Christmas 2010

We had a very busy time with Christmas and celebrating with family this year. We wanted this year especially to try and keep in mind the reason for Christmas, which is to celebrate the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ and all that means to us. We enacted a small family Christmas pagent with the grandchildren.

Grandpa read the story out of the Bible. The three wise men were Tucker, James and Ashton. Evan was the angel.

We even convinced Jarom and Amery to play a role and they were Joseph and Mary.

Of course we had opening of presents on Christmas morning, which is really exciting for the children. Tianna with Jim, Amery, Dallen, Evan, Aston, James, and we even had Jarom here on Christmas break from college.

Caleb

Talitha and John.

Doranda with Bob, Tucker and Penelope.

Penelope

Ashton

Then we had the annual family talent show. Here's John.

Tucker played harmonica and sang.

Bob and Doranda had a skit that was incredibly funny.

James.

We did Skipe to talk to and see Joshua and Rebecca. Julia, Ethan, and Christian. They watched the talent show and participated with some talents of their own. We also talked to Nathanael and Mary-Anne on the phone several times over the holidays. We also got the chance to talk to our parents (the Great-Grandparents) in Arizona. Wish we could of seen everyone in person but it's not always possible. We also had a very long phone call with Isaac who is on a mission in Japan and talked for almost a hour and a half. He seems to be doing well but we miss him.

We did several other activities too. One of which was dinner at the Outback for the adults, all of which was made possible by presents and gift cards. Thank you everyone.

Jim and I made a trip up to the Seattle temple and did a sesson one morning.

Malachi and Layne joined us at the Outback and they brought two special visitors over to visit at the house one day. We had a great time with Sergio and Andrea (I probably have the spelling wrong) and hope to be seeing a lot more of them in the future. They are wonderful little kids.

We were launching rockets on two different morings. Dallen got a new rocket for Christmas.

Caleb had a rocket too and the launch pad. He knew how it all worked and was the only one of us that had done any before.

This was a miraculous photograph to actually capture the rocket in the milli-second right after ignition.

It was fun chasing down the rockets after they parachuted back to ground.

Dallen caught one of his before it even touched the ground. Although the first one we had to go a long way to retrieve and even had to climb a fence since it blew clear out of the Meadows.

We were doing some wood building too for a couple of days. Evan made a tool box for his Dad.

This was the big project. Bob, with some help from me and others, made a new mantle for the fireplace. It looks absolutely great.

That's all for Christmas this year. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

Tennis Letter

No it is not tennis season. The Emeral Ridge High School Tennis Team had their awards banquet this month and so it seemed appropriate to show some pictures of Caleb during this year's tennis season. He won 9 out of 10 Junior Varsity matches and 2 out of 3 Varsity matches, so it was very good year for him and he even got a high school Tennis Letter.


He also got an Outstanding Scholastic Award for getting good grades at the same time he was playing on the tennis team.

Here's a copy of his Letter certificate. We're all very proud of him.

Here's a set of some pictures that follow. It's hard to get good ones because you sit back so far.

Thanks to everyone that helped practice with him over the summer. The best part of all was that he had a lot of fun.

Repair Bill

The repair bill for the Taurus alone is over $7000. Can you believe that!!! This is for a minor rear end collision that wasn't even bad enough to deploy the airbags. How can that much damage happen from just a minor accident? All my friends are just as shocked as I am.

Car Wreck

I got in a car wreck yesterday evening. Fortunately no one was hurt. I rear-ended a little red KIA. One of the people in the KIA said their back was hurting them but no one went to the hospital and the air bags didn't deploy. My car got the worste damage, it only damaged the back bumper on their car. On our Tauras the hood is dented and won't close and the bumper is destroyed and the insides falling out and the little light below the headlight is knocked out. I was able to drive it home. On Monday the damage will get appraised and then it can be repaired. Hopefully it won't take to long to fix. And hopefully USAA won't raise our insurance rates too much.

Meanwhile Jacquelyn is gone to Arizona. She left on the 1st and will be returning on the 15th.

I hope she's enjoying the sunny weather down in the dessert because it sure is chilly and damp here at home.

She's down in Arizona to close out on the investiment house we are buying and to get it cleaned up and ready to rent. The house is in Laredo Ranch edition in San Tan Valley, Arizona. It's east and south of Mesa and Apache Junction.

Here's a picture of the front of the house. It did close and she got the keys yesterday.

She also gets the chance to visit with her sister Conni. This is Conni with her husband Layne and their foster child Quinton.

She also get to visit with her Mom and Dad who live real close in Apache Junction. Hope she's having fun because things aren't going real well back at home with the car wreck and all.