Natalie's 10-Year High School Reunion

Natalie flew up to Seattle this weekend to see all her old high-school friends at their 10-year reunion.
Luke loved riding around on great-grandpa's tractor!

Dave and Charisse's Wedding

While Natalie was up in Seattle this weekend I got to go to Dave and Charisse's Wedding (fellow Younglife volunteers).It was a beautiful outdoor wedding and reception in Los Altos Hills and I enjoyed catching up with the old Younglife crew and the kids.

Video: Army Crawl to the Cat Food

Luke crawls through the house to try to get to the cat food, then he pulls himself up to his feet trying to get an avocado.

Video: Luke's Dedication on Father's Day

Luke and the pastor wore matching sport coats for the dedication...



Both grandpa's were in town for Father's Day...

Day at the Beach in Santa Cruz

Today we went to Santa Cruz to hang out downtown and relax on the beach.


He loves the sand, but we tried not to let him eat too much of it.

4 Years of GMail

It's now been exactly 4 years since I opened my GMail account. June 2004, in the height of engagement planning -- followed shortly by planning for our November wedding. In those days you had to either know someone at Google to invite you or pay $50 on EBay for an invitation to get a GMail account. I mentioned in an earlier post that I told Mr. Schmidt that GMail saved my marriage--that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure did help with planning a Sacramento wedding while living in San Diego. At that time, GMail's 1 gigabyte of storage was the most beneficial feature as I was constantly sending budget and guest list spreadsheets, my invitation and program designs, and pictures back and forth with Natalie & family.

This Google account has added many useful applications since then. In October 2006 I started this blog using that same Google account. Then Natalie and I started sharing our calendar online so we would actually know what each other are doing -- now I wouldn't know what's going on without it. Then there's Picasa web albums for the cool slideshows and Google Reader lets me know when friends update their blogs.

Over these 4 years I have racked up 16,411 total conversations (no spam of course, gmail doesn't allow that). Of those, I have sent mail in 3,456 conversations so by my guesstimation I've sent an average of 4.73 personal emails per day (assuming 2 sent mails per conversation and one leap year). I am currently using 1.75 GB (25%) of my 6.82 GB of available storage space and have never deleted an email. I still love all kinds of things about GMail, especially the speed, searchability, labels, custom "From:", group chat, conversation view, the April Fool's jokes, and even the targeted ads.

The Radicati Group says that the number of emails sent per day (in 2006) was around 183 billion -- 130 billion of which they say may have been spam and viruses so that leaves 53 billion legitimate emails sent per day. There are approximately 1.2 billion worldwide email users so the average number of emails sent per day per person is 44.17. Even if I add my work emails I'm still ~25% of average. How many personal emails do you send per day?

Afternoon at Lake Joy

Luke loves watermelon.
He's also starting to clap. He claps for everything.
After lunch we had a highly competitive family volleyball game.
Then we went to Mars Hill for church to hear from Mark Driscoll.

Nathan and Jen's Wedding

Luke was lookin' dapper in his tux...
The girls...Brother and cousins -in-law.
The bride and groom running to the limo...

Rehearsal Dinner, Jazz, and James Brown

Cool shirts for the groom and groomsmen.
After the rehearsal dinner, Sharon watched Luke so Natalie and I got to go on a date! We went to an awesome wine bar and jazz club in Bellevue where we danced to some good jazz and met many interesting people -- including James Brown's nephew (seriously) and 3 kids who just graduated from Santa Clara University. The band almost got Natalie to sing with them, but she opted to relax and enjoy the show from the audience.

Seattle Day 1: Mariner's Game

Luke got to go on another plane ride and continued his perfect record of being a good, quiet, passenger.
This was the first time he was really interested in looking out the window.
We went straight from the airport to Safeco park for the baseball game.
Luke with great-grandpa -- both sporting their Seattle Mariners gear.
16 family members all cheering for the Mariners... they lost, but we had a great time!
Luke's favorite new toy. I think it will give him ADD, but it kept him busy while we were eating at the Spaghetti Factory.