Summer Pictures

Kennan and Morgan at a swimmeet

Micah has earned money with a few "Micah camp" events - this was the pirate camp

The birthday party palace in the backyard

Micah and the whole birthday party gang in the tent

Set up for the party - a view of the lovely back patio

Setting up the outdoor movie for the birthday party

Brig the daddy tiger

Micah's birthday donuts

The kids on Micah's birthday

Ang and Micah at the American Idol concert

Cute Morgan

Cute Kennan

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium's touch and feel pool (note Kennan's nowhere near the water!)

With Grandpa and Grandma in Monterey

Grandma reading books to the girls

Our three Covington Critters

Nice smiles!

At the SF Zoo with G&G - no tiger attacks!

Flipping pancakes at the ward 4th of July breakfast

Grandpa, Brig, Preston

The family being all patriotic at the 4th breakfast

Great to have G&G visiting us over the holiday!

Epic Struggle

Dan and I hit the links yesterday evening for what turned out to be a physical and emotional 13-hole battle of wits and skill on the divoted and windy fairways (and roughs, and water, and sand) of the Shoreline Golf Course. After jumping out to an early two hole lead, I suddenly forgot how to play the game, but it probably wouldn't have mattered even if I'd been playing well as Dan came charging back to square the match a few holes later. Dan eventually took what appeared to be a commanding one hole lead late in the day until I hit what can only be described as a heroic putt to win a hole and pull even again. I decided enough was enough and took my own one hole lead as twilight fell, but like warriors we pressed on until the bitter end, fighting the falling darkness and goose poop as mortal enemies. My precarious one hole lead was very close to expanding on two straight holes when Dan was faced with difficult mid-range putts to tie the holes and remain within striking distance. The entire gallery exploded with raw emotion as Dan sunk both putt after putt to keep my lead at a manageable one hole. And then, the fateful final hole. Darkness was all but upon us, geese were hissing at us as we strolled unconcernedly by, minds were sharp, eyes were riveted, and all balls were in play. Once again, it came down to a longish putt that Dan had to hit to tie the match. Dan had set up this remarkable chance at a save by hitting a towering fairway wood up onto the green while the group ahead of us was still on. He was, however, unphased by the shouted insults and possible threat of them waiting for him in the parking lot. This amazing shot, which some would call lucky, appeared that it might be enough to trump my own steady play. However, when all the chips fell, it was Dan left with the aforementioned longish putt to pull out the tie and live to fight another day. The crowd hushed, the commentators whispered, and Dan sank the putt with icewater in his veins. He sank to his knees, falling back to the ground with both fists clenched and shaking in ecstacy, reminiscent of Roger Federer on the courts of Wimbledon. The old ladies in the clubhouse looked on in awe (or confusion?). And so it ended.

We'll resume the rivalry at a later date. Myself - bitter that I let him hang around; Dan - exultant that he was able to play well above himself and challenge the unchallengeable. Until next time then...

:-)

Fun weekend

Hi everyone, we had a really fun weekend. Well, I should say that Angela and I had a fun, somewhat irresponsible weekend (don't tell Grandma LeBras!). It all started on Friday night when we decided to go with some friends and Dan & Hailey to the new Batman movie, leaving the kids under the watchful eye of Micah and her friend. We went to the 9:30 show and really liked it - very good although a bit edgy and dark. We didn't realize it was a 3-hour movie including previews, so we got home very late - kids all asleep. Saturday morning we both had long runs planned, so we got up very early despite our late bedtimes, and Ang ran 14 miles, I ran 17 miles. So the kids went to bed without mom and dad home, and they woke up without mom and dad home ... at least we're consistent. That evening we were invited to go to the semi-finals of a WTA tennis tournament at Stanford with some other friends who had very nice 3rd row seats, and you kind of can't pass that up. So we left the kids at the friends' house with their kids, and headed off for more fun and frivolity. The match was awesome - these women were phenomenal players (Bartoli d. Sugiyama), and we also stayed for the first set of the doubles semi afterwards - again, very good. We ended up getting home at a reasonable time, but of course it takes a while to get home and the kids in bed, so thanks to another late night, Brig was one melt-down after another on Sunday. Oh well, it was still a really fun weekend. Forgot to mention we got a ton of organizing/unpacking done in the garage on Saturday and that made me very happy. I could actually pull my car in now if I needed to.

