Other Current Events

I haven't blogged in so long that I decided to add a few more photos. Aiden up to his usual. He could at least get off the couch and use the vacuum that is sitting next to him.

Brennan and his friend Ethan were nice enough to come along for Sophie's Sunshine Generation performance. The Christmas show was really fun, and Sophie did a great job!

Brennan has been saving his money for a long long time in order to buy a pocket rocket. Lance finally decided that he had saved enough, and pitched in a little to help him out. He's had a great time riding it. I've even taken it for a spin. Not a lot of leg room.

Christmas 2009

We've had a good Christmas day. The kids were really happy with their presents, and we felt like we were pretty good about not going overboard.

Grandma June was here with us again. It's always nice to have here visit, especially on special occasions.
Aiden received the usual from Santa: Legos.

Brennan was thrilled to receive a tether ball set for us to install in the backyard, as well as a DSi.
Sophie was thrilled with her new sewing machine even though it later made her pretty grouchy.

Brennan and Aiden gave each other airsoft guns. They've been out shooting targets (and most likely each other) for a lot of the day.

Lance's parents gift to our family was ROCKBAND. We've had fun with it today, and I must say that my drumming skills improved. I was really bad at first.

Finally I can post again!

Lance just had to take a picture of me wearing my eye protection covers after my Lasik surgery. Recovery hasn't been bad. The worst part is that I'm suppose to wear those plastic covers when I sleep at night, and it really hurts to pull the tape off in the morning.


Brennan just turned 11! His birthday was a little drawn out due to the weather. Our original plans fell through because of the rain, so we went and saw G-Force at the discount theatre, and then went out to eat. We also sent him on a treasure hunt inside and outside of the house to find his presents. He tells me that it was a lot of fun.
Brennan and Ethan (Brennan's best friend) were bored one day, and added a few accessories to their attire. Unfortunately, Daisy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Does this dog look amused?
The boys look like they are wearing some sort of bad orthodontic head gear.

Not working

I have tried several times in the past month to update my blog. Everytime I try to upload a photo it locks up on me. I'll eventually get it figured out.

I realize that it has been a very long time since I last posted. I tried once, but the computer wouldn't cooperate. I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say, we've been happy and healthy. We've had a busy couple of months with school getting out etc. We're leaving on vacation tomorrow, so I thought that I'd post a couple of photos before our departure.

We've been ice blocking with friends. This is a blurry picture of Sophie as she is falling off.

Sophie also lost another tooth recently. Her first top tooth. It's being a slow process for her, but that's a good thing. At this point we're occasionally having difficulty understanding her speech. What will it be like when both of her top middle teeth are gone?

She got a haircut today. She's very happy with it.
Brennan and Sophie having a happy moment with Daisy. I don't think that we could make Daisy pull that face again if we tried.

In other news...Aiden did fabulously well with his artwork this year. He took "Sixth Grade Art Student of the Year", and won best of show for one of his drawings as well as several first places. We're very proud of him. I will be sure to post a photo of his drawing when we get back from vacance.

Typical Aiden

Aiden came home from school today, and disappeared into the kitchen for a snack. I came in a few minutes later to discover that he was eating a yogurt and an apple. I was praising him for his healthy food choices when he says, "The ice cream was all gone." Typical Aiden.

Soccer Practice

Since the race, I haven't been doing any running in an attempt to finish healing from the lovely groin pull. I've been using the elliptical at the gym, but not running, and limiting my walking. Unfortunately, I haven't been doing a very good job at limiting my food intake. Anyway...I was with Brennan at soccer practice the other night when he let me know that he couldn't find his ball. There were probably about 200 + people at this park, mostly parents and kids there for soccer practice. I proceeded to walk the path around the park looking for his ball. The park is right next to a creek, so there are a lot of trees. I was busy studying the forested area in hopes of catching sight of the lost ball when I got nailed in the head by a soccer ball. There were some teenage girls there practicing, and one of the forcefully kicked balls miss the goal and hit me. It hit me so hard that I literally saw stars. The force of it almost knocked me off my feet. Unfortunately, as I staggered and stumbled about trying to stay upright, I injured myself again. Besides feeling like I might have a week-long headache, I was really mad. I was finally feeling like I was within a few days of being able to run again, and all because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time I was back to limping. Oh well, what's another week or two of inactivity? And no, we didn't find his ball. Someone must have decided that they really liked it.

