Austin's Baptism

We had another nephew, Austin, come to live with us in the beginning of this year (I know, we just keep collecting them). Austin is one of Richard's brother Rodney's kids. Austin was living with his mom and sister in the Sacramento area when he and his mom decided that he needed a change in scenery. He has visited us several times before (during Christmas and summer vacations) so they asked us if he could come again.
We've been having a good time having him around, especially Randy. Austin and Randy are the same age and the same year in school and, luckily, they get along very well. They are sharing a bedroom and seem to be having a great time doing it. We weren't able to get Austin into the same high school that Randy goes to, but he seems to be enjoying our local high school well enough.
One of the nicest things that has happened since Austin came to live with us is that he decided that he wanted to be baptised. He had come to church with us the other times he had visited, but never seemed very interested in church before. Well, I guess Randy is a good missionary because when Austin was asking about church and showed some interest, Randy got him in touch with our ward missionaries. They were able to go through the lessons fast enough that he was ready to be baptized when Austin's mom and sister came to visit a few weeks later.


Here is Austin in the big day with Randy (who did the baptising. I can't believe that he is old enough for it but he has been a priest for months now) and Austin's missionaries, Elder Smith (who, bye the way, is the grandson of the Gillilands) and Elder

A picture of us with Austin's sister, mother, Richard's mother and Richard's step father.

After the baptism, both boys were able to relax.

A lovely trio of young women from our ward did a lovely musical number.

Richard's sister, Tifarrah, was able to make the last part of the baptism, with Isabel.

Random picture of Richard and his mom.

And here is Nathan, ready to go home.

Spaghetti in the Sink

I was standing at my kitchen sink thinking about my ancestors. About how they ate bread with bugs in it and meat so rancid that it had to be heavily spiced to be edible. (The middle ages weren't a real shinning moment in our culinary past.) So I'm thinking about all the crap people eat, and I'm asking myself, would it really be that bad if I fished the spaghetti that I was draining but accidentally dropped, out of the sink? The sink wasn't clean, but what would really happen if I still served it? Oh well.
P.S. After leaving the grocery store about 15 minutes later, I saw two teenage boys pushing a couple of carts of groceries out of the parking lot and into the adjoining neighborhood. I wondered what was the story there and if the store would get their carts back.

Catch-Up

I know, it's been way too long. And the funny thing is, when getting ready to write this, I noticed that there were three posts that I started to write and completely forgot about before finishing and posting them. Let hope that this one makes it out of the planning stage.

So, what have we been up to? Randy tried out a new hair do for Halloween. He really liked it and I didn't mind. Unfortunately his school has a dress code policy that doesn't allow stuff like that so he had to dye it back the next day. Richard and the bishop were happy

We really enjoyed Halloween.

Really enjoyed it.

Did some fun projects at school.

Nathan tried soccer for the first (and maybe last time).

As a side note, I think that it was a good experience for him and he had a fantastic coach, but he seems to feel like it just isn't for him. That was basically the same reaction that he had with the t-ball that he tried this past summer so I don't feel too bad. He is excited to try out archery this summer though.

We had Thanksgiving (sorry, no picture) and Christmas (sorry for the weird expression Tessie, but you still look beautiful).


Celebrated Joshua's birthday a little late,

and baby number 3's a little early.


Oh, and she is my excuse for being lazy about posting lately. Not that it has been a hard pregnancy, I'm just tired. I think that I will go to bed now. Good night.

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.