Golf with Dan

I played a very fun round of golf with Dan this morning. It was nice and cool, not crowded, and we both played relatively well - i.e. very few lost balls, reasonable number of decent shots, no broken clubs, no mumbled swear words (Dan!), and fewer excuses needed. Dan suggested the next time we play we adopt the "skins" format to raise the stakes a little bit. I personally would welcome the challenge, although I would feel a wee bit bad taking little Danny's money. We'll see...

On another note, I owe you guys a lot of pictures from recent fun events. I'll post very soon, please be patient.

Micah Camp

Micah's been having some fun little 3-4 hour sessions, called "Micah camp", with some of the young kids in our ward and neighborhood. It's fun to see her being industrious in coming up with new games and activities, and it doesn't hurt that she's earning some money while doing it. I think she charges $3 per kid per hour, which seems to add up fairly quickly for an 11 year old.

Angela took the opportunity to teach Micah about business when she helped Micah get supplies for the camp, and then took the costs out of the gross proceeds. Ang has also been very helpful with overseeing the activities and the operations, and helping prepare. I don't think she charged Micah a fee for her time though...

Well, we're already half way through July. Not sure where the first half went, but somehow we're a good chunk of the way through the summer. Dan's internship is within a month of finishing, which means we'll have to give up Dan, Hailey and Preston very soon. We're less than two weeks away from our annual pilgrimage to Utah, which always is something to look forward to but has felt a long way off until now. The kids are just over a month away from going back to school, which will really signify the end of summer - especially for Morgan who enjoys sleeping in in the mornings and will be starting all day school for the first time as she moves to 1st grade. And we're drawing ever closer to football season, the marathon, and other fall activities...ok, so that may be a little premature, but still, summer's flying by.

Rockin Friday Night

Tonight is Micah's birthday party with her friends. We've set up our huge tent in the back yard, hopefully complete with decorations. The grill is going to be fired up for some burgers and dogs, as well as plenty of treats I suspect. And for the coup de gras I'm going to attempt to set up a projector, screen, and speakers out by the tent for a late-night viewing of The Game Plan. Should be a fun night for all, until the one friend who doesn't like sleeping over wakes everyone up in the middle of the night crying... Oh well, maybe it will be different this time.

I'm also taking Brig to his little buddy's birthday party at a park. He's excited to go, but I'm a little nervous that he's not going to want to relinquish the large crocodile replica he's supposed to be giving to Joey. I think he'll do it with some convincing, but you never know. It'll be fun anyway.

With a little luck, Angela and I might even get to relax later and watch our own movie.

Wednesday Update

Man, you should have seen Angela and Micah come in from the American Idol concert last night at 11pm. They were just beaming! It made me glad we chose to do that despite the expensive tickets, because they sure enjoyed it and couldn't stop talking about it. An extra neat thing is a couple of really great friends in our ward actually had backstage passes and they had promised to get some stuff signed for the girls. The word today is they've got some coveted autographs and some paraphernalia, so the girls are sure to be stoked. I'll put some pictures up when I have a second to download them from the digital camera (I was surprised they let Ang in with it!).

There's some weirdness going on at work. Recent developments have inspired the finance and accounting team to rethink where our resources are being used. As a result of this assessment, my Emerging Business team is going to be effectively disbanded, which was somewhat sudden but not entirely unwelcome. I am being given the opportunity to look around and figure out what I really want to be doing within Google, and I'm excited about it. I have had a few managers, including my own, come forward and offer positions, which is very nice, and I'll consider them as I explore a variety of options. I'm going to put feelers out in a fairly wide net and see what seems interesting and possible. I've felt very good about the changes from the initial meeting, and I continue to feel excited that this is opening other doors I might not have otherwise explored. I'll keep you posted!

Some of you (very few most likely) might be interested to know that Johan Bruyneel came to speak at Google today and I found it very interesting. He was the director of Lance Armstrong's cycling teams when he won all those Tour de France titles. He takes a lot of credit for Lance's success, and he's probably right, it was just a little surprising. Anyway, it was a nice hour break if nothing else.

