Just a quick followup...

Since Grandma Grahm was nice enough to send me a few pictures she snagged at the waterpark (the rest of us were too scared to pull out the electronics!) I wanted to toss them up here:

Lunch for the kids this year came in a smart little plastic lunchbox (nothing worse than soggy PB&J's), and Siddha and the rest of the kids decided to keep theirs as souvenirs.

Somewhere in this pile is Daddy Larry (me!) and Tre. We were warming up after some time in the Lazy River. Behind us you can see the structure that sits in front of our choice cabana location. It's a great space, very isolated from random traffic, and right by the kid's place space, so it's practically custom made for our kid-heavy family outings.

The Whirlwind Subsides

As I mentioned last post we were living in a lovely new storage unit. Well, we have put away a lot of the boxes and still have a lovely house underneath it all. The house is in the last stages of being put it to rights. I'll see if I can get Leng to walk around and snap some pictures of the place. We still need to give the guest room, meditation room and the sun room a little more love. Then we need to actually get art, family photos and knick knacks up to give it the Queer Village flavor.

We had our first house guest here - Ms. Lena from Santa Cruz and it was a lovely visit. She got to see the wild roaming packs of children we have in the house and a lot of adult hang out time with the parents. Larry and I are heading up to stay with her in early September as well so double Lena action for us. She is always wonderful to talk to and we all miss her dearly. She came with me to try out True Food while she was here - felt proper since she was here from Santa Cruz. The food was delicious and it was a nice change of pace for me. at least. We also got in some movie watching and she was here for our annual trip to Knott's Soak City. 

Speaking of the water park, it was a great time again. We had the Musico family (Lae Lae, Rowena and their two sons Nate & Noah), the Sangha Family (Kathy, Becky and their three daughters), Yoav (a new friend to the Village),  Luisa with her daughter Tara, and Grandma Graham. Taking our number this year to 16 people. We rented a cabana like previous years and it was delightful. The kids had an even better time this year since they have all gotten much more comfortable with water.  I will see about photos - we're still working out the roles with all the adults. Leng is our resident shutterbug and I do the blog so we need to get together and get photos of all these things to the web.

Nani has been taking swimming lessons and really put herself out there. She has been pushing herself and has made tremendous strides. She swims from one end of the pool to the other by herself and is retrieving dive toys from the bottom of the pool. It's been awesome to see her take control of the process and practice everything she gets exposed to in her lessons. We have plans for Siddha to take a swim class in the winter since she has been energized by watching Nani doing her lessons and swimming around the pool. 

We got a chance to go to Disneyland with Stephen and his family (Jen and their two kids Addy & Tanner). We drove up before dawn with the kids packed in the car and spent the day running around the park. Siddha had a blast in Toon Town seeing everything and interacting with the props there. The older kids were much more adventurous this trip and went on a significantly more rides and ones they had flat out refused to try on previous trips. They also got a chance to meet Mickey Mouse himself while we were there. Tanner and Tre bonded over lightsabers and Jedi while Nani was chatting up people left and right. As always it was great to see them and spend time with them. All the kids asked if we could see them again. 

The dads got to go to Gen Con this year and we decided to try the full convention this time by arriving on Wed night and leaving Mon afternoon. In the past we had gotten in late Thur or midday Fri and left Sun evening. It was soooo much better with the full experience. We hadn't realized how much we were trying to pack into the shorter trips and the leisurely pace of this trip has sold us on the concept of doing the full convention going forward. We ate great food and meet some entertaining people. This trip we all learned how to make chainmail and two of us (Larry and myself) learned how to make scale male. We saw a lot of vendors and got the chance to play a few fun games. We saw incredible art and great costumes while walking the convention floor. All in all a fantastic trip. 

We also had a Family Matters bonfire and potluck at Campland on the Bay. This was our first time attending and I think it was great - we will be adding it to our list of events that we attend. The kids ran around playing, made s'mores, and watched a movie under the stars with decked out in glow stick jewelry. The kids are eagerly awaiting the Halloween Festival they put on in October. The parents have starting volunteering every month to help out with the Parent Support Group that Family Matters hosts and its been a wonderful opportunity to show the kids giving back to the community and growing our connection to other LGBT families. 

That's everything for this month and as usual I will close with an invitation to visit us. We love you all and thanks for reading.