..And the Rest of the Year

The months of October and November meant marching season in full swing - plenty of practices and all day tournaments for Kevin (yeah, and me). The weekend before Thanksgiving signals the Savanna Tournament, which meant lots of extra hours of planning, coordinating, and a gabillion minutes used on my cell phone plan.

RJ was in charge of the BBQ Row, serving up hundreds of pancakes, cheeseburgers, and carne asada tacos. The day ended with a fantastic performance by the UCLA Bruin marching band - a show that wowed the crowds of spectators and volunteers alike.

The first weekend of December was the SCSBOA Championships in San Diego. A busload of us band parents and friends tagged along, gabbing and playing 50/50 on the bus. The group ended up taking first place for their division - a great way to end a winning season.

Sam got a job at WalMart back in September, and spent the last 3+ months working plenty of hours selling phones, TVs, and assorted other electronic items. He's getting great experience working with the public and learning the responsibility of the working world. Driving lessons are also continuing, but our two schedules don't always allow for much time.

Christmas came with the usual note to Santa asking once again for their trivia scavenger hunt. I wonder if these things quizzes would sell...

The week after Christmas found us back at the float barn decorating this cockatiel/rooster/parrot/toucan thingamabobby bird for the Jack in the Box float.

Matt, Kevin and I went for the first time to the Rose Parade and sold programs to the crowds. A portion of each program was given to the boys for their scout accounts - helping pay for summer camp and other activities. Having never been, it was a fun and wild experience for all of us. We got to see some kids who were marching in two different bands, and also ran into distant family who were spectators. What are those odds?!??

We walked for what seemed like forever, sold a bunch of programs, and also waved to two other friends who were participating in the BSA entry in the parade... all before noon. Came home to sleep through the Rose Bowl game. What a way to wrap up the year and kick off the new decade!

Some Random Fall Happenings

Kevin and Snoopy celebrated a birthday, one of them adding another few inches in height..

Fall decor came our way in the form of a .99 cent store spider web...

Matt and I took a weekend to go camping with his buds...

... got in a little rock wall climbing...

... and we enjoyed the time off with no Tournament planning; the sounds of Chino Hills coyotes, tent zippers, and no cell phone service; and the foreign sights of a million stars at night with a couple shooting stars thrown in...

It's Fall Again

Wow - can't believe that it's OCTOBER already. Seems like school started only last week...but now looking back, we've had back to school nights, Scouts starting back up, football games and even a couple tournaments.

Kevin's troop had a court of honor at Firestone...where the lovely Ms Stephanie arranged a Dutch Oven dinner for the families. I had to take notes, cause Matt and I will be camping out there in a few weeks.


Kevin spent a Saturday washing cars for band, even taking a break to say hi to Nick who happened to be in town for the weekend. He seems to be having a good time with all the practices and fundraisers and high school in general.

Their group already has a couple first place finishes under their belts, I'm sure that helps.

Labor Day Weekend 2009

Every once in awhile, when we're not working on rank requirements that have to do with compasses, crossing rivers, CPR, knowing the native plants of California, or knowing what a bowline knot is for (and then tying it), the Boy Scouts go and do something FUN.

Saturday Kevin and I got up at the crack of o-dark-hundred and went to Angels Stadium with his troop. We were there with quite a few other Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops of various ages, along with all the other parents that had driving duty.

We were there cheering on the runners for the Disneyland Half Marathon, and the nine-mile mark was them running through Angel Stadium. There were all sorts of athletes, from the professionals we saw at 7:30am; to the wheelchair runners; the large amounts of folks sporting any and all manner of Disney-related costumes - Tinkerbell, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Snow White, and Minnie Mouse (both girls AND guys wore this!!); the folks walking the route and stopping to take pictures and video of it all; down to the last straggling walker at 10am. We cheered especially hard for her. Elvis even made an appearance.

It was most fun when we went down to the wall and gave high fives to the runners - they were very appreciative. And sweaty.

