December fun

Shopping with sadie. She is pretty much done so we are sitting in the car while the rest of the family finishes shopping.

Snow day! ! !

We've got at least 18 inches & it's still snowing. The kids said it was the coolest day ever next to legoland. They built snowmen & built forts & we had a snowball fight.

Stripey Sadie

Stripey Sadie
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Amid the weeping and mourning over Chip's departure til March, there
is still a ray of sunshine, and her name is Sadie. If you look
closely, you can find her between the stripes here.

Baja Fresh "Regulars"

Can you believe this sunset as we left the house for our weekly Thursday night dinner at Baja Fresh!?  

Thursday night "out" exists because the kids have kids' choir/praise practice every Thurs evening, so we started going to Baja Fresh when we discovered they have some healthy food choices there.... not to mention the killer salsa bar!!  So tonight after about 4-5 months of this routine, the manager who is very nice and always upbeat stopped by our table and asked if we needed anything, and then he smiled and said "so this is a weekly stop for you, huh?  What, every Thursday night, right?!"  We laughed that we are now both "locals" and "regulars" at this Mexican restaurant.

 

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Thanksgiving Day
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Thanksgiving Day
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Thanksgiving Day
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Thanksgiving Day
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Thanksgiving Day
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

Don & Chip starting the XR500 on loan from a friend in Vegas... the beast lives!

Shooting skeet in the neighbor's backyard... The whole group is pretty much an even mix of neighbor Tom's extended family and of the guys in our bible study. Don & Chip got to try out the .20 & .12 gauge shotguns Don brought back from Turkey in '02. Thanks to neighbor Tom, we just showed up and bought ammo and clay pigeons by the boxful there. This was Tom's family's first Thanksgiving in their newly built house.


Don gave Gibson a half-hour fun ride on my Husky TE250. The ground
was damp, the air was cool--perfect conditions.

That evening we had our Thanksgiving feast. The Johnsons (Kim & Troy, and their kids, Ali, Stephanie, Katie, and Lil Troy) came over to join Don, Chip & our family at our house. This is the kids' table in the front room. The smoked turkey turned out AMAZING! We took 1 thawed 22 lb turkey, injected Lawry's Steak-n-Chip marinade into the meat, then cooked the turkey in the Orion smoker (link) for 2 hrs with the temperature probe attached. EASY and superdelicious.

Cheeeeese!

Sadie wearing a headband for two whole minutes!

Got to love 'em

So Laney, Mya and Gib take tumbling at a Cheerleading facility. After class today, we were waiting for Laney in the little waiting area and Mya says (in a loud voice) "why don't you like cheerleaders, mom?" I smiled and mumbled something about how it's not that I don't like cheerleaders I just don't want to be one. I don't think I'm going to get a discount next month.

Day at Pilgrim Place

"I climbing a cree!"

Chuck E Cheesiest

Here is from earlier this fall, when Nana & Papou visited... we
partied at Chuck E Cheese. "It's for the kids!" Right? Woah, what's this? 113 to 90 points, Chip? :) :)

Papou was thankful that Laney held his hand through the bumpy ride. And as Nana demonstrates, astronauts still bring along their purses.

Note: Ang had to work that day so her face doesn't appear here... we can
only see her giant mouse costume when she got to spend her break time
with us!! :) hehehe

{She has to make some extra money to support Mya's heavy gambling problem... Mya the Amazing, who makes tokens disappear by the fistful before your very eyes... "what's that, a coin game?" now you see tokens...now you don't} .::poof::.

Baby Chicky's Birthday

Baby Chicky's Birthday
Originally uploaded by scottie_ang

It was November 1st... and you know what that means, right? No, you don't? Where have you been, Ms/Mr Headinthasand? It's a highly revered birthday in our home -- the {supposed} "birth"day of Mya's little yellow highly-esteemed stuffed (yes, stuffed animal!) baby chick. The festivities included freshly baked ginger cookies with frosting, games, song, and party poppers on the porch (pictured). I don't recall this much fuss over my own birthday. :)

Lego my Bike...-oh

Just wanted to show off one of the spoils of Legoland. Hey... Where were these toys when I was a ...oh, wait. I'm still a kid.

