January Wrap up

We rang in 2010 in a more quiet fashion this year. My dad made it down here just in time.

Somehow I don't have many pictures of my dad's visit, but we had a good time.

Here we are out to supper one night.

Samantha was invited to participate in another honor band. This group included the best players in Central Oregon. It was probably my favorite concert of Samantha's I have ever been to. It was nice music, entertaining and not too stuffy.

Way to go Samantha... another honor band!

January also means "Pinewood Derby" time. Ethan did a great job of cutting the wood all himself, even sustaining an injury. When he sliced his hand and saw all the blood he turned white as a sheet and told me "I feel dizzy," so we quickly sat him down to help him recover. It was a pretty good gash. He didn't use any power tools at all. It was all done with a saw, chisel and sandpaper. I was very impressed that he kept with it.

So, here it is. The completed car It was not very fast however :-(

Here they are waiting for their turn on the track. Ethan was a really good sport about his losses, and Brad has vowed to help a bit more next year and look into the fine art of Pinewood Derby car creation.

We recieved sad news in January of the sudden passing of Brad's uncle, Gary from a heart attack. Sharon and Gary were able to come out and visit us a couple years ago, and the kids always described him as "the uncle with Peanut." Peanut is Gary's beloved dog, and it appropriate that they included this photo on the program for his memorial service.

Gary and Sharon lived in Boise, which is driveable from Bend, so Brad's mom flew in to Bend, and they were able to go to the funeral and spend some time with family, which was nice for them.

Here is a nice picture of a bunch of the cousins together at the funeral

Near the end of January, Samantha and Elise each brought a friend and I took them to the "Hairspray Sing-a-long" at the Tower Theatre down town.
What a fun night and a great idea!!

What's more fun that going to a musical an the theatre and getting to sing along?

I was SO FUN!

Well that about wraps up January. Now to catch up on February!

Stuck on you!

January 8th 2010 would have been Elvis Presley's 75th birthday.

We were "all shook up" about it so I grabbed the kids and my "Big Hunk O' Love" and headed to a local diner for a special dinner to celebrate

Lyle the owner and his wife came up with this fun menu

They also had fun trivia cards on the table, but "A Fool Such As I" didn't do so well with the answers.
I had never had a signature GRILLED peanut butter and banana sandwich, so I figured
"It's now or never" and ordered one and it was really "Too Much"... no "Return to Sender" with this meal. It was delicious!!
Check it out!! (Mmmm... now I want another one!)

They had Elvis music playing over the speakers in the restaurant and were playing an Elvis movie on the TV and I "[Couldn't] Help Falling In Love" with Elvis and his music and charm.

Now "Don't be cruel" and judge me too harshly, but we couldn't resist getting a peanut butter and banana shake for dessert too. Mmmmm!

It was such a fun way to celebrate and educate the kiddos on "The King"

I love this video. He looks so great in that leather outfit


This is probably my favorite Elvis song. I SO wish I could have seen him perform in his prime!


This one's a classic!!



Elvis, it was fun to celebrate "The Wonder of You"

Christmas is finally here!

Santa's elf helping prepare on Christmas eve

Samantha got the phone she's been asking for, for forever!! And used all 250 free texts in a matter of minutes!!
Ethan's swiss army knife from grandpa

Ethan had been bugging my mom about what was in a present she had for him under the tree. My mom jokingly told him it was a tutu, and so the running joke began. Ethan would joke about what he was going to do with his tutu and how excited he was to get it. So... my mom couldn't resist actually going out and buying him one. It was so funny Christmas morning when he opened it... :D

Thanks to the Markels for our awesome Tony Hawk game!

Abby got this pretty quilt from grandma Whiting, with lots of hours of love and care sewn into it.

Another big hit was Owl City tickets

It was fun to have Granma and Karl to share Christmas with us. We haven't ever had someone share Christmas with us at our place our entire marriage, so it was a nice treat.

Brad was super excited about "helping" put this toy dinosaur together for Ethan

Elise working on a new fashion design

Ethan wasn't too bad at it either!! :D

Santa brought Abby a desk. Here she is at 12:20pm

Here she is at 4:50pm

Here she is at 6:41pm!

She was busy, busy, busy in that desk ALL DAY!!

While we didn't recieve snow for Christmas morning, late Christmas day came a fog that produced this beautiful hoar frost for Boxing Day.

The hike up Pilot Butte was so pretty!

A great wrap up for our Christmas season.

More December fun!

December brought more fun, like the ward Christmas party. Although we are not coordinated at all in this picture from the party, I think everyone looks pretty good. Thanks to Lora for taking the pictures- we haven't had a picture of us all together for a very long time! I went to help in Ethan's class to help them make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. All the children in class were carefully following the model the teacher had shown them and my son comes up with this....????

I also went with the YW to wrap presents for the needy seniors in the community. I thought it turned out to be a really nice event.
Some of the younger girls joined us as well.
We also went for a snow shoe trip up to Virginia-Meisner snow park. It was a little chilly to begin with or if you stopped moving. We did about 3 miles.




At "the top"

Very pretty day and pretty view.

Abby's tuckered out!

Brad took the little kiddos out sledding one day over the break.

And the kiddos and I joined the YM/YW for tubing at the tube park

Some deep snow!!

Check out the cool tow to take you up the hill!

Lots of good stuff this month!

Concerts galore

Concerts, concerts, and more concerts.

This is "Come Unto Christmas" put on my our Stake

I don't know how our school music teacher "gets away with it", but all of our kids Christmas concerts were Christian songs!! Imagine that! At Christmas time! Nice being "off the radar" sometimes.

Silent Night in German (sorta), English, and Spanish (sorta) :-)

This was a sing along at the High School (forgive my "singing along") with again... Christmas songs!

Goal driven...

Ethan decided one day that he really wanted to wear his socks for 4 days straight. He wouldn't even take them off at bed time. I really had to convince him that he HAD to take his socks off for his shower, but that was the only time!

He made a little chart in his room and everything where he checked off his "progress"On the night of day 3 even Ethan was a bit grossed out by the state of his socks and the grimeys between his toes, but he was determined to last the 4 whole days.

And he did it!!

Here he is with his "trophy socks"

....Boys!!!

Think they'll give him a boy scout badge for following through with his goal??

Let the festivities begin!!

We started our December fun on the 5th with the Bend Christmas parade.

Samantha got to wear this super sexy band uniform. Can you tell how excited she is?

Here she is. The flutes are at the back

It was a chilly day so the parade moved pretty quickly. In fact Samantha's band was at the beginning of the parade, and Elite was the 3rd to last entry, and Samantha was back from the parade route before we left!!

Abby and Ethan had a great time riding their scooters down the parade route with the Elite Fitness group. They didn't complain a single time the whole route! They were too busy showing off their scooter tricks... check'em out!

After the parade we met up with the Lewandowski's again for the great Christmas tree hunt.

Brad found "the perfect tree", but had to take one for the team trying to get the tree back to the van through all the brush and ended up twisting his knee. But, we did have one fine tree!!

Brett and Abby were working really hard

Brittany and Sam having a good time.

Sunday we got a nice big dump of snow to start our Christmas holiday off right :D Ethan and his "snow pillow"