First 10k in 20y

Well Saturday I completed my first 10K race in 20 years! The race was called the Human Race and was the 15th annual race and is run in Mountain View. The weather was great if not a little too warm and it was really well run and they also had a 5k run, a 5k walk (which Melissa and kids did,) and a 5 k dog walk which I thought was thoughtful. The race had a lot of sponsors and one of them, National Semiconductor, matched donations to our school organization and we were able to raise $5600 for DSCO (school organization which Melissa helped found and was vice president of for a year)

I was able to meet my goal on race speed but it was pretty tough. I was over dressed and it was pretty warm so I was laboring a bit. I was not the oldest, youngest, tallest, shortest, thinnest etc. runner in the race. The race started off fast and it evened out over time so that I was basically running with the same 20 people for 3/4ths of the race.

I also relied pretty heavily on my friend Steve (dj steveboy) to help with the race, he was with me all the way.

I am definitely inspired to do more races, it was great to have a goal to train for and combine that with fund raising for the school!

To Teachers - Thank You!

From time to time Melissa and I teach Sunday school at our Church. We feel it is one of our obligations to give back since we utilize the program so heavily. :)

There is a really great kids program at our church called BLAST and there is a common theme taught for a 6 week period and the material is presented in different forums like theater, cooking, computers etc. The way the class works is that each week it rotates through the grade levels in no particular order. So as a teacher you see different grades each week.

Last week we had the 5th grade class - and man it is tough to teach when they don't want to be engaged!

This particular week the content was a bit light for the class and as Melissa and I went through the material the kids (9 boys and 3 girls) where quite ornery. We were trying to keep them engaged by asking questions however they kept coming back to us with questions like:

"Do you need to be certified to teach this class?"
"What if the angels aren't real in this story?"

and so on and so on...

So as the questions kept getting tougher and the kids squirmed more we naturally started sweating!

So as we walked out we felt that we really had a new appreciation for what the teachers of our children do and how hard their job can be.

Thank you teachers!

Reading Comprehension ++

Our oldest daughter has always loved books. She devours books. She read the last two Harry Potter books at 7 1/2. Not only does she read a lot of books she reads them incredibly fast. So the other day I was wondering just how much of the stories she comprehends as she blasts through them. She is currently very into a series called The Children of the Red King - Charlie Bone. She just finished one of the books so I thought I would ask her a few questions to test her comprehension level. I didn't have to go very far to see that she was indeed putting it all together.

The conversation went something like this. D= Dad, J=Julia

D - "Did you like your book?"
J - "Yes very much!"
D - "Can you tell me about the book?"
J - "Yes, what do you want to know?"
D - "Tell me what happens to Charlie."
J - "Do you want the short version or the long version?"
D - thinking to myself "ok she can either summarize or give detail, that is good"
D - "How about the short version."
J- "Would you like me to summarize the series up to this point or just start where this book starts?"
D - again to myself "wow, OK so she can go at any level of detail here - the entire series to date or just this book"
D - "Lets just go with this book for now"
J - "Well in this book Charlie is..."

Needless to say she is not only comprehending the books she can summarize or drill to any level of detail. And she can do this across all of the series she has read including Harry Potter and the A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.

Oh to have a young agile mind!!!

As an aside to say that books are always a good gift for Julia is an understatement.

Glorius Weekend...

that was 8 years in the making! Sure we've been away separately for more than a week individually and had been away together for over night trips. But we had never been away together for more than 1 day together IN THE PAST 8 YEARS!!

This past weekend Melissa and went to Seascape which is a resort down on the Monterrey bay near Aptos to have those two days away. We went down with good friends of ours Steve and Jen who as it turns out had not been away from their three children in 8 years as well.

Here is the link to more pictures from the weekend:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12565717@N00/sets/72157604796440223/

The weather was awesome, the condo was on the beach, the company was great! We went to dinner, we cooked leisurely, we played croquet, we played Wii (Guitar hero baby!), we did nothing, we read 2 papers cover to cover!!

It was awesome and I owe a HUGE thanks to Mom for coming to California to watch the kids. According to Mom they were great, they listened, didn't get too upset that we were gone.

Wow!

$4 Dollar Gas

I filled up my car today at a gas station in San Carlos and it costs $4 per gallon!! It cost $56 to put 14 gallons in my car and that was not even filling it up!

I hate to think if what the prices are going to be in mid-summer!

p.s. don't even ask how much it costs to fill up the Expedition - suffice to say I've taken a second job!

Dancing with R2D2

A co-worker Ann forwarded this video of her daughter Ella dancing with an R2D2 robot and I thought it was pretty funny! Enjoy!

Our Lemon Tree Can Hear Us Talk?

Several birthdays ago I bought Melissa a Meyers Lemon tree because she had started to like Limoncella's so I thought she could make her own with fresh lemons. :)

We planted the tree in a sunny spot in the back of our garden and expected it to grow like mad (like everything else in California). For some reason it never really seems to have done well, always looking anemic with yellow leaves and few if any lemons. We've tried special fertilizer and it gets plenty of water and sun so we were not sure what to do. This year we decided we should go ahead a replace it because it had such a prime spot in the yard it was a waste and did not look good.

Well apparently talking bad about it and discussing replacing it did the trick! In the last few weeks it has more than doubled in size, sprouted tons of green leaves and lemons! There are blossoms all over it so there is promise of many more lemons to come. Melissa is now drinking lemons in her water and we are looking at enough to create lemonade!

I guess all of to apply that to my other plants that are not doing so well.