Fall 2002

Diana Maloney

My little sister Diana went and got married in August to a guy named Matt. The wedding was in Portland, OR at a place called the Heathman Lodge. Here is Diana, Matt, and our Mom taking some wedding pics.

Here are the brothers, Grant, Mark, and Scott (with Jackson at the bottom of the picture) in our tuxedos after the ceremony. I'm sure it's the last time all three of us were in tuxedos, since, well, since the last time one of us got married.

Here is the Palmer family table. There was a mix-up and the Palmers originally didn't get a table, but we rearranged some place cards and took this one. The food at Diana's wedding was really good.

Here are the cousins standing in a garden outside the lodge. It was nice to get all the kids together. Julia is getting very tall. The kids really liked to swim in the pool and workout in the hotel gym.

2nd Grade

Jackson is in second grade and his teacher is Mrs Kirchner. I'm once again volunteering in the class as is Lisa. After a couple of early year behavioral adjustments (Jackson called Mrs Kirchner a "moron" at one point), Jackson seems to be doing very well. Mrs Kirchner emphasizes creative writing, and the kids are always writing stories. Some of them are pretty good. My favorite recent story was by a girl named Erica who wrote about an elf who got laid off.

Lisa's New Life

Lisa made a life decision in August. She left her job at Phelps Dodge and is going to go back to school to become a teacher. She used to tease me about sleeping in until 7:15 every morning but she very quickly got into to the sleeping-in habit. In this picture, Zachary and I are encouraging Lisa "to get up and greet the new day with a hearty 'How are you'". Her response was something like "#$!%*".

Once Lisa gets out of bed, she has lots of time to spend with Zachary. We cut him back to three half-days at daycare a week, so on Tuesday and Thursday Lisa and Zachary spend the entire day together. Lisa is pretty good about coming up with activities like baking cookies.

Zachary has been ready to start school since he was about three years old. Next year he gets his chance. He is a little upset that Jackson will also be ahead of him. One day I had to explain to Zachary why he couldn't start school in the third grade. We got him some preschool workbooks so he could practice his letters and stuff.

Halloween 2002

Halloween rolled around like it always does and this year. Zachary, ever on the cutting edge of Halloween costumes, was spiderman. There were three other Spidermen at his daycare costume party. Jackson was Goku. If you know who Goku is, you watch way too many cartoons. Jackson wanted to make clear that he was Big Goku as opposed to Little Goku.

Even in Arizona the seasons change. Actually we have two seasons - the hot season and the cold season. Spring and Fall last for about three weeks each. The boys, not wanting to give up on Summer, wanted to have a marshmallow roast one night. We used candles.

Fall Sports

Once it wasn't quite so hot outside, we signed the boys up for Fall team sports. Jackson is 7 years old now, so he joined a 7-9 Kid-pitch baseball team. Kid-pitch is totally different from T-ball. There is none of this "keep swinging until you hit the ball" with kid-pitch baseball. It's three strikes and your out. Jackson's team was definitely the youngest and smallest in the league. The other teams were filled with 5 foot tall "9" year olds who could throw 60 mile an hour fastballs. Jackson's team did manage to win one game during the season. Jackson never hit the ball, but he did walk a few times and scored a couple of runs.

Zachary switched sports and tried T-ball. He joined a 3-4 year old league. In this picture, Zachary is on base being advised by one of the coaches. There were usually about as many coaches on the field as there were players. The coaches job was to tell the kids where to run and, in my case, to explain to Zachary why every ball wouldn't be hit to him and that occasionally some of the other members of his team would make the play.

Zachary didn't quite get the concept of swinging. He was more likely to chop downward at the ball. His team was full of four year olds with a lot of experience at T-ball. Some of them wore batting gloves and would slide into home. The nice thing about T-ball is there aren't any outs. Every kid gets on base and gets to score runs.

Visit from Grandpa

Grandpa Ken and Grandma Barbara came down for a visit in October. It was hiking weather so Lisa and Ken took the boys to South Mountain. Jackson is a real nature-boy. He loves to go hiking. Zachary likes the concept of hiking, but when he's doing it he decides that it would be better without all the walking around.

A proper hike takes some planning and some command decisions along the way. Jackson, Zachary, and grandpa seem to be having a high-level meeting in this picture. Maybe they are assessing their water supply. Maybe they are deciding whether to attempt the West Face or the Deadman's Crevasse.

Jackson was telling me just the other day, "If you aren't living on the edge, you are taking up too much space, Dad". I think I was on the couch watching TV at the time. In this picture, Jackson and Zachary learned something about themselves by reaching the summit of the 1,345 foot high National Trail at South Mountain. It was a dangerous challenge, but they are better little boys because of the experience.