Charlie Bites!

Before you watch these, which are hilarious, you have to go to Heather's blog before this and watch her first homemade music family video thing.......! Then, come back and watch these. Ruebi showed these to me. I died of laughter. Especially after watching the first one twice and the second one after that...

MINE OWN FIRST!!!

Hi everyone! I am very excited to have figured this out myself. Thanks to your inspiration, Addie. Here is my very first song/music/video thingy just like mikie and addie do. It is rough, but I really enjoyed doing it.

Also, does everyone know that Stanny's movie entitled Finland 1935 starring Darin as well as Addie, Art, Joey and I won "Best Picture" and "Best Cinematography" at UC Santa Cruz film school?!! Wonderful news for our future production company and for our dear wondrous stanny. he is also featured here in my video along with many other greats.

love you all!

this video is called "i love my life."

kid vid

So I took a cue from Mom and did some videos through Vimeo. Vimeo, YouTube, Blogger, whatever, they're all online videos and it doesn't make much difference to me.

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This one is from tonight; it's Oey reading a creepy crawlers book while Jarom and Bella discuss "love" in some pretty profound, metaphysical terms.


Love and reading from Matt Beatty on Vimeo.

Here's one of Jarom's many recent domino creations. We have a lot more where this came from, including ones where Oey or Bella (or both) destroy it, or it completely fails, and so on. Also available are "marble traps."


Dominoes I from Matt Beatty on Vimeo.

Happy Happy Birthday Mikie Dear!

Hey Everybody, Mikie is 27 years old today! We are so lucky to have this talented, energetic, creative, wonderful person as part of our family. We miss you Mikie and can't wait to have you come see us and have cake with you! You choose the kind of cake you want and I'll bake it.

I know you are having a fun time in Idaho. Can't wait to hear all your stories of the trip. It must be beautiful there.

I love you so much Mikie and am very proud to be your Momma.

Happy Birthday Michael Stephen Beatty!!

Heather is this close enough? Which one do ya mean?

Yall Remember This One I Would Bet

My silly Valentine!

Heather wanted to know how we spent the rest of our day. So this is it. After that breakfast that I blogged about we went to a birthday party for London's little sister. Pearl Valentine. She turned one and was born on Valentine's day- so cute huh!

Bella and London. Fairy Princesses. Note to Nana- Bella is wearing one of the dresses you brought up last time. She looked really cute in it. I tried to dress all the kids in red. Corny I know, but I can't help myself!!

Weee. Here comes bell. You can see London and Oey bouncing in the back.

My little fluffy head. his hair is so funny. He would play in some play areas where I could only see the top of his staticky hair and it was all over the place.

Dax and Jarom. The kids get so hot jumping around and the water fountain was dead. These boys lucked out with Slurpees.

For Heather and Adie. You two were there when she picked these lovely snugglies out at the DI. She insisted on wearing these all evening. And it is a good thing that we didn't send your box yet Nana. Jarom found something on this shelf that he just knew you would love!!

She is not so happy that I'm making her pose so dorkly. We took the kids to see Bolt at the dollar movies. I love the dollar movies so much. I'm always tempted to watch every movie that comes in, even if they are way lame. I just can't pass up a good deal.

last pictures ever with my camera?

You guys all know how i love my camera and use it obsessively. so you can imagine my sadness that my precious camera seems to have met a fatal end. i don't know what happened...it's simply not turning on anymore. but lucky for me, it worked friday night, friday the thirteenth that is, so i captured these ever-so-magnificent images as my camera's last hurrah.

we were snowed in that night so we thought the place would be empty, but karaoke was HOPPING. took all night to even get to sing our songs!

darin sings "lonesome, onry and mean" by waylon jennings.

joey and nick doing a little country dance to darin's song.

joey was astoundingly good, as usual...here he is singing a smashing pumpkins song.

darin likes to try to look scary in pictures, i think he looks like a turkish emperor of the ninth century.adam was in town...the whole reason we went....he is the best karaoke singer ever. he was in a country mood that night. he gets on the microphone and tells stories about his bluegrass-musician dad and just charms the whole audience.

getting DOWN.

emily dedicates a song to mallory tomei, so sweet.

fofe...ever the romancer.

once again, thank you to karaoke at powells for giving placerville a night life!

