This past month has just flown by. Joel had his first trip and went to Alaska. He said it was beautiful and perfect weather. He even got the chance to get in some fishing and caught almost 30. He went there to bring back some F-18’s to Mirimar (the Top Gun school). The kids and I have stayed very busy doing projects, swimming and going to many places. Just recently I took them to the Exploratorium in San Francisco and they had a great time playing with all that science crud.

This 4th of July we decided on going to the Fairfield parade. I guess the theme was “emergency vehicles” or something along those lines, because that’s about all there was. Still, the kids loved watching it. The only really odd thing was this guy behind us sitting on a bicycle. Every few minutes he would chant loudly L-O-O-I-E! For two and a half hours Joel and I sat there listening to this and racking our brains trying to figure out what the heck it meant. Finally we just decided that he might have been better off in a straight jacket than riding a bike. After the show of force…I mean parade we went home and spent some time together as a family. Later that night we barbequed some hamburgers and left the house to watch the fireworks in nearby Vacaville. We were going to just buy them at the store and do them in front of our house, but we found out it is illegal here, even possessing them is illegal. We found a really good spot at a high school which ended up perfect. It was also fun to watch all the biker cops speeding around writing tickets to anyone who wanted to “augment” the city’s fireworks. They were serious about that stuff.

Yesterday we took the kids to the San Francisco Zoo and had a blast. We were so used the Hogle Zoo in Utah were the animals pride themselves in seeing how long they can remain motionless. This Zoo was great! When we first got there we saw a mommy and baby giraffe get bumped by an antelope and the giraffes began chasing around the antelope for about 10 minutes. The Zebra and a couple other African animals even got involved and joined the chase. It finally got out of hand when Joel jumped the fence and started headbutting the giraffe too. The Zoo here had just about every kind of animal we could think of except Elephants, which we thought was weird. They did have three tiger cubs which played around with each other and jumped all over their mommy. It was vaguely familiar how all the cubs were jumping all over the mother and she just sat there taking it, looking very annoyed. We rode a little train ride which they kids liked. When Joel asked Lily what she thought of the train she said “I didn’t like it.” Joel asked her why not and she replied “it was pretty hanus.” We laughed our heads off, and we have absolutely no idea where she got that word.

The kids are all doing very well. They are enjoying their summer and are still growing like crazy. They are so interested in the daily things I do and always want to help. Sometimes they help just a bit too much. Their favorite thing to help with is the cooking. The other day I was making Fettuccini Alfredo, Lily was right by my side as usual standing on her princess chair watching my every move. I was making the sauce and had just finished putting the salt in. I accidentally left the salt on the counter in her reach and as I turned around to grab the next ingredient she poured about half the container in the pan. Of course I only had enough whipping cream to make that one batch, so I spooned out as much as I could and we ate it anyway. She just wanted to help and its so cute, but its so hard to hold in your frustration. I love her so much!