The kids started school today.

I think it’s their first August start EVER. Gavin joins Dylan at middle school, leaving Grace all alone at elementary school. She got the teacher she wants and has good friends in her class, so she has been impatiently counting down the days.

Rennie Family at Elizabeth's Wedding

Just Married!

We took a quick trip to St George last weekend for Elizabeth’s wedding and some sightseeing.

The Narrows

Gunslingers

Last weekend we had a mini reunion on Don Pedro Lake in central California: Shannon’s sister and her family drove down from Sacramento and her brother and his family made it their first stop on a 2 week expedition.

Grace did a great job at the 4th grade year end Gold Rush play/ musical. She wrote and memorized her part. At crunch time she nailed it: spoke clearly and confidently.

Gavin and Grace had another band performance last week. Probably Grace’s last.

From going to the Craig Ferguson show I’m on an audience waiting list. Last week I got an email offering tickets to the American Idol finale part one THAT DAY. I said “Yes, please” and got 4 tickets! You have to be 12, so I took Dylan, Gavin and their cousin Bobby. It was a LOT of waiting around, but fun. The email confirmation was a ticket to wait in line for a ticket outside the Staple’s Center. After an hour in line we got our actual tickets, but had ~1 hr to kill before we could get into the Nokia theater. There’s an ESPN Zone right there, so we headed over there. Saw Brooke White up close doing the TV Guide show. After the Zone we headed to the theater. There was an interview area for TV stations to interview previous Idol contestants. Saw Scott, the blind guy and a few others. Matt Girard was practically begging people to get his autograph. We passed. Once we were in the Nokia we waited some more. It was cool to see the stage with all the neon AI signs. We sat near the back of the main floor. A few rows in front of Jason Castro. From the live audience you can barely hear what the judges are saying, probably by design. The girl, Krystal (?) was way better than Lee on all three songs. She got standing ovations every time from a crowd that was favoring Lee by a big margin. Lee seemed to have low energy and like he was just kind of going thru the motions. It was fun and the boys had a blast. The best part was the HUGE smile on Gavin’s face when I told him why he was getting out of school early!

We had a tough decision last weekend: boating at Lake Mead or boarding at Mammoth. The original plan was to go boating at Mead until I saw that the water was only 60 degrees. I checked Mammoth and saw that they had ~2 ft of new snow in the past week, the temps had stayed cold and it was about to get sunny and warm. We had a blast: the snow was in great shape, off season ticket prices and we were able to ride/ski together all day. Downside: mom and dad got fried. Despite multiple applications of sun screen, the 10,000 elevation, bright sun and reflective snow conspired against us.