byufan.net

A Birthday and a Bear

Brian — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:18:43 +0000

Sam recently had a birthday and turned 10 years old. He and Diana have birthdays fairly close together so they got to jointly select the location for their birthday dinner. Their choice? Golden Corral.

It was the first time any of us had ever been to Golden Corral and I think the kids were influenced in their choice by the chocolate waterfall advertisements on TV. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that advertising works – especially on kids. Golden Corral turned out to be a bit more blue collar than the Chuck-A-Rama. Fortunately for me, that meant the people-watching entertainment value was high. Unfortunately for the kids, their expectation of a buffet is based on the buffet we went to in Vegas recently so they were a bit disappointed that the Golden Corral didn’t have the same selection and quality as the bigger Vegas buffets.

10 years old

Fortunately, a chocolate waterfall covers up a lot of shortcomings and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and ate as much chocolate covered stuff as they could hold. Life is good when you’re 10 years old and there is a chocolate waterfall around.

Sam getting his bear award and a hug from Mom

Tonight was Pack Meeting and Sam received his Bear award along with a gold arrow point and 4 silver arrow points. Now he’s on to the Webelos den. Before you know it we’ll be going on Scout campouts together.

Catching Up

Brian — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:38:16 +0000

I’ve been remiss in updating this blog. In fact, I’m two years behind on accumulated posts. In the past I used the fact I was in school as an excuse to let the blog lapse. Then I got a new job right after graduation so that was a distraction. But it’s finally time to stop the excuses and get started updating the blog regularly. We’ve been taking pictures and videos for the past two years but I just haven’t taken the step of writing up posts and putting the pictures on the blog.

The following are some catch-up posts:

March 2010 – Road Trip
April 2010 – It’s Great to Be Six
April 2010 – A New Cub Scout
May 2010 – Sam’s Baptism
May 2010 – Memorial Day Fun
June 2010 – Pinewood Derby
July 2010 – New Shelves
October 2010 – My Startup Adventure
October 2010 We’ll Miss You Barrel Man – But Not Much
November 2010 – Halloween

Also, I’m not very big on social networks and such but I decided to experiment with linking the blog posts in Facebook. We’ll see how it goes.

Caroline’s 5th grade program

Nancy — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:33:04 +0000

Today was the 5th grade program at Caroline’s school. I actually didn’t know that they were going to have the program until this morning. I usually go walking every morning with a friend in the neighborhood who has kids almost the identical ages as mine. She mentioned that she had to go to her son’s fifth grade program today. I asked whether it was just his class or if it was all of the fifth graders and she said it was all of them. I am glad she said something because I would have missed it. I think Caroline didn’t mention it because she thought that I would embarrass her in front of all her friends. I don’t know why she would think that because all the parents were in the dark for most of the program( I didn’t take very good pictures because of it). I love Caroline very much and I think she did a great job. She even had a speaking part at the beginning (I only wish I could have taken better pictures!) Here are some of the very out of focus pictures I took of the event.

Spring Flower pictures

Nancy — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:28:31 +0000

I like to go around my yard in the spring taking pictures of the pretty flowers in my yard. Here are a few for you to look at:

Daffodils

Caroline’s Mississipi State Report

Nancy — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:18:22 +0000

I also went today to Caroline’s class to see her float she made for her state report. She has been working for a couple of weeks on it and was excited for me to see her hard work. All the kids in her class were sitting in a circle by their desks and showed off their state reports to their parents and all the other 5th graders. She was so proud of her work that right when I go there, she had to show me that she got a 95 out of 100. I was really impressed. Great job, Caroline!

Diana’s Princess Book Report

Nancy — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:10:51 +0000

Today Diana presented her book report on Princess Jeweliana and the Sparkling Rainbow Ball, by Allia Zobel to her class. She took one of her princess costumes and fairy wings so she could tell the class all about her book as if she was the main character. She did it all on her own and did not even have a cheat sheet to read off of. I forgot to take a picture while she was giving her report so I had to take the following pictures while she watched the other kids give their reports. It was a lot of fun.

‘Tis the Season

Brian — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:30:07 +0000

My kids have been asking me since before Thanksgiving when we were going to put up Christmas lights. The problem with Christmas lights is that I’m completely afraid of heights and can’t bear to get up on our roof again after the first time I put lights up several years ago. Last year I bought new lights but couldn’t bring myself to put them up. This year I found a great neighbor who isn’t afraid of heights and volunteered to climb up to the highest part of the roof (thanks Aaron!). While he was on the peak of the roof, I used the ladder to put the lights up around the lower portion of the roofs. In about a half hour we had the job done.

Thank goodness for good neighbors

We also decided to take a Christmas picture today. After about 10 different takes this was the best one we could come up with. Not sure what Diana is grumping about but everyone else is smiling…

Christmas 2010

Halloween 2010

Brian — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:12:32 +0000

Halloween wasn’t a fancy affair this year. I was too busy with school to help much with costumes and the older girls were too busy being teenagers to care about trick-or-treating like the used to. In fact, we failed to take our traditional pictures with the kids in costume although Sam managed to snap a self-portrait before he left for trick-or-treating.

Sam's self portrait

At least we managed to grow some good pumpkins in our garden this year and were able to carve them as jack-o-lanterns. Hopefully next Halloween will be more fun as I’ll be out of school by then.

Halloween Pumkins

Snow Day

Nancy — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 01:25:26 +0000

I am sure glad that I took care of the tomatoes yesterday because this is what my garden looked like today.

A couple of days ago we had some snow, but not enough for the kids to play in. Luckily last nights storm brought in enough for the kids to enjoy!

Goodbye to Gardening

Nancy — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:13:04 +0000

Since it is supposed to get to the freezing point tonight I decided it was time to get rid of all of the tomato plants. It was hard work especially because we had at least ten plants. Most of the tomatoes were still green, but I heard that they will ripen okay inside so I decided to pick them all and get rid of all the vines. As you can tell by the picture I could not fit all of them into our garbage can. Instead I have to leave them in the middle of the garden until little by little they will get to the landfill. Here are the pictures of my labors……….

It doesn’t look like much, but it took me all morning to get it done!

Now I just have to wait for them to turn red!

We also had a very good crop of raspberries this year. I tried to tie the raspberry bush up using twine, but I didn’t buy very strong stuff so here is the result.

We did get lots of yummy raspberries which we turned into yummy raspberry muffins!