I created Folsomphoto.com because I enjoy photography and at one point I was hoping to start a hobby website with photo's I took around town.
But, while i enjoy photography still, I never got fully into the hobby so instead this has become a family website...
Merry (almost) Christmas everyone! We arrived here at "The Merriest Place on Earth" (aka Disneyland Resort), got into the rooms, checked out the hotels/Downtown Disney and had dinner at Goofy's Kitchen. Off to a great start. Traffic was very smooth (took 99, others traveled I5 and had a lot more traffic to deal with).
Tomorrow is rides, holiday tour, parade, Christmas Eve dinner at Blue Bayou and we will probably open some presents!
Selected pictures from tonight:
You know that weekend before Thanksgiving, the one with a fair amount of wind and rain --- well that was the final weekend of the Sierra Marlins Fall Clinic with the Gobbler Swim Meet. Christian swam well given the conditions. He swam in 8 events, 4 on each day with a couple of events he's never tried but really wanted to.
Saturday was the worst, weatherwise of the weekend. He swam the 50 Free, 100IM, 25 Fly and 25 Breast... He did not get a best time in any of these events but I guess other kids had the same Christian came in 6th, 4th, 2nd and 6th.
On Sunday the weather, and the swimming, was much better! He swam in the 25 Back, 50 Fly (a new event), 25 Free and 100 Free (another new event). He came in 1st, 5th, 10th and 9th and got a best time ever in his backstroke and it was an "A" standard time earning him Sierra Nevada Swimming "A" Medal! As you can see in the photo, he's very proud of his ribbons and medals from the year and the video is of his 25-yard backstroke swim, he's in the lane just past the kid in the green cap. His best times are posted below.
He loves his swimming and is looking forward to next season. Looks like we'll have a new head coach with the Sea Otters, I'm optimistic that everything will be good. He's been swimming well and so long as he doesn't lose his technique he'll be successful!!
2012 Best Times
25 Free - 17.25
50 Free - 39.69
100 Free - 1:34.45
25 Back - 21.71
25 Breast - 25.8
25 Fly - 21.54
50 Fly - 51.93
100 IM - 1:48.86
25 yard Backstroke - 2012 SMST Gobbler (he's in lane 5, just past the swimmer in the green cap)
Still playing catch-up with my posts... In November all of our Fall sports came to a close, swimming, soccer and flag football. Going from being busy 6-7 days a week and having a week off before winter sports start. Swimming I'll post about separately...
Flag football is an interesting sport for Christian. He REALLY wants to do well in football and he believes he is the greatest. He handles his own okay and overall he does fine though he needs to learn A LOT more about the basics - and of course he won't listen to me to learn. Oh well. As with soccer he is best at defense, having 3 interceptions this year and returning 2 of them for touchdowns! He had fun and had a good coach.
Christian had a breakout year in soccer! As noted in earlier posts he's been more aggressive and seems to understand the game a lot better and has started to understand the strategy behind it. He had fun playing defense and mid-fielder and even ended up scoring a couple of goals in one game. One goal he earned, he was in the right spot after a corner kick deflected off a defender and got a great kick into the corner of the goal... His other goal was mainly luck. We had the ball near their goal but Christian was hanging back closer to mid-field. The defense cleared the ball out right to Christian who gave it a solid kick on the ground. It went between 4 defenders and just out of the goalies reach and right right into the goal. Even he was shocked with it --- the picture below where he is smiling at the camera is after one of the goals.
In the end he only got the one yellow card, but it was the only card issued to anyone on our team. I have no clue if any other teams at this level had any players carded or not. The last weekend was rainy and muddy and we had a double header! Due to swimming he didn't show up until halftime of the first game - and they decided to call the game at half so he didn't get to play in it. Everyone that did play in the game was muddy. Christian was bummed, he wanted to play in the mud and hoped it would be that way for the second game. That afternoon was game #2 and he got wet and very slightly muddy, nothing like in the morning, but he had fun anyway.
We'll see what next year brings, I'm sure he'll want to play again! In the pictures take note of the focus he gets --- either holding his breath with puffed out cheeks or with his tongue sticking out... 
Yes, this is a HALLOWEEN update... It's late, I know, oh well! More updates to come in the coming days so I can get caught up...
Halloween started on October 27th for us as we headed out to Bishops Pumpkin Farm and Christian and Matthew had a great time up there. Panning for marbles, sliding, playing, watching the NASPIG races, pumpkins, food, animals, hayride... Had a blast, but in all that fun we did not come home with pumpkins --- we saw pumpkins at Safeway earlier in the day for half the price.
We picked up the pumpkins at Safeway and carved them --- the best part is always ripping out the stringy guts and seeds of the pumpkins! Christian didn't want to use a template this year so he drew on his face and started carving. Good thing I got the picture early as he didn't carve for long before he was begging for me to take over and do it. The pumpkins turned out great, but I did forget to snap a picture of the completed pumpkins!!
On Halloween we hooked up with friends again and had a great time. Christian was a "Red Ninja" --- along with a lot of other kids...
That's right, you read it here first, I am NOT pregnant!
As most of you know in May of 2009 I was diagnosed with Cancer. Had surgery 2 weeks later which confirmed it was stage 1 cancer, radiation in August of 2009 and then every 6 months for 5 years I need to get a screening done to make sure it didn't spread before the treatment occurred.
Today was my next six-month follow-up screening... The CT Scan is fine, chest X-Ray is fine... The blood work shows normal AFP and that I'm not pregnant... WHAT?!? Apparently the lab did a qualitative HcG test instead of Quantitative HcG. Qual is used in pregnancy tests, Quan is used, amongst other things, as part of the cancer screening. So now I have to go do another blood draw so they can run the correct HcG test. Oh well... It's the CT scan I REALLY hate about this whole process, doing another blood test is no big deal! But what a relief to know that I am NOT pregnant, I was really worried about that one!
So everything is looking fine, pending the new blood test which I expect will be fine and my doctor gave me good news - since we're at the 3.5 year mark we'll switch over to 1 year visits!! Woo hoo!! While the other tests don't bother me, I REALLY don't like the CT scan, so moving the tests to only once a year is definitely worth celebrating!!
It's been an interesting 3.5 years, especially that first year following treatment. That first year or so every time I had a pain - no matter where it was - maybe my leg hurt or I have a headache I would think the worst --- I have cancer in that area of my body. No, I didn't have a headache because I'm tired and been working hard, it had to be cancer, at least that was the thought process. Jump to the OMG and then back away and realize it's just a normal not enough sleep too much work headache. My doctor said that was completely normal, happens to a lot of people... After a year or so of doing that I stopped jumping to that OMG thought. As the years go on I'm more confident that the cancer is gone.
Going through this certainly gives new perspective and what I have gone through is NOTHING compared to what many have to go through.
© Copyright 2019 Steven R. Weise