February 22 birthdays-great spirits

New camera, didn't use a flash but was a good picture of her



I love this picture of Mikie



Two well known people born on the same day. Hey and they are related. Grandma Georgie will be 97 and her grandson Mikie,27. So, I wanted to encourage my family to acknowledge these birthdays, and in Grandma Georgie's case please send her a card. That's all she needs--no presents necessary, but she loves to receive cards and one from ea of you (or ea couple, of course)would be so wonderful and make her day. She is doing fine and with a little luck, may make it to 100!(when we will have a major celebration) For this year we're planning to take her to dinner on her birthday with Art/Addie, Darin/Heather, Joey/Emily, Mary/Dave and daughters attending. Rich and Khristine and Curt and Jeanette and families will celebrate with her on a later occasion. Wish Matt and Amy and Mikie and Candice could be here, but a card will suffice.
As for Mikie, he will be out of the state for the whole of that weekend he told me. Candice has a gymnastics meet in Idaho(I think) and they will both be flying to Idaho for that. Wish you could be home for your birthday Mikie, but we will be celebrating his birthday the following weekend hopefully. That trip to Idaho for he and Candice will be a neat birthday activity though.
Grandma Georgie's address is: 1017 Hampton Rd. Sacramento, Calif. 95864
Well, I love you all
Dad (Papa, pops)

we got snow!

everybody comes out to play. first night of snow, bandini is very nervous/fascinated with the whole experience.

even daphne gets to romp around.

but this is really what we like best:

seven people

I'm having significant writer's block since Heather actually requested that I post something on here about things.
It's interesting how your mind works when you're asked to do something, versus you just naturally wanting to do it. You somehow replace a part of your artistic vision with the business of pleasing others. It works though, if the other is truly pleased. Just you yourself feel like you've accomplished little more than a business deal, even if you did create something from scratch.
Business. What a subject to discuss amongst the Beatty family.
We are an anomaly: between 5 children from a decent middle-class upbringing, not ONE of us ended up starting any kind of business. Sure we all had to get jobs at the age of 15, and financially fend for ourselves throughout high school and into the world. But now here we are in our twenties and thirties with local service jobs that temporarily support our needs and that's IT.
How is it that none of us were fitted to professionally be in business?
Now I feel there are good, and not-so-good, ways to look at this. I believe first and most importantly, a good is that we all have the absolute capability to adapt to our environments and take care of ourselves. We can immediately survive. If there was a major earthquake or raging fire, I wouldn't be worried about any of your health because I know how capable we are. Even freaking Mom. She'd battle Satan himself before letting some fire ruin her quiet evening. This survival thing is definitely a biggie. I have this inkling that a large percentage of America cannot take care of itself as fully and committedly as we can. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that way. So thats a "good". Another good is the way we live so democratically. We believe in unwavering equality amongst people that sometimes we're even tyrannical in our passion; we fight for the mutual greatness in everyone, despite age, race, religion or ethnicity. We always try to see the "good" in people. In my experience with the adult world, that's a gem-of-a concept Society forgot to teach to like 85% of the population.
Excellent. We're survivors and we're lovers. We're not hippies, we are not elitists, we are not necessarily white collars, we are not old money or new money, and we're not even all that dysfunctional!

So here's where I get terribly confused. How is it that with such a recipe did our family so incredibly miss the boat about Business? How is it possible that along the way NOBODY decided to take up (with all of our intellectual brilliance and artistry) some kind of money-making idea that could have made even a little bit of money?
Matt sold a lot of stuff on eBay. But I wonder, were we to ever put our heads together, could we have concocted one of the most successful, profitable and socially influential businesses in the modern world? Probably!
But for some reason:
Joey's scraping by
Adie's scraping by
Heather's scraping by
Dad's scraping by
Mom's scraping by
Mikie's scraping by
and maybe even Matt's scraping by.

Seven people, Zero dollars.

What the HECK happened?!?

I leave this completely open to discussion. Nobody's excluded, so don't be shy. The economy takes no blame.

Mikie

My first one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Glacier National Park

Alright I'm getting this shiz together, I'm taking control. Actually, Heather and me started taking control this morning. We are working on plans for our trip this summer, with its primary focus as Glacier National Park in very northern Montana. Now, I really hope that everyone will get into this idea (so far, me and emma and heather and darin and matt and amy are all into it,) because I know it is inevitably happening for me, and I want it to be a beautiful group experience like Havasu was. I have wanted to explore the vastness and magnificence of Glacier for more years than I can remember, so it's happening for me NO MATTER WHAT. With that said, I will present Heather and my tentative (but hopefully pretty permanent) plan.

