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Wow two post in two days! I’m starting off this year with a bang!

So to end our vacation with some good old (and by old I mean new) fashioned fun! We invited some friends over on Friday of last week to just come hang out, bring the kids and then get your Rock Band on! We loaded up the new Xbox with the jamming new Rock Band 2 and “we proceeded to tear that hotel down!” The hotel just happened to be our pad and man this game is fun when you got three or four people ripping up the instruments. It’s hilarious to watch people when they are thrust into the spotlight and see how they handle the pressures of making it or getting booed off the stage. Thanks to all our friends that showed up to rock the night away and the kids seemed to have a blast too. The only down side to the night was not busting out my camera to take photos :(  Man that just never happens with me anymore and here on a night where a great mix of new and old friends mingled together to get their jams out I forgot the freakin’ camera. Oh well, that just means ROCK BAND PARTY 2, BABY!

The last day of vacation before work and school started back up, we took Jaden to visit the Griffith Park Observatory. The newly renovated building, underground rooms and the Leonard Nemoy Theater are great. But it’s the updated planetarium that just rocks! It show’s this killer movie called Centered in the Universe and runs you through the history of stars and space exploration. It’s a great way to spen a lazy Sunday afternoon and remember to stick around for one of the coolest sunset views in L.A. We left there all filled up on science, space and planets and J even got a souvenir Meteorite that is over 4,000 year old! Wicked cool for all you fans of space!

Wow! I completely missed December! What was I thinking? Anyway, I had started writing a post mid-December and just lost track of time and space apparently. Well now I’m getting things back on track for the new year. So let’s recap the past month and maybe even throw in a handful of photos for all you visual entertainment folks out there.

As my good buddy Ferris likes to say “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Thanksgiving was at my Uncle and Aunt’s house, due to my grandmother having surgery and the a slight accident as a result of the surgery. It seems she had a pretty serious operation done on her inner ear which of course made her equilibrium a bit out of whack and she took a nasty fall, hit her head, and blacked out resulting in her heading back to the hospital with a nasty gash on her head. She is doing much better and says that she can hear like 80 percent better than she has for the past 60 plus years! I’m telling ya that modern medicine is pretty spiffy! So turkey day was moved and we all seemed to have a pretty good time with tons of good food and fun, hangin’ with family.

While my mom was in town watching J through the long Thanksgiving weekend, Karen and I headed out to Pasadena to see our friends Andy and Crissy. We ended up having a few drinks at this groovy bar/club/pool hall and then grabbing dinner at the Crepe Vine Bistro which is a must visit for anyone reading this who is planning on visiting Pasadena anytime soon. Thanks to Andy and Crissy for a much needed getaway and an all around fun night out.

We rolled in December with a trip to Disneyland thanks to my old pal Lawrence and his brother. This time, however, we ended up spending most of the night in California Adventure because 1) We’ve never really been to that park and, 2) They are undergoing a complete overhaul on it that should be done by 2011, I believe. Oh and by the way, the plans look AMAZING for the newish park! We also can’t emphasize how cool that new Toy Story ride is… it blows Buzz Lightyear AWAY! The next night was our annual trip to the Belmont Shore Christmas Parade. Maybe it was because of the cold weather, but it certainly seemed more festive this year. We started the parade off with a dinner at Domenico’s where lot’s of friends showed up and then joined the us at the parade. Overall, a very nice evening for everyone.

Next up, Christmas and that meant grandma was coming back out to spend time with the J-man and and that gave me and Karen a chance to get away for a few days! We spent the day (after I got off work) at my Uncle’s again and played our Feikema version of the white elephant gift stealing game. We also went with a more non traditional barbeque style dinner and was a nice change of pace from the old ham and turkey routine. Later that night we bailed from my family’s gig and headed over to our friends Sam and Lisa’s household. We all exchanged gifts for the kids and stuck around for awhile talking and eating with the Barreras.

