Sokiveta.com

A good ol’ Fox too.

Here are some more photos from the air show we went to on Saturday.

And finally, proof that my mom approves of me owning a motorcycle.

So there have been a lot of vehicle changes in the Sokiveta household in the last few months.

First, the van smash.

During that one day when it rained in December, Sarah was in a pretty bad accident. She was t-boned by a Land Rover. Luckily everyone was fine. The minivan, however, was totaled.

Let me just say that minivans are ubersafe. I mean, it did its job that day. The air bags went off, and everyone was safe. The kids, who were actually at the point of impact, were kept safe by their childseats.

I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping children in safe childseats. Titus, who is close to 50 pounds (which is a lot for a little boy who just turned 3), is still in a 5-point harness and will be for the next year or two. If he hadn’t been, he would have certainly had some broken bones, let alone bad head and spine injuries.

Well, we were very blessed that day to have no one injured from that accident.

Also, our insurance company, Progressive, was fantastic. I was a little worried about having to deal with them, but they came through immediately. Not only did they have a rental minivan ready for us within minutes, but they had a check to cover the cost of the car, including new childseats, ready for us within a few days.

We went with a Honda Odyssey, a little bit better than the Toyota Sienna, but both are great. In fact, I would have no problem owning either.

Second, good bye German, hello Italy.

last month I sold my beautiful BMW 7-series. Oh, how I loved that car.

Why sell it? Well, it’s a great car, but I just didn’t want to keep it perfect. It’s hard owning a luxery car, you always have to keep it polished, and if it gets a scratch then it’s a big deal. And altogether it’s a little maddening.

So I sold it to a guy in San Diego, and being the nice guy that I am, I drove it down to him. Oh it was fun, one last good roadtrip with my beautiful car. Sarah followed me in the minivan, and then we turned the whole trip into a little vacation. We ended up staying a few days in a fantastic hotel right on the water. We found a deal online that was basically 80% off the normal price, and our hotel room was great. It was bigger than our first apartment. It had a kitchen, and a separate bedroom (so we could put the kids in while they napped). And the back patio overlooked a marina. I mean, there was nothing between us and the water put a few feet of grass. It was very private and fun to see all of the boats.

Bridgette and I went to the store one of the days and saw a battleship deploy from the naval base. And then later as a family we drove around and saw aircraft carriers and other huge boats. We even saw fighter jets take off. Now, those things are loud.

Anyway, it was a fun trip.

And having sold the car, my wife says to me, “Why don’t you get a motorcycle?” Well, I’ve always wanted one, and so I started looking at what was out there on craigslist. And then she says, “You should get a Ducati.” And so I did.

Meet the Ducati Monster.

It’s a ton of fun to ride. I’ve already been on a few long road trips, but I always play it safe — never too fast, never without a helmet, crash jacket, gloves and boots.

My first long trip was to Tortialla Flat, AZ. They had a big Ducati thing going on there. I met up with a few other guys and we all rode down together. That was a lot of fun.

The culture of motorcycle owners is interesting. It’s like an instant brotherhood, where everyone is glad to see each other. And you can always see riders do a half-peace-sign wave as they pass each other on the road.

The next trip I went on was to Buckeye Air Fair. It’s about an hour away from where we live, and instead of riding down with a group of other Ducati owners, I went with my family (they followed in the minivan). My mom even came with us. We had a good time at the air show, and Titus loved sitting in the helecopters and airplanes, and seeing the fighter jets take off.

Even though they didn’t “win” they’re winners in my eyes. It’s so nice to have a home team to be proud of.

My favorite player is Larry Fitzgerald, and yes, I even got a Fitzgerald shirt to wear during the Super Bowl. I also got my wife a Warner shirt, and together we supported our team.

One of my favorite things about the Cardinals is the lack of anoying, center-stage egos. Unlike the drama queen Terrel Owens (who is a very talented player, but constantly needs attention), or drug using baseball players; Larry Fitzgerald and Kurt Warner are great guys, best in the league, and all-around good men on and off the field.

My wife and I were talking about whether or not sports celebrities should live up to a higher standard as automatic role models. And I think they should live up to a higher standard. I love being able to sit with my son and watch great players do amazing things with their talents, and then have them continue to be a good example as they come off the field. The thing I hate is to see a player doing something great, and then do something stupid, like get into a fight on field, or yell, or get arrested during the week, and then I have to explain the sad situation to an adoring child.

It’s refreshing to have professional athletes that children can look up to. I wish more celebrities were like that.

Now there's a man who can catch a ball.

For a long time now film makers have been making sequels to movies. And sometimes the sequel was good, like Spider-man 2, or the sequel was better, like Terminator 2, and then there were those sequels that were so bad you wish they hadn’t of made them, like Ghostbusters 2.

