A story from Race

Burt and the Tsunami

One day this 200 foot tall giant named Burt was eating breakfast at the Giant Chef Burger on the bay. Then the wind started blowing; it blew for 24 hours. The wind blew so hard that it caused a tsunami!

It took five hours to reach land. When it did, Burt came in his crane and he climbed up on the hook. Someone operated it and flung him to the tsunami and the tsunami flung him to the moon.

Bert was stuck on moon for hours. He had to hold his breath because there is no air on the moon. As he began to run out of breath he saw a meteor flying by. He jumped on it and rode the meteor back to earth.

Burt crashed into the tsunami and stopped it from hitting land. He saved the whole town of tiny people. The mayor, Mr. Short Pickle of little town, awarded him with the highest honor of all, to be the mayor for a week and have a huge party.

California Missions and More--the video

Here's a clip of Race as Father Junipero Serra. It's a rather large mpg file and may take a few minutes to download. Click Here for the Video or click on the post title.

March 29th--Happy Birthday to Race

Race had a busy birthday! Wednesday night the Mustang club was over for a Board Meeting and they sang Happy Birthday and he was thrilled to share and ice cream cake with the club members. Thursday: his actual birthday started with 10 balloons distributed throughout the house each with a box or bag attached. Each box or bag contained a $10 bill! Dean ran down to Min's Kitchen and got Race his favorite breakfast, chicken fried steak, to go. Elizabeth and Race had made Chocolate Chip muffins and Race took them to school for all of his classmates to enjoy and help celebrate his birthday. In the evening, twenty-three neighbors, friends and relatives showed up for pizza and cake.

March 24-25 Come hang out with us

Dean and his race team are fielding two cars for the Lemons race at Infineon next weekend. Come up on Saturday and hang out. The race is from 9-5. At 5:00 the beer comes out and we're having a taco feed. Don't be surprised if SPAM is on the menu. Here's a preview of the SPAM car and Dean's SPAM Can costume. The other car is themed as Soylent Green Eggs completing the odd pulp movie, Dr Seuss, Lunch meat, Monty Python combination the "Soylent Green Eggs and SPAM" team is fielding. Check out the can key peeling back the hood on the SPAM car.

4th Grade California History play

Race played Father Junipero Serra and actually sang a duet! He also appeared as a California Indian and an American Farmer. Twenty-two friends and family members showed up to watch him perform. I think Race's fan club made up about a quarter of the audience.

Blue Devils Special Needs Flag Team

We attended a rehearsal of the Blue Devils newest flag team. These teens and adults are all special needs. Our Lions Club is sponsoring them by providing their uniform t-shirts for their first competition at the end of the month. Our friend Liz Lamach is showing off the t-shirt back.

California history project

Mission san luis obisbo is ready to turn in. 

Race's latest essay, for your enjoyment

The Greatest Gift

By Race Cofer

God gave me my greatest gift which is Jesus Christ. Jesus is my greatest gift because he died to save me from my sins. Jesus is caring because he teaches us about God. Jesus is my best gift because he gave me eternal life.

In the Bible it shows that Jesus was crucified. 1 Corinthians 15:3 says, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” In 1 Peter 3:18, Peter writes this, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.” This teaches us about Jesus' sacrifice to save us from our sins.

I can prove that Jesus teaches to believe in God, to faithful and caring. In Matthew 4:23, Matthew tells us that, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” John 3:2 tells us that Jesus was a teacher. John wrote about how the Pharisee, Nicodemus, “…came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him. ‘”

Here is the best reason why Jesus my greatest gift. John 3:16 tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus died to give us eternal life. Romans 10:9-10 says, “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Eternal life means that we die, but if we believe, our soul still lives in Heaven with God and Jesus.

I’ve shown the reasons why Jesus is the greatest gift by dying for our sins. I’ve shown Jesus cares because he teaches about God. Jesus wants our soul to live forever if we believe in him. So I can say that Jesus is the greatest gift because he did all these great things for us.

1/11/12 Chapel

Today was the 4th grades chance to shine. They were the featured class at today's school Chapel and Race had a line. He recited a bible quote about being faithful. They also performed a few rousing songs. Yes, he was having a bad hair day. This is the first time I used my new camera in the school Chapel and I am really pleased with the results.

Last week was pretty good for Race. He got an "A" on his Compare and Contrast report and he learned to use a Plasma cutter. Yes, sitting on the report is a piece of the Lemons car that Race helped cut up for scrap. He also spent a few hours scraping stickers off of the other Lemons car.

Pack meeting

Our Webelos moved from their Cub Scout blue shirts to Boy Scout green tonight. They're growing up fast; only one more year as Cubs

The less intelligent members of the family at play!

