Video Ride

Melody bought me this pretty cool Fathers Day gift. It's an action sports video camera. It comes with a variety of ways to attach it to helmets, bikes and assorted other equipment. With a 1GB SD card it will take 30 minutes of video with audio. The claim is that it's water proof down to 10 ft., so I can take it boogie boarding. This is my first attempt at using while attached to my bike.

As you can see, it's pretty rough. Later I had it on my helmet and it was a lot smoother. This ought to provide some great future blog videos!

More Grant and Lucy - LIVE!

I know this is supposed to be Pete and Mel's Blog - but if I can't show off my grand kids here, where else can I do it. The first video clip is of Grant on our daily walk to get a newspaper. This was the only time he had his hat on. The rest of the time he held it between his thumb and fingers in front of him. The next one was the next day. His pants are too big so he's trying to hold them up while he runs.

The bottom one is of Grant driving Lucy (and Grandma) crazy.

And my favorite line from Grant? "What did you tay?" (he doesn't quite have the "s" sound down yet) A thousand times a day - in the middle of anything - he just has to be sure he understands you. "What did you tay?"

Grant has a BLAST!

Grant and I went down to the park yesterday and fired off some rockets (propelled by air forced through a tube by stepping on a plastic bladder). We kept this up for a good 45 minutes - a new endurance time for keeping Grant occupied. : )

HGH, back when it meant something good

Here it is - a week and a half late. Grandpa Hall's grave marker in the Sutter Cemetery. Grandma keeps the flowers on it at regular intervals, and the cemetery puts out the flags for Memorial Day. I've also put up a couple of other photos of interest from the visit to the cemetery.

Later in the day we met at Uncle Richie's house for a bit of charred meat. Actually, James cooked up some tri-tip for us that turned out really well. But we did tease him a little about the "burned offering." That's Emily and Sabrina watching the fire.

Below is a little clip of Emily learning to "crack the whip." Since it was a celebration of her 18th birthday, Rich got his whip out (the one he got on his mission in Brazil) and showed her how to get started.

We are in AZ visiting Grant and Lucy (not Pam and Rob, they're in Washington) so I'll have some more fun stuff to post later this week!

So here's the deal...

Sorry for not updating the blog for a while. There are a couple of excuses (no good reasons) I will offer:

First, this past week was the last week of school here - a week that really needs 6 days instead of the usual 5 for me to accomplish everything that needs to be done, but in fact only had 4 due to Memorial Day. (Who's bright idea was it to end school the week of Memorial Day? Oh yeah, the union was involved).

Second, this was also the week prior to stake conference, which as you might guess is fairly busy for a stake president. I'm not complaining at all. It was a WONDERFUL conference! However, one member asked me: "Since you're in charge, why don't you just change the dates?" Of course, I'm not in charge of that - Pres. Packer makes those assignments - and I have not felt at all comfortable with going to him and saying: "Gee, I'm kind of busy that week, how about if you pick another weekend for us?"

Anyway, I have photos and information from Memorial Day that will be kind of fun for you to see. We're going to AZ tomorrow to see Grant and Lucy (Pam & Rob who?) so I should have time to post them this week. See ya in the funny papers.