A gud ol 'Merican Sumah

Howdy,
   So as was mentioned at the end of the last post we went to a nice AAA baseball game here in town. The local team offered free tickets on a Monday night to all of the kids who have perfect attendance during the state testing week. Since Teresa organized the thing for the entire school we were able to go and see a bunch of her students and coworkers. The team was down something like 6-0 after the second inning so we didn't stay to watch the whole thing, we went to a grass area so that the kids could run around I stopped paying attention at that point.

It was a crazy nice night.

Mr Jethawk.

That kid is really after that hot dog.

This past Wednesday we ventured down to Leo Carrillo for a little simple camping test. We are planning a longer larger trip later in the summer and decided this would be a good fun way to see if there are any kinks that need working out before hand.

After the Kernville trip I was sure we'd need a ton more packing space to pull off a camping trip so we bought a car rack and a weatherproof sac that I stuffed to the brim. We were a bit worried about being able to make it out of the garage with the extra height like Clark Griswald backing out the family truckster, but we made it. I was also a bit nervous about how it would stay on there but the drive went great and we had all kinds of room in the car this time.

We stepped up the tent situation too so that the kids could have one room and we could have a separate room/ entrance so as not to disturb them when we went to bed after the campfire. It is a crazy large pretty sweet bit of tent.

This illustrates the size  bit better. we had a queen air mattress on our side and still had tons of room. 

Comes with a swinging door too!

We went down to the beach which was a bit overcast but really nice. Not too crowded on a wednesday and A got over his beach phobia, in fact this time he loved it so much me wouldn't leave the water despite shaking like a leaf in the cold water. Z built sandcastles and had a great time. 

   The whole trip went really well, the kids slept eventually and loved s'mores. They entertained themselves with running around the tent and campsite. This bodes really well for our later camping trips.

  

Till next time-

RTSZA

Wedding Bells

So,
   Last weekend A recovered from his vomitosis just in time to fulfill his duties as ring bearer for our friends wedding. Z is friends with thier daughter who used to live down the street and we have become friends too. They asked A to be the ring bearer after some family fell through and they asked me to take some pictures of the whole shin-dig.

A with the groom, Ashley and the best man.

A stopped about halfway down and wondered why Ashley was dropping all of the flowers on the ground.

Then he got shy and didn't want to give the ring to the groom. He was a big hit.

After the ceremony we took a few more shots. It was really hot in the room so since A had just recovered from illness we took of his jacket.

note the crazy long tie.

On account of there being 8 people with iphones trying to shoot the same thing most of my shots have someone looking the wrong direction. Ohh well. I tried.

Z got a pretty new dress  and shoes for the occasion and wanted a shot with Ashley.

After the ceremony we headed to the reception.

Z and Ashley would have spent all night doing this if there hadn't been a photo booth. It was the hit of the evening. We all certainly made good use of it. There is some solid gold in these shots.

Notice in the far right shot Z breaks the provided prop while trying to play it like a tambourine. Photo booth operator lady was NOT happy.

 We also went to a baseball game last week but my computer keeps freezing up so that's all you get.

RTSZA

Z Birthday 2013

So,
    As everyone who has heard more than 20 consecutive words from her mouth knows June 4th was Z's 4th Birthday. She had already been treated to a celebration up in Kernville but we had to throw a little something on her actual birthday too.  When she woke up she was able to open a few presents from the Cheney grandparents.

The kids love cash registers and Z loves princesses a lot.

She wanted to go to chuck-e-cheese for dinner so we did that. That place is really really loud. The kids had a great time. Then we came home and had Hello Kitty cake and Ice Cream. This time she was able to blow out her own candles.

Then we gave her our present.

A "BIG GIRL BIKE!!!"

We took it out for a spin. She did mostly great.

Still a little unsure.

But then she really got the hang of it.




A was not pleased at him not having a big boy bike and not being the center of attention for the day.

So he rode a pink scooter and then Z offered to let him try out the bike.

Z hung out while A tried to ride but he wasn't big enough to reach the peddles so it didn't take long.

Her turn again!!

She kept getting more and more brave until she took her first spill.

But like a trooper she got right back on and kept at it.

She's a fun, smart, helpful, loud 4 year old now and we're happy to have her in our family.

RTSZA

Cherry Picking 2013

So,
    We headed up to the Leona Valley to do some cherry picking again this year. The is a rather large fire that has been burning for 5 or 6 days now in the area so we weren't sure how well it would go but we forged ahead. On the way up we suddenly hit a traffic standstill and saw the people in front of us all turning around. We waited until we got to the roadblock and told the officer we wanted to go pick cherries. He said OK. so we went though and picked cherries. We were some of the only people up there which meant that all of the trees were still completely covered in big ripe sweet cherries. It also means the family owned farms were losing money like crazy so we loaded up our buckets as much as we could (whether intentionally or not).

As you can see the trees hadn't been picked at all so the kids could easily reach tons of cherries. I think this is mostly to blame for the overwhelming volume of cherries we ended up with.

We walked back down the hill to weigh and pay for our cherries and the woman behind the counter poured them all into one brown bag. When she had some difficulty lifting it then said that'll be $35 I thought huh??!? That means we picked 10lbs of cherries in about 45 minutes. We paid for them then had a feast on the side of the road. We brought home a ton, washed them pitted and froze a bunch of them, and we are still working on about 4 lbs of them in the fridge.

I found this video on the internet about how to get the pits out.



I thought well a paper clip is free and a cherry pitter is $12 I'll just do it the paper clip way. That was a terrible idea. After pitting about 5 lbs of cherries 2 days ago my thumb is still sore and my fingers are still dyed blood red.

Anywho, today is Z's 4th birthday so I'm taking pictures of that and there will be another post coming along soon I'm sure.

Till Next Time

RTSZA