By Saturday, Karen and I were off to L.A. for a local getaway at the Georgian Hotel for a couple of days of peace and quiet. The hotel was beautiful and very 1920s L.A Art Deco style that faced the Santa Monica Pier.We walked around the 3rd street promenade that night for some shopping and dinner and ended up catching the late showing of Milk with Sean Penn. A great film with incredible performances by everyone involved and definitely an Oscar for Mr. Penn. The next day we drove up into the Hollywood hills to do some sight seeing and after an hour or so we headed back down to the city for reservation at the Dome on Sunset to see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Another outstanding film, although a little odd for maybe some people’s tastes, but still a really enjoyable film. It’s extremely spooky at how good the effects are getting nowadays. The work they did on Brad Pitt and even Cate Blanchett was spectacular. Our mini vacation ended with good food, two good movies and spending it all with my best friend, my wife Karen. Perfection!

We rang out the year with a new Xbox for Christmas and tons of game time, but one last trip was in store for us with J to the La Brea Tarpits. This time we spent our time on actual tours and got a run through on the museum and then it was outside to an actual excavation site!

The Evanskey’s Halloween quest.

J’s school had their annual trunk or treat festival for Halloween where the kids line upto get treats out of decorated car trucks that are provided by PTA members and volunteer parents. K was there to take pictures and then watch as the kids lined up afterward for a costume parade.

By the time I got home, K and J were getting ready for some serious trick or treatin’. K was going as a Morticia/witch hybrid and J was his favorite cartoon character Ben 10 with a working Omnitrix (that comes with a humungosaur hologram!) We headed over to J’s school friend’s house a block away from ours where we proceeded to trick and treat every house possible, at least for a street or two. At that point, and over one street another friend was having a kid friendly Halloween party. We stopped in and let the kids play in the backyard for awhile. After that we left our neighborhood and headed to another Halloween party in Signal Hill at another friend of J’s house whose parent are friends of ours as well. This was a much bigger party with a live band and was a mix between kid party and the mom’s birthday party.

Saturday was a small poker party over at our friends Sam and Lisa’s place. The kids got to play and run while we got to relax and play some cards. The fun part was this tiome Karen wanted to learn how to play and I spent most of the evening teaching her the basics of the Texas Holdem.

Sunday was our lazy day although we did get to clean a little bit of the house. Most of the day was us playing with Jaden at the park and then a movie at the end of the day. We rented Nim’s Island and I actually got a kick out of it. It’s a fun adventure story about a girl and her father who live on a remote island where the father is a scientist and get’s lost at sea and the girl befriends an agorophobic novelist who writes “Indiana Jones” style books who comes to her rescue on the island. It’s cute movie for what it’s worth although I felt there could have been a bit more story and background. Even kids movies need some substance.

But make sure to pick the right cookie!

I had started a post about 10 days into September and put it on hold for what I thought would be a day or two, and suddenly we were halfway through October and I thinkin’ where the hell did September go?

So much has happened in a month and a half that it’s hard to find a good jumping off point, so let’s just go all chronological on ya:

J started first grade on Wednesday, September 3rd and is having a blast hanging with some old friends and quite a few new ones too. His math and spelling skills are continuing to build out of control. I think he’ll be ready for calculus by 2nd grade. J’s birthday was that first weekend after school started and we had one heckuva party. He invited a select few to have a sleepover party and it was a blast! Click on the picture to see the Flickr set of 1st day of school and party photos.

Some big news on my end is that I started a new job at Toyota Corporate doing some Desktop Publishing and XML stuff similar to what I used to do at IEEE Computer Society. I work some really great people and in a pretty relaxed environment. I’m really diggin’ the new place and it also gives me some time to clean up and add new material and ideas to the game I’m working on. Hopefully I’ll get to present it soon and entertain some offers on it. More updates on that as it develops.

An odd thing happened to the Evanskeys during September and it kinda went like this…

Early in the month I was dropping J off at school and one of the new kinder fathers had rammed into the front end of my Landcruiser, smashing up the front driver side fender, the bumper and the fender flair. So I was in a rental for a few weeks until his insurance covered everything to get it fixed. Anyway the week I get my truck back K’s Jeep gets hit in the exact same spot while dropping off J at school! Unbelievable. Her damage wasn’t as bad and unfortunately the person who hit her didn’t stick around or leave a note! Well we were thinking about upgrading her bumper anyway so we’ll see how this plays out.

