It was a PARTAY!

Hard to believe but Savannah hit double digits yesterday! The little one of the bunch has hit the big 1-0 and is growing up! The PARTAY! of course was complete Savannah style with a disco-ball / black light dance party in the garage all night long with 8 of her friends. The next day was a trip to the mall with mom to get her ears pierced. I guess it'll just be a short time till AJ's tenth!

Happy Birthday Savannah!

Winter Wonderland

We're just back from a week up in Lake Tahoe. It was a great way to spend the time between Christmas and New Years. We were lucky since a bunch of snow dropped the day before we went up and it was sunny and cold the rest of the time. That made for great conditions for skiing, sledding, snow mobiling and just hanging around the cabin at the edge of the lake!

Annabelle Has Arrived

OK, so we've neglegted the website for a while, so we thought we'd come up with a really big and important topic for restarting our blog. So, here it is, or should I say, here she is.

The latest addition to the family is Annabelle Jones, born March 5, 2008 at 12:05pm in San Francisco. She came to us at 5 lb. 15 oz. and 18 1/2 inches long.

Bre and Annabelle are now at home an recovering nicely and getting aquainted with each other.

Mikayla and Savannah have been great big sisters so far and are looking forward to the extra girl in the house.

Update on the Brady House

Slowly but surely we're kicking the spirit of Mike, Carol, Alice and the gang out of our new home. Not that I didn't like the Brady Bunch (I mean Mike was an architect and Marsha was a doll!), but we don't want to live like them.

So, starting Memorial day weekend we've been on a blitz to remove more of the 1960's decor and bring the house into the new century. The goal over the three weeks was to get rid of the green paint and paneling in the living room and dining room.

We encountered some small problems, like no drywall under the paneling in the living room and moldy drywall under the paneling in the dining room, but we seemed to have overcome most of these issues.

There are of course plenty of good stories to go along with the progress. Be sure to ask us about them!

Spring Update

OK, so its been a while since I posted. In that time plenty has happened. Here's a quick rundown:

1) The San Rafael All Stars won the Marin Fast Pitch Series (see my last post)

2) The Smackers three-peated (this time with Savannah) as the Marin County Minor League champs...this year going undefeated the whole season!

3) Mikayla officially graduated from elementary school;

4) The Marin Tremors are in full swing, having played tournaments in Vallejo and San Jose

These are the everyday updates. There is plenty more happening that I'll comment on shortly.

San Rafael All Stars Also Rule!

Softball season is well underway. For most of you, you haven't heard from us, so that's the clue!

Well Mikayla was selected for the San Rafael All-Star team and the All-Star tournament started this weekend. Basically that means we spent all day Sunday at the ball park.

Despite the fact that the girls have only been playing together for a few weeks, they looked like a seasoned team thanks to the great coaching of Jim, Moose and JR. They want 3-0 this weekend, with the last game being a 3-2 nail biter with the Novato team.

Mikayla played great at right field, 3rd base and short stop and provided the game winning hit against the tough Novato team and a really tough pitcher.

The bottom line is all the girls played great! If the coaches had to award a game ball or MVP, I can't imagine who would have received it because all the girls played so well and so hard.

Oh' and Brent, yes Mikayla can hit better than you!

For those interested, I've got additional photos on our fliker account.

John

The Magic Kingdom

We spent the past week in Florida visiting Bre's family and Mickey Mouse's crew. It was a great time although I was a bit skeptical about the weather. On Friday afternoon when I left my office in San Francisco it was 77 degrees! At the same time, the forecast for the Orlando area was a high of 62 degrees. Obviously I was second guessing our decision to take a February vacation to Florida! Well, after a couple of days, it was in 75 degrees in Florida and snowing on the peaks around the Bay Area, so all was back to normal.

As for the events of the vacation, we did a fair amount in a short period of time. We flew most of the day Saturday, went to a rodeo on Sunday, went to MGM and Epcot Center on Monday and then went to the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday. Each day we were up by 7am and to bed at 10 or 11pm!

Funny thing about our trip to see Walt's World. Even though it was the middle of February, evidently this was the busiest week of the year at Disney World! Who would have thought that! Well we paid the price, the popular rides such as Splash Mountain had lines of over 2 hours! Can you believe people waited that long! Luckily our tour guides were Bre and Angie, so we looked for such rides as the "Carousel of Progress", "Spaceship Earth" and " the Energy Ride" (don't ask me what the real name was!). These rides had no line and we got right onto them!

Check tomorrow for our adventure to the moon!

The Brady Bunch Live!

Funny thing happened while talking to our financial planner.

While we were starting to get ourselves organized for buying a larger house in June, we stumbled upon a house around the corner that was on the market for $675k. A veritable bargin in this area. So, as of 10:00pm last night an offer went in and at 10:00am this morning it was accepted! Looks like we're moving.

It's a cute little 3 bedroom, 2 bath house around the corner from us on Miller Creek Road. The home has been owned by the same folks since it was built and from all indications they haven't remodeled since 1968. To picture the place, think Christopher Walken sipping a manhattan in the movie Blast from the Past!

It will be a fun project to say the least!

More photos are on our flikr page.