Learn to let Go

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

Mark Jr One Year Old

Mark Jr Seventeen Years Old

MY WORLD..MY BOYS..

Josh





Ryan




Mark Jr.




Taken April 29th 2009

Donate Life-Run/walk

Saturday I got up at 5am and drove to Fullerton for the Donate life 5K walk/run...
Maggy's family, Delia and Jim's family and Julie's mom and I were the ones to go and be on Julie's team. Jim, Tabin, Manuel, and the older girls ran and the rest of us walked. I pushed Julie in the wheelchair and never dumped her. It was a mixed path, half paved, half dirt trail.... we only got air once and Julie gave a girlie yell that she then wondered where it had come from! =)
We had alot of fun laughing most of the way which caused her mom to not know if I ever needed help or if we were doing just fine. Her mom also kept threatening to give me driving lessons... where the heck does that come from, I never crashed Julie, came darn close but never did! That's all that matters!
Next year Julie will be sporting classy new lungs and wearing a shirt that says DOUBLE LUNG RECIPIENT!!
She also said she would LOVE to be on a team with her donor family too!!!!
BREATHE LIFE!!!!

FLORIDA....... AGAIN

Growing up, when Tanya and I would have a sleep over, watch a movie or just hang out...our favorite munchies were Doritos and peanut m&m's!!!!
So we had to keep with tradition!!! We made the candy last the whole time but the chips only lasted a couple nights. YUM YUM YUM!!!!! Still our favorite!!!

MY JEWEL-EO

Please keep Julie in your prayers.. I can't go into details and please don't ask her questions, just know that her doctors need prayer for what they are about to try to accomplish and Julie needs to keep breathing until they get those lungs inside of her and it MUST be soon!!! Her rare unknown disease has brought her to 17 percent lung capacity..... God is truly her source of air!!!
Treasure EVERY moment.... none of us know what tomorrow may bring! Love, live, laugh!!

Halloween in the 80's

WOW.....an old friend pulled this out of hiding....a cowgirl huh?! You typically wont find me in a cowgirl hat! =)

GRAND SLAM!!!

On Wednesday April 8th 2009 my oldest son hit a GRAND SLAM out of the park, over the VERY tall trees, approx 380-400 feet.....

This is the same boy that at 1 month to the day we took him to his first Dodger game and handed him to Catcher Gary Carter for a photo and to absorb some of his professional major league skills!! I'd have to say it might have worked.

We sent it to the league and he signed it for us and sent it back. Those were the days!!

MY BOY!

OK so after the game at Cate, Jr. told me to check my pictures cause he said that he held his right hand to his side showing 'I love you" with his fingers. Ahhhh HOW SWEET, very clever of him, he knew I was taking pictures so he thought he'd do something special. I had to post these on my blog to show what a great kid I have........

OK so he forgot to stick out his first finger, ha ha so I got "hang loose" instead! OH well it was a nice thought. HA HA!!!
His excuse is that he needed to focus on the ball coming and he did the best he could.....
Now on to more exciting news.... Have you EVER seen an aluminum baseball bat snap in half??

So Mark was up to bat.... he hit the ball, we all felt it was THE hit, it hit just right and the ball went to the left and half of the bat went to the right..... IT WAS CRAZY!! Our young Sammy Sosa used a little too much muscle for that at bat! HA HA.....
Here are some more from that game.

Our Home away from Home

Back to Florida

At Tanya's house about to head off for our day of adventure!

So I had 4 goals to accomplish in Florida..... to see a wild alligator, to see the flying cockroaches (OH I HAVE STORIES TO TELL ABOUT THAT) to see a wild manatee (another story there) and to see a wild boar. So it took a coulple days and some good hunting but we did finally find the alligators.

I really wanted to get out of the truck and have Tanya take my picture by the alligator but she wouldn't let me and I guess they can go from 0-30 in an instant, so I just needed to zig zag and jump in the back of the truck but her and Bruce weren't game for me doing that. So I had to settle with just a picture of it by itself. Oh well, it was about 5 feet long and still pretty cool. There were quite a few of them out there that day.
Then another night we took Tanya's son Joshua and we went wild boar hunting, we drove out to a natural wild life area and there is a campground out there, there was a man in charge of the camp and we stopped and I asked him if he thought we might spot some wild boar. He said in all his years he had never been asked that question, so he got a good laugh at least. He told us the boar hunters had already been there and they hadn't found any so we were most likely out of luck but thanks for the chuckle. We took off and tried some more good dark areas that would have been a good place for them to be. Joshua had brought his bb gun just in case.

HOMERUN!!

Mark Jr. has been questioning why it is taking me so long to post his home run.....SO HERE IT IS..................
Saturday at Thacher school in Ojai, He hit a great one, easily clearing the left center- field fence. It was very exciting!!!

