We celebrated 14 years with our boy yesterday.

Fun family dinner with all the trimmin’s, fixin’s, and grinnin’s.

We hope the next 14 are as much fun and as smooth!

Our house project this year was located on the hillside of Ensenada overlooking the ocean and port.

Million dollar views from shack after shack.

Here’s a sample of neighborhood houses.

Here’s the view from the house we built.

Here’s a view of the house from the street.

We built a house for the owners of this pooch.

Have you ever seen a pug like dog with one blue eye?

There are so many interesting combinations in Mexico.  Makes for a challenging game to determine breed specifics.

We know the prayer offered in faith brings effective results.

What of the food offered and the food eaten?

One of the cardinal rules of visiting a foreign country is to be gracious and polite and eat what is offered.

When you’re trying to cut down on your consumption of carbs, Mexico can be a difficult place to cut down on your carbs.

We smile, we’re thankful, we eat what we are given and hope it all sorts out in the end.

Which it usually does, or the belly!

We’re back down in Mexico helping with another building project.

Worked all day long today and drove only 1 nail.

Can you believe that?

Between the hard working crew from Oregon and the local workers now involved in our building projects it’s hard to get a nail in edgewise.

It’s great, absolutely fantastic to see so many people working so hard.

May not have been able to help frame (which is my favorite part) but the boy and I did run the chop saw all day long.

The boy, like his mother, has a head for numbers and comes in handy making sense of fractions.

Yes it has been a long time.

So long I forgot my username and password!

Busy?  Yes

Lots of activity in our lives?  Yes

I know that’s true for you as well.

In spite of the frenetic pace everyone is well.

August will be a month of transitions and changes – part of the normality of  growing kids and full-time jobs and school.

Joe Harrington was the first.

Starlin Castro was the most recent.

Will Clark was somewhere in the middle.

Any idea what list this is?

These are just three of the players who hit a homerun their first at bat during their MLB debut.

Our # 1 son accomplished the “toastmasters” equivalent last night – receiving a standing ovation for his first ever public speech.

The great thing about the standing O was that it was begun by people not directly connected or related to him.

Proud, proud, proud we are of his academic accomplishment, his well delivered and received speech (you should have seen the head nodding*) and most of all we are proud of his character and leadership.

*Greg would be familiar with head nodding while he speaks but it usually was indicative of speech induced comatic sleep.

. . . and I still didn’t come up with anything.

The boy said I should write about not being very funny.

How could I write about such obvious lies?

I can tell you I’m getting some new creatures and critters for my salt water tank today.

Picked them up Friday in Sacramento but kept them in the massive saltwater system of reefjester until the transfer today.

A green anemone, a yellow anemone, a maroon gold band clown (hopefully his face paint is waterproof), a lunar wrasse and finally a snowflake eel.

It’s always fun to have new sea life in the tank.

Today is the boy’s last normal day of Middle School.

Though we might well discuss the definition of normal.

We are blessed to have the boy.

He has an ability to rise above the antics of others and not stumble over the obstacles.

He speaks the truth from a pure heart and is very, very funny.

His Valedictorian speech is finished and now he must only deliver the speech.

Eighth grade will soon be only a fading image in the rear view mirror.

A well deserved summer break before the next task:  Surviving Ninth Grade!