Okay, so far we are planning to leave Placerville the morning of Friday, July 31st. Emma and me want to do a leg of this trip on our own, and this trip to us is more than just Glacier, it also is going to include the Pacific Northwest, so we wanted to do that part just me and her. So, her and I are going to head north toward oregon on july 31st, and heather and darin (so far) are going to head over to Provo, where they will meet up with Matt and Amy and their offsprings and take off the next morning (saturday, August 1st) toward South Dakota. Emma and me will spend the next five days exploring the northwest and making our way toward Missoula, Montana, which is where we will be meeting up with everyone else so we can all go up to Glacier (north of Missoula, about two hours I think) together. Heather and Darin and the MattAmy posse (and anyone else who is joining them) will be using those same five days to explore the South Dakota Badlands and the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn and the Black Hills and all that beauty. So, our plan is to meet and camp in Missoula, Montana, on tuesday evening, August 4th. We can camp together maybe, whatever, we'll figure that out, and then the next morning we will all drive to Glacier hopefully pretty early so we can have a nice full day. I think we should enter Glacier at it's west entrance, a place called Apgar. Apgar is a great place to embark on the Going-To-The-Sun-Road, which we definitely plan to do. The road spans the somewhat-southern longitude of the park. We are going to be doing that with our first day, I think the road is about 40 miles long, and we can it last until the early evening. It will be somewhat relaxing and aweinspiring. At the end of the road on the eastern end of Glacier lies St. Mary, which is where we should camp on the night of wednesday the 5th of August, our first night in Glacier. The next day, thursday the 6th, we can explore a bit at St. Mary, check out St. Mary Lake, all that, and then I think we should drive that day about 25 miles west to an area called Many Glacier, where we should spend that nite, thursday, camping. On the drive there we would cross through a town called Babb, very close to Canada in the Blackfeet Reservation. Anyhow, we can spend thursday nite at Many Glacier, which is surrounded by lakes rivers and lakes and glaciers and perfection purity of nature.

Okay, so friday is controversial, maybe, because i REALLY want to do at least a one-nite backcountry backpacking trip. My current plan is to backpack one nite (friday nite) starting in the early morning of friday, either to Cracker Lake or Poia Lake (both with trailheads beginning very close to where we'd be camping at Many Glacier). Cracker Lake's hike is only 6.1 miles, and Poia Lake is 6.4 miles. I think Poia Lake is a good choice, because I don't think it's as well known, and would probably have fewer people. Plus, I'm still not exactly sure if Cracker lake is totally accessible from Many Glacier. I'll look more into it. Anyways, I want to camp in the backcountry on friday nite, the 7th. Everyone let me know how you feel about that, because even if not everyone is into it I still want to do it, its one of my goals of the trip. And if our group is big enough we could even maybe split up that nite. Whatever, we'll see. Also, I just read a bit about an awesome cave located on the eastern side of Poia Lake. We could explore it! We would need headlamps and all that, since it is quite a tight squeeze. Have any of you explored a cave of that capacity? I have once and it is so unbelievably fun and beautiful. I hope someone would be into doing that with me.

Okay, so then Saturday we can do whatever, explore and see and ponder and wonder. hike around, swim, whatever. Sunday morning, maybe Matt and AMy and the kids will take off (heather told me you guys can only do a weekend, plus a week, plus a weekend, so matt you might want to be back to work monday the 9th? let me know if thats right or if this all sounds okay to you.) I think it'd be cool to stay maybe one more nite there, the rest of us (so far me, emma, heather, darin) and camp one more nite, maybe at a different spot of our choosing. we'll see, whatever. Anyways, that would be the end of our Glacier time, Sunday for matt and amy, and either Sunday or Monday for the rest of us. We'll figure it out.

Then, It is the current plan for us California folk to take a trip thru the northwest, into Canada, and take about a week getting home back to California. We can see whistler in Canada and Vancouver, and then Anacortes and Victoria and the San Juan Islands on the way home. In fact, we might want to take more than a week so we wont be rushed and pressed by weird modern civilization systems of time, we should really try our best to be as free and roaming as possible, relinquish timeframes and deadlines and just explore the earth. Anyways, maybe we could be back in California and at "home" by August 18th (tuesday) or something like that?