Other K news, her knee completely went haywire and for the end of August and the entire month of September K has been going religiously to physical therapy 3 times a week and doing a rigorous daily leg excersice routine to strengthen up her leg. When this all started she couldn’t walk at all without the help of two crutches and now she is off the crutches and no leg brace!

J has been working hard at soccer. He practices once a week and game day is Saturday so we end up being pretty busy with all the practicing and games and school and such. I have a couple of videos up on YouTube and you can check them out here:

Those are some of the highlights of September and I’m hoping to get a few more posts up before October ends!

Last weekend was K’s birthday and we spent it doing a bunch of fun stuff. Friday night we took J over to grandma’s house for a five day visit and K and I were off to see Tropic Thunder. The movie is a laugh riot and Tom Cruise does a memorable job in a small supporting role as a greedy studio head who doesn’t mind dropping quite a few f-bombs and threatening everyone around him.

On Saturday, K and I headed out to Gibson Amphitheater (formerly Universal) and saw Poison, Dokken, and Sebastian Bach in what can only be said was a revitalization of 80s glam to the extreme. All bands were on fire and didn’t let anyone down in the partying department much like the old days of 1988. Sebastian Bach did have a wonderful moment though while singing I Remember You, where he trip backwards over the front PA system and went feet over head upside down. I might even that moment on video! If I do I’ll post it. I guess my only complaint is that it was pretty much a “hits” machine concert. I mean all these bands have enough material to throw in the rare non-hit and Dokken was pretty much the only one that did that by adding “Kiss of Death” to their set list. Well Poison did do a cover version of “What I Like About You” by The Kinks but that actually was a released single from a little over a year ago from their Poisin’d album of all covers. Oh well it was still Nothing But A Good Time at Glamfest ‘08.

Finally on Sunday we saw Pineapple Express and had a great time watching it. Surprisingly, it’s not my favorite Jud Apatow flick but even saying that is a compliment considering that it’s ten times funnier than most of the flicks out there. The thing that threw me off on this one was the attempt to cross breed this with their typical humor and let’s a Quentin Tarantino film… so lots of laughs but a lot of rough violence too. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but somehow unexpected for me. I still liked the movie movie quite a bit and would recommend it over most of the wannabe comedies.

We finished off the birthdayfest on Monday with a wonderful lunch at Lucille’s and one last movie, Vicky Christina Barcelona. Both were excellent and a nice way to cap off the day and the weekend with good drinks, even better food and a top-notch movie.

Actually it’s the non-violent kind of toothless. Yesterday, J lost his first tooth and is prouder than almost anything he’s done so far. On the downside he also lost his first tooth but we reassured him that the tooth fairy keeps a very good spread sheet on all things regarding loose teeth. He’s excited to see what this famous folk lore fairy will bring him as a matter of fact I am too.

This week is sports week at J’s school and specifically tomorrow is “wear your favorite team’s shirt/jersey” day. We here at the Evanskeys aren’t big on the sports apparel so I dug out my old little league uniform and presto J is now going to be a New York Mets fan for the day.

This weekend the Evanskeys headed out on another boating adventure and this time we brought along a fairly new crew with an on board regular or two. We took our new friends north up around our new favorite spot, Palos Verdes Peninsula and cruised around blaring a mix of 80s, 90s, 00s tunes along with some rare gems as we were flying over some hairy-scary lookin’ waves. Chris, our friend from Karen’s work, brought a few of his Hollywood/L.A. friends who were a total blast to hang with. So I just wanted to throw out some props to Lori, Chris, Anna, Amy and Drew. And, Anna, you’re old school Polaroid ROCKED hopefully we can get some copies of those shots! Karen and I had a blast guys and hopefully you’ll want to come out again. Next trip… maybe Catalina!

One day back from vacation and we here at the Evanskey Compound were already prepping for Friday’s school field trip to Soak City, Knott’s Berry Farm. J was amped and I was somehow volunteered into this day of hot sun, sun block and tons of chlorinated water gushing thrill rides. Originally I had 4 kids to keep track of but one canceled and the other one’s parent showed up so it was me chasing and keeping track of two 6 year olds. The day was in the low 90s and the water was flowing like mad phat rip tides and the three of us had a blast. Here’s a quick pic of the day.

