Darryl's Big Events

Hello from Elk Grove. We have 100 degree weather this week! Lucky for us this is some of the first hot weather we have had. Despite the heat, we are having so much fun.

Darryl is the big star of the month. He turned 30 on July 1st and all the stars aligned for him this year. He was recently promoted with KPMG and he was appointed to a Company Command position with the California National Guard. For his birthday we celebrated with a cake and signs made by Tanner and his friends from next door. We hung streamers all over the kitchen and played games and opened presents as a family after dinner to celebrate. As a surprise for Darryl I invited our very good friends the Murphy's to dinner on Friday July 2nd. Mike Murphy and Darryl became friends while we lived in Fremont and the Murphy's now live about 2 hours south of us in Merced. Mike won the great friend prize by keeping our dinner date even though he had to drive all the way from a business meeting in LA to join us on Friday night. Dinner was awesome. We ate at the Rio City Cafe in Old Town Sacramento. It's a great restaurant on the waterway with beautiful back patio seating. The food was good and the company fantastic. We even stopped at the candy shop across the road for some salt water taffy tasting to finish off the evening.
Darryl's other great event was his change of command ceremony for the National Guard. He became the commander of the Alpha Company 340th Brigade Support Battalion. The ceremony was nice and the outgoing commander received gifts and a lot of praise. The Battalion Commander spoke and gave some great advice. During the ceremony the guidon, or company flag, was passed to Darryl and he was able to give a brief speech about his plans for the future. He did a great job and he is excited for the opportunity to be the decision maker and create a strong unit for the next 2 years. We were glad to have our wonderful family there to support us. In attendance were Darryl's cousin Ryan Nielson, my aunt Susan Hartley and cousin Robert Hartley, my Uncle Bruce and Aunt Wendy Darrington. After the ceremony we went to the Darrington's for a great BBQ and relaxing afternoon with the family.








July has been amazing for the 4th of July festivities as well. After the birthday we went to a great swim party and BBQ on Saturday July 3rd at the Elk Grove Racket Club. We played games and swam and ate all afternoon. The kids had a blast throwing poppers and streamers to celebrate Independence Day.















On Sunday we continued our tradition of celebrating holidays with other families that are in California without a lot of family nearby. Dinner was at our house this time and we ended up with 10 adults and 7 kids. The Carr family, the Valdez family, the Ryan Family and our family contributed what we had in our pantries and fridges to a potluck dinner and blew off a few fireworks with our neighbors in the street out front. We laughed when the kids wanted to become super heros all evening and put on safety goggles to enhance the super powers. Most of the kids didn't love the fireworks. The sparklers went well and nobody got burned so it was a wonderful success.


The boys and I have also been on some great summer field trips. We went to the Oakland Zoo with a bunch of our Fremont friends. Tanner and Parker were all over the place. Tanner liked grooming the goats, watching the elephants, looking at the sea otters and exploring the bug exhibit about leaf cutter ants. Parker liked the bats and the lily pads floating on the water. I liked the company of all the other moms. We had fun with the kids. It was hot, but fun to help them discover new animals and experiences.

Our other fun field trip was to the Stockton Children's Museum. The whole museum is geared toward the local region. It explains what is grown, produced and supplied to the area. There are also exhibits about the police and fire department. Tanner liked the bones exhibit and Parker loved the balls that flew through a tube and down some ramps. I liked all of the exhibits related to magnets and how they work. We spent all morning at the museum and had a lot of fun. We went with the Leger family and the kids helped each other to learn and put on a puppet show for us. All the kids painted their faces. We had so much fun the kids came back and crashed out.One of my favorite events of the month was girl's night out at Macaroni Grill. My friend Suzette is a singer at the restaurant so she gets a great discount when we go. All of us are moms and we escaped one night for some fun. It was a delicious meal and we laughed and talked until it was so late we couldn't stay any longer. My favorite part of the evening was the fact that it was not a gripe session about kids or spouses. It was an evening of fun stories and great advice on how to handle our lives. I came home excited to be a mom another day and that was worth every moment.

We are looking forward to some more adventures and we can't believe how fast the summer is going by.