The operating center

Family

Two bilingual boys, one very busy mother, one orange father, and a surprising number of boards, fields, pools, stages, roads, and radios.

Randall and Krista

Krista and I built a family life around participation rather than spectatorship. She is K6KEG, my partner in radio and everything else, and the Board Secretary for Shalom, Chico AquaJets, Chico Junior High Drama Boosters, and Rosas de María.

The boys

Both boys are bilingual and fluent for their grade levels in English and Spanish. They swim competitively, bike for transportation, skate, run, play competitive soccer and baseball, participate in Virtues and Ballet Folklórico, and use GMRS.

Rhys also participates in Scouts, performs in drama, and has learned small-boat sailing.

How we move

We drive when it makes sense. We also walk, run, bike, use Class IV lanes, ride EUCs, swim, kayak, ski, snowshoe, sail, and work out the transition between them. Team Stone is the public home for those travel and continuity systems.

How we publish

Family photographs are used with permission and context. School routines, live travel, exact routes, private schedules, and details that would burden the boys later stay off the public site.

Team Stone Rosas de María

Adult and child sharing food while seated at an outdoor community gathering — Family life at a community gathering. The ordinary moments belong beside the formal roles because they explain what the work is for.

Earlier years

Before the family expanded, the archive was mostly Randall and Krista.

The later family story is full of schools, pools, performances, radios and transportation logistics. These earlier frames matter because they remember the simpler two-person version: travel, community work, formal events and ordinary time together before parenting became the organizing system for almost everything else.

Krista and Randall Stone seated together at dinner in December 2007 — December 2007. An ordinary personal frame, preserved precisely because not every chapter needs a podium.

Krista and Randall Stone dressed for an event in February 2008 — February 2008. The date is carried by the original camera image; the venue is left undescribed until the archive identifies it.

Krista and Randall Stone together beside the ocean in July 2009 — July 2009. A coastal trip from the earlier two-person family archive.

Special Olympics and winter travel were already shared parts of life before parenting became the dominant logistics system. Special Olympics history · Outdoor history

Young child seated beside the Humpty Dumpty figure at Caper Acres — A family visit to Caper Acres. The photograph is also part of the public-service record because the park’s continued operation depended on practical municipal problem-solving.

Family places

Public policy eventually becomes somebody’s ordinary Saturday.

Parks, pools, schools, sidewalks, trails, and community programs matter because families use them. That is the point of the infrastructure and the budget in the first place.

Read the Caper Acres and ACS story →

Family archive

The public record should still remember the ordinary years.

Family history is not a list of current activities. It also includes the close-up years, indoor adventures, long drives, small routines, and the gradual expansion from two adults into a mobile operating system with opinions.

Smiling infant secured in a child safety seat — Family archive from the early years. No routine, location, or unnecessary identifying detail is published.

Family of four standing together at an indoor recreation facility — A family outing during the active years, when recreation generally meant everyone participating.

Current family life

Home, travel, relatives, ballparks, coast, and trail.

The present-day record is the accumulation of ordinary places, shared trips, outdoor movement, and family gatherings. The pictures can carry some of that work without each one being sentenced to a paragraph beneath it.