Family Pic

This may have to be our Christmas card picture this year. No matter that it was taken via Skype on a Saturday afternoon when none of us had made it to the shower yet. No matter that Jenny the Chicken takes front and center. No matter that Spencer appears to be 18 inches tall. We all look so happy, and that's what counts. Cheese!

First Snow of the Year

 This is Spencer pulling Eva and Stella home after a quick sledding trip.

The snow is a definite improvement over the drought-stricken grass.

September in Lincoln

 We've seen a lot of Nebraska-style mayhem the past two weekends. Last weekend we witnessed the Zombiefest. There was supposed to be a battle on this quad, but the Resistance just ran away from the Zombies, so it wasn't exciting as it could have been. This past weekend we also went up to campus to see the Husker game antics. Husker fans are a bit more jolly than zombies, in my opinion, and they also eat better food. Both zombies and Husker fans wear a lot of red. That's my fodder for a Zombies/Huskers venn diagram.

 Seminary: what can I say? This is how I found Rebecca Friday evening. I think she had been asleep for about 4 hours at this point.

 This is Scarlet Sue Criserry. It was an abandoned bunny found in the middle of the street. Eva and her friend Stella are more than happy to be Scarlet's new parents. They give her more attention than a bunny deserves.

Poor old house. The basement is getting jackhammered. The front yard is getting dug up. All because we like indoor plumbing. We really do like indoor plumbing.

Romeo and Juliet on the Trampoline

Eva Cantering on Vanna

Busy Times

 For Eva's birthday party this year (2 weeks early), we experimented with tie-dye t-shirts. They turned out really well, and since we forgot about latex gloves, everybody had tie-dyed hands to match their shirts.

 Poor, poor Ben. He had to spend a beautiful Saturday digging up the sewer line in the crawl space so he could replace a battered, root-filled section of cast-iron pipe. Our hero!!

 Meanwhile, the rest of the family spent a lovely day with the cousins at the Boulder Creek Festival. Here are the girls standing in front of a cute puppy's cage.

 Grandma came all the way from Utah to spend the weekend with us. It was so wonderful to have her here. She was a real trooper.

 Rebecca had her Alice in Wonderland show the following weekend. She had lots of interesting parts. Here you can see her in her fish costume.

Now that it's summertime, Spencer and his good pal Cade have lots of time on their hands to create interesting things like this, uh, tall robot thing.

6th Grade Wax Museum Day

I went to the school this morning and saw all kinds of people I'd been hoping to meet: Al Capone, Zeus, Anne Frank, Marylin Monroe, Alexander the Great, Bonnie and Clyde. And here's Orville Wright (of Wright Brothers fame):

 You can walk around and look at the wax statues, and if you want them to tell about themselves, you just push a button (or a mustache or a lightning bolt, depending on the statue's preference).

Back in the Saddle

Eva hasn't had a chance to go horseback riding much since the end of last summer, but Becky's back (for a little while) so Eva got to go hang out at the stable on Saturday.

Sunday Evening Geocache Adventure

 We discovered geocaching this year, and we've found that it's a lovely thing to do on pleasant Sunday evenings. Here we are on our way to hunt down another geocache.

 Jolie and Eva couldn't resist a a yoga pose on the top of a fence.

 Can you see the camouflaged plastic box? We took a little car from the box, signed our names on the log, and put in a red rubber thingy we found on our walk (we forgot to gather something meaningful before we left).

 Then we played on this hillside for a while. Rocco was enthusiastic, even though he's been having some back problems lately. He's too overweight for his poor little daschund spine. He was limpy after this foray into the wild.

 Triumph!

Academic Awards Assemblies

 We got a new camera recently. It's a cool camera (compared to other cameras we've had), but unfortunately, I'm not a very cool photographer. But I have been practicing, so I hope to improve. My first real camera practice day occurred during the academic awards assemblies, so these pictures are, uh, bad. But here's Spencer with his Honor Roll certificate. Yea, Spencer!

 And here's Eva with her High Honor Roll certificate. Yea, Eva!

 And here is Ms. Wolfer's class, getting in line to march out of the assembly.

And here is the playground swarmed with children who are so grateful to be outside without their winter coats and hats and gloves. Ah, blessed March.

Swimming

 Spencer and Rodrigo get ready to race!

 Spencer gets ready to blast off.

 Hooray! He won the 50 Freestyle and the 100 IM.

The best part of the Pizza Meet is.......Pizza!

Long Time, No Post

 Our camera died a while ago, so the blog has been quiet. A new camera should be here soon, but in the meantime, here are some pics that were on my dad's camera. The above picture is Rebecca and her friends Tebowing after their Christmas Carol show.

 Eva fell and cut her lip during our hike in to Vagabond Ranch after Christmas. She was a trooper, though, and had a good time with Grandma and Grandpa, aunts and uncles, and cousins.

 Here we are, hiking to the Ranch.

 I think this is Adam, or else maybe there was an ambush I was oblivious to.

Pretty, pretty.

Go Green Alligator Pandas!

 Eva doesn't really identify with the name that was democratically voted for by her intramural volleyball team: The Green Pandas. She wanted to be the Alligators, which happens to be the team name of her t-ball team a couple of years ago. So, to make things right, I call them The Green Alligator Pandas.

 Today they played the Turquoise team. I don't know what they voted on, but I'm going to call them The Terrific Turquoise Tarantulas. The Terrific Turquoise Tarantulas won the first game. The Green Alligator Pandas won the second game, and Eva contributed to their winning score with several awesome digs that made her mother very proud. Then, the Terrific Turquoise Tarantulas won the tie-breaking third game. Darn. But kuddos to the Tarantulas.

 This picture looks weird, but I just had to include it because it's a picture of one of Eva's awesome point-scoring digs.

And in this picture it looks like her arm belongs to Elastigirl, which is totally awesome. Elastigirl could be very valuable on an intramural volleyball team.

Halloween!

 Eva helped me make these cute, yummy little hot dog mummies. You just wrap refrigerated roll dough around the hot dogs and bake them for 15 minutes. It looks like Eva was really getting in to the Halloween spirit while she made her hot dog mummies. Frightening.

 We had excellent weather for Halloween this year, the best Halloween weather I remember since I lived in Texas many, many moons ago. Halloween got caught between two snowfalls, just at the peak of warm spell between. It was almost 70 degrees during the daytime, and Eva didn't even wear a jacket while we were trick-or-treating. Of course, I carried it around and kept asking, "Are you cold enough for your jacket yet?" because I just can't imagine why a person would refuse a jacket after the sun has gone down.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a good time on Halloween. I don't think they caused near as much destruction as the real Thing 1 and Thing 2. Rebecca's wig recovered really well from Rocco's attack on it. He must have thought it was a bird because he tore that thing up and left little blue feathers flying all over the basement.

Unlike years past, these two put off costume design until about 5 minutes before we left for trick-or-treating. We're not exactly sure what they were supposed to be, but it doesn't seem to have mattered.

These two, on the other hand, have been planning their cowgirl Halloween costumes since springtime. Giddyup!

First Snow

Our first snowfall of the year really packed a punch last week. We lost a couple dozen tree branches and had to call the power company to have them detangle some from our power lines. The city has set up a tree branch drop-off site, and we're hoping to get our branches over there this weekend because they're taking up a lot of yard space. It was an exciting way to start the snow season, but I hope our trees don't suffer too much more trauma this winter.