Lake Tahoe

 In July, Brian and I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in Lake Tahoe and attend the celebrity golf tournament. It was BEAUTIFUL there. The weather was perfect and the course was gorgeous. The crowds were small and we got to be feet away from all of the celebrities. The picture above is Jimmer Ferdette

Kevin Nealon from SNL

 Brian at the lake

 Me at the lake.

 We saw a Shakespeare play outside right on the water.

 Jerry Rice

 Ray Romano

Michael Jordan

 Aaron Rogers sunk a put right in front of us.

 More Michael

 Me

 John Elway

 Kevin from the office

 More Jimmer

 More Kevin Nealon

 Charles Barkley

 Dan Quayle

There were a lot of celebrities there. We only got the tip of the iceburg on camera!

June/July Catch up

 In front of Cold Stone for one last ice cream with our SLO friends. These are all of the kids from the Rober's, The Whites, the Brundages and the Deans. These aren't even all of them! Joe and Davis were missing!

 We ran into Jesse the babysitter downtown with the whole crew.

 Moving day in front of the van. Below are Becca and Hannah (of HannahbeccaGG fame) visiting Elk Grove

 The La Posada house all packed up.

 In front of the Sacramento river

 Ty in a costume shop in Old Sac. We got in trouble for taking this picture!

 Back at Foster's.

Having a picnic on the temple grounds with the Gossell family.

School

The kids at the little school house museum in Old Sacramento.

As we are meeting new people here, a very common question we get asked is, "Where are the kids going to school?"

To which I have to reply, "I have no idea.They can't tell us"

While I am trying to have a good attitude about this, I must admit, it makes me rather nervous.

Here's the basics:

We would like them to attend their neighborhood school. Actually, we don't care which school they attend, or whether it is traditional or year-round, we would just like them all at the same school...on the same calendar schedule.

But, the neighborhood school doesn't have room for them. I'm not sure if any of the schools have room for all three of them. They have all been on a waiting list...waiting to see what the class sizes will be, waiting to see how many teachers the schools can hire back. If we find out that there isn't room for any of them, they will offload them (that means send them to another school).

To some school.

But I don't know which one.

The most recent conversation with the school secretary covered topics like whether or not we would like to gamble and wait until August 15th when tradtional school starts and hope that there is space for all of them. But if we lose the bet and there isn't room for them, then one of them might get moved to another school,in which case they might have to send one of them to a year-round school, in which case that one child will have missed an entire month of school. So do we want to start that one kid - who may or may not have a spot a the neighborhood school - this week in the year-round school so that he doesn't miss a month of school?

Are you following me ('cause I'm getting up to get some Xanex to calm my nerves right now!)

I told the secretary I was uncomfortable starting one kid this week at a year-round school on the off chance that (1) there isn't going to be space for him come Aug. 15th at the neighborhood school and (2) they won't be able to off-load him to another traditional calendar school.

I'm finding all of this very difficult because we are so new to this system and I don't know how to play the game. And that's what all of this feels like - a game. When I tell people my kids are on a waiting list, it sounds like we are trying to get them into an elite private school, or at least the best public school that everybody wants their kids to go to.

Nope. Just the neighborhood school. All of the schools here are top rated, so I don't really care where they go. Just find me a spot in one location for my 5th, 3rd, and Kindergatener to attend - and tell me when- and I'll be there!

Zoo and Fairytale Towne

One of my favorite places to go is the Sacramento Zoo. I use to come here as a kid and I loved it. I like how the reptile house looks like the reptile house in Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. The kids really seem to like it, too.



Right across from the zoo is my other favorite place to go, Fairy tale Towne. I guess I didn't take that many pictures on this particular day, but I've taken plenty on other occasions.

Check out these shots taken circa 2003:





Ashlynn still loves that slide and one of our favorite attractions in the park is the crooked mile (the shot with Baby Briggs in it is one where we are standing on the crooked mile). I can't tell you how many times I had to "time" the kids while they ran the crooked "mile".

Sun and Rain

One of the first things we decided to do was check out the community pool. A lot of people have pools in their yards here, but we were pretty impressed by the public pool.





Oddly enough, the next day we had a rain storm sweet through the Delta. The kids decided they needed to try out the trampoline in the rain.

Splash Parks

The second day here, we unloaded the truck. Thankfully my sister and brother-in-law and kids, and my parents came to help us unload. It went pretty quick, but unfortunately it was very hot, and, again, the AC was out.

So we pooped out quickly.

(As a side note, we motivated the kids to help with the unloading by taping a sheet of notebook paper to the side of the U-Haul with all of the kids names written on it and a sharpee marker attached to it. Every time the kids brought something in from the truck, they gave themselves a tally mark. They quickly picked up on this game and starting dubbing certain items to be "2 pointers" or even "4 pointers". I had made it clear that there were not going to be any prizes given out in the end, or even a winner declared, but rather, it was a way to see how much they had accomplished. I did have to make it clear to my dad once that nobody was giving out points for style when he made a very precarious exit down the truck ramp.)

Luckily, Elk Grove has a lot of Splash pads at their local parks. So my sister and I took the kids to one of one of them right by the house.

Natalee and Ashlynn

Annessa and Briggs

Finally. A little blogging.

Our new home

We've been here a little over 3 weeks and I finally find myself with a desire to update the blog.

We have been very busy, enjoying everything our new city has to offer. The first couple of weeks just felt like being on vacation, where everything and everyone is new and exciting. Then all of the sudden, you remember that you need to do some laundry, and perhaps scrub the toilets. The children grow disenchanted with discovering all the nooks and crannies of the new house, and return to their comfortable routine of whining and asking to play video games.

The old house, empty and clean. Very unusual.

Most of the boxes are unpacked - except for one room upstairs that has become the catch-all room - with boxes piled practically to the ceiling and crowding the door so it is impossible to even enter the room. I'm not exactly sure how to even start on that room. My mom said, "Why don't you just close that door?" I just shrugged and said I guess I could.

One of the hardest things to adjust to in Sacramento has been the weather. The weekend we moved in was hot. The week before we moved up, Brian had noticed that the AC was not working. He quickly called our landlords, who sent someone over the fix it, in hopes that it would be working when we moved in.

It wasn't.

Even though they said they fixed it.

It didn't get fixed until 5 days later.

The kids got sick of me saying, "You'll get used to the heat. You'll get used to the heat." I was really saying it to reassure myself. I'm not much of a fan of weather over 90 degrees. It just takes too much out of me.

We packed every square inch of this truck!

However, since we moved in, we had a rainy day, which was VERY out of season, and we've just had an unseasonably cool week, which reminded me of SLO weather, so we took full advantage of going to the park and seeing the sights I knew I couldn't handle in the heat.

We surprised the kids with a trampoline already set up in the backyard. They have had fun with it so far and love to put the sprinklers underneath it to cool off a bit.

I love how, in the video, Briggs was the only one to turn around and say, "Thank you, Daddy!"
Classic.