Kids Updates.......

The REAL Ocho Cinco.......

Week number 3 of the High School football season is in the books, the Central sophomore team is 2-1, with wins over Muscatine (week 1) and North Scott last Friday. Their lone defeat was at Burlington last week, all three games have been extremely close scores, coming down to the last minutes of each game. The varsity team is 0-3, but they are not all that bad, the scores have not been blowouts.

Gabe is not getting much playing time, except on special teams and some series at outside linebacker. He sat out of Fridays game in Eldridge, a result of a concussion from earlier in the week during practice that caused him to miss a day of school.

Gabe, now a member of the Central Singers Inc., the varsity show choir team, will spend this week entrenched in rehearsals each day after football practice till 9pm. Their hired choreographer is in town for the week. Should be a long week!
He has gotten off to a great start in school, taking physics, Spanish, choir and a life guard class and he is also playing on a soccer team which plays games on Sundays around the area.

Abbi Update

Abbi starting swimming this week with the Metro team at Central, she was very excited to get back in the pool. In the spring/summer session, about 20 kids would show for practice. Now they have about 60 kids participating...thank you Michael Phelps! Dads Club soccer games were to start yesterday, but rain postponed the first weeks worth of games, we're working on 3 days straight of rain in the Quad Cities.

We were told by Abbi at the end of the school year she wanted to take violin lessons at school with the music instructor, so we rented a violin from the guy who works on my guitars. She is very excited and has been practicing a lot. Her friends seem quite jealous when she takes the violin out to show off!
Photo Above: Ambrose likes napping near the laundry area, Abbi decided to cover him up!

Elli Happenings

Elli is keeping herself busy with her Dads Club soccer team as well as her select team that plays on Sundays. Dads Club practice is Wednesday, select team is Tuesday and Thursday. Flag football practice is Wednesday after soccer, first game is next week. Both girls alternate scout meetings on Wednesdays before soccer. Wednesday are a little hectic, we call them...'crock pot' days.

A few weeks back Tiff and girls were bored so they decided to dress up the dog and have some fun. Elli is posing with Ambrose in his soccer uniform and in the photo to the left Ambrose declares who his favorite baseball team is......Go Cubs Go!

Need More Cowbell????

The Rock Star we know as Gabe did a very nice thing yesterday for a friend in need.

You might recall a few posts back about our night at the ballpark in honor of our friend Davenport Firefighter Bob Juarez. Well, Gabe and his bandmate Drew Hence came up with a way to help with a benefit concert featuring some other bands at Central. A great idea! 'Rock For Juarez!...A Benefit Concert' was born.

The idea came a couple months ago from the boys, they asked if I could help. I gave them a list of some things to check on, but I thought the task would be too much to put together. It wasn't until Drew's dad Dan, the manager at the Stoney Creek Inn in Moline offered their banquet room for the event at no charge.....then the ball started rolling.

He gave the boys a date and said he would sell pop and candy at the bar. The boys got four other acts involved including a friend of Drews who played in a cover band at bars in our area that had a decent sound system.

We printed over 500 fliers and the event was included on various media reports about Bob's progress. Signs on schools in Davenport mentioned the event as well. $5 to get in, donations welcomed.

After weeks of rehearsal, the foursome known as Racing Sunsets was the third act of the day, following the Demon Ducks, leading into Firesale. They played for about 45 minutes mostly cover songs with a couple originals mixed in.

After load in yesterday before the gig, I decided to go home and get my Les Paul electric guitar for Luke Bergman to play, I knew how much he likes it, he drools over it when he comes over.

More than 100 people attended and most stayed for a long time. The efforts of the boys raised almost $1300 for Bob's fund. The Argus/Dispatch sent a report and photographer, it was on the front page of the paper this morning! Good Job Boy!

Tiff took a bunch of photos, once she downloads them off the camera we'll get a few posted.

California Adventures

Well we're back from the coast. I have plenty of info and pictures and videos to share. So here goes......


We flew out Tuesday morning, Aug 12 everything but our bags made it to San Diego! Those came later in the day. We were picked up by Grandma from Arizona, my sister Britta and her daughter Morgan. We hit Old Town, an area of town that is Mexican influenced for a hearty Mexican lunch.....I had a west coast staple...the fish tacos! After eating we took a trolley ride of the city which last two hours. Our tour guide, Deb, is probably the most knowledgeable person on the topic of all things San Diego....Deb became an inside joke during our week long stay. Here's a shot of Gabe and Abbi on the trolley taken with Tiff's new toy, her much sought after Canon Rebel. She took around 550 photos! I took about 2 hours worth of video.








Wednesday was Disneyland day!! Britta, Morgan and our five loaded up and headed out early in the morning for the drive north up the coast. We got there at 9:30am and didn't leave until 11:30pm!!!!! That's like 14 hours. We did as many rides as we could, ate some over priced food and bought some over priced merchandise. The day was as fun as it could be. The topper might have been riding the big roller coaster at the California Adventure, the Disney owned theme park next to Disney, for Elli and Morgan it was a first, but we all got through it in good shape. I bet we walked about 15 miles.






Here is the best shot.....some 20 minutes into our ride home shortly after midnight, Elli and Morgan passed out in the van.



