Abe's Family

While we were in Arizona for Christmas we has some family pictures taken. Jill's sister Mindy took them. I thought that I would post the main one for now. This is all 39 of us including Auntie (far right).

Reagan's Birthday

Reagan had his 2nd Birthday while we were in Arizona. He loved all the attention he got. He danced the whole time the family sang the Birthday song. He tried to blow out his candles but was too afraid to get close enough to actually blow the birthday candles out. Since there was so many people we had a race car cake for Reagan and a pink cake for his Grammie. On the drive home he kept asking for more cake.

Christmas

New Skills

Jonah Has developed some new skills:

Playing the piano
Reading
And most important...

Babysitter for hire - quite cheap!

Missing you at Christmas!

We hope everyone had a very nice Christmas. This is who missed you.

Sledding Fun

We took some time today to do a little sledding. It was very cold and windy but we did manage to have plenty of fun as well as a little blood, sweat, and tears. The blood and tears came on the first run down the hill when Mason ran into Claire and knocked her down flat. Oops, it was an accident!
Ian and Mason wanted to stay for ever. Grandma was too cold!

Merry Christmas to everyone tomorrow!

Discovering Snow

Sunday morning Reagan woke up and watched the snow fall from the sky. He wanted to go outside and play in it really bad. Finally I decided he could go out there for just a minute to see what snow was. That is why in this video he is just wearing pajamas.



He now understands that snow is cold!!!

Air Hockey

While we were in Boise Reagan convinced his Grammie to play Air Hockey with him. Here is the video.

Santa Visits

Tonight we took Reagan to a Christmas party. There was a special visitor at the party. It was Santa. Reagan wasn't sure what to think of Santa at first. Then Santa started tickling Reagan. He thought that was funny. When he hopped off Santa's lap he gave him a high five. Santa gave Reagan a candy cane and a present to open. Reagan wasn't able to wait until Christmas to open the present so he just opened it on the way home and ate the candy cane.

Gingerbread houses

Sunday evening we made gingerbread houses with all of the little kids. I thought that the easiest place to make them would have been having them all sit at the little picnic table. But after Reagan fell off backwards twice in ten minutes we decided it would be safer to do it one at a time at the kitchen table. Lots of sticky fingers and a few snitched pieces of candy later everyone had a gingerbread house to take home. Actually, Claire made a castle! We had so much fun we hope to do it again next year with Jonah and Lauren!!

Double the Trouble - Double the Fun!

I sometimes call Claire my little "messmaker". I even went as far as to teach her the words to the song "mess maker, mess maker, make me a mess" (The tune is from the matchmaker song from Fiddler on the Roof). She has found a new best friendwith Reagan and the two of them have had lots of fun playing and making messes. Saturday night we were busy doing something and not paying to much attention to them. I noticed that the two of them were playing in the pantry with the door shut. I though they might be eating crackers or something but instead they got into a canister of sugar and were throwing it everywhere. The clue was when white stuff came under the door! Next mess, Reagan came out of the bedroom saying "ouch" He had a mouth full of hot tamales that he found on Grandpa's headboard. Probably about the same time that the two of them spilled two classes of water on our bed.

Thanksgiving

I hope that everyone had a fun Thanksgiving. We enjoyed the day even though it was a little weird not spending it with family. We went over to the Rubich home and spent the day with them. She teaches at the same school as Abram. Reagan loves playing with their little boy Michael. After diner we took some family photos. Reagan didn't understand why he was supposed to sit still or why I didn't want him playing in the pile of dirt. He didn't cooperate very well. We ended up getting a few photos that worked. The last photo has the Rubich family in it also.

Something to make you laugh

One afternoon, I put Lauren down for a nap and decided to do the dishes. Claire was playing in the family room while I was cleaning. After a while I noticed it was completely silent. I am sure you all know the feeling. when I couldn't hear Claire anymore I knew she was up to something. she was being sneaky. The first thought that came to my mind was " she better not be upstairs waking Lauren up!" I ran upstairs, opened my door and what I walked in on... well, lets just say I had to turn around and grab my camera. This is what I found.

Hard working girl

With the economy the way it is claire thought she would start working a day job to help out with our finances.

well, actually claire is always getting snacks or treats when she does something good, so for our craft last week we decided to make a money jar. Now when she does something like a chore or something good i just give her some of the change that i never use. i think this is good because it will save on future dentist bills and it teaching her to earn, and save money. when she cleaned her room i used it as a teaching opportunity. i told her how daddy goes to work everyday and he works very hard, and even if its not fun, he does it so that he can buy her special things and so we can live in our house. when cory got home from work that night, she ran up to him and gave him a big hug and said, "thank you for working daddy."

Will you play with me?

Eagles Play Poorly in Lines' Coaching Debut

Last night was my high school basketball coaching debut. April wanted me to point out that her and Reagan were the only white spectators in the gymnasium. Growing up in Arizona and Oregon, I used to think that would mean that you had a phenomenal team. Okay, enough about the diversity of my team and on to our game.... We lost 48-52. It was a great game up and down but my team just turned that ball over and missed too many wide open lay-ups. We played poorly and only lost by 4 so that is a good sign for things to come. My whole approach has been to emphasize the positive with them. They already know what they did wrong so I am approaching it with what they did well and am building our practices around improving in the areas that we did poorly in. With 2:30 left in the game we were down 10 points. I subbed in 5 guards and went to a full-court trap. We went on a 6-0 run but that is as close as we would get. I should have gone to it earlier, but you live and learn. It felt good to be coaching again. Although I must say my legs are a little sore from squatting down on the sideline to go with my pacing back and forth.

Hopefully the 0-1 start is a good sign. My senior year when I coached Caleb's sixth grade basketball team we won our first game and then never won again, hopefully this time it will be reversed.

After Thanksgiving Day Sales

I thought that I would share this website in case anyone was interested. The site has the 2008 Black Friday Sales listed. If you already had some ideas for Christmas but thought you would wait till after Thanksgiving to buy it to see if it would go on sale this site may help you out.

www.TheBlackFriday.com

Mommy's Little Helper

Reagan loves to be his mommy's little helper. Which isn't always helpful. When I do dishes he wants to help. Reagan only knows how to unload the dishwasher. So anytime I am at the dishwasher Reagan is right there helping me unload it. Even if I am trying to load it. On Friday I decided to make pumpkin cake rolls. Reagan decided he needed to be right there helping me. He actually did an ok job. There was a bigger mess than normal but they still turned out good.