Vintage Caroline. 
This may seem like a set up, but in truth, it isn't. Caroline rides hard--all day--keeping up with the older kids, and all the neighbor kids that frequent our backyard.

She is actually rather tough, all things considered. She genuinely fell asleep, right in the middle of a quesadilla the other day. 

Keeps the whole family laughing.  Quite articulate, full of promise.

She is highly, highly flexible, has strong white teeth, golden locks like flaxen and is pretty good buds with Latte.  Whenever she is not playing with Liza, she is surely hanging out with the pooch, experimenting with his pain threshold. 

Ahhh, the carefree life of a two year old. The famed "terrible twos" have been good to us--they don't come sweeter than Caroline. It's hard to believe she will be three in a few months.





When Caroline is around, Latte eats well--too well.  He is supposed to have a 1/2 cup of food, twice a day, but Caroline likes to experiment with a variety of ways to feed him.  She takes a lot of pride in keeping him fed.

Liza Turns Five.  A lot has happened in the last five years in our family. Five years ago, we were in the throes of transition--sold our Utah house, packed up, started a new (lemon) job in Las Vegas, put money down to build a house in Vegas, quit the job after 28 days, lost the earnest $$ for the house, was hired at Shaklee in the Bay Area, redirected the moving truck (we even went to our "going away to Vegas" party in Utah only to tell friends "Just kidding, it's the Bay Area we're headed to), started the new job at Shaklee, 10 days later Liza was born, two weeks later flew the whole family out to the Bay Area, bought the house and here we are.  (I don't recommend doing all this, all in ~ 45 days by the way).

There is a lot more to this story, but let's just say the last five years have been YET ANOTHER point of evidence of higher powers at work in our lives. We're now documenting all these "evidences" (and there are MANY) where the timing with which events happened, the order in which they happened, and the circumstances in which they happened are simply miraculous. They really are.

Let's just say the last five years have been unbelievably happy, stable, fun, and challenging all at the same time.  We can't tell if it's because five years ago we quit making "plans" and striving for "goals" or the roots our kids have going down are "running the show" regardless of what we do, or if we have simply realized that higher powers are at work anyway, so why upset the apple cart?  "We drink from wells we did not dig, and eat the fruit from trees we did not plant." We don't take it for granted. Deep thoughts from the Doxeys indeed.

Be that as it may, Liza turned 5, and per customary festivities she had the full treatment -- a few birthday parties, birthday breakfast, birthday cakes, and all the other fun stuff.  On a whim, the day of her friends birthday party, she decided she wanted a dinosaur themed birthday. So, there were construction paper dinosaur tracks throughout the house, a dinosaur cake, you get the idea.  She must have brothers.

Nate and John didn't seem to care that it was really a girls party, they were right there in the fray entertaining the ladies, as always.









Birthday french toast.

Special day crown from pre-school.

Yet another cake, this one all chocolate for the  birthday party with family.

Late March will always be a happy time for the whole family.

So much to relect on and be grateful for.

Living the dream.

We love Liza!!





Funny faces at the park--inseparable sisters.












 We have the best neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. One of them, Carol June Rowley (who we believe is Dan's mom's long lost Catholic sister) is our next door neighbor and on the San Ramon City Council, currently running for Mayor of San Ramon. So, when Nathan's 11 year old troop needed to meet with a civic leader, she was a natural candidate. The boys peppered her with questions, and she was excellent with them.  Nate and John love her a lot.

Update on Nathan & John's Golf Ball Business. Now that it has stopped raining, and the boys have scrubbed, bleached and dried all the balls, and organized them -- we are finally ready to start selling.

  With some help from John Call, they determined a dozen Titleist Pro-Vs should be $10 a dozen (normally $40), the Callaways and Nikes should be $8 a dozen, and everything else should be $5 a dozen.

With the eye catching sign ready to roll, the boys were ready to learn some serious selling skills. With Kip and Uncle Rico setting the pace for "looking official--like we've got all the answers" ... Nathan and John set up shop right next to the golf cart path by our house.

The balls were organized in egg cartons, with the brands prominently showing, all the extra boxes put away, sign in place, cute dog nearby, they were ready to make some "sweet moola."

It wasn't as easy as they thought it would be.



The point being, they quickly learned you can't just set a sign out there, and then sit there trying to magically let the sign do all the work...acting like you don't even speak English (which is what they were doing after the first group came by).

I quickly realized Nate and John's only experience with commerce is being hustled by vendors in Chinatown--so teaching them how to sell took a bit of doing.


So, we worked on some "golfing lingo" that they could say to golfers as they drove up to them...they would STAND UP, GREET THEM, SMILE, AND SAY something like, 

"How ya hittin' it today?"
"I saw you put a few in the drink back there, you look like you need a few new balls."
"I see you're keeping us in business today, whacking it in the yards around the course!"

After that, they really started to sell, and made $55 in two hours! They have three 5 gallon buckets of balls to clean and prepare, and a few hundred ready to sell.   They get them by doing yardwork for our good Italian friend and new Church member Livia MacDonald who lives near us, on the golf course.

Let there be wood...a boat load of wood.  Tom Call gave me a tip that there was a tree service in Danville that was giving away rounds of wood from trees they had cut down--Redwood, Monterey Pine, etc.

So, being the woodchuck that I am, I hooked up my trailer and went to get a load. When I got there they said they would deliver it if I could take more. Much obliged. They came and to my exultant joy, dumped a massive, massive amount of wood on my driveway--like, enough to burn until the kids go to college.

Little did people know I already had a pile of Ash from a local tree that was felled, which in itself was about half the size of this pile -- so the boys and I had a little wood project on our hands.

This is me, wood clothes donned, contemplating the ramifications of trying to chop it up with a hachet--and capturing what may have been the last picture where my spine was healthy.

Our neighbors must think we've "Gone Fundamentalist."




Behold, the 27 Tons of Force, Hydraulic Wood Splitter.   We brought all the Ash out from the backyard on a Friday night, and the next Saturday morning, we were ready to do "Man Work" ... "because we're MEN." We hunt and gather.

Nate and John were actually really, really helpful.  Since it was a 24 hour rental, we had that log splitter running for 12 hours straight.  Beastly, rugged thing.

Nate and John took turns being "the operator" ... pushing the lever up or down while I would quickly stack three rounds high under that wedge and split like a mad dog. Reminded me of our days in Alaska. We did this same thing for a friend whose wood crib was the entire basement of his cabin.

Whoever was not operating or splitting was running and stacking.  We had two wheelbarrows (Julia and one of the boys) running the wood to the backyard.  We were working like freakin' Japanese beavers ... really hard, all the time.

I have never seen our little family work for 12 hours straight like that.   The reward at the end of the day ... anything you want at In- N-Out.  Of course, it was 9:30 pm and the boys opted for Cheeseburgers, Animal Fries and Milkshakes.  Mercy.  

We gave away four pickup truck loads of wood and still had all that you see here with the log splitter. A great way to wrap up Spring Break. Don't worry about us next winter. We'll be warm.

Nathan and John are now riding 24" wheel bikes, and both finally finished earning them.

A complex incentive chart produced these. Nate worked on his chart for 5 months--I'll have to post that chart sometime, just so you know bikes like these don't just fall out of the sky. (Well, John's did, it was free, but we won't tell him that).

They took their new bikes up the road to Memorial Park to ride them on the BMX track. Lots of fun, picturesque and memorable!

Life is good.