So I’ve had the iPad for a few weeks now and I must say, I am totally diggin’ it.

I mean, really loving it.

It hasn’t replaced my MacBook Pro, but with the way I use it (reading (a lot of) blogs, reading books & PDF’s, bible reading/study, surfing the web, email, streaming music, basic note taking), the iPad has become my de facto, go to device for my day to day needs.

It is by no means a perfect device or a total substitute for my laptop, especially when it comes to fancy documents or spreadsheets, but it’s pretty close. This article is pretty good summation of my overall thoughts.

Although, there’s this article that says iPad owners are “elitists”, but only someone who doesn’t own one would say that. Even then, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, so my reply is a hearty “neener neener neener”. (The article didn’t mention anything abut us being immature, so there.)

Aaron
sent by iPad

July isn’t over yet & it’s already proven to be a crazy busy month, busy enough to keep me from updating this blog (not that I update it that regular anyway, but still). At least it sure feels like it’s crazy bizzay.

Because I am tired & lazy & can’t believe 2010 is halfway over don’t want to write a ginormous update, I’ll just add the highlights in photos.

UPDATE:  I forgot to add that we sort-of-almost moved to Washington state.

Lana at Sports Camp at church. She wanted to be a cheerleader (of course). That's her at the top of the pyramid (of course).

Ian's new metro do

Ian's RED themed birthday party

Ian's birthday cookie. Not sure what happened to his red clothes for his red birthday party.

Impromptu dinner with Shelly's cousin from Hawaii in Manhattan Beach where the entire restaurant sang Happy Birthday to Ian. So awesome!

Our usual group self portrait, this time in the pool on our Palm Desert getaway weekend

We went to a princess birthday party for a friend’s daughter who turned 4 years old, I think.  Because it was a princess party, the parents rented hired a Cinderella princess from one of those party places.  Only she didn’t quite look like Cinderella.

Now, the Cinderella we all know and love is from the animated Disney film from 1950 where she is wearing a blue gown, has blond hair, and is, well, white.  This Cinderella rental actress look-alike that came to the party would have been better as an almost Hispanic Jasmine.  I mean, she had the blue gown, the blond wig and was pretty enough but isn’t quite as fair skinned as the one from the film.  But that’s not all…

This Cinderella is also an artist paints faces.  Most of the girls got frilly butterflies or swirly-sparkly stuff lathered painted on their faces.  They were all very cute.  One was supposed to be a cat but I swear looked more like a jack-o-lantern and another was supposed to be a puppy but looked more like Chewbacca or Barf the Mog from Space Balls but the adults finally concluded she was more like Teen Wolf.

Oh, and Cinderella also made balloon animals.

Just think about what this might look like…picture a pretty sort-of hispanic Jasmine wearing a blonde wig and Cinderella’s blue gown painting little girl’s faces to look like jack-o-lanterns and Mog’s then using her gloved hands to pump air into skinny balloons twisting & contorting them into balloon wiener dogs.

Yeah, it’s that weird.

While the girls had fun with “Cinderella”, us boys went to the school down the street and played with rockets.

Aaron

Shelly & Lana are trying to see if they can hula hoop together.

See if you can figure out what Ian thinks of it.

Aaron

One of Lana’s recent classroom assignments was to write a story so she wrote about Christmas.

She wrote it in April.

Below is her story, including her spelling and punctuation.

One Crismas morning we were going to get our Crismas tree.  When we got home we saw lodes of pressents.  Me and Ian beged mother and fother if we can open our pressents they said, “sher you can!”  We cried, “Yepy!”  The first pressents I opend I tor the paper off and it was a mug.  It was blue, dark blue.  I yelled, “Can I put some hot cocoe in my mug?”  They said, “Not right now ok dear.”  I was lafing and said, “But mom I really want it.”  You know what, I had joos in it but not hot cocoe!

It’s obviously a cute story coming from the imagination of a 1st grader.  Except I wonder if she wrote the whole story based on the last sentence, where she had “joos… but not hot cocoe”.  I don’t know if it has a deeper meaning, if any meaning at all.  I’m sure we did tell her juice & not hot cocoa because it totally sounds like something we would tell her because we were lazy & didn’t want to take the time to boil the water concerned about her spilling the hot cocoa & burning herself.

I just find it interesting that’s the one detail, out of everything that happened during Christmas, that she decided to write about.  I wonder what she remembers about other events.  Or what she is going to remember when she gets older, like family vacations, her high school years or her wedding.

I just hope her eulogy for my funeral is accurate and includes more than memories of being turned down for joos.

Aaron

Sometimes the best weekend trips are the ones that require little to no planning, are cheap, and last only a few hours.  And sometimes they are almost too good for words, and nothing really happened!  We left home around 11am, went to a beach in Malibu, had shaved ice and came home around dinner time.  That’s it.  Nothing fancy, nothing elaborate.

Sure, it was kind of a far drive just to go the beach considering we live next a city with “beach” in its name.  But there is something to be said about getting away from your familiar surroundings, getting away from your ‘hood, that can turn even a routine event into something that exceeds your expectations.

So the extra miles was worth the extra gas.

Worth the time on the freeway.

Worth the $20 lunch at McDonald’s.  (Just because we visit Malibu doesn’t mean we have to spend like we live in Malibu.)

Worth not paying for parking.

Worth having a nearly empty beach to ourselves.

Worth meeting a little girl that somehow befriended and hung out with us.

Worth playing chicken against the waves with my kids.

Worth spending quality time with the family.

Aaron

It’s for business not pleasure, but check out where it’s at!  Quiksilver + the beach = FUN!

Since she can’t download Skype on her work laptop, we’ll be chatting every night via TokBox.  (I heart the interweb!)

View Larger Map

**Stupid Google Maps may not be embeding correctly.  If you don’t see a map above, click on “View Larger Map” to see where Shelly is going.**

Shelly’s One Bird Alley side business is starting to flesh out more, at least in it’s web presence.  She hired a designer who created the website and logos, pictured below.  I’m working on setting up & tweaking the blog, using WordPress and the Standard Theme.  We’ll be posting more in the near future of how it’s going.  Stay tuned!

Lana & Ian got new shades the other day.  Ian almost lost them ON THE FIRST DAY.  The boy would have lost his head if it wasn’t tethered to his shoulders.

Aaron