth and chan) piano lessons. Their practice has been paying off! Some real progress. Started them on chords tonight. Gina has worked practicing into their daily routines so it's going pretty well.

Got their annual standardized test scores back this week, too, and were very pleasantly surprised. Great progress. In fact both Seth and Chan each scored a "Post High School" level in a subject - Seth in science (of course) and Chan in reading comprehension. Way to go, guys. Not bad for a 2nd and 3rd grader. So I renewed their teacher's contract for another year (that'd be their mom.) Being homeschoolers, we don't care terribly much about the standardized tests, but its nice to know they are tracking just fine. Better than fine in fact. Much better than fine. Keep up the great work.

Went camping

Had a GREAT time camping over the weekend with Seth chan chase drew levi and gina. We went to Glen Helen regional park (the "untamed wilds" as I call it ... not) with the boys' Contenders for the Faith school group, about five other families. It was great! Had fun campfires at nights, the kids put on skits, did some fathers-day themed "game shows" to see how well the kids knew their dads. Spent saturday at the park's water park, swimming and hitting the water slides.

Slept well enough, considering the freeway was close and the very active railroad was too.

Everyone had a great time. My better half forgot the camera (she blames me) so as of now we have no pics, though Christina hopefully will email a couple she took of us.

Boys ran around field collecting, er, "treasures" - mostly broken glass ("crystals") and even an old mostly intact muffler. Comedy. A billion bottle caps, Seth made pins out of them w/ a hammer and safety pins.

My tree-identification skills totally paid off. Ashes, sycamores, oaks of course, and even a beautiful, lone "desert museum" (yes thats the name of a tree) out there covered in yellow flowers.

On sun morning I, er, "led" little-kid worship and Rick gave a nice msg. Then a mere three hours to break camp and home we came.

Old baby announcement email

I was digging through my work inbox looking for something and stumbled upon an email I sent a little over a year ago to the office when Levi was born. I thought it was touching, so I paste it here for posterity. I quoth:

From: Andrew Crawford
Sent: Sun 5/4/2008 10:34 PM
To: Department
Subject: baby announcement

My wife and I had a baby boy on Friday! His name is Levi Peter and he's the cutest little guy in the world. Ill be out next week helping him get settled in, showing him how to use the remote, helping him get his bike set up, etc. See you next week, Andrew

Red Rock Canyon

  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.

Angels Stadium

 

Took a tour of Angels stadium today with Seth, Channing and Chase. They took us in the visitors' clubhouse, the Angels dugout (it was pretty cool to walk down the tunnel the players walk down), then up to the press booth. This shot is of us in the dugout.

Chino Air Show

Went to the Chino air show today with Grampa and all the boys but Levi. Levi stayed home to help Gina catch up on scrapbook. Excellent time. Big faves were the A-10 Warthog and the C-17.

Skate Night

Tonight was skate night at the local roller rink. Had a blast with some great families from our Sunday School class. The boys tore it up out there. Play that funky music ...