A few weeks back, Britta noticed that the San Diego Padres were town and they had a Thursday afternoon game scheduled with the Brewers. She also noticed she could get upper deck seats for $7. $7!!! By then my brother JP flew in from Columbus and we finally met up with my bride to be sister Rachel and her man Tim and some of their friends at the game. We had a blast, ate some dogs, drank some brews and took in the excellent scenery of the new downtown ballpark. It was Abbi and Elli's first big league game. Rachel and Tim then hosted a party at their apartment where we were introduced to some of Tim's family.





Friday we headed to the beach at Cardiff by the Sea, not far from where Britta and uncle Tom live in San Marcos, a town over from Carlsbad, about 45 or so minutes outside of San Diego. Gabe wanted to surf and we wanted to introduce the girls to beach life. They have never been in the ocean before. We stayed for a few hours, Tom had all the toys, from surf and boogie boards to wet suits to sand toys.

Following our first visit to the beach we went to Mission Bay to check into the Catamaran Resort, the site of the wedding. The rehearsal was at the resort, the wedding took place on the back lawn over looking the bay. The rehearsal dinner was at a place in Balboa Park, not far away. I got some funny video there before the dinner began. The next morning we discovered a mama duck and some baby ducky's hanging out on our patio at the hotel, so we gave them breakfast, Cheezits and Fruit Loops!

Saturday was wedding day, the girls got their hair done while Gabe and I took a walk along the boardwalk and got a bite to eat and bought some t-shirts from a boardwalk shop. I got to walk Rachel down the isle, it was very special. Abbi and Elli were very excited to be flower girls, they looked amazing! Here is the girls in our room before we left for the ceremony, followed by Rachel and Tim entering the ballroom at the start of the reception. The ceremony went off without a hitch.

After the reception dinner, the hired DJ played some dance songs, the video below will start with Gabe and Elli dancing. Soon after, my cousin Rich from Chicago taps in to dance with Elli, as Rich's wife Germaine takes Gabe. That is followed by Tom and Abbi getting down. Then you'll get some scenes of the Grateful Dead cover band Rachel hired to play after the DJ. Yes, my sister hired a Grateful Dead cover band to play at her wedding. You're not reading that wrong. I was in heaven, they sounded wonderful. I was the guy yelling song suggestions, the one guy you hate to be around at shows.....but they played everything I threw at them. Tiff got that funny scene of me turning and waving at the camera. I truly didn't know she was recording, or why I turned around at that point.

Sunday we took it easy, headed back up to San Marcos and had a quiet day. I remember telling Tiff and Britta that I thought it was time to give the kids a break. For days we were asking a lot of them to be good and proper at Disney, the ball game, rehearsal dinner and wedding. Later that afternoon, Tom took JP, Gabe and I to a local brewery for a tour and a couple brews, Stone Brewing Company. It was impressive. That night we ate at Sammy's Woodfire Grill, where JP ordered an appetizer.....the duck tacos. I tried them, pretty good, to everyones astonishment Gabe decided to try it, he liked them as well. He normally doesn't venture out and try weird stuff. The girls got dessert with their meals, a messy sundae.

Monday was deemed another beach day, a beach in Carlsbad. The ocean water was very chilly, around 67 degrees I read in a local paper. But after about four minutes you really don't feel it any more, the water warms up to you and you get comfortable. Tom took Gabe out for more surfing and Abbi and Elli boogie boarded and Rachel drove up to be with us for our last day there. The weather was sunny and clear and the beach was ours, there wasn't many people there.

We left Tuesday morning, Ambrose was sure happy to see us return!

Dog Tricks

We've had some more requests for another feature on our little guy Ambrose, so I taped him the other night with Abbi going over some tricks we have taught him over the last two months. He has got the sitting command down pretty good, from that he learn how to go down, laying on his belly. From there he learned how to roll over, or on his side. Recently he has learned how to shake. As you can tell....he loves having his belly rubbed. Abbi seems to have the best rapport with Ambrose, but then again, she has always been great with any animal she encounters! Ambrose has been sleeping much better and now doesn't have a problem with his kennel when it's bed time. He is also getting comfortable with walks around park.

It's Saturday, three days before we leave for our vacation in San Diego for Aunt Rachel's wedding next weekend. We are all very excited to go and will start packing tomorrow. Plane leaves 6am on Tuesday, Wednesday we will spend at Disneyland, Thursday is a Padres game with wedding stuff taking up much of Friday and Saturday, not much on the books for Sunday and Monday (at least not that I know of), plane leaves around 10:30am the following Tuesday for home.

I asked the kids what they are most looking forward to doing while out West. Elli said Disney and seeing her cousin Morgan. A few days ago I told Elli about sunsets over the ocean, so she mentioned she wants to see the sun set over the Pacific. Abbi also said Disney and she is very much looking forward to wearing her flower girl dress for the wedding as well as spending the night at Morgan's with Aunt Britta and Uncle Tom. Gabe is looking forward to seeing the Padres-Brewers game and mentioned he hopes Tom takes him surfing. I got a feeling Gabe is looking forward to showing off his much improved muscular physique he has been working on during summer football conditioning........so look out California girls....the G-Dog is on his way!!!! I am looking forward to not working.

We'll talk when we get home.....Boom! Outahere.