Well the Evanskeys did their annual trek up to Shaver Lake and somehow managed to force ourselves to come back to civilization. This year the weather was beautiful everyday and usually peaked at around 90-92 degrees with a wonderful breeze. Not an ounce of humidity to muck up the days and the water was perfectly chilled to cool everyone off on the occasional cove stop. Although we had thought we’d have a smaller group going this year, the turnout actually turned out quite high. Our friends the Barrera’s had a multitude of family show up with plenty of kids to keep the youngsters going nonstop. Here’s a link to some of the pics we took.

Our latest boating adventure has been documented by some photographs and pushed our FLickr account finally over the 1000 mark. Woo hoo! We launched with a specific plan in mind and that was to head North this time. We cruised through the port of Los Angeles and the nearby Ports-O-Call village up to the Vincent Thomas bridge. After that we headed back out to sea and around Palos Verdes peninsula. The water was amazing around the cliffs of Palos Verdes and that’s where we came across a school of dolphins swimming south. We turned to follow and the dolphins were about 15 to 20 feet from the boat. It was sight to see that close up. There were groups of 4 or 5 at a time that were jumping out of the water on either side of the boat so I grabbed quite a few shots of them in action. Click on the picture to check out our newest boating adventure.

Just letting you know the Evanskeys are doing alright after a 5.4 magnitude earthquake ripped through the southland today at 11:42 AM. We were just shaken up a bit but that’s pretty much it. Here’s a link to some info about the quake:

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/ci14383980.html

We’ll be back later for more updates that deal with boat trips and dolphins.

Wow! What a year for movies and now this weekend I get the one-two punch. What two are you talking about, you may ask and besides the obvious release of The Dark Knight (see it on Imax if you can!), there’s the trailer for the Watchmen. You might even ask “Is that the movie you keep mentioning on your little blog here?” and to that I would say “Of course silly! It’s the greatest graphic novel of all time and turned the super hero world upside down and was wonderfully stolen (sort of) by Pixar in the form of The Incredibles and now it is presented in HD by our friends over at apple. Click on the smiley face to hyperjump your butt over there and watch this thrilling trailer.

UPDATE: Click on the pics for more photos!

July is nearing warp speed for the Evanskeys. I just caught my breath and realized the month is half over (or only halfway begun) and I have posted not one single thing. Well shame on me. Get ready to pause that DVR cause I’m hold down the fast-forward button and just running with it.

We spent the fourth of July with our friends, the Barrera’s and much to their credit through a rip roarin’ block party that probably exceeded 200 people and include 3 house on the street. It was hot (fireworks and temperature) and the kids enjoyed jumpin’ in their pool and playing many of the fun games set up for them (tether ball and a electronic scoring basketball game). Later the kids and adults went to town shooting of tons of fireworks of all shapes and sizes, mostly sparklers for the kids though. Along with the good company, tons of food and drinks, fireworks, games, etc. it was an exciting celebration.

J’s been getting together with a bunch of his friends from his school at the park, at their houses, at our house, and a kids day out on the Evanskey boat where we spent the day cruising up and down the California coast and stopping for some fun sand time to build castle and what not.

The backyard is still under construction and will hopefully be done in a week. The majority of the work is finished including the stucco, decorative tiles, removal of trees and garden concrete slabs, new east gate. Most of the plants have been relocated to the south west corner along with the lemon tree so hopefully it will survive but right now it’s not looking so good.

School started back up for me and because I love to torture myself so much I’ve decided to go full blown into this math thing and tackle “The Fundamentals of Math and Physics for Game Programmers.” I figure since 2 + 2 is 4 and if an apple hits me on the head after falling from a tree I’ve pretty much got this one covered…

We did take J to go see Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D and while the movie is pure sugar coated summer fare, the 3D is AMAZING. This new Real D the studios are using is shocking and on an extra good note, the glasses make everyone in the theater look like Buddy Holly.

Well signing off for now but will do my best to post again before the end of the month.