BTW, Kevin just made his First Class rank, and knew how to do all those fun things (and more) listed above. And now, so do I.

The rest of the weekend included a pool party in Temecula; dodging drunk drivers on the road; and a beach day. . .

Summer Flowers

When they bloom, they bloom purty...

More Summer Stuff

Kevin came back from a weekend camping in Ojai last month, and brought me this lovely snapshot. It's rare - I never let him take the camera, unless he is working on his photography merit badge. Rather pretty place, we ought to try it sometime.
We spent the Fourth over at a friend's house, watching the kids play in the pool while we sat around grazing for the afternoon. It was neat to watch from a distance the illegal fireworks being lit on our street.

Matt spent this last week at Cub Scout day camp over in Los Alamitos Joint Forces base. It's a big patch of dry, hot, gopher-holed dirt. They brought a fire truck in one day and turned the hose on the kids - they loved it. I think the grass shown here is the only patch on the place.

The boys also got to shoot bb guns, bows & arrows, do leather crafts, check out rocks, check the oil and tire pressure on a car, do some cooking, pet a K-9 dog, and a myriad of other things. They had a great time, and are ready to go back again. I think it will take me a year to clean out the dirt from his clothes and shoes.

End of Year Fun

June's been kinda crazy around here, especially since there were three school graduations going on in the family. Sam graduated high school, Kevin promoted from the 8th grade, and Jacob promoted from 6th grade.

Matt's third grade class celebrated the end of the school year with a giant softball-baseball-mass-of-kids against the parents game one Friday. Picture a parent hitting the ball in the air, and 20 to 30 kids dog piling over each other to get to the ball first (with another 20 or so shyly standing around). Some of those kids were pretty darn good, though - you could tell which ones were in Little League and Bobby Sox. We now officially have only one kid left in that school.

Jacob's promotion came soon enough (or not soon enough, if you ask him), and he is now officially in junior high. Little does he know what that means - kids being mean because they are trying to fit in with the other "cool" kids, acne, and dressing out for P.E. Going from being the big fish in a little sea to a little fish in a bigger sea is also something you can't quite explain - not that my moody, hormone driven 12 year old would listen to me these days. We've already pegged him to be the one that we have to watch, especially since he now has the "freedom" to ride his bike halfway across town to school on his own each day.

Kevin officially promoted to high school as well, but the school district determined there was no money to hold ceremonies for the junior high kids. Don't know how much it really costs to set chairs up in the quad, but obviously it would break the non-existent school budget. So my only picture of him at this time is at Jacob's ceremony - and I had to twist his arm to actually attend that morning.

Matt actually had a "graduation" of his own, that of finishing the Bear rank in Cub Scouts, making him an official Webelos cub scout now. We had a ceremony for all the boys - here is the group of rowdiness I had to contend with this past year. Don't let those little sly grins fool you, they are all up to something at one time or another.

We celebrated the endings and beginnings with a day/evening at the beach. The kids all spent the afternoon (the first sunny one all month) in the water, and then we had dinner and a bonfire. It was incredibly windy, and while it subsided down a couple notches at sundown, it never completely stopped. We were all windburned, sunburned, and smoky by the end of the night.

Kevin (here doing his blind person imitation) invited Thomas and Stephanie along . . .

. . . while Sammy invited his friends Kevin Stark, Ricardo, and Norma out for the day. Lots of food, fun, water, smiles, wind and sand marked the day.

Next promotion/graduation dates =
June 2011; June 2012; June 2013; June 2014; June 2015; June 2018

One Down, 3 to Go

Last week I made the trek out to Harlingen, TX to make my first and last visit to Sam's school. The airline ticket was bought two months ago, but he kept us biting our nails until the last minute on whether he would pass one last class.

The day started out with an early morning awards ceremony parade, on the grounds in front of the Iwo Jima memorial. Each company had a contingency participate, and we were told this was a traditional parade review format. Sam's here in the band (much smaller than he was used to!)

