Whites

Here's a picture of my brother Jared at Fenway Park in Boston. He's finishing up his officer training for the Navy in Rhode Island. He graduated from Dental School in May and will serve three years in San Diego for the Navy.

The Replacements

Well... here's some of the pictures Eric's sister-in-law took of us at our July 4th baseball tournament. The rules were similar to softball, you know starting 1-1 already at the plate. The pitchers could only throw fastballs up to 60 mph. There was a large radar gun/display behind the plate to monitor the speed. If the ball was thrown over 60 a horn sounded and that pitch was an automatic ball. If a pitcher threw 66 or higher, they were ejected. It was pretty hard for our two pitchers to keep it 60 and below. If they tried to throw any junk, those were called balls too and were subject to ejection after one warning. Very fun, and can't wait to play again sometime.

No Fear

Brynley has no fear jumping down the slide. I was afraid she'd bounce out onto the neighbor's driveway, but she kept the bouncing under control.

Sadie's turn.

She was getting ready to go down herself, but Brynley still wanted to help her get going.

Diesel's Turn Down the Slide...with some help.

I guess we like to torture Diesel. He wasn't too sure if he wanted to go down, but Brynley gently (yeah right) took him down. He didn't go down again.



Poor Diesel...

Slip-n-slide Castle.

My cousin Rob and his wife Jenny invited us over to BBQ and swim on their castel thingy. The kids had a blast.

Upgrading to the 250cc.

I taught Brynley how to ride the 250cc quad last week. It doesn't have a clutch so it was fairly similar to doing the gas on the small one. I sat on back for a while as we rode around a dirt pit up the street where there are lots of trails at the base of Mapleton Mountain. The first thing she did was go up a little hill that she had just gone up on the little 90 quad. When we got to the top (about 5 feet), she was so used to the little quad and having to give it tons of gas to make it up, she kept her thumb on the gas and ended up riding a wheelie for about 10 ft with me on back. But... not for long, she ended up throwing me off the back and I landed in the dirt on my back. The quad stopped vertical on the grab bar and she was hanging on to the handlebars. I hurried and ran up to her and pushed the quad back down on all fours. She was a little scared and started to cry and didn't want to ride it anymore, but not wanting her to be afraid of it forever I told her I'd give her $5 if she'd ride around on the flat ground. It took some coaxing but she did, and loved it. Uncle Sean was laughing pretty hard. Then when we went home, she rode it around the house (while grandpa wasn't there). She got the hang of it and didn't run over any kids. She's a really good rider and listens to all of my instructions. She's very safe and always wears a helmet. Here's some pictures and a video.



Here's a couple of pictures of my elbow from when Brynley threw me off the quad. This was 4-5 days later and was starting to drain.

Landscaping the front yard...

Last week Jeff and Stacey were down here finishing doing some landscaping in front of the house. Sean and Amy also brought their family up from Arizona for a few days. Sean pitched in to help Jeff and Stacey shovel mulch on to the flower bed.

July 4th...

We went to Denver for the 4th of July. Josh (my cousin) invited me to play in a fast-pitch baseball tournament with his family ad my brother Eric. It was a lot of fun, but was very hot. We played four games, starting at 8am. We got fried from the sun and lack of baseball practice.
Josh and Robin hosted a big BBQ dinner, which was delicious and we got to visit with the Ricky Mack's.
We were almost too tired to watch fireworks because of the long day and ended up lighting off some of our own and watching the "big" ones from Eric's backyard. It was really nice and the kids had a blast. Tosha whipped out a big box of otter pops which didn't last very long with all of us.
Here's some pictures and some vids. I'm trying to get some more pictures of our game too.