28 December 2014 - Christmas Week

As we did last year, we spent Christmas Eve with Eric and Kathy.  Joanne had found this Star Wars Mr. Potato Head for her cousin Emily.  Emily's a big Star Wars fan, so it went over well.

Santa did come to our house on Christmas.

The girls slept until after 8 am Christmas morning.  I guess we're past the age where our kids can't contain their excitement and wake us up at 5 am.  They were plenty happy when we did finally wake up.

Jessica got the weirdest thing ever -- a Snoopy hot dog toaster.  She was very excited about it.  And we've been eating more hot dogs lately.  In the background, Madeline is showing off her new digibird, Sammie.

Joanne got a star quilt from her sister.

She also got a very fancy new computerized sewing machine.

By Christmas afternoon, the new sewing machine was already in action.

Joanne's mom and stepdad came on Christmas night to stay with us for the weekend.  We had a very nice Christmas snowstorm that had started on Christmas Eve, and left ten inches of fresh powder at Bogus Basin.  This is the snow packed road on the way to the resort.

The crew, including Grampa Phil, ready to make fresh tracks.

The views from atop Bogus mountain are incredible in almost every direction.  This is Jessica and Emily at the summit, looking east.

The day after skiing at Bogus, we took Grandma and Grampa Phil to our exercise class at the Y.  We do a weight lifting class called Group Power several times each week.  They said they liked it, despite some sore muscles.

Saturday evening it started snowing again.  We had planned to go see the lights along Indian Creek in Caldwell, and we didn't let the snow stop us.

Eric and Shaylee came too.  Caldwell does an awesome job with their light display.

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and wish you all the best for the New Year.

21 December 2014 - Concert, Swimming and Skiing

This week Jessica had her school choir concert.  The lighting in the auditorium is always terrible so the photo didn't turn out well, but Jessica is on the left behind the piano.

Jessica also had a solo. She had a part where she asked this little kindergartner what she wanted for Christmas, and then she sang her solo while the little one listened.

On Saturday the girls had a Candy Cane swim meet.  Between the three of them they won several heats and improved best times in a number of events.

Santa even put in an appearance at the Candy Cane meet.  Wet swimming suits did not go on Santa's lap.

The girls did a 12 Days of Christmas thing for a family in our ward.  This blue Jell-o 'pond' was home for seven ducks-a-swimming, and you can't much tell, but inside the Jell-o there's some Swedish fish-a-swimming also.

For their last Young Women's activity of the year, the girls went Christmas caroling.

Emily made a pretzel and peppermint bark log cabin.

When the weekend arrived, we surprised the girls with a short trip to Sun Valley.  We stayed at a lodge facing the slopes.  This is the view from our room's deck.

There were several new inches of snow, and Sun Valley already had one of the deepest snow packs of the season, so conditions were optimal for skiing.

Dressed up warm and ready to hit the slopes.

Our first gondola ride as a family.

All smiles ahead of the first run of the day.

This is at the top of the gondola.  I loved this picture because the mountains behind the girls almost look like a painting.  The village of Sun Valley and town of Ketchum, ID can be seen in the valley below.

Soothing tired muscles in the hot tub after a long day of skiing.

This was a perfect way to warm up for Christmas.

14 December 2014 - Christmas Theater

This week was full of Christmas Theater.  On Tuesday we went to the Nutcracker ballet.  This is put on by the Eugene Ballet Company and the college hosts them once each December.  Here's the Sugarplum Fairy working her magic.

Here's the entire cast at the end of the production.

On Friday evening, we went to A Journey to Bethlehem, a live walk-through nativity at the 7th Day Adventist church in Eagle, Idaho.  There were lots of little stops along the way -- we passed some beggars, had to coax our way into the city of Bethlehem, stopped to pay our taxes and heard a prophecy read by a rabbi about the coming Messiah.  After we were told that there was no room in the inn, we went outside the city wall where we found three wise men who told us they were following a star and they invited us to come along.  Just then, an angel appeared and told us the Savior had been born, so we walked just a bit further to the stable where we found Mary and Joseph with their baby.

On the way out, the kids got to pet a camel, which was gratefully very calm.

We had a good time, but I think Madeline had the most fun of all.

7 December 2014 - Christmas Preparation

This week we had our ward Christmas party.  As is traditional, Santa showed, and Madeline waited patiently for her turn to let him know what she's been hoping for this year.

On Saturday, Joanne and the older two girls did a service project with Shop With a Cop.  Some disadvantaged little kids from our area got to go to KMart with a local police officer and shop for up to $150 worth of gifts for their families.  The young women in our ward served as gift wrappers.

On Sunday, the girls followed their tradition of building Christmas gingerbread houses.

30 November 2014 - Thanksgiving in Utah

I was leaving work one evening and we've had some beautiful sunsets lately, so I stopped to take a picture.

We left for Utah on Tuesday evening after I got home from work.  The girls had all kinds of fun at Grandma's house.  They spent many hours working on ornament crafts.

They also made chocolate cookie turkeys for Thanksgiving Dinner.  The young lady on the left is Bailey, Jennifer's step-daughter.

Here is a close-up of one of the turkeys.

On Saturday the girls had hair appointments during our visit.  Emily got a fancy pretzel braid.

Although it wasn't quite Grandma's birthday yet, we went ahead and had her open a few small gifts while we were there.

On Sunday, we had breakfast with Tiffany's family and then went to her baby blessing.  Joanne likes to kiss sweet babies.

With all those guests to entertain, baby Natalie was soon worn out.

That way she could be passed around without being bothered.

23 November 2014 - Birthday

Madeline had her 5th grade science fair project this week.  Here is her poster and the erosion bottles on display at the school.

November was more like January this year.  After our foot of snow, temperatures dropped into the single digits some nights and an inversion caused hoarfrost to form on the trees.

Thankfully the deep freeze was not too long-lived, and as the snow softened and melted, it became good snowman snow.

It also cause gigantic icicles to form on our house.  Sword sized ones.

Oh, and it was my birthday this week.  It wouldn't be my birthday without something Simpsons oriented.

16 November 2014 - SNOW! and Science

All week the weather forecasts were warning that it would snow on Thursday and Friday, and that we should expect 1-3 inches in the valley.  I snapped this picture of campus as I left work Friday afternoon.  There were two or three inches, and it was still snowing.

Friday morning, we woke up and it was still snowing.  We had about a foot of snow.  School was cancelled, so we set to work digging ourselves out.

Well, some of us worked.

Others just took advantage of a free day off school to play.

It wasn't all fun and games all weekend though.  Madeline has a science fair coming up, and she decided she wanted to look at the effect of water erosion on rocks using a microscope.

So we built a contraption she could use to drip water on some rocks.

She picked three rocks she wanted to erode.

She has quite a rock collection, but she decided these three would be the most likely to erode.

She spent much of Saturday afternoon "raining" on her rocks using our contraption.

We'll finish the project this week, and I have no doubt more photos will be forthcoming.