Battle of the Books

Ethan recently participated in the "Battle of the Books" at school. The kids are supposed to read the books on a list and then are put in teams to answer questions about the books. They even buzz in like they do on "Jeopardy"

It takes a lot of concentration :D

It was actually kindof exciting. When the buzzer went off the teams were tied and they had to have a tie breaker. He did a good job and it was a lot of fun to watch. :D

Wrapping up his 4th decade

Brad began the last year of his 3rd decade on Feb 21st. Next year will be the big 4-0!!

In honor of Brad I thought I would post a couple of my favorite pictures of Brad :D One cool dude!

Brad took his "birthday money" and bought himself an iPod Touch. He LOVES to play with it!! It is the best toy ever!

Got any fun "apps" to share? The current favorite at our house right now is a fishing game.
Happy 39th Brad!

Bootcamp update

Here's a little video of how I've been starting my day. If you're in the area and want to be a part of this let me know... they're starting a new group right away.
You may even recognize a few people in the video :-D

I LOVE IT!

Brundage Boot Camp lots of fun and great results

Was I dreaming?

It was so long ago now, I wonder if it was really a dream... I was skiing on Mount Bachelor AGAIN, without any kids AGAIN!!

I just checked on my cell phone pictures again to confirm that my friend Kim (mother of 4) and I were really there together without children... and it's TRUE, IT REALLY HAPPENED!!

How could this be, you ask??

Well, it was all thanks to my dear brother in law, Benji's, terrible misfortune. Benji flew in on Feb 27th on a beautiful Friday morning from AZ to snowboard for the weekend. I took him straight from the airport to the ski hill where he bought a 2 day pass for his fun snowboarding weekend. Sadly (for him :D) he fell late in the day on Friday and by Friday evening was hurting so bad he knew he couldn't snowboard on Saturday. So... as not to let a good pass go to waste I called my friend Kim at 10:15pm Friday night to see if she could ski with me... and she said "YES!"

We had a great day together "sans" children and remembered why we loved skiing and got to try out some runs the likes of which neither of us had seen in years. True, we were a little rusty, but we have decided that we need to do this again and hone our skills a little more.

Here's a little video I took of us skiing

p.s. I understand that Benji, Brad and the kids had a good time at the High Desert Museum and a fun snowball fight... so sad I missed that.... :D Thanks for coming Benji!

Benji has always been such a great uncle. The kids LOVE him!!
sorry about your hip Benji.... but thanks for an AWESOME day!

A Howlin' Good Time

Friday morning our family started our 5 hour road trip to Washington for our much anticipated trip

Once we were checked in at "The Great Wolf Lodge" we went straight for our room, put on our bathing suits and spent the next 3 hours in the water park

We were so tired and waterlogged after that we went to one of their on site restaurants for supper, where they served dinner in these cute buckets (isn't that such a cute idea? I think I may use it for a birthday party or something)The kids were so exhausted they went straight to bed and we all slept for NINE hours straight!!The BEST thing about the Great Wolf Lodge is that it is all about the kids. I especially love the "Kid's Kabin" the kids got to sleep in. They had a bunk bed and day bed in the little room with their OWN TV!! Could you imagine anything more exciting?Saturday morning we headed back to the water park for another 3.5 hours.
Abby and Ethan enjoyed some water wars




Look up!
Watch out!

My monkey boy!
He's a lean machine!
They had something for every age level. You can't see in the pictures I posted, but there are 2 medium water slides, 2 big waterslides with rafts, 2 waterslides for tubes, and a wave pool in addition to the pictures I took. I particularly loved the "Howlin' Tornado" it was like nothing I had ever been on before... and SO fun.
This trip totally wore us out (in a good way of course :D) We'd love to do it again some time and think it would be even more fun with friends... so who's up for going with us next year??

Sportsmen (in training)

Last Thursday our family decided it would be fun to go to the

and it did not disappoint.

We spent the first hour in a "Survival" lecture from Peter Kumerfeldt (his website is here.)

He had some awesome information and I bought a few of his super duper orange plastic bags. If he's ever in your area, I would go and/or check out his website.

After the survival lecture it was off to paint duck decoys Although I'm not quite sure what we're going to do with them now that they are done.

Then is was off to the trout pond

Abby was first to snag a fish and bring it in


You can tell from the look on her face what she thought of the fish :D

Elise caught a couple too, and decided to keep one.

(Samantha looks equally excited as Abby about the fish)
Then it was Ethan's turn to catch one

Sadly, Ethan's fish got away from him before he could land it. He had 2 more bites that came close to landing, but got away. He was so disappointed and upset.

Then finally....
SUCCESS!!

and he throoughly enjoyed his catch!!

The whole 4 hours we were there was great, and we didn't even get to see and do a bunch of the stuff I wanted to. We will have to go earlier next year. It was such a blast!

Another highlight of our trip was getting a quail caller. Ethan has been practicing his "Che KEE ta's", so soon we will have to go out in the field and see if he can't attract a covey.

FUN! FUN!

CAUTION: Wild animal

There was a wild animal trapped and making a terrible noise in Abby's room a few weeks ago. It was like nothing I had heard before, so I took some video of it

After 20 min. when the noise finally calmed down and we checked in the room we found the animal had escaped and only Abby was left in the room. Strange! Don't know what it could have been... sometimes is sounds like a leopard, other times a chimpanzee.

Hope the wild animal doesn't find it's way into your child's bedroom. BEWARE!!