Cowtown Half Marathon

On Saturday, I competed in the Fort Worth, TX Cowtown Half Marathon (13.1 miles). Competed isn't really an accurate description, because really all I wanted to do was finish. I started training several months back and was so excited about the improvement I was making, and then POW! BOOM! BANG! and maybe even ZOWIE! I hurt myself trying to get the high score on the Wii Fit Hula Hooping. I do believe that I did manage to beat the top score, but then I paid for it dearly. Apparently I suffered a groin pull. My friend Angela and I have gotten a lot of mileage off of the work "groin". It's just one of those bad sounding words.

Anyway, for more than a month I've been trying to allow this injury to heal while keeping up my training. It didn't work so well, so for about 3 weeks, I didn't run at all. I went through with the race because it was a goal I had set, and I was feeling really pretty good. I didn't suffer too much during the race, but I wasn't able to run as fast as I could have done had I been able to keep up with my training. As the day of the event drew closer, we started watching the weather forecast. We have been having beautiful weather, so that was what we were expecting. As luck would have it, a cold front moved in the night before the race. It was freezing. To add to it, we got stuck in traffic, and missed the start of the race. We started 25 minutes late, so for the first 4 miles we ran past all of the walkers. At that point, I knew that I needed to slow down my pace, so I let my friend, Heather, run on ahead so that she would have a decent time. I hit the wall at about 11 miles and wasn't sure if I could keep it up. I really don't remember much about the last 2.1 miles, but apparently I conquered. Here I am on my way to the finish line.

Lance came to support me, and to take a few photos. He was so cold that it was hard for him to get a decent shot of an already moving target. Wow! Look how fast I was moving!

Crossing the finish line.

Heather and I sporting our medals and holding onto a nice hot cup of chamomile tea. It was great! I think I'll do it again.

Susan B. Anthony

On Friday, Sophie participated in a project that her class has been doing. The kids have been researching famous Americans, and their contributions to society. Then they were to dress up as this person, and tell a little about what they admired, and what advice this person might give. Sophie was Susan B. Anthony. She was very excited about this project, especially the dressing up part. Here she is in the middle of her little speech. She had to stop and think for a minute.

We forgot to fold back the sleeves. She was very cute in her outfit. Her teacher is standing in the background.

We borrowed a lot of what she wore from a sister in our ward who has one of everything. We're glad that there are people like that around.

Sophie's Baptism

Here is cake #4. Sophie was baptised on Saturday, February 7, 2009. She was very pretty in her white dress, and it was a special day for all involved.

We are very proud of Sophie and her decision to be baptised.

My sister, Julie, and her son Evan made the trip to come and share the day with us. It was so much fun having them here with us. We will miss them, but look forward to seeing them this summer. It's so hard to get a good picture of a group of people. This was the best in spite of the look on Evan's face.
A family in our ward, the Silers, put together a video presentation about baptism that we showed between the baptism and the confirmation. It was really well done, and very neat. Here's the link: http://studentweb.engr.utexas.edu/cds847/SilerFamily/videos/BaptismVideo.htm

A week later we celebrated Sophie's 8th birthday. This was a big one. It turned into a week long celebration with eating out, her baptism etc. We had cake and ice cream with our neighbors, the Aherns. This is Jake and Lance with Mr. Nibbles (Brennan's hamster). The little boys loved the hamster, but were a little wary all the same.

This is Collin wondering how he really feels about a rodent crawling on him.

Sophie with her balloons, cake and presents, ready to celebrate. She received her very own set of scriptures, an MP3 player, several books, a little dress, from her family, and a journal, shirt, and sweater from the Aherns.

She had a good birthday, but was disappointed that she didn't get any toys. Oops! She received money from grandparents, so we thought that she could buy her own. Not good enough. We'll remember for next year.

Here's cake 3 within a week.

We celebrated Lance's birthday on January 23rd. He doesn't want anyone to make a big deal out of his birthday, so I respect that, and never plan anything big. We usually end up going to a movie or out to dinner, or just hang out with the kids. He was in for a surprise this year. When he got to work the lights were all off, and he was welcomed by being covered in "Silly String". At lunchtime his co-workers insisted that he go to lunch with them, and that he would ride with them too. As they drove past his car in the parking lot, he discovered that they had decorated his car. They spent the day telling all of his patients that it was his birthday. Not his style, but he was a good sport. Of course they brought a cake!

