Here's a quick summary of how our summer looked. Lots of fun. Best part is the boys can now practice YEAR ROUND!!!! (I think Tara's pretty excited at the prospect of sending them outside year round without worry of Child Services. *KIDDING*) Also, this video was on my phone (which started a 48-hour death march yesterday - we now have limited time together, necessitating getting all the videos and pics off of it). So I can't vouch for the quality. But the videos go up, none the less. And I think they're missing audio because of the conversion.

As a side note, they have both started taking my skateboard out, luging down the hill skeleton-style, so they can practice their pop-ups on the move. I'd grab a vid of that, but it would probably TKO my phone.

And for those keeping score, that's Brad - 2, picture-taking-devices - 0. I'm doing my best Ray Bradbury impression on digital media for the good of humanity. (Bragging rights to the first one to get the literary reference.)

First Day Of School

So today was kind of momentous: first day at the new school, and Ian started kindergarten. We're a little anxious about Ian and how he'll handle sitting in class all day without hitting anyone. We're also dreading the call home about an "accident" and a change of clothes. We'll see how it goes. But Tara's pretty excited to be home all morning long with just the girls.

The other kids in the picture are a family in our ward that we've become friends with. They walked out of their house as we were walking past and their little girl Patricia is in Ian's class. He seemed pretty excited to already know someone on the first day of school. We saw several other

families from church that live in the area (not all in our ward), which was kind of fun. California isn't considered one of those conservative-values states, so it's nice walking into a new school seeing people of similar values there. While I'm sure there are families of other faiths with similar values (NP is pretty conservative itself), I just haven't met any of them yet - good thing we've got Boosters (PTA) as a chance to get to know them! (Yes, Tara's already signed "us" up for some class activities and "fun"-draisers.)

California Cars

We were driving to Callie's a few weeks back and we pulled up behind one of the local cruisers in our neighborhood...a bright yellow Lotus Elise. Not sure why you would adorn such a nice car with such a horrible spoiler, but I guess money's not an issue if you own a Lotus.

And in case any of you are wondering, I'm WAAAAAAAAY out of my tax bracket here. This picture was taken while driving either my 2000 Toyota Sienna minivan or my 1996 Civic, both of which are paid off and still run. Seriously, I was pretty happy in my previous post about how excited I was to get a used surfboard on craigslist. But at least I can take my kids on a surfboard, right?

(BTW...Aaron stood up the other day on the Anderson at Mondos. He's pretty excited to get out and try it again. Pretty soon he'll be joining us on those family dawn patrols when everyone's in town. Maybe he can join Brayden and Owen on the Jr Jones Pro Circuit.)