The madness at the house isn’t just constrained to March. It’s been quite the few months…too many late nights at work and too many naps boycotted by the kids at home. I’m told it’s April in a week but I’m not sure what happened to January, February, or March. It seems that the past few months have been filled with lots of little things. We still managed to snag a few pictures of them but not the way we usually do.

We finally turned on the fire below 7 gallons of water, found some grain, and made some more beer. The kids seemed rather oblivious to the group of men hard at work on a Rye Pale Ale but I think it was the home made pretzels and cheese dip not the lack of interesting things going on by the kettle. As is the case in the late winter / early spring in SoCal, the avocados and citrus are ready to be picked. Sophia and Will are quite the helpers but their baskets seem to fill and empty at their leisure.

We successfully completed our first family journey in the FJ60. While I’m more than a little biased, I think it is safe to say it was a success. We took the Nate Harrison Grade Trail up to Mount Palomar and had a nice little picnic. I used the last millimeter of brake pad on the way down… and then used another millimeter of the brake pad’s steel back plate. That why they invented wrenches right? Yikes. What a headache it was to replace a caliper that is as old as I am.