Sat, 29 Nov 2008

Santa Claus is Coming to Grandpa's House

It's always fun when Santa comes, when Santa comes. All during my childhood, or at least for the parts that I remember, my paternal grandparents would always have a family get together around Christmas. They would always invite Santa to the party and he would always show up. I remember one year that Santa showed up with a bit to much Christmas spirit.

My parents decided to carry on this tradition and Santa came to visit our Christmas party this year. Luckily he enters through the basement door and not from the garage roof top.

The best part of the night was the conversation Santa had with Amanda.

Santa: Why hello there Amanda.
Amanda: Hi Santa.
Santa: I hear there are two special boys in your life.
Amanda: (She was at a loss for words.)
Shantell: You don't have to answer that!!!

I don't think that Amanda had any clue how Santa found out about the two special boys. :)

Oh yeah. That was just some random video I found on youtube.

 
Thu, 27 Nov 2008

I thank the Indians for this feast.

We had Thanksgiving at my moms house today. All three of my brothers and their families were in attendance. It was a good time. Being around my brothers bring back a lot of good memories. I am pretty sure that me bring around them brings back a lot of bad memories for them. I wasn't always the bestest brother to them. I had a lot of energy growing up. My parents thought that sugar was the cause of it. It wasn't later that I found out that it was really just a bad case of artificial poisoning. I think Mark got the worst of it. I used him for a bunch of magic tricks. I attempted to make him disappear into walls and doors. The magic trick only worked when screen doors were involved.

The feast was prepared by the head chef of the family. The sous chefs were in charge of various side dishes. The cranberry orange relish is my absolute favorite thing to eat turkey with. Remind me to get the recipe.

Mom and Dad have been married for 40 years and have 13 grandkids.

Random photos of the day.

We took the advantage to take a family portrait.

 
Sun, 23 Nov 2008

School Pictures

Here are copies of the kids 2008 school pictures.

 
Fri, 21 Nov 2008

WOW!

This year T-y participated in the the 2008 Reflections contest. This years theme was "WOW!". T-y wanted to enter a photo in the contest. I asked him why, and he said cause I take a lot of pictures. What a good kid. Here I thought that he hated it when I would take all those pictures of him and his sisters.

Here is T-y's entry.

Apparently, Mr. Z makes it a requirement for all his students to enter the contest. I being the great father that I am failed to check his notes, so T-y spent a long day at school earlier in the month finishing up his entry. So all of the credit for helping T-y with this entry belongs to Mr. Z and the school librarian. It warms my heart to know that T-y has such a loving and caring teacher and school librarian.

The school had their reflections award ceremony today. T-y's entry won and award and moved on to the district competition. The district competition will happen sometime in December. At least that is when I think they announced.

 
Wed, 12 Nov 2008

The Penny President

T-y gave another literary response today. He gave it on a Abraham Lincoln book that he had been reading. Shantell rented an Abraham Lincoln costume for him to give is response in. I wasn't able to attend, but Shantell was and said that it went over very well. Thank you Mr. Z for taking these pictures for me.

 
Sat, 08 Nov 2008

November Scout Camp

We took the scouts camping this weekend. We were going up to Squaw Peak. I say going because the road was closed. This was a shock, as it was open just two weeks earlier. So we had to make a change of plans. We decided to go to Aspen Grove and camp. We had a good time despite the couple of inches of snow on the ground.