Are they ready?

Yes, they are! Trevor and Logan began the 2007-2008 school year today! They were up at 6AM and ready to go by 6:30. We didn't need to leave until 7:50 so there was plenty of time to kill. They checked and rechecked everything several times just to make sure they wouldn't forget anything.

new shirt? check.
new shoes? check.
new backpack? check.
new lunch bag and waterbottle? check.
lunch? check.
kiss mom? uh....not in front of my friends, please!

Logan is excited for his lunch in the cafeteria. And Trevor cannot wait to play soccer again this year. These guys are ready for anything! Off we go!

Pismo Slideshow

Lemonade Anyone?

Trev is the business man of the family. As such he is always looking, planning, conniving and scheming for ways to make or take an extra buck. For someone his age, he actually is pretty good with his, and others, money. Every time Logan gets some money, Trev always "trades" him something for it to increase his cash flow, like an old McDonald's happy meal toy or a really cool set of binoculars (two cardboard toilet paper rolls taped together). One time Trevor sold a piece of scrap laminate flooring to one of our neighbors for $2.00 during one of his famous yard sales. Not surprisingly, I have not seen that neighbor return.


Trev is always hitting us up to do a lemonade sale. For mom and dad this includes preparing lemonade and cookies, setting up shop, and keeping the lemonade pitcher stocked up. On a good day Trev has walked away with almost $20.00 in his pocket. Not bad for a seven year old kid. The cousins are always interested in helping out also, for which Trev always comps them for their time and labor. Of course, being the owner of the lemonade stand, means you can take a larger portion of the profits. For Trevor, that's what being a free market capitalist is all about.

Thanks for the memories, Pismo!

Hello to all you blog readers! Jennifer here. This post will be my first ever - just wanted to make you aware in case I make a huge posting faux-pas. It was my assignment to summarize this year's annual Pismo trip. Here I go!

This event is supposed to be an all-inclusive family reunion type event for my mom's side of the family. In the past we've had over 50 people there camping for the entire week! This year there were so many conflicts (babies being born, weddings in Hawaii, families moving out of state, etc.) that the only people that showed were my parents and their children! Now, this was not necessarily a bad thing. We had a great time with just us. Read on to see all the fun we had.

The campground was totally full by the time we got there and the only 2 sites left were right across from the showers. These are the ones that back up to the dunes. They are not very big and not very level. We had an interesting time finding spots for all our 7 tents. So, like I said, the campground was totally full. You would not have believed how noisy it was all week. It was like there was a party every night until 2:30 in the morning! The campsite right next to ours was a family that played their loud music all day and all night. Then the teenagers would come out after midnight and hang out by the showers - skateboarding, laughing and whatever else. Where were the rangers?! To say the least, we were all a little sleep deprived while we were there.

That was all the bad news - now on to the good! We made it to more sunsets this year than ever before. They were gorgeous! (Check out Jeremy's short sunset video below.) We ate much Splash Cafe, bought candy at the Hot Lix store, fished off the pier at night, and visited the tide pools at Montana de Oro over the weekend. We rented wet suits and boogie boarded at Avila - it was perfect for our little kids. We went to the fruit stand in Avila and enjoyed the farm animals out back very much. We ate very well, in and out of camp. We had, beef stew, chorizo, dutch oven peach cobbler, tri-tip, chili verde nachos, cinnamon-bread french toast, bacon-french toast-sausage-eggs breakfast - and dad had even lost a pound by the time we got home!

Trevor and Logan were very busy this week. The boys were boys from the start! One day they organized a bike race for all the kids in the campground. They made a START and FINISH line, complete with flags and prizes. We had a great turnout with about 10 kids on bikes and one girl in her electric wheelchair. One of the big boys won the race, but everyone got a prize and everyone had fun. Trevor and Logan also had a great time on the beach one day catching seagulls. They made a special trap with buckets and lots and lots of bread/crackers/tortillas - whatever they could get those birds to eat. By the end of the afternoon they had caught 2 pigeons and of course let them both go home unharmed to their families. But I am convinced that the highlight of their trip was at the fire ring in the campsite. They made fire after fire, burning matches to their hearts' content. They each emptied a box and a half of matches! Don't worry - they were reminded constantly that this was only ok while camping - not at home.

Mom, Dad and Mica were troopers as they helped out with our kids day after day. They even took the kids to McDonald's one night and sent Jeremy and I out on a date - all by ourselves! They are so good to us.

We look forward to another exciting Pismo camping trip next year and can't wait to go back!

