While memorial weekend at our cabin in Serene Lakes admittedly didn’t bring a lot of tearful memorializing of our men and women serving our Country, it was celebrated the way so many American’s celebrate: with family, barbecues and food. A few of the kids brought friends up which brought our numbers to

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New Year’s eve 2012 at the cabin was a full house, possibly setting a new record for visitors, but certainly the most family member’s we’ve had at once. Along with the usual McClellands and Wassermanns, Beth and Robert Rust were up to bring in the new year with Matt home from Turkey with his newish wife, Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn’s family joined us too, bringing the number to

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The kids and I recently took advantage of an empty day on the calendar to make a day-trip to Yosemite. The trip was almost a non-starter though when I realized we were half way to Yosemite, almost out of gas, and I had forgotten my wallet at home. An emergency credit card I had hidden in my car got us the needed petrol, and after driving home and back again we decided to make the most of the remainder of our day head back toward the park. Among other reasons, we wanted to try out our new camera and some new-to-us photo techniques. Off to Yosemite we went, and am I ever glad we did.

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I thought that on my dad’s 80th birthday it would be appropriate to talk about the greatest dad in the world.
Then I thought, “No I should write about the best public relations guy in Sacramento.
I thought briefly that I’d spend some time discussing one of the shrewdest businessmen I know.

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We’ve been haunting our driveway and front and back yards on and off since 1995, but 2012 was the second year that all the neighbors and a bunch of friends chipped in to help. It’s also the second time we charged an entry donation of two cans of food for the Elk Grove Food Bank. Though we thought (and have said) that 2011 was the peak of this event, (“How could we possibly top that?”) I believe we topped it this year. We raised more than a ton of…

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What’s going on here? Steve shows what he’d look like with long blonde hair with Kianna Blake at the cabin on Memorial Day weekend. This is a teaser of the upcoming video The Shave 2 the sequel to the much acclaimed home movie of Emily and Patrick shaving daddy’s beard. Emily did the dirty work this time and we took over 200 photos along the way.

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Something’s up… It’s April Fools Day and the day is nearly over and no one has even made a feeble attempt to pass off a gag or practical joke. I don’t trust my family. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not planning something.

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Okay, really, why don’t the kids get up this easily on school days? For most of us it was the excitement of hitting Universal Studios for the day, but for Patrick it seemed it was the pancake machine in the hotel lobby.

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