MY KIND OF WEEKEND

Saturday was a double header for Mark Jr and Ryan in Santa Clarita and Sunday we started the day with Mark Jr and I going to Pete's game at Pacifica (the team Mark was playing with when he swung the bat and ruptured his bicep tendon) then we headed out to meet the others at Josh's double header in Toluca Lake, right by studio city.....
I could spend 365 days a year watching my boys play baseball!

off track

I have to post a couple things that have happened before and after Florida so brief intermission here, then back to Florida.

Mark Manuel Julie and I went to a dinner theater to see Phantom, we had a great time! Before the show started Julie and I used the restroom, I know, TMI, but I have to tell you that to get to the good part, we wanted pictures of the 2 of us so we stood by the mirrors in the pretty entry room to the bathroom and used my phone to take our pictures.

We were having way too much fun in the bathroom. Julie had a blonde moment though, as you can see we were looking in the mirror trying to figure out which way to look for the picture to come out with us looking into the camera and at one point Julie had a bright idea that maybe if we turned our heads so that the back of our head faced the camera then it would be just perfect.

"RIGHT JULIE", maybe if we have our face on the back of our head.....that was when the hysterical laughter started like you see in the pictures where they are out of focus and the one where Julie seriously looks like she might have a face in the wrong place =)>

Well we were having so much fun in the bathroom that we all of the sudden heard music, we quickly left and got to our seats as the first act was ending! Well anyone who knows anything knows the first act would be the most important so at that point I turned to Julie and said "I can't believe they didn't wait for us".......You can see why we are friends =)
By the way it wasn't till later that we realized we could have had Mark or Manuel take our picture together at the table like we had done for each other already. HA HA..... we like laughter better than being smart thinkers!!

lookin young!

So I hope you were wondering how I could possibly look any younger than I already do

=)

Well our VERY first stop in St. Augustine was at the


We paid 8 bucks to have a drink of that water!

BUT it was worth it!

More Florida

Ok I am going to add one story at a time.....
First I'll start with Georgia......
So Tanya and I headed to St. Augustine

as we were driving she told me that Georgia was only 30 minutes from St. Augustine,
so of course I said "LET'S GO TO GEORGIA" Whoo hooooo road trip baby! So I text Mark and said Tanya and I are on our way to Georgia to buy a soda take a picture and buy a lottery quick pick and then I will have been to Georgia.
Mark said, have a peach. GREAT IDEA! I was so excited, my mom loves peaches so I thought I will buy her a crate of Georgia peaches and have them shipped to her, I was having a blast. So as we drove Tanya realized it was actually 30 minutes form Jacksonville so it was actually an hour extra each way but what the heck we were on an adventure and I was on my way to having a peach! So we passed state lines

and came to the very first exit and we got off the freeway. There right in front of us was the biggest fruit stand with the biggest signs and one sign said.. "We ship fruit anywhere" YEAH!!! but I didn't want to do it that fast I wanted to see a little bit of Georgia first so we drove around a little and 20 minutes later, never found another fruit stand so we jumped back on the freeway and headed back to the first exit. We got back to the first fruit stand and parked and got out to take our pictures when a little, I mean little, drunk Mexican guy walked up to us reeking of booze and wanted us to come in his fruit stand. We proceeded to take our pictures..


Then I headed into the stand and looked around, guess what, can you guess, are you smarter than I????
THERE WAS NO PEACHES!! There wasn't any fruit. We turned to little drunk guy and asked him where the peaches were... He said, "no, it's too cold, you want peaches, you go to Walmart"
ARE YOU KIDDING ME!
But dumb blonde me, I said, OK how do we get there. So we rushed off to walmart but came across Publix first which is their grocery store in Florida and I guess Georgia.

So we headed in and straight for the produce. There were 2 produce guys working and we found the peaches and can you guess, can you guess?? are you smarter than I?
The PEACHES WERE FROM CHILE!!! "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!" So dumb blonde me again turned to the produce guy and asked where the heck the GEORGIA peaches were. He let me in on the fact that they do have Georgia peaches..... in the SUMMERTIME!!
Cheese and Crackers!! I was very bummed and feeling pretty stupid but I was in Georgia so..... ha ha just kidding!
So at the last minute I remembered my lotto ticket (which by the way I havent even checked yet, I could be a Georgia millionaire and not know it) and Tanya took my picture holding a Georgia newspaper.

Well we at least had another good laugh, we had MANY of those the 6 days I was there.
We left Georgia and headed to St. Augustine, I'll post about that next time but you might be wondering why I look so young in St. Augustine....... you will have to keep checking back to find out :)