Leo Carrillo

A few weeks ago Tara took a trip back east to spend some time with her sisters. She took Melina and left me with the other three. Outnumbered three to one, I had to come up with some pretty good activities. Fortunately, Super Dad came through. I took the kids down to Leo Carrillo State Beach at the low tide and the sea life didn't disappoint. We held all sorts of weird stuff - star fish, urchins, crabs, mussels and snails. Ian in particular got a real kick out of poking every single anemone and watching them close.

BTW...no one got hurt or went hungry. Thanks to help from Callie and our friend Melissa, I was even able to get some work done while the boys were at school! All in all, a great opportunity to spend quality time with my kids.

Cool snail we found, just chilling on an exposed rock. He probably wanted to climb back towards the water.

The boys pose with some star fish.

The boys were pretty quick to ask Lani to crawl into that little cave first.

Purple and gold...who knew that King Triton was a Lakers fan?

This was when we first arrived...everyone's still dry!

Ian smiled but was a little busy keeping balance. The waves kept rolling in at our feet and the rocks we were standing on were pretty slippery. The starfish and anemones stuck on the rocks were pretty cool and added a lot of neat colors.

Fathers & Sons

So about a month ago (yes, I'm that far behind in just about everything I'm doing, even work) I FINALLY got to attend my first Fathers & Sons camp out as a dad. Last year, I was here and the boys were in UT. Year before, we were selling our house. Year before, I was graduating from University of Utah with a masters degree. So this year, I took the boys to Coriganville Park in Simi Valley, near where I grew up. We got pizza on the way, stayed up late, woke up early and had a great time. All those kids running around...it was absolute chaos! Best part of the trip was the morning hike. Another dad and I took a few boys to the top of the hills we camped against. We were just south of the 118 at the Santa Susana Pass, looking out over Simi. Reminded me a lot of catching a few sunrises at Rocky Peak back in high school.

"See this rock I'm standing on? It's big like my arm muscles!"

Nice shot of Aaron as we start the morning hike.


Here's all the local hood-rats looking for trouble.


Apparently "make a funny face" translates to "look like a sissy" when you're eight years old.

Easter

Before I get to the pictures, it's confession time. (As a side note, blogs seem to be a GREAT place to confess your parenting shortcomings without your kids ever actually become aware. Until they learn to read. Then you transition to Facebook, I guess.)

Anyway, Easter Eve, Tara and I were watching a movie. She was writing clues for the kids to find their Easter baskets but never got around to finishing them by the end of the movie. Instead of staying up late to finish, we *MAY* have told our kids that Peter Cottontail was busy placing Easter baskets around the world and couldn't get to our house until a little later, say 10AM, so they should sleep in. And surprisingly, NO ONE SAID A WORD! As a parent all I can say is: Best. Easter. Ever. With that out of the way, onto the pictures.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and...wait, what was my line again? Still trying to get this whole reading thing down.

Gratuitous Candy Shot ahead!

My name is Inigo Montoya...

Catch Up Time

So I had a fun experience this week: I inadvertently crashed my laptop. While fixing it, I couldn't get any of the MS Office programs to behave correctly (serious problem for work), so I switched over to Linux. It's been a steep learning curve, but I'm typing this from Xubuntu now. And the best part, certain parts of my laptop, such as Bluetooth, now work better than before! So I can get my pics off the camera and onto the blog MUCH easier. Here's a Melina post:

Hide and Seek

Melina likes to play hide and seek and peek-a-boo. Not a very popular hiding place amongst my more odor-discerning children (though I'm surprised she's the first to start hiding there).

When A Sweet Tooth Goes Wrong

Tara had stashed some jellybeans in my office prior to Easter (I may have opened the bag and sneaked just a few). Melina saw Tara take a few and decided to follow suit while Tara wasn't looking. I came home to find a recreation of that scene in Sixth Sense (couldn't find a good Youtube link) where the little dead girl goes into Cole's tent and barfs all over the place. There was no barf and I laughed pretty hard.

Quintessential Kid Shot

So I was in my office working the other day and was a little hungry so I went out to the kitchen to grab something to eat. Tara had bought some flour to bake with a little earlier in the day, which must have caught Melina's eye. Don't ask me how she go into Ian's robe.

On Thursday I was driving through Redding, CA to visit a client. I missed the turnoff and found myself on the way to Shasta, a small historic site a few miles away. As I looked for a place to turn around, I came face to face with a familiar family name!

It's spelled the right way so I knew it was from the same family. After spending some time on both Google and LDS Familysearch, I was able to make the connection. The street is named for Dr. Benjamin Shurtleff, MD, who lived in Shasta and later moved to Napa in the 1800s. He originated from Massachusetts and sailed to San Francisco during the gold rush. He settled in Shasta and had a storied political career in addition to his medical career.

From what I could find, Benjamin is 4th cousins to Luman Andros Shurtleff and they lived about the same time. They both come from the William Shurtleff line - William Shurtleff was one of the first Shurtleffs from England during the colonial period, back in the 1600s. Luman Andros was descended through William Shurtleff's first son, William, while Benjamin was descended through William Shurtleff's third son, Richard or Abiel.

Miscellaneous Pictures

Here are a few pictures floating around on my phone that I've been meaning to put up on the blog:

Here's Melina learning to be a Jedi Baby form her siblings. I think's it's fair to say Star Wars was a great movie, but I don't know where my kids are getting this whole Star Wars kick from.

This is a picture of Kailani getting a fairy package from Grandma. She absolutely loved it. The only problem? So did Ian. We had to convince him that fairy wings don't belong on boys.

This is a picture of Melina on a recent drive back from Salt Lake. We stopped at the McDonald's in Victorville for lunch and Tara thought it would be a good idea to lure the children back into their seats with ice cream cones. Apparently, so did Melina.

Sock Hop

For Valentine's Day, someone came up with the idea of doing a sock hop at Church. It actually worked out really well for me, as I was traveling for work on Valentine's Day. None of the pictures turned out great, but here's the best one we got.