Making Rolls

We may not have had the most traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but we had to have homemade rolls. The kids always want to help when Mom is baking. Here's our little helpers.

New Camera

After our trip to Legoland, Michelle and I started talking about how we should start looking into the possibility of getting a new camera. We bought the camera just before Tyler was born, so it is now over 5 years old.

Not too bad of a lifespan for electronics if you ask me. Our biggest complaint with it is that it has a proprietary battery.

After every charge it would give us the low battery indicator within about 5 pictures. We could continue to use it all day (like we did at Legoland), but we never knew just when we would be taking our last picture. So, I began looking at the point and shoot cameras on the market. Let's face it, neither one of us has the time to learn how to be a real photographer. As I did my research, I just couldn't justify the expense of a new camera. So, we never replaced it. Well, while we were out Trick or Treating on Halloween night, the camera got dropped. It still continued to work the rest of the night, so we didn't really notice the real damage. A few days later, Michelle tried to take some pictures of the kids in the back yard. Whe she tried to zoom in on them, she couldn't get the zoom to go. I took a look at it when I got home from work that night, and found that the drop caused a lot more damage than we thought. It still takes pictures, but none of the buttons work.

So, here is the replacement camera. I got it about a week and a half ago. I am still trying to figure out all of its features, but I like it so far. It has a much bigger zoom, image stabalization, 9 Megapixels, and it runs on AA batteries, so we can replace them anytime we need to. We bought rechargable ones to use, but just in case we forget to charge them, you can find AAs anywhere. So, all the pictures from now on will be with the new camera. I just hope that we like it.

Dinner Time

So if you don't like what's for dinner, just give up and go to sleep. We had chicken enchiladas for dinner the other night. The kids usually eat them without any problem. Meagan must have been really tired this night though. She sat down to see what was for dinner, took one look at it and decided to give up. By the time that everyone else was done eating, this is how she was.

Halloween

We went to Gilbert this year to celebrate Halloween with the kids' cousins. Rebecca was a '50s girl, Tyler a frog and Meagan a fairy princess with wings. All of these costumes had been worn by Rebecca in years past, but that is what each of them wanted to be.

The nice thing about Arizona Halloweens is that it isn't cold. Meagan walked around in her leotard all night and never complained about being cold.

Soccer Season

Rebecca and Tyler both played soccer this fall. They had their last game last Saturday. As fun as it is, and as much as they enjoyed it, we are glad that it is over. Practices every Tuesday and Thursday evening and games every Sat morning makes it hard to get much else done. Plus, I'm never around to help Michelle out during the week, so she had to do a lot of it on her own. Here are a few random shots taken throughout the season.







Michelle made the team banner for Rebecca's team. Obviously they were the "Blue Sharks". Each player has a shark with their name on it. The boys had grey sunglasses and the girls had white bows. I thought she did a really good job on it.

Consequences

I believe that there are consequences to all the decisions that we make in life. Sometimes the consequences are positive and sometimes they are negative. I chose not to plant a garden this summer or fall. As a consequence, I did not reap the benefits of having fresh produce. I also had the consequence of the kids always wanting to dig in the planter box. I chose to let the kids play in the planter box with the condition that they not get any of the dirt outside of the planter box. This is what they chose to do:

What should their consequence be?

It just makes me mad...