Okay, just so everyone knows, THIS IS WHAT I'M DOING, no matter what. Not everyone has to be super into it, but I've been mentally planning this trip for a long time and Im super into it and excited. True mountainous exploration! Please, let me know what you all think about it. It would be about 2.5 weeks or so of travel. That might be too much for some, but I know that I want to do a somewhat lengthy trip this summer no matter what, and this is it for me. initially I wanted to do a month or two and explore the vast US, but we've decided to make it more of a trip focuses on certain destinations (ie, for me and em, the pacific northwest, Glacier, Canada.)

Really what I want input on SOON is the backpacking aspect of Glacier, because I'll need to apply as soon as possible for a backcountry permit thru the NPS. So please let me know what you think of the dates and all that, because I want to apply for that soon.

Everyone please tell me whats up with you on how you feel about all this.

ITS GOING TO BE SO INCREDIBLE! GET EXCITED WITH ME !!!!!
heres some pictures

This is Apgar, where we would start the Going To The Sun Road.



This is the road.



This is St. Mary, where we should camp for a nite, on wednesday.



This is Many Glacier, where I think we should stay a few days. This is the Many Glacier hotel. Obviously, we would be camping, but this hotel, nevertheless, is pretty crazy looking. We'd try to steer clear as much as could from having to look at it.



This is a campsite in the Many Glacier campground. I think it looks effing perfect.



This is a photo of Poia Lake, where I think we should spend one nite in the backcountry.



Here is a picture of part of the Poia Lake Cave. How incredible!



This is Babb, Montana, in the Blackfeet reservation. We will be passing thru this town as we drive from St. Mary to Many Glacier. We could stop and get food.




Alright guys, here is ONE MORE IDEA. Maybe, as an alternative to staying in St. Mary on Wednesday, our first nite, we should just drive ALL THE WAY (not that much further) to Many Glacier after finished the Going To The Sun Road. We could get lunch in Babb and then camp primarily in Many Glacier, instead of moving campsites. I think this idea is much more economical and would give us an oppurtunity to explore more of a certain area. Also, my favorite part of this idea, maybe we could up our backpacking trips length from 1 to 2 nites. I really think this would be perfect please let me know. love you all!

whirlygig

So you can see the whirlygig up close.

Dinner with Mikie and Daniel

I had a great time with Mikie and Daniel Friday night at Chipotle's. I got a surprise call from Mikie when I was getting off work on Friday night. He and Daniel were in Pollock Pines driving down from a snowboarding trip and wanted to know if I could meet them for dinner. Well, I was going down to Folsom to Kaiser anyway, so I said how about Chipotle's. I had a ball! We talked about love and sex. We read a page from my diary from when I was 14 in 1966 and got my first kiss. I really like Daniel and I think it is so cool that he and Mikie are staying good friends after all these years. Friends are an important part of our life! Mikie came back to my house later and spent the night. He was just hanging, watching tv and needed some comfort for his tired bones. Poor guy had a cold so he took some Nyquil and listened to me for a while and had a great long sleep. The next day I went to Reno to see Grandma Cherie and Grandpa Corry, so before I left Mikie and I shared coffee and a hug. It was such a beautiful drive over the Sierras!

The Grandma and Grandpa C's are doing well. They are so sweet. It is sad for me to see them aging and getting frailer each time I go. Even little Sierra their dog didn't get her 14 year old bones up to come running to see me when I got to the door like she used to do. Man, the passage of time kills me!!

Anyhow, Grandma made me a beautiful sage green crocheted afghan for my couch. I love it, it is so nice and warm and Grandpa made me a twirly windmill whirlygig thingie that has a hummingbird whose wings flap up and down for my garden. He made it out of wood and painted it himself. I think that is so sweet for them to spend their winter days making something for me.

Today I went to Mel's with Mikie and then he left. Grandma sent him some of the cookies he loves. She sent cornbread for the Darlington kids too. She loves you all so much.

I went to see New Girl in Town with Marcia today. It was a really good movie and funny! It had Renee Zellwegger and was about a small factory town in Minnesota. It was a good movie for these terrible economic times. A happy movie. Love to all my precious family.