Otterpops Anyone?

The otterpop party was a lot of fun. We had otterpops, of course, but also enjoyed some indoor s'mores and lots of games. Our youngest guest this year, Abigail, also enjoyed the otterpops, but more as a teething ring than anything else.

Look What I Did At School!

Brad finished his woodworking class last week on Monday. After weeks and weeks of sanding, cutting, and staining, he finally finished and got to take home his beautiful table! He put in a lot of hours, but had so much fun "playing" that he's already signed up for the next class.

Joy's Bday Celebration

Our good friend Joy turned 30 and so to celebrate we took a hummer-limo down to Los Angeles and ate at the Rainforest Cafe in downtown disney. It was a lot of fun. The Rainforest Cafe is this neat restaurant that is decorated like a rainforest, hence the name, and occasionally the lights will go on and off as it rumbles and lightnings and rains...yes, rains (just not on you, thankfully!), in the restaurant. All the while there are these jungle noises...elephants, birds, monkeys, etc. to make you feel like you are really in a rainforest.

A Great Thanksgiving

We had such a nice time at Thanksgiving with our families. We managed to crowd 16 adults around a long table in our dining room and some extra kids sitting at the kitchen counter. All in all, we had a great time visiting and enjoying each other's company. Family stayed around for the next few days and we got to enjoy some "geo-caching" with Jarrett and his kids.


Lisa and Baby Jordan

Andrew and Bradley

Brad and Bradley on our geo-caching adventure.

Jarrett finding the box while geo-caching!

Seth and Bradley discovering what was in the box...such fun stuff.

We've Got Concrete!

Snooky GREAT! We finally got a sidewalk put in on the side of our house. Little by little we are making progress on the things we would like to see done at our house. The concrete guy said the job took especially long today (10 hours) because the sidewalk is on the shady side of our house and it was taking forever to dry...good thing for us, slow thing for them! Anyway, it looks great.

Via Arte

Each year the marketplace does what's called Via Arte, and basically it is chalk art. It is fashioned off of the Italian Street Painting Festivals. There's a part that is set aside for professional artists and another part that is for amateur artists. Schools take part in the amateur side and so here's one of the pieces that Bakersfield Christian High School did. Neat!

Turkey Races

We watched Turkeys run at the Kern County Fair, Sept 30th, 2006!
Check out this video clip!



Please, please, please leave a comment! Thanks

250,000 Bouncing Balls

Brad recently found this commercial made by Sony and he loves it!
You can't help but be in a good mood after watching this!
Check it out!


If you liked that, I STRONGLY recommend the hi res version:

http://www.bravia-advert.com/commercial/braviaextcommhigh.html

Hi Resolution version


No CGI used here, they actually dropped 250,000 super bouncy balls at the corner of Union street and Leavenworth Street in San Francisco! The song's name is "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzalez. You can buy it on Itunes!!

Also check out these neat pictures of the event
Here

PS. Did anyone else see the frog?

Hume Lake

We just got back from a short trip to Hume Lake. The school Lisa teaches at goes there for a retreat each fall. We got to get out of Bako-land and go up to the mountains, which was awesome. The weather was beautiful, the scenery gorgeous...it was a lot of fun. And hanging out with the high schoolers was also fun, we got to know some of them on a different level outside of the classroom. Here are a few pictures from our trip!

Welcoming Jordan Jonathan Sadowsky!

We have a new nephew! He was born on Wednesday, Sept. 13th at about 8 pm. He weighed 5lbs 7oz and was 18 inches long. Both mom and son are doing very well, and dad too! Praise God for babies!!

Happy Bday Mom!

To celebrate Lisa's Mom's bday, we took her to La Costa Mariscos, one of her favorite mexican restaurants. We had a great time! Here's a picture of Paul & Mom and Brad & Lisa.

San Francisco

We're back from San Francisco, Brad's donation went very well. The only difficult part was that Brad had to remain fairly still during the whole process, but it was a temporary discomfort. The nurses said he was "juicy", which meant he had a good crop of stem cells to donate. Now we just continue to pray that the recipient would not have any problems receiving Brad's stem cells.

Back to the dry heat...

We just got back from our vacation to Estes Park, CO. Brad's family has a reunion every other year at the YMCA in Estes Park! We had a great time with family...playing games, hiking, sleeping, watching bears...you know, all the fun things that happen in the outdoors! And yes, we truly did watch bears...Boo-boo, the friendly bear, would visit our campsite after hours to sneak some snacks out of the "bear secure" trash can.

Snooky Greatest

Brad is going to be a bone marrow stem cell donor the end of July. There's an article in the Bakersfield California about him and two others. Here's a link to that article. He had put his name on the list years ago when they were looking for a match for a girl from Bakersfield and then about a month ago they called him up and said hey, we think you could be a match for someone on our list, what do you think about donating. And he said, snooky great, sign me up. So, read all about it here!

Bakersfield Californian Marrow Donor Article

After The Excitement

We had a really nice 4th of July. We spent it with friends, we bbq'd and enjoyed watching them set off their fireworks. Here's a photo of our kitties, resting the day after. Logan has a new resting spot, behind the couch with his head partially covered. :)

Some more of Portland!

In addition to the falls, we also enjoyed visiting the rose garden! It was in full bloom and it appears as though there was some poking there also. Hmmm...

Portland!

After the birthday party, we got on a plane in Sacramento and flew to Portland to visit Tim, Rachel, Laura, Rocky, and Bella. What a wonderful visit. Portland is a very neat city and Oregon is just beautiful with all of the lush green everywhere! One of our favorite stops was at Multnomah Falls, so beautiful, these pictures don't do it justice! We wished we could have stayed longer!!!

Happy 1st Bday Andrew!

Our nephew Andrew just celebrated his 1st birthday. Here's a picture of proud dad and son! And another of Soon-2-B-Mom-Again-Of-A-3rd-Son watching Andrew "play" with his 1st birthday cake.

One post every 30 days or your money back

I have new found respect for people who post to their blog every week or twice a week. Who has time for that? I guess those dedicated people make the time.


This is a picture of me and my new poking stick. If you know us very well, you know poking is very big in our family. This stake was buried about 3 feet under ground, broken off the 8 or 10 foot long stake supporting one of the Bradford pear trees planted by the builder of our new house. Their foresight is poor, because in 15 years, these trees would be very large and their roots would be pushing up our sidewalk and driveway. So! We pulled up the new trees and put them in large pots we bought until we are ready to permanently plant these trees somewhere else.





These pictures are from our hike on May 6th in the woods just outside of Shirley Meadows, a short drive from Lake Isabella. This hike, which we heard about from Dad Sturm, covered 5 miles of trail and paved road hiking. It was a little chilly, but the views were awesome.