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!)

Hiking til we puke!

We spent four days in Kernville this past weekend. I had the boys write a paper about our time and this is what they had to say about it. From Channing: This weekend I went to my cabin. My favorite thing there was the Unal Trail! Me and my brother, Chase, found a leg of a deer separated from the body! Pretty gross, huh? Back at the cabin we saw a few deer too! On the Unal Trail we also found goose berries! Some were small, some were big, and some were really big! These are the trees we found: pine, fir, cedar, and sugar pines. Unal means bear. If you ever want to go on a hike, pick the Unal Trail, and it will probably be the best you'll ever go on!!

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.

Wild Animals at Wild Animal Park

 
 
 
Took the day off work today and took everyone down to the Wild Animal Park in San Diego for a field trip with the boys' school group. A great day.

Freeze tag

Spent the evening playing freeze tag in the backyard with the boys. I didn't do so well. Those kids are quicker than you'd think.

 
 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.

Angel game and fireworks

Had another great night at an Angels game tonight. Had a big ol' bag of peanuts, some red vines, some crackerjacks. Gina used the boys' hats as bowls to put crackerjacks in. Necessity is the mother of invenntion, eh. Sometimes a baseball game is an excuse to sit there and have snacks for three hours. Seth and I talked batting averages. The boys cheered at the outs and home runs. Really fun time. Then they had fireworks afterwords, that was awesome.

Mom Rocks with a day at Newport Beach

On July 9, I took all five boys to Newport Beach...by myself! I've been wanting to give it a try, but wasn't sure if I could manage all the ins and outs of a day at the beach without the help of my wonderful husband. Don't get me wrong, it's still easier with good 'ol dad along. I'm just proud of myself for doing it and having fun too! With the help of my Becco carrier for Levi, the Wonder Wheeler for the gear, and a few older boys to help, we managed to get on the sand. It was a perfect day. Seth enjoyed boogie boarding while Channing body surfed. They both joined the bigger kids out at wave break, which made me a little nervous at first. After watching them for a bit, I was able to relax. They were hanging in there just fine. The little ones and I built sand castles. I was finally able to figure out a way to make a whole village before the kidzillas knock it down. We have lots of buckets, so we filled them all up with sand, turned them over to form our village and THEN took off the buckets. Magic! For a second, before they all come running to smash the town to bits. Fun to be a kid!

I thought I was going to have to take all the kids home along with the pounds of sand that they accumulated during the day, but we even managed to do showers with changes of clothes before leaving. Hooray! It did take us an hour to pack and get cleaned up with just mom on duty, but I made sure I left plenty of time on the meter to do just that. All in all, I can't wait to go back and do it again.

Vacation - Friday

 
 
 
 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.

Vacation - Wed, My Birthday

 
 
 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.

Vacation - Tuesday

 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.