Good Luck!

Last summer during swimming lessons I made friends with another spectator mom. Her boys are the same age as Zach and Nate and we have enjoyed hanging out ever since. She recently reached the tough decision of having to go back to work. We'll miss our fun outings. For our last hoo-rah, we took the kids to the zoo after preschool on Monday. Good luck at your new job!

Yellow Belt

Congrats to Zach for earning his yellow belt in Karate. He started just after Thanksgiving and loves it! He did great at his belt test and showed off with his "Thunderstrike" routine. Good Job Zach! Here he is with Sensei Johnny, one of his instructors.

Dribble, pass, shoot...

"My future is definitely not in sports photography." Every picture I took at Brandon's basketball game clicked right AFTER he passed or shot the ball. And they were just horrible anyway. Everyone looks psychotic. Maybe I need a new camera. But here are some shots of the Jayhawks in action this last weekend. Brandon is having fun. They have a 30 minute practice and then a 30 minute game.

Monkeys

We went to Howarth Park in Santa Rosa this weekend while visiting my parents. It was 70 degrees out and beautiful. The kids had only been to this park in the summer before and were wondering what happened to the train, carousel, pony rides, and petting zoo. Apparently the city doesn't expect it to be 70 degrees in January...imagine that.

But the playground is always fair game. Those specks at the top of the picture are Brandon and Zach at least 20 feet in the air on top of the "Spider Web".

Nathan's First Haircut

Well, I finally got Nate's 12 (13,14...) month picture taken so he could get a haircut. We always wait until after the picture to get the haircut, because once you cut their hair, they just don't look like babies anymore! So here's our big boy!

More Gymnastics Video

Here's the video of his beam and floor routines too.

Zach's Gymnastics Show

Zach had his end of semester gymnastics show at The Little Gym on Friday. This is his 3rd semester doing this, but this time the show had a new twist. The kids came running into the gym to the Rocky theme and ran laps around the mat with these incredibly serious looks on their faces. It was so funny. Here's a video of his bar routine and a couple other shots. The one of him and his friend Scott wrestling on the Tumble Track is great...mostly because that is what Zach and Scott are usually doing; at gymnastics, at preschool, in Primary, etc. It's good to have friends when you're a little boy :)

Skiing

Apparently, I was trying to load too many pix on that last post, so here is winter sports continued.

Finally, this last Saturday we took Brandon and Zach skiing for the 1st time. Cheers to my lil' sis for taking care of Nate so we could go. They did a 2 1/2 hour lesson and then we skiied with them after lunch. They did great. We even moved up to the chairlift from the conveyer belt. They both had a lot of fun and can't wait to go again!

Winter Sports

We have been really enjoying winter sports over the last month or so. We went Ice Skating the day after Christmas and had so much fun. Brandon can skate by himself now, although he still loves how fast he can go with those walker things.

On New Year's Day we headed up to do a little sledding. Brandon and Zach are both little daredevils coming down the hill...but Nate could think of other things he'd rather be doing :)

Merry Christmas! (Just pretend)

We had a wonderful Christmas Day this year! My Mom, Dad, and Sister Jena all came over and spent the night on Christmas Eve and stayed for a few days. On Christmas Eve we went for a drive to see light displays and read good Christmas stories. The next day, we had a lot of fun trying out Brandon and Zach's new Wii and just relaxing. Besides the Wii, the boy's favorites were:
Brandon: Geoair remote control Airplane, VTech Music Studio
Zach: Better Batter Baseball, Matchbox Mega Rig Space Shuttle
Nate: Star Wars Lil' Quad, Amazing Animals Zoo

Here's a few picks of the craziness. Hope you all had a great day too!

Playing Catch up...Ward Christmas Party

Our Ward has a fantastic Christmas Party...it's a pajama party Breakfast! We had great food, good music, and a visit from the Big Man himself. It was a wonderful way to start the season. Please try to pretend it's not the middle of January.

We're Alive!

Just thought I'd update everyone on why we haven't blogged in a month...
First we started taking pictures on our new cell phone and haven't been able to get the computer to recognize the phone to transfer the files. Then we misplaced our actual camera (it showed up yesterday in our ski bag). Now we can't get the computer to recognize the memory stick. I'm going to take a wild guess that our computer is having issues :)

Hopefully, we'll get some pix up soon. We did have a great Christmas and enjoyed the break from school. The kids got a Wii and have been having a lot of fun with that. We went to the SF Zoo and up to the snow...pix to follow someday. I also got strep throat the day after Christmas, yea!

I'll close with a Zach quote. He apparently has his priorities straight. I asked him if he wanted me to sign him up for a Readers Club/Hooked on Phonics class. Big, pregnant pause and he says, "Well, I want you to sign me up for baseball." That's our boy!