Dylan is 11!

Hard to believe, but my boy is 11 years old. Still learning kung-fu, still getting good grades, and still behaving well. What more could I ask for? He's a great kid and I'm very proud of him. This year he chose to have his cake and presents on his birthday with his family rather than wait for the weekend and do it with his friends. So the end result is this; a picture of his cake and not much else! The pictures I took when the boys were here on the weekend are almost identical to the pictures from last year, a group of boys (practically all the same boys too) standing in front of the Wii. The thumbnail preview of the pictures just say "See last year." But at least his cake is different! I hadn't taken any decorating classes last year (yet), so luckily he had asked for something easy. This year he challenged me a bit.

Inauguration

Let the change begin!  I am happy and relieved to have a new President.  Not that I'm silly enough to think things are going to change overnight, but the feeling of optimism is contagious and many people that I know are optimistic that things will get better faster now. 

 

On thing that strikes me about the inauguration, as a mother of an elementary school child, is that all those millions of people in the audience were sitting there quietly listening to the people doing the talking.  It amazes me.  It amazes me because year after year I attend my sons school functions and every time I am so disappointed in how rude people are to the principle, the performers and their own kids, just because they won't close their mouths and pay attention to what is going on.  Parents refusing to turn off their cell phones, and even talking on them during performances, it just makes me crazy.  I know people have the ability to be respectful,  saw proof that it can happen today, and I would love to see it happen at my sons school. 

 

See, even that small change would make my life a little more pleasant. 

Winter Sunset

Rootstock had another show in Fort Bragg last weekend. On the way to the coast we watched an excellent sunset.

The ocean is visible as a thin strip between the hills and the sunset.

You can barely see Lex and Frankie soaking it in.

Happy New Year

2008 has been a wonderful year in many ways. I hope all my friends and family had a good year too. As always I have been very busy, as you will see in a moment, and haven't kept up with people as I should. My self-imposed punishment is to fill you all in on a years worth of activities, events, photos, and news. I will attempt to make it entertaining, enjoyable, and not too wordy. Here Goes:

Oh, and FYI; After the video was made, we showed it to the kids with a secret microphone on the desk behind them. Their recorded narrative of the video is what you hear while you watch the beginning. Unfortunately the audio feed got interrupted so we only got a little bit recorded initially.

So, we added their few comments to the video with some music and showed it to them, while we were recording again! Gosh, it just gets better and better. So remember as you listen to the very beginning, you are hearing 2 conversations from 2 different times - have you had your mushrooms today? After that you are only hearing the second viewing of the video, so keep up here, there are circular references to things that happened while we were watching it the first time that you won't have any recollection of because you weren't with us the first time around (or the second) and the audio feed *&$%#'ed up, but if you pay attention it all ties together….and is amusing. Soooo Spinal Tap!




Notice...Dylan is suspiciously quiet. Once he knew he was being recorded, he clammed up. While I was uploading the photos into the video program, a picture of Brandon hitch-hiked and inserted itself right into the storyboard. So, I figured if he wanted to be in the video that bad I could let him stay. When we showed the video to the kids the first time, nobody said anything about the ghost photo, but the second time around Dylan did..."Who's that?" Goofy kid.