Happy 1st birthday, Lucas Hochanedal!

Mr Lucas turned one this past week and had a birthday celebration on Saturday. You can see from the picture to the immediate left that he likes cake. Whenever I'm around Lucas it makes me wish that Jennifer and Samantha lived closer and I am looking forward to next month and our trip with Jennifer and Miss Samantha to Lake Almanor. Lucas is a great little guy with a great personality. He was a little overwhelmed with all of the people and gifts and wanted to just play on the stairs. Now there's a one year old for you. He did perk up when the cake came out and didn't know what to do with himself while we were singing to him. He did hoe into his cake and make a complete mess of himself. Don tried to teach him the meaning and drawbacks to fire when he lit the candle on his cake and Lucas reached out to grab the flame. Alicia panicked and Don said that he just needs to learn. I would think second degree burns would probably not be a good lesson for a one year old, but that's just me.

I was supposed to play golf on Saturday at Woodcreek, but it poured rain all day. Boyd and Darren both opted out early for our 8:44 AM tee time, but Phamas called me at 8:00 AM and said he was over at Woodcreek and the course was empty (nice observation Sherlock, it's pouring rain!!). He tried to talk me into joining him for some mud golf, but I deferred. I went back to bed and slept in. When we finally got up I took Darla out to a late breakfast/early lunch and we both went with the lunch option. We then drove over to Alicia and Don's for the birthday party and then over to a used book store to reload and from there to church for the 5 PM Saturday service. We watched "Conviction" last night, a great little under the radar movie with Hillary Swank based on a true story. Two thumbs up from Darla and I.

The rain finally abated overnight and although spitting this morning, I was able to get in our Net Amateur tournament at Diamond oaks. It was a case for me of what could have been. The bunkers were wet and crusty and I was 3 over after five holes. On the 6th, I hit a booming drive to the edge of the canyon and then topped a three wood into the water, took a drop, hit my next shot into the bunker where I tried to play an explosion shot. I almost put the ball in the water behind the green, when the blade bounced off the sand and sculled my shot over the green. I took four to get in from there and put up a nine on the par 5 hole. I did mange to go even par over the final three holes with a birdie, a par and a bogey for a 43. The back nine was worse where I was one over after 15 and went bogey, double bogey, double bogey (the dreaded devilish 6-6-6) to finish with a 42 and 85 for a net 72. It was a case of what could have been as I limped home with a 5 over finish the last three holes. Our handicap chair will adjust my score to 83 when he posts it.

Tomorrow is our Insurance Golf day and we have had some interesting weather and events leading up to the tournament. Gail from my office was on the golf committee with me this year and volunteered to take care of getting the 144 sleeves of golf balls for the check in table. I walked by her office on Wednesday and she had a carton on her desk. When I asked what it was, she said the balls for the tournament. I asked where the rest of the balls were. She got 12 dozen balls which is 144 golf balls. In her confusion, she asked me, "well, how many balls in a dozen?" I looked at her and then told her to Google it. She had to go out and buy another 24 dozen balls, which luckily the committee was willing to pay for as I wasn't. I also ordered 12 dozen personalized golf balls for our office in March and when they hadn't arrive by the Friday before Memorial Day, I called our marketing group. They told me they had been on back order, but finally went through production and would be in my hands by Thursday. I looked online Thursday afternoon to check the tracking order and saw that they had been signed for and arrived. A "Chin" had signed for them. I don't have a Chin in the office and when I looked closer saw that they had been delivered to our San Francisco office. Harvey was nice enough to have them overnighted to us which cost close to $100. These are Callaway Warbird balls. At the cost spent, I could have had ProV1 balls personalized locally and saved about $75. The balls are for the players in our three foursomes and for the raffle tomorrow night. The forecast for tomorrow is light rain early clearing off in the afternoon and getting back into the eighties by next weekend. It's about time.

Darla is still hard into her quest for Puerto Rico. it is an uphill battle but she has 14 parties planned in June and was even in Monterey on Friday night at a home party. It is still almost out of reach, but she is putting a hard rush in to qualify. Darla is one focused young lady when she puts her mind to something. she is amazing.

Today was overcast and warm with highs in the seventies. It felt like being in the golf course in Hawaii after a rainstorm. The ground was wet and the humidity was high and when the sun came out, it was sweltering. Tomorrow will be a similar day. I'm heading in to the office in the morning and then will head over to the course about 9:30. My only responsibility this year was to buy the prizes for the golf and got Ruth Chris gift certificates for first place, McCormick and Schmick for second, Olive Garden for third and Strikes Bowling certificates for last place.

Here's hoping the weather improves. We had a funnel cloud on Wednesday (hard to call it a tornado), but winds were 120 MPH and it destroyed a barn in Sutter County. We then had another round of hail, heavy rain, lightning and thunder. I posted on my Facebook that if I wanted to live in Kansas, I'd move to Kansas and then shoot myself. I forgot my brother-in-law was from Kansas and he was offended. What he needs to realize is that people in California are not lining up to move to Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Wyoming or Oklahoma.

Well, that is the Blog for another week. I hope all are well, living a solid life and being nice to each other. Ciao.