"Picture" Day

Hello All,

Here are the many faces of Dylan. The first two are when Dylan lost his 2 front teeth. The one with his "Flame" pajamas was taken on January 2, 2013 and the other was taken just 10 days later.






Then there is one of my favorites. It was taken at Frank Raines park in Patterson. the Picture has Dylan, hanging off the back, his best friend, Daniel, Sofia (left) and Alina (right), Daniel's sisters.



The picture below is of Dylan and my first fishing trip together. We didn't catch any fish but we both had a blast!










This next picture was in October of 2012. They had "Nerd Day" at Dylan's school. His mom and sister, Samantha, dressed him. He loved it!







And the next one is Dylan and his beautiful mom, Lisa. This was taken April 2012 when we were visiting my sister, Delia, and her husband Randy. We were there for Easter and to see my family.



I will be adding more photos as I try to catch you up on the many years that have passed between blogs.
This was mostly pictures but the next ones will be filled with more stories.

Be Blessed,

Richard

Fish Tank Saga

Hello everyone,
Today we talk about fish. Dylan had won a goldfish at the Almond Blossom Festival in Ripon, CA  February of 2012 and had it in a bag when he got home. I have a 220 gallon fish tank with Cichlids (which are an aggressive breed). I also had an extra small tank so I put the goldfish in that one.

I finally got tired of feeding the goldfish separately from the others so I explained to Dylan that I will be putting the fish into the big tank and he might not be there tomorrow.

 The fish survived!...Until a week ago.

I was looking at the tank and noticed that the goldfish wasn't there so I took a good long look. I had also got him a friend since he was lasting so long. I didn't see either one of them swimming anywhere. I didn't say anything to Dylan because he gets pretty emotional about these things.

He noticed a week ago...

Yes, he got upset and didn't understand why his friends would eat him. He kept saying " ...but it was a prize! I won it!" I couldn't stop the crying so I did what any father whose son was non-stop crying would do. I promised him his own fish tank.

Now we skip forward to this last weekend (May 11-12, 2013). We were helping My Mother and Father-in-law with their garage sale. Our nephew, Joey Perkins, brought some of his jun...stuff to sell. One of his items was, you guessed it, a 10 gallon fish tank!

I bought it and brought it home. Having such a big tank I had extra things like rocks and fake plants to fill it.

Now for the fish. when you think of the best tropical fish money can buy , of course, you think of Wal-Mart. This is where we purchased our fish mainly because it was the closest store and it was open late (we got into the store at 9:00pm). We got a goldfish, a striped Tiger Barb and a plecostamus (sucker fish). I told Dylan that we would get some more fish later. He was fine with that. Here is the tank:

Today I went with Dylan and we purchased 2 more fish. They were similar to the Barb but one was orange and one was green. When we went to pay for them I noticed that the green one had gone belly up! I told Dylan that we should go back and return it, just then, the fish started swimming again. Dylan said, "He was just tricking us" and said that he wanted to keep it. I of course said "okay" and proceeded to purchase and take home the two new additions.

I placed the bag in the water, waited until the bag water acclimated to the tank water and dropped the fish in. It wasn't long before Dylan noticed the fish swimming "funny". He said "The fish is on its back and its talking!". I tried not to laugh out loud. The visual was very familiar to someone who has had fish tanks for a long time but for a 6-year-old it was devastating! So...off to Wal-mart with almost dead "Lloyd" in hand ( Yes, he had already name it). I was able to exchange him for another fish which took way longer than expected and brought the new member of the household home.

We will see if the fish are still there in the morning. As for me, I must get some sleep. I don't know what I got myself into but only time will tell. I will definitely keep you informed of the "fish saga".

Good Night All,

Richard

This is an older draft that never got posted because it was not complete.
Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas !!!

I hope all of you had a great Christmas this year. as for us, we had a great time with family and friends.


Catching up... Dylan got a birthday haircut( his birthday is November 17th) and was pretty good this time. Of course I had to bribe him with gifts and balloons. At the end, he still wasn't too happy as you can see. He had a great birthday and was very happy with all his friends coming over. We had a jumping house, a pinata and of course all things Veggie Talestm.

It's been awhile

Hello all,
Due to some technical difficulties I was unable to write on this blog. but that is for another time. Suffice it to say that I have some catching up to do.

So much to say. Dylan is now 6 and is in first grade at Walnut Grove Elementary school which is a dual-immersion school. He is learning both Spanish and English and right now the ratio is 80% Spanish and 20% English. He is doing well now but when he first started kindergarten the ratio was 90%/10% so very little English was spoken in class. I was a wreck thinking that he would not understand the teacher (who, by the way, spoke only Spanish). He did and is doing great.

He has done so many wonderful thing in the time that has passed I am sad that I will not be able to recount all of them because of the first sentence in this blog. 

So starting today this is what I have for you. My not-so-little boy was in the shower this evening and was singing at the top of his lungs. I was able to run downstairs and grab my phone and took this video (It is "G" rated). I know it is sideways but you only have to listen. He is singing a song called "I am Redeemed".

I have to tell you that if you are even a little impressed that I was able to put this video in this blog I have to give full credit to my beautiful and talented wife, Lisa. This blog will be short but it will have been 3 hours of trying to add, edit, install, uninstall and re-install this one video. My wife takes over and in minutes she has it uploaded and running. I really love her!

This blog will continue at least weekly or if Dylan does some note-worthy event that deems attention. For now I will say goodnight.

Be Blessed,
Richard