March haps

We have been busy this month.  Roman, Kira, and Blakey had birthdays.  

Iron Man made an appearance at Roman's birthday party.  Heather always puts on a good party.

Got some funny pictures of Kira.  Lately, she's been saying, "Whatever."

Blakey is growing right up.

Tyler getting aggressive with the pinata.

I watched Iron Man make some balloon toys and made a sword for Blakey.

Hobble and his family stopped in on their drive from Oregon to Dizzyland.  I hadn't seen Hobble since our wedding, and before that, we hadn't seen each other since high school.  It was good catching up and meeting their kids.  You know Hobble has a Corvette?  Yeah.  Wow.

We sang happy birthday to Blakey and let him blow out the candle.  Kira had her birthday on Thursday and got some Hello Kitty stuff.

The kids had a good week away from school.  The weather was nice and they jumped on the tramp quite a bit and seemed to get along.  I worked six days this week and am grateful for work.  Heidi could probably write a lot more about what's up, but these pictures and a little text are gonna have to do.

Tyler's prayer

Dear, Great Heavenly Father.  We're grateful for this day.  We're just a little bit sad that we didn't get any rain."

He's said some other funny things, I just can't remember them right now.

Scott's baptism weekend

Scott was baptized on March 1st at the stake center in Antioch.

Grammy and Grampy came 

Pop came too

The boys caught a frog in the golf course and made a little ecosystem with the lizard's terrarium.

Dad's not totally stoked about how Kira rubs his ear.  

Grammy and Grampy got Scott some scriptures

Blakey wants cookies before breakfast.

For cub scouts, Scott wanted to make some bean bags.  I showed him how to use the sewing machine and he was working for quite a while.  I got the boys into making fancy patterns with the embroidery tool and now we're going to get Scott into quilting.  I mean, heifer, if he's into sewing, we're going to encourage him.  Better that than being on the computer all the time.

He was showing Tyler how to scroll through the menus.

Sunday photos

Some pictures of the kids with the big didge and 50 mm 1.8 lens.  Heavier but much higher optical quality.  Nice bokeh too.  

Dinner at La Costa

Pop joined us for valentines day dinner at La Costa in Brentwood.  

Tyler insisted on a taco and after he ate his burrito, we got him a taco without the spices.

Kira wanted her picture taken like this.  We got several boxes of clothes from the neighbors and there were lots of cute items in there.  Kira can pretty much dress herself but refuses help with her hair.  Well, she'll grow out of that in seventh or eighth grade.

When I pulled out my old powershot S400, I heard some teenagers make some comment about how no one uses cameras anymore.  Yeah, pretty much.  But these are still higher quality than their cell phone pictures, but not as good as Lavar's old film camera with the 50 mm lens.

I was whistling War, by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (from the Hunger Games when Katniss is interviewed in front of the audience in the capitol), and Kira said, "That hurts my ears."

I said, "Well your screaming hurts mine."  She must have just been real tired.

Okay, bye.

Blue and Gold

Now that Scott's eight we get to do cub scouts.  Here he is with Pop and the cake they decorated together for the blue and gold banquet.  Then Scott won the raffle for a gift card to bass pro shops, so that was pretty cool.  Check out his face:  It's healed quite a bit from when he went down on his scooter.  

January in Brentwood

 It's been unusually warm and dry this winter.  This was last Sunday afternoon:  short sleeved shirts.  We played on the golf course until the sun went down and then it got cold.

All of these were taken with my new old Canon S400, recently acquired from ebay.  Though old, well-used, and outdated, it still takes good pictures.

Big boy Scott had his meeting with the cub scout leaders.

The lighting for this was perfect.  I didn't have to do any post-processing.  Kira's outfit is amusing--a kind of eclectic mismatch.

Mr. T is still a cheeser for the camera.

Looks like Blakey's eye is red from either crying or him rubbing it.

At Skipolini's to celebrate Scott's 8th birthday.  We like Skips because the pizza and salads are good and there is a play structure to wear out the kids.

Blakey's thing lately has been to stuff his face to the point of explosion.  Sometimes he chokes himself, other times he just throws up.

Pop came out to celebrate.

This girl wanted to be in our family picture, and Tyler wasn't having any of it.  He threw a fit and somehow we bribed him to be in the picture, and this is the result.  A classic Tyler crusty.