Chapter one
Raising a family
I raised five kids. For most of the years in these pictures we lived in the foothills east of Los Angeles, and the pattern was simple: when we could get out, we got out. Kayaks, trout ponds, a crag with ropes, a tent under the oaks in December, a canyon in Arizona with a church group, four days in Yosemite with one son and a pack each.
These are the pictures I'd show you if you were sitting at my table. They start with film prints and end with a road trip across the country, and they're in the order they happened.
The early years, 2003 to 2006
A haunted house at Disneyland, Nala swimming out to the kayak every time, a trout pond where Tim and Sabrina learned patience, and all five kids lined up on one bench.
The outdoors years, 2006 to 2009
You realize looking back that you didn't take nearly enough pictures. So many memories live in my mind rather than in photos. These are some of the ones that made it. Two days under the oaks in December with a camp stove and a red balaclava. Real rock climbing. Deep Creek in June. Kites on the beach at dusk. Yosemite with Tim. A U-Haul in the summer of 2008. And a year later, a wildfire coming over the ridge behind the house.
Growing up, 2009 to 2013
A steam train in the redwoods. Snow in the yard with the dog. Donovan home from deployment, then engaged, then married in his dress uniform with the groomsmen in pink ties. Nick's graduation. And the spring we raised chickens from a box of chicks under a heat lamp.
The road-trip years, 2021 to 2022
With the kids grown, Suzanne and I spent the better part of two years on the road: Sedona, White Sands, Texas lakes, Tennessee, the New River Gorge. There's more of that on the hobbies page, because by then the camera had become a hobby of its own.
My mother, Antoinette, is in a lot of the years these pictures cover. She has her own page.