As anyone who knows me can tell you, this graphic appeals to me on many levels, the most important ones being that it’s funny and it’s all about whether you can eat possibly tainted food. Huzzah!

We just got back from Los Angeles where we celebrated my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary! Congratulations Mom and Dad!! Here are some photos from one of the parties. Arlo was also documenting the event with Monique’s camera phone, I’m wondering if he got any better pictures…

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Flickr set of Anniversary Party photos

Kindy was happy to get the opportunity to rock out a bit in this Spirit Week video featured on El Molino’s October 6th Daily Bulletin podcast. His friend Andre makes an inspired appearance as well. Tomorrow is the big “Apple Game” out this way and we’ll all be there cheering on the Lions.

(I couldn’t embed the video, click on the image or go to the El Molino Daily Bulletin archives to watch the whole thing).

When Bruce and I first started dating, I was determined to put a little country into the city boy, so I took him fishing and hiking as an introduction. The closest place to fish was a man-made pond in northern Santa Rosa behind a hotel and golf course. It was fun, although we never caught much (if anything). Then disaster struck — as we left the pond at sunset one evening I dropped my Ray-Ban Woodie sunglasses — by far my favorite pair of sunglasses ever. We went back and looked for them in the daylight, but never found them. And when I tried to buy a new pair, Ray-Ban had discontinued them, and there was no way to get a new pair.

Long story short — 22 years after I lost my favorite pair of sunglasses, I can now replace them thanks to Shwood, a Portland-based company that’s making suglasses that not only look like wood, but are wood.

These are going on my Christmas Wish List right now.

I also thought about naming this post “Boys in a Hammock.” (Thanks, Jenny!)

These frozen cookie-dough “potstickers” stuffed with ice cream and served with chocolate dipping sauce just made the rounds online, sparked by this post at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, right about the time Shawn was trying to decide what to make for our son’s 14th birthday. Since he LOVES potstickers and has often called them his favorite food over the years, and like any kid he’s always up for cookie dough and ice cream, this seemed like the perfect birthday dessert for the occasion.

I admit I was a little skeptical at first, but Shawn knew from the onset these would be a big hit, and they were! Buying pre-made shortbread cookie dough eased the process, and it was all worth that first expression on our son Kindy’s face.

An afternoon in Berlin

Sometimes it’s the simplest things…

Jumping with Tramaine

Remember that bit in my opening post about using this blog to build a pile of evidence for our kids’ future therapy sessions? Might as well get started with that. Here’s Arlo starring in the first video taken with my new iPhone 3GS.

OK, we’ve decided that it’s (far past) time to put up our own blog. We’ve been blogging and writing at different sites around the net since the web was in its infancy, but have never put much effort into a site of our own. Well, unless we’re counting that very old vanity site I did for our son Kindy when he was a baby (he’s 13 now!) that won the Best Web Site Award at the Sonoma County Fair. Suddenly, I was an “award-winning web designer”! Not that I went in that direction, but it was fun to brag about at the time.

My first task for this blog (after installing WordPress) was digging up those old website files. Dang, he’s a cutie! And I’m happy to report that I was able to locate and extract the html files from an 8-year-old backup CD in just a few minutes — my backup strategy works!

I’m not sure what you can expect here. We’ll be posting about things that are interesting to us, chronicling our family’s adventures, and building a sort of online scrapbook that we hope others besides us will enjoy. Or maybe we’re just building a pile of evidence for our kid’s future therapy sessions. Time will tell.