It has finally cooled down to the mid 90s this past week. Gas prices have gone down by 10 cents but more importantly a barrel of oil has dipped down to $130. Still the price of everything has dramatically increased from only a year ago. Some items by as much as 47%! Tough times ahead? Hope not. I added the pictures in the picturespage of our Grand Canyon trip and I also added some of the pics that Rog and Susie took on their Euro trip. The I-5 project is finally at its final stage (thank goodness!) with only a week to go.

In sports, Yankee stadium hosted its last All Star game with a memorable performance: Josh Hamilton sets a record 28 homeruns in the 1st round! The American League win the All Star game in the 15th inning. In rec sports, the Jabbawockeez lose in the championship. The Hammerin' Cooleys take an early exit from a pre-West Sacramento league tournament.

Here are the highlights from the HR derby this past weekend:

Just got back from Grand Canyon. And let me tell you, the scenery is surreal. It was pretty amazing to see how huge Grand Canyon was in person. We stayed in a small town called Flagstaff (Drive time: 11.5 hours). The quaint, artsy town was as small as Davis lined up with restaurants and bars. Didn't get to celebrate 4th of July with fireworks this year because they banned fireworks due to potential forest fires. So instead they replaced the celebration with a laser light show, which we didn't have tickets to. Overall it was a nice relaxing trip. The only bad thing was coming back to the 105+ degree weather in Sacramento.

In sports, Nadal upsets Federer... could this be the end of Federer's 5 year reign? Maybe. It was the best tennis match I've ever seen. You gotta watch the highlights below. Looks like the Kings will end up trading Artest since he feels like he was snubbed out of potential millions. The A's are 6 games behind the Angels at 48-41.