Tyler gets baptized

Tyler was baptized a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 9/26/2015 at the Antioch Stake Center.  My parents, Uncle Jason, Roman and Paisley attended. 

I think the more interesting part of this photo is Kira and Scott.  Scott looks bored back there and Kira's practicing her poses.

 Paisley and Roman

Tyler with Bishop and Sister Hull

Dinner at Skipolini's.  Looks like several weren't ready for this picture, but oh well.  Skips has good pizza and the kids like the play structure.

Heidi didn't stay for dinner.  Instead, she went to be with her dad in Walnut Creek.  

Haps

On Sunday, on the way home from Pop's, Scott wanted to hear stories.  I've told him lots of my good ones, so I just started telling him about my life in college and dental school.  I talked about waking up at 3:50 to get ready for work at the treadmill factory, riding my old Yamaha motorcycle to the Freeport center, and taking naps at the lunch table during breaks.  Heidi wasn't that interested in my stories and asked to wear my ear plugs.  Then she said, "You should write a book."

"I did," I said.  "My journal.  I have hundreds of pages."  

So I was telling the girls at work about story time and I went to the entry in which I described my homecoming date at BYU.  It was even funnier reading it straight from the horse's mouth.   Good old journals.  So here is my journal entry for the week.

This is how Scott practices in the morning.  See Mel on the left?  Yeah.  

Mister is six months old and he moved into the next batch of clothes.

Scott's starting to care more about how he looks and spends lots of time in front of the mirror.

Kira doesn't care that much about how she looks, but Heidi does, so Heidi bought her some cuter clothes.

The outside made for strong backlight, so I fired the flash and then saw his hair and face were messy.  Oh well, a bad photo is better than no photo.

We were expecting it to cool down now that we're officially into fall, but it was 100 degrees yesterday.  Okay, bye.

Are you serious?

The other day I asked Tyler to brush his teeth.  I hear his sonicare power up for no more than ten seconds, so I said, "That wasn't two minutes!  You gotta brush two minutes!"

I hear his toothbrush power up again.  Then I walk past the bathroom and see it, running on the counter, while he stands aside.

"Are you serious?"  I said.  He gave a guilty look and then I had to brush him.  Okay, I gotta go.  Bye.

Tyler's birthday and stuff

Tyler turned 8 on Friday.  He got some sweet gifts, including this wubble ball, some legos, that hat, a bike speedometer, and a slinky.  

For his party we went to Pump it Up in Oakley.  It was open family hour and we all rode the slides and jumped in the jumpy houses.  This picture was taken in the morning when I was photographing the single Bob stroller for a craigslist ad.  It sold this morning, by the way.

On Saturday we went to Pop's house, where he got more legos.

Cute picture of Kira and Parker

Blake saying "cheese."

Parker wasn't in good spirits for this shot but he's been generally pleasant lately.

Erika, Walt's sister, came up from Malibu

Zoran (Erika's husband), Joyce (Erik's wife), Walt, Erika, and Erik Lietz (Walt's cousin).

Pete is a long-time friend of Walt's and came up for din-din.

 Tyler blowing out his candles.

Catching up on genealogy and immigration stories.  Heidi will have to write about them but apparently, Erik had quite the tale of how he emigrated from Germany.

Scott inherited Grandma's camera and took the next few photos.  He is running for historian and wants to take pictures of his classmates, so I'm glad he's motivated to get into photography.  We had to try several batteries in order to get the camera to work.  I gave him some basic instruction, beginning with, "A bad photo is better than no photo."  Then #2 was the rule of thirds:  Put the subject's eyes at 1/3 down, not halfway.  This portrait isn't bad but could be cropped a little better to satisfy the rule of thirds.

He seemed to take my instruction well and hopefully he'll be able to evaluate his own work.  It took me years before I felt like I was good.

Blake finally got a speed suit which he's pretty excited about.

 Tyler got a golf toss from Heather and they played it in Pop's back yard.

What's on for today?  I don't know.  I want to fix the van's steering rack and put on some new tie- rods, but we'll see.  I got the kids to do their chores and now they're vegging in front of the TVs.  I should write a little more on my composition.  I feel like I've been productive, though.  I did payroll, sent off the IRA contributions, did some expenses, and sold the stroller.  Yar.