I had baked a cake at home, so that made two.

We celebrated quietly at home after his fun day at work.

Finally, a chance to post. We've been busy the past few weeks with just life in general. Brennan worked hard on his science project. He chose to study which animal had the grossest mouth; humans, dogs or cats. Cats had the stinkiest petri dishes, but we decided that we're all pretty nasty. Stripy didn't want to be swabbed.

Daisy didn't think that it was too much fun either. Fortunately she was a pretty good sport.

Here is his finished display. Notice the empty spaces. Somehow a couple of important pages fell off during transport from his classroom to the gym. His conclusion was one of the missing pages. His teacher still gave him an "A" on the project, but he wasn't judged as high as he would have been had the pages been there. Someone else set it up for him, so he didn't know that anything was wrong until after the judging had taken place. Bummer!

More Laundry

After the mouse incident on Monday, and the mounds of laundry that I washed I received another fun surprise yesterday. I got a call from Sophie's friend's mother letting me know that her daughter has lice. The school nurse is guessing that she's had them for about 4 weeks! We've had a lot of contact with this child over the passed 4 weeks. Yikes! I had just finished shampooing the carpets when she called and was ready to sit and read my book for an hour or so. Instead I spent the rest of the day doing more laundry, and vacuuming every crack and crevice of the upstairs. Fortuantely, we have yet to find a single louse on anyone's head. I'm sure I'll keep checking for the next week at least. Never a dull moment.

Rare Moment

This doesn't happen very often at our house, so I thought that I better document it. Generally the kids space themselves evenly across the living room. No one shares a piece of furniture ever. So what if they're each playing their own game. At least they aren't fighting.

Mouse in the House

This is what my closet looked like yesterday morning. It was a mandatory cleaning due to an unwanted guest. The kids were playing in my closet and Brennan made a discovery.

Yes, we had a mouse. After cleaning all of the top shelves on Lance's side of the closet, and finding what I thought to be the mouse's nest, I thought my job was done. I was wrong. For some reason, the mouse was enamoured with one of my sweaters. This is the remnants of what it removed from the main body of the sweater.

This is the fabulous new design that that sweet little creature left for me.

I was thrilled. It also chose to chew a few holes in the beautiful quilt that Lance's great grandmother made for him. I feel sick about it.

The best part of the story is that while I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, Jodie, telling her all about the three hours of closet cleaning that I had done, and the mountains of laundry I was in the midst of, I picked up a blanket to put it in the washer, and out ran the mouse. It frightened me a-so that I hung up on Jodie. Fortunately, Daisy is an excellent mouser. She chased it into the bathroom where I was able to trap it under an empty coolwhip bowl. Sophie's friend, Kelli, was there, and thought that the whole ordeal was so exciting and fun that I should release the mouse and chase it some more. I didn't like that idea, so I let it go outside. My guess is that it's missing the warm home that it thought it had. We're wondering what it was eating? Sweater? Blanket? Plastic bags? Hmmm.

Christmas 2008

Aiden wanted to make sure that his cache was viewable as well. He actually received 3 lego sets. Spoiled child!

Christmas 2008

Sophie with her loot. Her favorite gift was a DS.

Brennan looked very disappointed when he discovered that Santa hadn't left him the hamster that he's been begging for. Santa was kind enough though to leave him a rip stick.

Aiden spent Christmas morning the way he likes best; putting together a lego set. I don't know if he'll ever grow out of Legos.

Brennan's parents are too soft hearted. Lance finally decided that our house already smells like a dog. Why not add another stinky pet. We wrapped the cage, and gave him a gift card to buy the hamster of his choice. Hamsters must be a popular Christmas gift because we had to call six different Petsmart stores to find one (they actually had six to choose from) and drive 30 minutes to get to the location. It was worth the trip, because he is a very cute and sweet hamster. Brennan named him Nibbles.

We had a very good quiet Christmas. Lisa and Sydney sent a package, and Daisy got a new toy. It's a dragon with squeaky eggs inside. She's figured out that she can annoy us greatly by repetitively squeaking the eggs while sitting next to us.

Brennan and Sophie both had very fun class parties. Sophie made a very cute and yummy gingerbread man.

Brennan's class had a brunch, and played a few games including Bingo.