Here I am taking the kids for a boat ride at Deadmans Basin, a local reservoir where we like to go camping, fishing, boating, and for fun in general. This was the first vacation and outing I allowed myself to go on after two years of severe illness, and a year of intense chemotherapy. 
It was fun to start living again... even at Deadmans Basin!
(forgive the hat, but the splotchy hair loss due 
to the chemotherapy had to be hidden)
 

This is Jesse, and is Sylvia's oldest son.
He is quite an athelete and is destined for
stardom in Major League Baseball someday.
He is a very responsible young man and I
wish more youths his age would follow his example.
He is one in a million. Good luck Jess...
and NO, you cannot borrow the car!!!
 

This is Christopher, Sylvia's middle son, and my biggest helper. Chris takes after his mother in the fact that he is an avid outdoorsman and loves to fish and explore. He also has a great love for the many critters that we call family.
Without the help that Chris has given me around here,
I would have been ready for the scrap heap long ago!


This is Daniel, Sylvia's youngest son and my little buddy.
Daniel is also an avid animal lover, and loves to help out with the 
feeding and watering of the vast collection of critters we now have. 
His second love are his two gerbils... Oreo and Maxine.
His third love is Godzilla and Dinosaurs...
glad we do not have any of those around!

This is Sylvia. She and I were childhood sweethearts, as she was my first love, and I was hers. We met as kids in Petaluma, a small ranch and farming community in Northern California. My family moved to San Jose California a few years after  we met and Sylvia and I eventually lost contact with each other. Thanks to my Father, we came together again after some  23 years of separation, yet it seemed as if we were never apart at all.
Thank you Lord.
 

Sylvia and I in our younger days...
back when dinosaurs ruled the earth!
 

"If today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the natural way of my forefathers and that of the... present way of civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an Indian!"

"We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit."

-Tom Brown, Jr., The Tracker