The Chomper Monster is Back

Anneliese has taken over the tradition that was once Ethan's of warning me to look out for the Chomper Monster each morning as I head out the door to my car.  It's very cute.

Anneliese has also picked up another gem from mommy:

"Are you serious?" --Anneliese

Father's Day Minigolf

For some reason I decided that for Father's Day I wanted to take the family miniature golfing for the first time. What could possibly go wrong with a five and two year old, right? Other than chasing them around a bit, nobody got hurt. Ethan impressed by making it into a windmill on one shot!

Ethan Scores a Goal

In the waning minutes of a controversial soccer scrimmage, shortly after the purple team's only goal had been nullified due to it being scored after an out of bounds by the same team, Ethan ended up breaking the 0-0 tie by scoring the only goal as time expired!  Looking at this photo I'm not sure why all these purple jerseys were sitting around but credit Ethan for navigating through 'em and getting the goal.

Ethan Graduates! (to kindergarten)

Ethan graduated with the Long Beach Christian Daycare Sunshine class of 2011.  As usual, they did a performance with fun songs.  Ethan had to tend to some nasal hygene during the performance.

Laundry Machine Debacle

Well, our front loader washer died a horrible death and it turns out it was premeditated murder. After much web research, I've discovered that the stainless steel drum and the aluminum spider bracket are known to be corrosive with water and detergent. What a lame thing for a manufacturer to do. After luckily finding and emailing someone who actually cares at the company, I was able to get a decent repair deal. I took the liberty of degreasing and painting the new spider bracket with engine block primer and sealer in hopes of making this one last longer. Sure smells like a class action suit to me.

Wrestling with the Kids

Black Tie Wedding

I was invited to a coworker's wedding that was incredibly fancy. His fiancee, Shane McCoy is from a pretty famous family. Here's an article from Sept 21, 1981 edition of People Magazine on the family.  The father was Nancy Reagan's chief of staff and his wife is a great granddaughter of oil baron Edward Doheny.  The church and reception site had full grown trees put inside.  It was a great time!

Angel's Game

I received four reward tickets from work to an Los Angeles Angel's of Anaheim (or whatever they're called) baseball game and decided to invite a neighbor and his boy instead of braving the outing with Anneliese.  We made it through seven innings and saw some pretty good grabs but just one post-homerun fireworks display.  My $9 'brat' with onions was pretty good too.

Click the picture of me and Ethan to see more.

Audi gets hit while parked in front of house

While drying off the kids from their bath around 8pm, I thought I heard a car crash out on the big street adjacent to ours.  Half a minute later, I heard an engine rev and tires squeal on our street and another crash sound.  I went outside to check things out and check on the Audi to unfortunately find that it had been struck on the corner and the rear tire toed in.  Police cars were quick to respond and were yelling at someone to "Get down on the ground!".  There was a hesterical girl near the incident as well.

From all we've heard that night from the officers as well as some info from our neighbor who is a district attorney, the driver peeled away from a house on a nearby street, intixicated to the tune of a 0.23, and immediately crashed out on the bigger street.  From there, he went up onto someones yard, backed up, floored it with squealing tires into my car, down the block missing everything else until he went up onto someone elses yard breaking off one of his front suspension and skidding to a stop.  The hysterical girl we believe was a girlfriend related to the driver.  The cops said there was no lengthy pursuit and just happened to be in the area.

The stinker of it all is that because the suspension got hit, that pushed the damaged to over $7k leading the insurance company to say that the car is a total loss which is pretty hard to wrap your head around when you look at the photo.  I had just fixed many annoyances and done the 90k mile timing belt/water pump service having committed to keeping the car until it died.  I'm now driving our '97 Ford Escort that has been my at-work car until I figure out what to do with the $9k check I got for the car.  Lame.

Visit from Mémère and Pépère

Mémère and Pépère dropped by for a visit which entailed Stomp Rockets and a train ride at El Dorado Park!

Anneliese Turns Two!

We had a great time with visits from all three sets of grandparents at various times to celebrate Anneliese's birthday.  As usual, she is totally set for clothes for some time.

A few weeks ago, she went for her two-year checkup and the stats are in: 24.5 lbs (20th percentile), 32" (8th percentile) but a 19" head (85th percentile)!  The craziest part is looking at the growth charts in their room, she's about as tall and heavy at two as Ethan was at one!  The visit concluded with some shots.  After crying for a bit, she uttered with her lower lip pouting, "I want stickers."  Her vocab continues to skyrocket and she's linking four or more words frequently.  She says "sorry" a lot, especially after she's bit or pulled Ethan's hair.  She also can repeat almost any word such as "awesome" but unfortunately that includes learning the S-word from Mommy.  When she drops something and says "Oh s__t" Liz has a hard time not smiling and just ignoring it.

Click here or the album for more photos from our whirlwind April!