We're as cool as Jon & Kate plus 8

We went to Legoland recently and the kids had the best time. (By kids I am also referring to the two oldest boys.) The rides were perfect for everyone and you can't beat entire cities made out of Legos. It was like our house except there were roller coasters too. When we got back we saw a commercial that "Jon & Kate Plus 8" had gone there so we made sure to watch that one. Gotta go...Scott and kids are doing push ups and I so don't want to miss out on that :)

Sweatquity

...rolls off the tongue. ...aka Sweat equity - I'm not sure if this qualifies as sweat equity if it isn't work done *on* your house, but it was work done on stuff we own, so I'm going with it. Beyond what I'm about to discuss here was plenty of other work done that WAS attached to the house so it really was sweatquity (say it with feeling)... I'll stop now--you get the idea.

But before I describe the pics and the work we did, I must mention that blogging is back in. Oh yes, it's cool again, in case you didn't get the memo that it was boring for a couple months and now it's back. The REAL story is that for some reason I was too busy doing other stuff that I just never got around to adding to it so now it's like cram-cram-catchup... but in a "not-forcing-it" sort of way. Oh, and a really cool thing for me is that my guard job which became fulltime in March (ref: "busy" in previous sentense) is returning to parttime in Dec, and I get to return to my favorite test job with its short commute in the desert. Thankfully God worked it all out so I didn't have to quit the guard job too.

Ok. The work. It was a cool learning what we're able to do ourselves (me & Chip) as far as auto repair goes. We replaced all 3 engine mounts (pictured above) on his Maxima - no small feat. I think we make a great auto repair team; we just need more experience. This particular job fixed the aweful jolt when you shifted in and out of Park or Reverse. [Good things come in waves...] In addition, Chip and his dad just yesterday discovered the fix to the rough idle... one of the spark plug cap wires was severed/detached, so after repairing that, the Maxima purrrrs like butter! Or a cat.

We also did some poor man's landscaping (on steroids). No we're not on roids, but our tractor is. New neighbor (and bible study buddy) Tom brought his personal backhoe and 2 large creosote bushes from his yard to ours (free bushes = the poor man's part). We're watering daily and hoping those old roots take to their new home.

As you can see in the tractor photo, there's Papou, who was an ever-present fix-it force behind just about all of the repair projects accomplished over the last 2 weeks. And Nana tirelessly read to the kids, taught crochet, baked... the list is long and also filled with pictures. Patience - you'll have to wait.

Anyways, I better get to bed - cya. -Scott

Century Mark

Just wanted to share scott's latest - since he & chip started running this spring, he has logged 100 Miles! Not sure what his shoes are rated to but i hope it's another 100 miles. -Ang

Cut ceiling, attach rig, build gigantic muscles

Well another project gets a big check mark. Through much planning, supervision and craftsmanship, Papou led us to success with the installation of our 1-inch steel pipe pull-up bar in the garage. It's attached to the ceiling trusses, so it's *solid*. The screws we used are like as long as your arm. Well, they're pretty long. The kids totally got into trying it out too--they surprised me with their enthusiasm. Too bad our project man is flying back to the midwest!

"Boy, watch'n all thum kids exersiz'n shur is make'n me tired."

Mission accomplished

And gib now has a hat! And i'm taking a break from crocheting!

Numero three

Gib says i'm a beanie machine! And he is wondering where his is.

Round two!

Laney is the proud owner of my second crochet project. She picked out the pattern, mom helped me know what it meant & i got to try it. We are having too much fun!

I got skillz! Ha ha!

I am a master crocheter! You all know what you're getting for christmas!

Chip & Scott: Night 5k Run

So Chip & I have been running now.  Geeking out over all the various web-based ways one can track his/her own running progress, vitals, weight, speed, blah blah blah.  All in the interest of keeping my interest!  So last night we took the fam down to the local college for their annual 5k night run.  It was Chip's first ever organized race, and only my third 5k ever.  We had a blast and plan to do it again soon.

Sadie is 2

Sadie and her birthday phone.

Mya's Birthday

So I don't know what you did for your birthday but we killed a rattlesnake for Mya's! Just one of the perks of where we live. We had a great time though and enjoyed presents and cake and crafts galore. Mya had actually made a lot of her own Happy Birthday signs about two months ago so we were definitely prepared.

Fun on the Fourth

We had fun with the VPs and hung out with a president too!

W!

Cubs win!

No cavities

Gib had his first dentist appointment and did great!

Roses are pink, teeth aren't blue...

... Mya just lost
... Tooth number two!

And we thought we should show that stuff really can grow in the desert... and that a living plant exists in our care that we didn't kill (yet). It's pretty cool to see something flourish that looked pretty sad on the clearance shelf at Lowes.

Wins and Losses

The Cubs have been playing good baseball (except that one game against the Nats.) Mya lost her first tooth! And Gib asked Jesus into his heart!