And then a few years ago it became cool to make prequels to movies, like Star Wars Episode 1, Scorpion King, Red Dragon, and the list goes on. And coming soon is The Hobbit, X-Men Origins, and Star Trek.

But now there is a new genre of ‘quel, and that is the in-betweens — like Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicals, and the animated Star Wars: Clone Wars.

Recently we got into Sarah Connor Chronicles, and we’ve enjoyed watching them. I think the show’s story line begins immediately after the second Terminator movie. The premise of the show is following Sarah Connor, her son John, his cyborg (who is fantastically played by Summer Glau from Serenity) who try to stop Skynet from becoming Skynet. But the funny thing is that it seems like every effort they make to destroy Skynet only ensures its creation. It’s an odd struggle to watch, but it’s a fun show. It’s in its second season, and I think they started off with a few bumps, but the lately the episodes have been pretty good.

We’re also into Lost and Heroes. Heroes drives me nuts, we really like the show, but it’s constantly disappointing. Well, let me rephrase that — I hate the show, but really like the characters. Now, Lost on the other hand, I can’t get enough of it. What a fun show. We try to not watch it for a few weeks and so we can watch several in a row (online) at once, but that’s hard to exercise that kind of self control.

So Titus is an amazing kid. He’s really fun to talk to, and one of the best things about talking to him is his command of the English language. I’ll give you an example:

One time my leg was in his way and he was trying to get me to move it. He said, “Move.” and so I moved my arm instead of my leg, just to tease him a little. And then he says, “No. Move it pants.”

What’s just as fun as talking to Titus is reading to him. He loves books. Both he and Bridgette will bring us books to read to them. Bridgette’s favorite book is Max’s Ride. Which was my favorite when I was only 11 months old, too.

The funniest thing is when I’m sitting on a couch reading a big novel and Titus will jump up and sit on my lap and expect me to read to him. And if I don’t start reading to him, if I just keep on reading to myself, he’ll demand, “Talk, Daddy, talk!”

What’s even funnier is the other day I was reading Falling Up by Shel Silverstein, and I was trying to find some rhymes that he would like. He loves asking what the title of the poem is, and he would point to the title on every page and ask what it says. Well, once you tell him what it says, he’ll demand that you read that. Only this time he asked me what it said when I was in the index of the book. So before thinking about it, I told him that it was the Index, and sure enough, he wanted me to read the index to him. “Read it Index? … Daddy? … Read it Index? … Talk, Daddy, Talk!”

Here come the Cardinals

So, for the first time in my life, the Arizona Cardinals are actually good. Well, they were good for the last few years, but they couldn’t win games. They couldn’t play two halves in a row, as the commentators like to say.

But now, they’re fantastic. They’re not going to the Super Bowl or anything, but they’ll definitely make the play offs. And, they’re fun to watch.

What’s funny is the fans in Arizona aren’t surprised, they’ve been supporting them for years. Even in the loosing seasons of yesteryear, home game tickets were often sold out.

My favorite player is Neil Rackers. That man can kick a football. Here, see - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZghatdM8mo

So, the reality is sinking in of having Barak Obama as President.

The one thing I’m heartbroken about is the fact that overturning Roe v. Wade is further away than ever, with very little hope in sight. Having worked in the adoption industry for several years, I have seen every side of the argument on this and I still have yet to hear a valid argument for keeping it legal.

I think each century has its abomination — something that we look back and say, “How could we have possibly have done that?” And I’m not trying to compare these, but we look back on the 19th century and we’re disgusted with ourselves as Americans when we remember that we once allowed slavery and that we drove Native Americans off their own land; and we think about the 20th century and consider it absurd that people didn’t have equal rights because of color, race, or gender; and now that we’re in the 21st century we make abortion easier to obtain than most dental work.

I think decades from now America will look back at our time and say to themselves, “How could they?”

How exciting. I didn’t like either candidates and I didn’t vote for Obama, but I like him as a person and I think he will make an excellent leader. I don’t agree with a lot of the liberal-democratic views, but at least we have a good person as a president.

You know, it’s one thing to disagree with a leader’s views, and it’s another thing to have a leader that is a bad person or who isn’t competent, which is what I think we would have if we had Hillary. Scary.

The only thing I’m worried about with Obama is his plan for bringing troops home from Iraq. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see all of our troops out of there, but most analysts agree that rushing troops out of Iraq just won’t work.

I originally voted for Mitt Romney because I really think his business CEO approach is what is needed in the White House. And I think if the economic crisis came one year earlier, it would be Romney vs. Obama. In fact, there were several other really good candidates that the Republicans could have nominated, but instead they all picked McCain. Oh well.

It’s time to focus on the positive, to look at how we are similar, not how we are different.

Today I finally installed WordPress. I’ll eventually import all of the old posts, but the main idea with this new and improved blog is to recommit myself to blogging regularly.

Let me then first start by telling everyone that I may have a tooth ache.