December Awards Ceremony

Christopher received an "outstanding character" award for his 4th grade class, and Shayla received a "conscientious work habits, responsible attitude and enthusiasm for learning" award for her 2nd grade class. Yay!

Thanksgiving Week

Here is Shayla's second grade class "Reader's Theatre" Thanksgiving performance. She is the cute pilgrim at the bottom.

Dave's mom was here visiting for Thanksgiving, and helped us pick out our new car! Very exciting news for us, since it had been a decade since we purchased our Odyssey. This is a more updated version of the same old faithful.

On Thanksgiving, we drove to San Diego in the new car and did some sightseeing at Balboa Park before heading over to John & Irma's for a gourmet feast, complete with three turkeys!

The California cousins, Jessica and Bryan (he is holding Santa's sleigh in his hand).

And their parents, Peg and Arpad.

Pat and the new skinny Herbert.

John, Irma, Maegan and Shelby -- the Thanksgiving hosts.

Here we are visiting the huge tree at South Coast Plaza (this is only the top half -- we are on the second level!) and below visiting Julian for some yummy apple pie.

Happy Halloween!

A first for us this year...all dressing up! Halloween on a Saturday made for a weekend of fun. We had a neighborhood party, and then went to San Diego for a party at Kelley's brother John's house. Lots of hilarious costumes! Yabba dabba doo!

Disney Day

Christopher and Shayla had a couple of days off from school last week for parent-teacher conferences, so we spent one of the days at Disneyland and California Adventure, thanks to Kelley's uncle Arpad, who works for Disney. Thanks, Arpad! We were there for 10 hours and saw both parks, and the kids were verrrrry tired the next day.

Fall Fun

October has arrived, and we took a trip to our local Pumpkin Patch to have some fun. We have been coming here since the kids were babies, and always get a few cute pix.

Christopher participated in an art contest at school this year, and took some cool photos of a sunset and a moonrise. Now he is always borrowing my camera!

And here is Shayla rocking out before bedtime. She usually dances around and gets a little crazy before crashing for the night. Never a dull moment...

Back to School

This is what a 4th grader and a 2nd grader look like on the first day of school. Each of them has their very best friend in class with them, so things are off to a good start. And Shayla's teacher is Mrs. Kelley. Too funny!

Beachtime

Here are a few shots of some great times spent at the beach this summer with family and friends. We love San Clemente!

Wisconsin Vacation

We were able to visit family in Wisconsin for a week this summer, and we had sooo much fun! So many pictures, so hard to choose...here goes:

Visiting State Street and meeting a real live Brat. Cool.

At UW Madison, on the lake, on one of those famous chairs. We wouldn't be doing this in January!

Visiting our cousins on a real live farm. Yes, they let kids drive these things there.

Meeting some real live corn.

More corn. Did I mention there is corn everywhere in Wisconsin in August? We just had to stop and check it out in person.

The sibs at Grampy's lake house. We had gorgeous weather, by the way.

This is a real live duck. Really. People ride on these in the Wisconsin Dells, and it is awesome!

Kassy & Ted's new house in Mt. Horeb. The cousins were inseparable the whole week. We can't wait to come visit again!!

New Summer Smiles...with Braces!

The braces have arrived, for both Christopher and Shayla. In fact, they got them on the same day at the same time, in chairs right next to each other! Shayla loves hers and Christopher hates his...guess it's the age. At least they have the same check-up schedule to keep me more sane!

Happy Birthday, Christopher!

Here's our birthday boy as he celebrated turning double-digits this month. He's huge now! Look, just see how big he is compared to the little guy at the bottom. Cute, huh?