Daddy is way too smart to ice skate.

Races Miwok diorama is done

I wish you could see the clay fish on the back of the drying rack behind the bear skin. I really like the shell necklace Race and Elizabeth made. -Dean

Finally, the leaves are falling.

Race finally got a big enough pile of leaves to jump into!  Yeah!

Race and Papa Mike went shooting today

And Race fired his 22 rifle for the first time.  You can see he did really well.

How Tall is Race?

Yesterday we made our yearly pilgrimage to the pumpkin patch and got our 2011 picture of Race standing in front of the big measuring stick. He didn't grow as much this year as in some past years, but he is growing.

Fall Show: Go, Go Jonah

Without a doubt this was the wildest school production Race has ever taken part in. We actually lost track of him numerous times during the show as the kids relocated throughout the theater, next to us, behind us, in front of us, everywhere. It was non-stop energy. Race played a sailor on the boat taking Jonah to Nineveh, a citizen of Nineveh and even had a rap solo at one point. I wish we'd taken the video camera, but you will have to be satisfied with a couple of still photos.

Horse back

We went horseback riding in Sunol-Ohlone park.  Race and Elizabeth enjoyed it so much they may take lessons.

Redwood Coast

Ok, this is a bit overdue, but we took a substantial detour when we picked Race up at Nana and Papa's house in Oregon. On the first day of our detour we went to Carter Lake, the Rogue River Gorge and then on to Crescent City where we played on the beach, took a walk on the breakwater and visited the lighthouse. We spent the night at a quaint little hotel on the highway called the Curly Redwood Lodge. The hotel is built primarily from redwood and all of the redwood came form the same tree. The next day we made our way down to Fort Bragg doing all of the tourist stuff on the way. We went to Big Trees, hiked a couple of miles through Redwood National Park, played on the beach, waded in a river and tried to catch frogs and tadpoles and taught Race to skip rocks. Crossing the Klamath River Elizabeth enthused, "there's a whale in the river, pull over." We stopped and walked out on to the highway bridge with all of the other looky-loo's and took some pictures of the whale. We were saddened to learn later that the whale died the next day. We spent the night in Fort Bragg and got an early start the next morning heading for Fort Ross. We had a great time wandering around the fort. The morning fog was just thick enough to hide the highway and nearby modern construction. It didn't take much imagination get an eery feeling of stepping back in time. We continued on down the coast and ended up in Petaluma for lunch and a tour of Mrs Grossman's Sticker Factory. It was actually pretty cool and we walked out with hundreds of sticker samples and scrapbooks to finish at home. We were surprised that Mrs Grossman had expanded her line and now, in addition to craft stickers, printed wine bottle labels for Ironstone, Coppola, etc. We arrived home in the early evening exhausted after our 3-day whirlwind trip through Oregon and down the Oregon Coast.

Lemons at Thunderhill August 7th and 8th

We managed to finish 61st and 114th at Thunderhill. In the process of this pitiful accomplishment we managed to blow the 14 cars engine and wreck the 11 car so well that we bought a replacement car from another race team. Yeah, we sucked! Here's an entirely unflattering picture of me in our Deff Lepoard costumes that we wore to tech the cars. Yep, scary, but the live guitar solo by teammate Ian during tech was a big hit.

Landscaping Progress

The backyard is close to looking like, well, a backyard. The irrigation, lawn, and paths are in. The traffic light and all the outside lights are now operated by wireless remote control and, today, we put Race's gas station back together.

Lake Tahoe

We spent Friday and Saturday at a Camp Concord work weekend. Lake Tahoe on an 85 degree day is a wonderful place to be. While we worked on cleanup and deck building, Race went off with the other kids and camp counselors for a visit with Smokey the Bear, pedal boating on the lake and building sand castles on Pope Beach.

Amtrack

Race and Dean are on there way to Sacramento for the day on Amtrack.  Why? Why just for the fun of it.

Some June Pictures

These are some pictures of Race degreasing the bottom of Elizabeth's '65 Mustang. Note the responsible use of safety gear.

Not so fun

We're spending the afternoon at the emergency room.  Race smashed his finger, tore his finger nail loose, we'r waiting on the xrays to see if it's broken.  He is his mothers child.

Update: it's broken, the tip if his finger is broken free.  He also lost the nail and has damage to his nail band.  It took three stitches, one internal, to pull his finger tip back together.  We won't be leaving for Oregon to stay with Nana today, after all.  Maybe Sunday.

Big fun on the street

There a new girl Race's age on the block and she has an electric scooter.  It might be love!  Well at least he's in love with her scooter.