In the state of AZ this year we have the opportunity to vote to amend the state constitution to read: "Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state." 20 simple words. That is all that it is. 20 simple words. However, it doesn't seem that it is so simple. I have no idea how it is doing in the polls. It just seems to me that we are living in the times like unto Sodom and Gomorrah. Michelle heard someone say that it will probably pass in AZ, but fail in Pima County (where we live). It just makes me sick to think that people can't see how black and white of an issue this really is. It is so important for the future of our families that this passes. I totally believe in the principle of loving the sinner and hating the sin. I don't want to imply that I have hatred or ill feeling towards anyone. I have spent many nights over the past few weeks stewing on this issue. (like I am tonight) Reading things on the internet and watching the short video segments in support of AZ's Prop 102 and CA's Prop 8. It makes me mad that I can't do more to help the cause. We brought home 5 signs in support of Prop 102 about two weeks ago. I gave one to my co-worker who wanted to put it in front of his house on a fairly well-traveled street. We put three of them out on Friday and left one as a spare in case any of the three disappeared. Every time that we would drive past them, Tyler would say "There's our sign!" Well, when I went to work on Wed, they were still all there. When I came home form work on Wed, they were all three gone. Two of the sticks still remained, but the signs were gone. The signs were printed on one side, but made so that they could be folded in half and the same message would be on both sides. It came stapled so that there was a pocket in the bottom of the sign to insert the stick. So, I drove the sticks into the ground (no easy task given the hard dirt here) and put the signs on the sticks. Then I took my staple gun and put a bunch of staples on both sides to secure the sign to the stick. Well, whoever it was that felt that they needed to quiet my opinion went to the effort to remove the sign and staples from the stick and leave the stick still standing. I want to go and put the one sign that I have left back onto one of those two sticks to make a point. I wish that I had more time to do more. The part that makes me mad is that society as a whole is just getting so evil. It is totally like the analogy of the frog in the boiling water. They say that the frog will jump right out if it is placed into boiling water (I don't know this for sure, I've never done it, but that is what they say) but it will slowly cook to death if placed in cold water that is slowly heated to boiling. Satan has slowly but surely used his tools to soften the edges of people's conscience to the point where they think that this is a good idea. Again, it just makes me mad.

Well, here are a few links to things that I have looked at over the past few nights:

http://www.yesformarriage.com/

http://www.protectmarriage.com/

http://www.preservingmarriage.org/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Hmdcy_lvQ

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=H3La1zbo8cc

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=gIxpv2sOs3s

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=CNA7Ts_OaTc

http://cbs5.com/local/gay.marriage.sign.2.844943.html This is a family that live in my brother's ward in San Jose, across the street from the elementary school that I went to.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=6zbpDe_QhS0

There are many more, but I'm out of time. I need to go to bed and stop stewing.

A Bumper Crop

Well, this is a little out-dated, but we had a bumper crop of weeds this year. We got a lot of monsoon rain in July and August and the weeds just soaked it up. Here is a shot showing the difference between what I had weeded and what I hadn't. Michelle and the kids were really helpful this year cleaning things up. Just think, in a year or two I can just give this job to Rebecca and Tyler. Wishful thinking....

Seacliff Beach

While we were at Grandma and Grandpa's in July, we took their motorhome down to Seacliff beach and stayed for three days and two nights. We had a blast. The kids loved playing in the water and sand. Their cousins joined us for the first day as well. At the end of the day, we thought we were going to have to drag Tyler out of the water kicking and screaming. The only thing that helped us out is the fog rolled in and it got cold.


While we were there a school of fish came by and along with them came the birds. There were hundreds of them, probably thousands. The pictures don't do it justice. It was really amazing.

Nathan and Brayden were able to swim out and be amongst them all.

She is definitely a girl

Meagan was thrilled to have Grandma paint her nails. She is very girly in everything that she does. She has had a fetish for shoes since before she could walk and loves purses, hair accessories and now fingernail polish. Thanks Grandma!

Family Photos

In July we went to my parent's house and spent a week with them. It has always been the tradition when we visit to get pictures of the kids in front of Grandma's house before we go to church. I don't know how that tradtion started, it is probably just that Grandma want pictures of the kids in their Sunday clothes. Here are the best shots from this year.

The Shoe Cabinet

For Christmas 2007 my Dad made us a cabinet with four drawers to store all of our shoes in. He delivered it unfinished and my job was to paint it. It took us several weeks to decide on a final color and then it took several months for me to get it painted. I seemed to only have one weekend a month that I could actually work on it. It is a really dark blue and so it took several coats (4-5) before it was fully covered. It has its imperfections in the paint that probably I only know about, but overall I am very happy with it. It has sure helped to clean up the mess of shoes everywhere.

Tyler's Birthday

Tyler's real birthday is the day after Christmas. But really, who wants to celebrate their birthday then? So, we celebrate his half birthday in June. We alternate between family parties and friend parties and this year it was his family party. He came up with an extensive list of all the things that he wanted to do on his day and we were able to do all of them. He really wanted a pinata so Michelle helped him make one throughout the week prior to his big day. Then we all took turns beating it to a pulp. When all the candy fell, the only thing that Tyler picked up was the gum.

First Time at the Beach

After the first day at LEGOLAND we went to the beach and had a picnic dinner. It was the first time that Tyler and Meagan had ever been to the beach and the first time that Rebecca could remember. Meagan didn't like the sand and it took a while for her to get off of our laps.