After a uniform change, which necessitated a trip back to the hotel for his belt that he forgot ("I'm done with school, I can turn my brain off now...") - it was time for the graduation ceremony. Since the weather was pushing 92, with like 85% humidity, it was held indoors. It seemed fairly short to me, probably cause we got all the awards out of the way earlier.

After all was said and done, we headed back for one last change of clothes before heading to the airport. Sam misplaced his I.D., and quickly learned that the TSA doesn't like that, especially now that you're an adult. He quickly remembered where he stashed it after I told him I would see him on the other side!

But all is good now, we are back in the land of dry heat and voluntary PT, diploma in hand.

This Thing Wanted To Eat Me...

Yesterday started out great, nice and overcast and perfect weather for tackling all the plants, weeds, devil-grass, vines, iceplant (and look, a kitten!) that has overtaken my yards. Drug out the whole arsenal of tools for the job: gloves, spades, full-size shovel, sunglasses.

I fully expected to run across my share of spiders, bugs, pincher bugs, rolly-pollies and the like. I was vigilant, cause I know there are black widows that inhabit the yard around me - know where they hang out, even. Seen 'em in the past, we eye each other warily, and go our separate ways.


See? Look...how pretty. Still only about 1/4 done, but hey, I can live with this for now.

So, the sun came out and started wiping me out. I came inside to take a break and chug some ice tea, sat down to check my email and play a mind-numbing game of solitaire while my back throbbed and my head felt dizzy.

Out of the corner of my eye, this THING crawled up from the back of my monitor and on to the top - right in my line of sight. This wasn't your ordinary house spider, the kind you blow away and move on with your business. NO! It was BLACK and FURRY and flippin' HUGE!! I swear to you that this was a tarantula. After picking myself up off the floor, I grabbed my camera and took a picture cause I knew NO ONE would believe me.
Had to go get all the boys to take a look and gawk and stare, while staying in the living room with my toes all curled. These guys? Yeah, no help at all...

Question now is: how many more are living in my office waiting to show up somewhere else?

April 25

Aaaah, what a nice refreshing, relaxing weekend. One that only involved cleaning one house. Granted, it was a house that hadn't been cleaned for two weeks, had no food in the cupboards, and had a fresh car-load of stuff dumped into it, but still... Yesterday I spent the day vacumming, cleaning upholstery in the car, folding piles and piles of clothes, moving the crap from the office to the other hiding spaces in the house, and paying bills.

I did go through two boxes of school and scouts stuff - things I pretty much forgot about, cause that's what you do immediately after turning them into the teacher. Things like MY ABC BOOK, a pile of character trait reports, ooodles of term papers and reports (that my kids never do!), art projects, and the like. I'm telling ya, mom saved EVERYTHING. Most stuff was junk, some things were classic, some made me laugh out loud.

Sample character trait report:
"At school this week, I showed Sincerity ... when somebody on the other team struck out and I didn't laugh at them." Wonder if I laughed at anyone on my own team when they struck out?!?


Earlier this week, when the boys were on spring break, Kevin and Thomas made a trek to the Vans SkatePark. They prefer to ride their bikes instead of their skateboards, but it seems a large portion of the time they just seem to hang out looking cool. Right next to the other kids who had to have their moms drive them there, too.

Weather last week was a blazing 100+ degrees for a couple days, then dropped 30+ degrees by Friday. Since that weather pattern causes earthquakes, Thursday night we had a lovely swarm of three to roll around with. Today was a little warmer, lots sunnier. The group of us Cub Scouts went out to the nature center, hiking around with all the mannerisms and the noise level of little boys. We barged right past the Girl Scouts who were quietly listening to the tour guide... yeah, that didn't work for us.... especially since the boys' homemade trail mix consisted of such goodies as cocoa puffs, marshmallows, peanuts, and M&Ms. They loved it, and asked when we were going to go back.