Chopsticks

A little random but I felt like telling someone. I think that I have finally mastered chopsticks, the eating utensil, not the piano song. I told Richard but he wasn't very impressed. And considering he has been using chopsticks longer than he has lived in the U.S., I guess I can understand. We ate Asian food twice this weekend and I completed both meals with out resorting to forks once. The first meal was Chinese food with the in-laws and I realized soon into the meal that the sticks felt "right." That had only happened once before and I lost the feeling soon after I realized that I had it. The second meal was even more impressive to me because it was Vietnamese soup and the noodles were very slippery at first. But I got the hang of it and enjoyed the soup very much. I know, a little silly but it feels nice to know that I can walk into an Asian restaurant and say no thanks to the fork and spoon that they only break out for the children and the white folks.
I just realized that we have been having a lot of Asian food lately. Two weekends ago we ate Japanese food with the in-laws too. Does that mean that we are going to have Thai this weekend? Yum!

Rigoberto Ruelas

I usually avoid depressing posts and have never posted a news story, as I recall, but this one is different. I have never met Rigoberto Ruelas or even heard of him before today, but his story intersects mine in three ways that will have me contemplating life for a few days. First, he was a teacher working for the same district that I do. Not that interesting because it is a very large district but I might not have heard of his death if he worked somewhere else. Second, the school that he worked at was in the same area as the school I worked at for the last 3+ years. Third, he lived in the area that I work now.
The second and third points are really what are causing me to obsess about this news story; I'm sure that LAUSD teachers die often enough that it really isn't that news worthy. The fact that it was an apparent suicide and that the suicide may have been caused by an unsatisfactory rating by the LA Times recently do make it news worthy, although I'm not really thinking too much about that. What I am thinking about are the students.
The elementary school that he taught at is very close to the high school that I taught at. He was there for many years so it is very likely that some of the students that I taught had him as a teacher. The community that I teach in now is a stable and predominately Hispanic community. The news stories seem to indicate that he not only lived there but had family there. He was very likely raised there and knew and was known to many families. I will not be surprised if I go to work tomorrow and find that several of my students have some connection to him and his family. I might even be teaching a younger cousin or niece or nephew.
I would have felt some sympathy for him and his family any way, but now I am wondering how many people that I know and love (or learning to love) will be hurt and personally saddened by the news of his passing.

Who's your daddy?

Today Joshua announced that he has a different father than Nathan. After reassuring him that they both had the same father, he then insisted no and that his father's name is Joshua. Added to that, apparently I'm not his mother either. His real mother is some woman named Elizabeth. When I asked him who I was then, he said that I was the babysitter. I then asked him when his real parents were going to come pick him up because the babysitter was done.

Richard's Father's Day Present

In the week before Father's Day, our camera died. Actually, it could probably be fixed, but last time a tried to get a camera fixed, they wanted to have me take it back to where I bought it and it was still rather expensive to fix. We couldn't remember where we had bought our most recent casualty, and considering the expected expense, it was actually probably better to just buy a new one. Unfortunately, Richard had wanted something else for Father's Day. Fortunately, Richard didn't mind too much about getting a camera instead (and I hadn't bought the other gift yet either).
It's not the DSLR that we had wanted for our next camera, but I think that it turned out to be better. The best thing about this camera is that it has a 26X optical zoom, which turns out to be much better for the types of pictures that we like to take. I'm pretty sure that all of these pictures were taken from at least 20 feet away. Some of them were more like 50 or 60 feet away.

Here is one of Josh jumping in the water.


A close-up of my baby.



An action shot of Ryan doing a cannonball off of the high dive. It hurt a little bit. I guess he didn't know about heights and water.

Randy taking a break from his work out.

Nathan's action shot off of the regular diving board.

I'm having way to much fun with Richard's present.

A boy, a pool, and a bribe

One of the things that I really wanted to do for the boys this summer was swimming lessons. I figured it would be a good way to get the older boys improving their strokes, the younger boys to be more comfortable in the pool, and all of the boys tired.
Josh, even though he is comfortable taking a dip in Aunt Jessica's pool, was very nervous about swim lessons. I was trying to be very hands off during lessons (from my own experience in teaching swimming and teaching in general, it just seems to work better when the parents aren't involved) but the first two lessons consisted of a lot of screaming and crying with very little actual swimming.
When it was getting time for the third lesson, and the crying and demanding were already starting, I decided that I needed to change tactics. I promised to stay closer (15 feet away and still on the pool deck as opposed to 50 yards away in the viewing stands with the other parents) and a bribe. I generally try to avoid bribes, those are Daddy's domain, but I figured that it could work this time.
"If you go to all of your swim lessons and don't cry and listen to your teachers I'll buy you a toy."
"A big toy?"
"Um, how about a Sponge Bob toy?"
"A Sponge Bob walkie walkie?"
"Um, sure!"
So this time he joined his class at the side of the pool with just a little verbal encouragement,


where he quickly asked to ride on his teacher's back, clinging on like a little monkey.

When he got to the wall, he was looking a little nervous, so mom gave him a big thumbs up and took a picture, which if you have children you will know, will cause the smile response. The smile response being the involuntary action children will produce when they see a camera pointed at them, wither or not they actually are happy.

Latter, after more praise from teachers and mom, we try out the swim noodle,

finally ending on the kick-board.

Mission accomplished! An entire thirty minutes of swim class with out any crying, screaming, wailing, running away, or any other reaction to make me regret the $45 dollars I spent on swim lessons.

Now all I have to do is find a Sponge Bob walkie-talkie. I sure hope that someone makes one or I'll have to resort to a generic set with added Sponge Bob stickers.

Nathan's Birthday

Nathan had his birthday a week ago and because he wanted an expensive present from his parents, we told him that we went going to do a friend party. I did still want to celebrate his birthday some how, so we had family dinner and decided to do it at the park.

I did the cake. The character is Kick Buttouski, a newish DisneyXD show.

We had most all of the family at one time or the other. Here are the lovely aunties.

And our adorable Colin. Look how big that kid is getting!

We had games of the active sort...

... and the more cerebral.

And of course cake.

We had a great time and were so glad that our family was willing to come celebrate with us.

Happy birthday Nathan! It's been amazing watching you grow.

Joshua's Last Day of Rainbow School

Josh has been going to a lovely neighborhood preschool for the past two years and Thursday was his last day. His Aunt Staci has been one of his teachers for both years and his cousin Gavin a fellow student this past year.


Ms. Tami is the amazing woman who runs it all and I'm a little sad to not be seeing her on a regular basis any more.



Now this little lady is, I guess, his first girlfriend. I mean, what else do you call your classmate who likes to give you kisses? Anyway, she is a sweet little thing and they really have a good time playing together. He has been proudly telling people that he has her phone number and has been bugging me to call her to set up a play date.