Pismo Sunset

Hiking with the Boys

I took Trev and Logan on a overnight hike this past week to Weaver Lake located in the Jenny Lakes Wilderness inside Sequoia National Park. Last year I took the boys on a short hike, about 1/2 mile, to a nice spot by Sierra Summit called Indian Pools. This year I decided to push them a bit more by hiking closer to 6 miles round trip. I had done this hike with my own father years ago as a kid and remembered it being a fun easy hike. I had forgotten that this hike gains quite a bit of elevation for a short hike, almost 1000 feet. The boys handled it well at first, but became a little mutinous after a couple of miles. Once we made it to the lake, all of the complaining stopped and we started to have fun. Once we set up camp we went fishing down by the lake for a while, with no luck of course, and then I began cooking some dinner. We had chicken quesadillas for dinner with some delicious pudding cups afterwards. Logan especially enjoyed the dinner saying repeatedly, "Daddy, everything tastes better in the mountains!" Trevor on the other hand looked at me like, "If this is as good as this meal tastes, then I am definitely not eating it at home." The boys are fascinated with fire and thus had a lot of fun, a little too much fun, making a fire. I actually began developing our escape plan when and if we started a forest fire. While sitting around the campfire, Logan asked me to tell them the story of how I met Mommy and so I did, watching Trevor squirm at the mushy parts. It was hilarious. We slept about as good as you can while backpacking, with the added fun of having dirty, sticky little bodies touching me in my face all night, all part of the fun. The boys were very excited to wake up the next morning and get the fire started again, while I made some great oatmeal for Trev and I and cup of noodles for my sweet-hater Logan. We left a little earlier that morning then I had anticipated due to the fact that we had used up the roll of toilet paper the day before and, unfortunately, required more the next morning. The hike out went considerably faster for that reason. While hiking out I found myself thinking of all the hikes I would like to take with the family one day in places like Yosemite (my favorite), Glacier and the Grand Canyon. Jennifer can't wait (ha ha). We finished off the trip the way every backpack trip should be finished, with a good burger and fries. The boys slept on the drive home with ketchup and dirt all over their faces. The mark of good times. Next year we do Whitney. Ya right.

Weaver Lake Hike Slideshow

The Famous Tioga Middle School Dog Incident

I had a very interesting experience this past week at school. On Wednesday, I walked to the front of the school as I always do before the end of the day to see if there were any unsavory characters at the front of the school, which there often is. I was startled to see 2 pit bull dogs walking towards me at the front gate. I immediately became nervous that the two dogs would walk onto the campus and terrorize the students inside, about two minutes out from being released for the day, so I jumped in front of them, trying to get them to walk a different direction, and they decided that they would walk onto a open school bus. The bus driver, waiting and sleeping in the third row of the bus, was a little shocked to see these dogs walk on his bus and let out a few explicatives. Almost immediately, this guy drove up and informed me that the dogs had just chased this woman over the fence down the road and left her scraped and bloody. Concerned, we immediately called 911 and the SPCA. I spent the next minute trying to get the dogs out of the bus, but they became more and more aggressive. The police showed up almost immediately, but had no more luck then I in getting the dogs to leave the bus. I noticed that the bell was about to ring, so I locked the front gate, ran onto campus and re-directed the students to alternative exit.

So these two dogs were holed up on the bus and there was now many people trying to see what was happening. While there were no students allowed to come to close proximity of the dogs, there were many neighborhood people and others trying to see what was going on. As I was trying to keep people on the other side of the road, standing right in front of the bus, a bizarre and somewhat surreal scene opened in front of me as the the two dogs came charging out of the bus going for the bus driver standing in by the closed front gate. The bus driver jumped on top of the fence as the dogs were trying to go for his legs, then both dogs then turned on the cop. The officer drew his gun as he was backing away from the oncoming dogs and shot one below the head while he stumbled backwards and fell on his butt. The next dog came charging at the officer who was sitting on the ground and the officer proceeded to shoot him as well. This all unfolded a few feet in front of me. Both dogs slumped down to the ground and began bleeding profusely. To say the least, quite a few people, parents and students, witnessed the whole event. Thank heavens no one was hurt. After the whole police investigation took place and the news media came out and did their thing, my first thought was I wonder what the re-procutions of a police officer firing off his gun at the front of my school during release time will be. Luckily, there has been no complaints or lawsuits...yet. See the media story at:

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=local&id=5490126

Trevor at the Meet

Trevor the Torpedo

Trevor has been swimming daily in the Clovis Swim Club along with his cousins Jacob and Emma. Part of being part of the club means weekly swim meets. Trevor swims 25 yards freestyle and 25 yards backstroke at each meet. Jennifer and I have been impressed with the improvement we've seen in his swimming technique. We encouraged him to join the club to keep him physically active during the summer and have been pleasantly surprised with how happy he is to go every morning. Before his first race at his first meet, Trevor told me, "Daddy my heart is beating so hard it's gonna jump out of my chest". Pretty cute.