Winter Time

For those of you not living in Utah, we just got dumped on. I mention this because I love it. It is snowing like it did when I was little. It seems the last 15 Winters have been wimpy. Very little snow in the valley, those storms that did leave snow on the ground were gone faster than they came and the snow quickly melted. Well, not this year. I think we have had snow on the ground since early December. It got added to yesterday and the weather geeks say two more storms are coming this weekend. We took advantage of the deep snow and took the kids out for some playtime in the snow yesterday. Even Rebecca got excited, as you can see by her jumping ability.

We had a great Christmas and Christmas season. We got to spend a lot of time with almost everyone from both families. Our kids are, of course, spoiled. Tierra says Grandma buys too many toys, but only when its time to clean them up. They have a very unique style of playing with toys. They go downstairs to where the toys are kept, dump out every drawer and box, emptying every shelf, and then choose a toy or two to play with. When its Tea Party time, the same thing happens, only every fake dish, fork, spoon ,knife, saucer, tea cup, etc ends up on the table in the upstairs living room. I know this is making my dad laugh in some sort of redemption-feeling-serves-me-right kind of way, but I still have the right to let it bug the crap out of me.

Eli: Reached the old age of 2.5 finally. With that has come the terrible twos in exponential fashion. He was a pretty good for so long and then the last couple months he has just gone off the brat charts. He has quite an attitude and sometimes taunts us. Again, my dad is doing some sort of victory dance at this info. Terrible twos aside, he is a very smart kid. He's even learning a few consenants.

Tierra: Loves the fact that she has learned to write her own name, in fact she loves it so much that she has already shown me how well she can write it on an all oak window sill I installed in the basement. She moved up in Primary at the year change and really misses her old teachers. She loves her new teacher though also. She loves going to her preschool class, and loves to learn all the new and exciting things they teach.

Rebecca: Hates the month of January because it "is cold and blah." She spends most of her day watching Season 3 of lost reruns on her new Mac Laptop. Meanwhile, and she approved this, the house is going to pot. She used our tax return to buy the new computer. She also has a goal to read 52 books in 52 weeks. With all her time used on books and computer, she still finds time to "cook" us dinner and raise the kids.

Chad: Same old stuff with me. Will not be taking the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge, maybe 10 books this year?! Working a lot of days, a lot of hours. Still Scoutmaster. We recently built a sled for the upcoming Klondike derby. The Klondike is the boy scout Iditarod, without the dogs. It is actually a fun camp for the boys, especially after building your own sled. I will let you know how they do. I have to miss the camp due to a work "field trip" to Portland area. I am going up to visit a few fire Departments to find out how they run the same programs we are trying to manage in our department. I guess this is the fire department's equivelant of a business trip. So that's about it for me. Spencer, my brother, got married a few weeks ago. Now all of my brother's are married except for Danny, the youngest.

Enjoy.