The last birthday surprise

As I write this, Angela and Micah are on their way to the American Idol Live Tour 2008 at HP Pavilion, otherwise known as the Shark Tank, in San Jose. I seriously thought Micah was going to have an aneurism when Angela told her, but she's currently still coherent, so I think she's so far been able to control her excitement. That may change when David Archuleta starts singing.

That's sort of the capstone piece to another fun birthday celebration for Micah yesterday. Micah and Ang came up to lunch with me, they got their toenails done similar to Morgan's birthday, and we all went and saw Wall-E last night. It's a pretty fun movie, and the animation is really amazing. Not your typical funny, exciting movie, but good and entertaining nonetheless. Unfortunately I was not able to sway the family to see Hancock instead, so Wall-E it was, and we enjoyed it.

It's hot again here. Until yesterday, we had been able to avoid the necessity of cooling down a much bigger home. But boy were we glad to finally turn on the A/C. I feel for Dan and Hailey in their non A/C home where many of the windows don't have screens and thus let in bugs and cats if opened. Oh well, at least they have a built-in zip-line, rock-climbing wall from basement to ceiling, slide from main floor down to basement, and other knick-knacks that to a 10-yr old would definitely make up for not having A/C. I bet Hailey's loving it.

Happy Birthday Micah!

Micah turns 11 years old today, and we're so happy to celebrate with her. It seems like every year her birthday gets somewhat swallowed up in the business of the summer - last year Ang and I were in Philadelphia for her birthday, and this year it's been a little crazy leading up to the big day but we're definitely in celebrate mode now.

Micah's so great! We love her so much and we're so grateful that we can count on her as if she were much older. I asked Brig this morning how old Micah is turning and he said "firty". That was definitely worth a laugh, but it's also somewhat indicative of Micah being mature beyond her years. It's hard to believe that we've had Micah in our lives for 11 years, but it's also very hard to remember life before Micah. We can't think of a better girl to have as our oldest than her because she is so good, so helpful, so successful, and so happy.

We were able to start our celebrations early with Grandpa and Grandma, who came out for a few days until they left early yesterday morning. It was sort of a celebration for all of us as we filled the days with many fun activities: San Francisco Zoo, ward July 4th breakfast, swimming with friends, barbecue with Richards family West, fireworks at the golf course with half the ward, Monterey Bay Aquarium, ice cream cones at Baskin Robbins and at the Monterey Fisherman's Wharf shop, books for Micah at Borders (G&G's bday gift to Micah), a little bit of house arranging with their help, reading books in Grandma's bed, and more. It was a great few days and we're really glad they could come out to visit.

The triumph for me of the last few days was getting all our electronics re-set up after the move, including a new wireless card I had to insert inside the desktop, and a new external hard drive (500GB) that's our new backup system for photos, videos, and music. I also have pretty much most of my stuff put away, which leaves all the junk around the house as Angela's... :)

This will be a really good week for us of just getting back to normal and trying to settle more into our new place.

Another Google speaker - ID Theft

I went to another Google talk yesterday on identity theft, and I think it was valuable enough to post my couple pages worth of notes. It's going to be fairly long, but you may find something of value as you evaluate how you're protecting yourself and your family from ID theft. I realized I'm guilty of doing, or not doing, some of these things. I'm going to copy my notes straight in from the quickly typed bullets in Word. If you have any questions or want clarification on anything, just comment and then check back as I'll answer back in comments as well.

Here you go:

Identity Theft tech talk – 7/2/08 – Identity Theft Resource Center (Jay Foley)

