This week was also Kai's first birthday. Marie made a banana cream cake that we all enjoyed, and Kai even figured out that there was good stuff inside the wrapping if he tore it open. He did need some help getting it started, though. Jerome and Asha were both really cute about Kai's birthday, and both made cards for him even though Marie and I hadn't told them to. Gma Campbell sent along two presents for Kai, who loved the truck book (the Thomas the Tank Engine overalls were more of a hit with Kai's mom). Kai also was allowed the pleasure of devouring a piece of banana cream cake on his own. As you can he, he quickly got into the task.

To be honest, I can't really think of a lot to write about, but here are a couple of things. On Friday I went on my first campout with the Teacher's Quorum. It was apparent that the Teachers had planned it themselves because the entire plan focused on taking various props to the sand dunes in the desert and riding these props down the dunes. They hadn't taken into account the fact that the dunes are 2 hours from San Diego, so it would be dark when we got there. They planned to camp in approximately the same place as they had 2 years ago when they came to the dunes as Deacons. This would also be the time that they were also almost run over by dune buggies numerous times during the night. After arriving at around 10pm, the boys then insisted that we camp in the same spot. I vetoed this idea, and we went to a different place where folks are actually supposed to camp and pitched our tents. Predictably, the boys stayed up all night, but this had the fringe benefit of having them suggest that we go home at 9am the next morning. Another fiasco that I managed to see coming was breakfast, which was supposed to be french toast. On the way out, we stopped at a truck stop to buy dinner. It was there that I acquired 2 Clif Bars which would serve as a fine breakfast in the event that something went wrong. Well, the Teacher that was supposed to bring the stove didn't actually come, so at 8am while I was contentedly snacking on my Clif Bars, the teachers were washing down chunks of virgin white bread with room temperature apple juice. In case you're keeping track, here's a rundown of the campout stats:
Teachers attending: 9
Teachers shot with airsoft guns: 9
Leaders: 3
IPODs holding songs with profanity: 1 (that I know of)
Total man hours of sleep for leaders: 12 (I got half of that myself)
Total boy hours of sleep: 18
Total meals eaten: 2
Total meals purchased at fast food establishments: 2
Driving time : 6 hours
Time spent actually having fun on dunes: 2 hours

An unrelated realization I made this week: At work, I keep on seeing people that I swear worked at PPG, too. These are people I probably only see once or so a month, and I guess there's a place in my brain where I store that info, and it happens to contain both PPG people and Pyxis people. I can't tell them apart anymore. Of course, I'll probably find out that in addition to myself, there were a bunch of people that worked at PPG headquarters that also quit and moved to SD to work at Pyxis at about the same time as me.