Thursday, October 4, 2007

Ernie Medina, Jr.


Hi again, classmates! I decided, after seeing all of your cool pictures, to put a "few" more in of my own, since most of you probably didn't have time to go to our other blogs! ;-) Here a just a few snippets about my life since I moved to wild and liberal SoCal way back in '89!

Like most of you, life revolves around your kids. Besides homeschooling Summer for the first 5 grades so far, here are some of the other activities that keep us busy.

She enjoys taking dance lessons--ballet, tap, and jazz. At a recent recital, she was a TA for the pre-ballet class so she got to lead out her class on stage.

Besides playing guitar, she takes piano lessons. Here is a recent recital where I had to play a duet with her--my first public performance in almost 30 years! Talk about stress!!! Fortunately, I did NOT have to memorize my part like she did!

Athletics is a big part of her life, especially since we homeschool. She likes to enter various running and kid's triathlon races. Here was last year's Holiday Classic where she took 1st place in her age category in the 5k.

Swimming is a BIG part of her life. She's been on the Redlands Swim team for the last 4 years now. On the relays, she usually swims the butterfly leg.

Breast stroke is her favorite, and she's getting better at her freestyle (she just did a 500 yd event in 6:43 yesterday), and one of her strongest events is the fly.

Back during our AA days, some of you will remember that I was into tennis. Well since coming out here, I've transitioned more to r-ball. Here I am with some of our 5:30 AM gang.

Remember all of our ski trips to Cannonsburg, Boyne Mt. and of course, Royal Rut? I remember almost falling off the chair lift at Cannonsburg while trying to show Janel that you did NOT have to lift your ski tips up like the sign said. That was embarrassing! Here in SoCal, we still get to ski, and now that Summer and her friends are of skiing age, we've started getting back into the sport, though I've switched over to SNOWBOARDING, which I find much better than skiing, especially in powder! Just this past summer, I finally learned how to wakeboard up at Au Sable. Reminds me a lot of snowboarding!

Another sport we just started this summer was bodyboarding. The Pacific is cold so we recently bought shortie wetsuits. Here's Keri in what looks like a raging storm! Here am I with a buddy of mine, riding a wave.

Besides all of these sporting activities, we keep busy with our local church. Keri and I are both elders and SS teachers, and we were the Directors of our Adventurer club, which started out with 30 kids and ended up growing to over 120 kids, which supposedly is now the largest Adventurer ever. After 5 years, we finally "retired" when Summer finished the highest level, so we're glad to have some of that time back, but it was a great experience for us.


While Keri has been an assoc. prof. at LLU School of Nursing for close to 20 years, I've been working at a medical group as a preventive care specialist (combo nutritionist/exercise physiologist/lifestyle counselor) for the last 14 years, focusing on weight loss, lifestyle-related diseases, stress management, and smoking cessation. Just last year, we opened up our first family fitness and wellness center called XRtainment Zone (www.xrtainmentzone.com) where the highlight is that we use video and computer games to get kids and adults moving.

Life hasn't been all work and exercise, but we do get a lot of play in as well, as you can see! We've been blessed to have quite a few good friends to do things with such as Bible studies, trips, etc. They've been great friends for Summer, and ironically, most of them have all girls!
My sister Kim is the music director at our church, so of course, we get recruited to play various parts in the church plays.
For last Mother's Day, a group of us dads put together the world's only all-male synchronized swimming team, where we performed our first...and last...performance for the moms and daughters.

This past summer, we were able to convince about 5 families from CA to join us at Family Camp 2 up at Au Sable and they kids (9 girls and 3 boys!) had a blast, along with the parents.

I've been very blessed these since moving here in 1989. Being a parent has been one of the greatest blessings...and challenges of my life! Friends are a great blessing as well, and I look forward to catching up with all of you who make it back to our reunion in less than a week!

We wish all of you could be there, but if not, we look forward to having that big reunion at the 2nd Coming when we can get together and do all kinds of things for the rest of eternity!

Until that day comes, let us do our best to make sure our family and friends won't miss THAT reunion!

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