Bay Area in the Early Summer Anyone?

Here's Your Top 5 For The Past 3 Weeks...

1. Mole for the Bros. Rob Call came out for John's 50th, (yes 50th) birthday awhile ago and Julia made all of us some incredible Mole...that would be the famous authentic Mexican dish (it's actually a sauce), not the cousin of a badger, nor the measurement of subatomic, atomic, and molecular structures. Of course, we had to take a picture because it was very much like three boys sitting down to some of Mom Call's great Mexican food. Hilarious. Like locusts.

2. Father & Sons on Mt. Diablo. The Father & Sons outing was on Mt. Diablo this year. For those of you that haven't ever been there, you can learn all about it if you click here.

Basically, it's a nearly 4000 foot hill here in the Bay Area. Very famous. All the coordinates for the West were aligned based on its location. On a clear day after rain, you can see all the way out to the Farallon Islands, Yosemite, and many other places.

There are many cool things about it. One of my personal favorites is the fact that there are awesome hikes/trails to the top, there are hard core cyclists biking to the top, and then there are people like us who drive their nice air conditioned cars to the top.

On the top you see the geological marker, a stone lookout tower, a mini naturalist museum and many tired cylists. As they are huffing and puffing up the hill, I always offer them a ride but none have taken me up on it. You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make him drink.

3. Mother's Day 2008. Mother's Day 2008 featured what was supposed to be Apple Spice Buttermilk Pancakes, Cinnamon Syrup, a pile-o-flowers from the rose garden, adulation and more. Tasty. We love mom.

4. New wheels. Nate & John scored some new wheels--bikes courtesy of the rarely visited 'For Sale' section of Craigslist. Normally we only visit the free section, but we just couldn't pass these up.

Their old, small thrashed bikes, which we bought at "the bike shop" in Provo (a.k.a. D.I.) just weren't going to make it another summer.

I guess their bloody knees (from hitting the handle bars) sent us an undeniable, clear message. They LOVE riding their bikes at Country Club Park, Boone Acres Park and the BMX Track at Memorial Park. We just tow Liza. It works.


5. Faith Promoting Story. Last Christmas Eve we went on an incredible bike ride in Golden Gate Park and to the Dutch Windmill. We accidentally left our camcorder at the Windmill. Of course, when we realized it was gone (about 10 minutes later) we went back and it had vanished.

We were bummed for a lot of reasons. There were four fully recorded tapes in there, and it's really hard to find a Hi8 recorder anymore so we could transfer all of our tapes to DVD. Whatever. Fast forward six months. Last week we got a call from a woman in San Francisco who had the camera, bag, tapes and all! Apparently she picked it up, went to find us and couldn't. Like idiots, we still had our Utah contact info on a tag in the bag--with our old phone number, old e-mail addres, etc. That's all she had to go on. From that point on, she started a six month search to find us.

Get this...she contacted the lost and found in SF, lost and found at the Ocean Beach Cafe, Golden Gate Park lost and found, talked to the SF Police and Utah Police who couldn't help, worked with the operator in Utah to see if there was a Dan Doxey there anywhere, put an ad in the lost and found section of Craigslist, and finally did a whitepages.com search and that pulled us up. Unreal. Nate, John and Julia said prayers together while I was running up and down the boardwalk looking for anyone who fit her description, and six months later, here we are with the bag, camera and all the tapes in hand. Amazing. What a blessing to have all that back!

Have a good few weeks!