Most commonly stolen pieces of ID: SSN, DL#, birth cert info, financial acct #s

· Don’t carry SSN cards w/ you
· Minimize # of credit cards in your wallet
· Minimize pieces of ID that show SSN
· Don’t carry blank checks or deposit slips in purse/wallet
· Use specialized pens when writing checks
· Shred all unused or old checks
· Only use checks with merchants you know and trust
· Use credit cards when possible
· Debit cards: cash goes out immediately; only short period of time to dispute or investigate (10 days); very hard to get money back from bank
· Credit cards: 30-60 days to notify cc company
· Use a locked mailbox and receive all mail
· Never leave mail unattended for pickup
· Do not drop outbound mail in box after last pickup of day
· Monitor your mail for the regular items you receive – if you’re not getting or if they’re late, start asking questions
· Shred and destroy any papers you throw out! – good quality cross cut shredder, destroy bar codes also
· Shred and destroy pre-approved credit offers
· Opt out of pre-approved credit card offers (888-5OPT-OUT) – don’t forget to OPT-OUT your child when opening any new financial account under their name – only includes companies that buy info from the credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion).
· Never provide SSN to anyone unless they have a good reason for needing it – watch for eavesdroppers and ask for privacy when conducting financial business
· Never provide personal information during a phone call which you did not initiate
· No legitimate business will ever send account verification emails asking you for personal information – it’s “Phishing”
· Rule of thumb, the faster someone talks on the telephone, the more likely it is to be a scam call
· Don’t necessarily trust caller ID – it still might be a scam call
· Keep firewall and antivirus and antispam up to date
· Use secure websites for online financial transactions (enter name of company and product into Google search to check)
· Implement password protection (including user accounts, wireless routers, online accounts, etc.)
· Areas beyond your control:
o Any database where your personal info is on file (doctors, schools, jobs, etc.)
o An employee who processes a purchase you make and steals the information
o A company that handles your financial data
o Dumpster diving, mail theft, and other
o Ask these questions:
§ Why is information being collected?
§ Who will have access to my information?
§ What will happen if I don’t give it to you?
· Most common breaches:
o Business
o School
o Financial institution
o …
· Order free credit reports
o 877-322-8228
o www.annualcreditreport.com
o Order one at a time from each credit service – every four months (stagger requests)
· Review credit reports carefully
· Review monthly bank and credit card statements
· Consider the possibility of placing a credit freeze on your credit file (www.privacyprotection.ca.gov/sheets/cis10securityfreeze.htm) … $10 fee unless victim of theft; lasts until you take it off
· Place a fraud alert on your credit reports – asking credit agencies to contact you first before opening a new line of credit
o A fraud alert is active for 90 days only
o Should be renewed every 90 days for at least a year
o Initial call will generate a letter confirming fraud alert been placed
o Recommend to contact all three agencies yourself rather than only talk to one and hope they tell the other two
· Credit freeze or fraud alert both accomplish pretty much the same thing – you don’t really need to do both unless you have a fraud alert on your credit and you start getting calls for credit lines you’re not requesting, then you can put on a credit freeze.ITRC: non-profit that exists only to help victims of ID theft (free of charge) - 858-693-7935

My How Things Have Changed...

For a long time in my life, this week was one full of anticipation and excitement for me. It is the week leading up to the Tour de France, and for years I was checking and rechecking stage schedules, evaluating all the top competitors and their chances of beating Lance, planning my own rides to emulate certain stages, etc.

But now, to illustrate how things have changed drastically, I just realized this morning that the TdF was probably set to start soon, and I actually had to look up on the Internet when things kicked off. I don't know who the favorites are, or even what teams are likely to be good. I do know who's NOT going to be there, and it looks eerily similar to the top competitor lists of the years where I was following closely. They're almost all gone for doping or performance-enhancing drug violations, although some chose "retirement" rather than the 2-year ban. In fact the entire sport of professional cycling is reeling right now as scandal after scandal has rocked the foundation of the sport, and has alienated all but the staunchest of fans.

I'll probably watch parts of the Tour this year, although with a completely different point of view than before. One of skepticism and waiting for the first suspension or failed test. Oh well.

A little move stuff, a little other stuff

Last night we had a fun family home evening where we drove over to our old house, parked the car, all got on our bikes, and rode ceremoniously from our old house to the new place. It was really enjoyable for all because of the quiet roads we were able to ride on, and it represented a fun transition from the old to the new. The kids are handling the move really well - they're having fun setting up their rooms and the playroom.

We're really excited for Grandpa and Grandma to come visit us and Dan & Hailey for a few days starting tomorrow. It's always great to have visitors, and especially grandparents who the kids don't get to see enough.

Work's going pretty well for me right now with a few projects progressing nicely and hopefully moving towards completion soon. My intern is doing a good job and it's fun to oversee more projects than just my own. There may be some changes coming to my job scope within the near future so it will be interesting to see where it all goes.

I'm starting to get excited for the summer olympics in August. It is always great to watch the events and hope the US kicks everyone else's butts. I'm also starting to get excited for college football to start ... as usual it's far too early to think about these things, but it can't be helped.

It's amazing to me that we're now in July. Have a great day!