An early start

After the deputies left, I jokingly said to Toby that we should just head out to Shaver right then.  She gave me one of her withering, sleep deprived looks which told me that I wasn’t being as funny as I thought.

We got back into bed, but due to the adrenaline dump, I lay awake for about an hour.  Even then my sleep was fitful.  I heard Toby get up and then she was talking to me.  “Alright, let’s go.”  It was 3:30a.  That sounded good to me.

We loaded up the rest of the stuff and the kids into the van and were on the road before 5a.  The kids saw their first sunrise during our otherwise uneventful 6 hour drive.  Toby elected to stay at the cabin and take a nap, while Max and Lucy and I went to the beach camp to meet the others.

We had a great time with Yaya, Poppa, Katie, Rich, Abbie, Alex, Jan, Jeff, Emily and Nate.  Max and Lucy and most of the other kids went tubing behind the boat.  Lucy is quite the fearless one (in some things) and she quickly used the hand motion for Uncle Jeff to speed up.

All the cousins had a great time playing on shore and in the water with each other.

Deputies as alarm clock

We have a plan to head for Shaver Lake for a long weekend.  We packed up the van tonight after the VBS show and plannned to get an early start at 6:30a on Saturday morning.  We were well on schedule when Toby and I went to bed ato 10:30p.  As usual I fell right to sleep.

BOOM! BOOM! “Sheriff’s Department!”.

What a crazy dream.  I must have kicked Toby in my sleep because she was rolling out of bed, gasping.  Maybe not a dream.  Toby was saying something about a fire.

BOOM! BOOM! “Sheriff’s Department!”.

I was fully awake now.  It was 1:30a.  I went downstairs to see what was going on.  Through a stairwell window, I saw a Deputy at the back (alley side) office door.  I barely registered the fact that the back door was wide open.  How did he get that door open?

It turns out he didn’t get the door open.  That was why he was on site.  They were on patrol, driving thru the back alley and noticed that our van had almost all of its doors opened.  When they stopped to investigate, they saw that our back door was wide open too.  They were making sure that the van and house had not been broken into.

After checking things out, I thanked them for doing a good job, and did what should have been done 4 hours earlier : locked things up. 

Trail Caching

Up until now, we have been mostly urban geocachers. Today we tried a more rugged set of caches. We headed out to the Romero Canyon Trail.

We found 2 of the 4 caches that we looked for, but we had a lot of fun hiking about 3/4 of a mile up the trail (Lucy’s little legs were pumping away). We also had a close encounter with Nature.


Max enjoys taking pictures with the camera phone.

Baseball Season 2009

Max is playing on the Giants team in Farm League B. This means that they still use a machine to pitch, but the boys play on the ‘real’ fields. The season has 3 games left and before today’s game the team was tied for 1st place. They lost today to the 3rd place team, so I’m not sure what their standing is now. Below is Max’s official player photo.

There is a pro photographer that takes really good shots of the players. We bought a couple of the shots.

A Girl On A Mission

Lucy has been eating a bag of cherries for the entire weekend.  In an effort to slow her down, I told her she could only eat 5 cherries and then she had to take a break.  Over the course of the weekend, she’s been piling up her pits.  After throwing away a bunch of piles of 5 pits, I told her she needed to throw away her own pits.  She replied that she was saving them to make her name.

I just came inside from doing some yard work and saw the results of her cherry eating.

It looks like her next set of 5 cherries will complete her name.  I guess this is ‘Pit Art’.