Incriminating Photo

You know, sometimes great photo opportunities present themselves before me and I can't pass them up! :) This one just happens to make me laugh every time I see it. Andrew apparently wanted a little "light reading", in the form of Austin's Cub Scout book, while taking some time out for himself. I love it!

Best Alien Invasion

The theme for this years Blue & Gold Banquet was outer space related. With that being said, the kids were asked to bring a dessert decorated with that theme in mind. So I left Spencer in charge of that one, he being the creative one in the family. This is what they came up with, an alien invasion. The eggs are supposed to represent space ships that landed and the little aliens taking over, with the army on the opposite side. It was cute, but more importantly, it tasted good!

Another one of those photos, I guess.

Welcome, 2011, Cheers to a New Year!

To ring in the new year we went back to my hometown of Seattle. Well, I didn't exactly grow up in Seattle per say, but close enough to call it home. In fact, it was this very bay in which Spencer proposed to me in his boat at midnight, twelve years ago. Our good friends Mike & Amanda invited us to spend the holiday with them in their home. Amanda recently gave birth to their 3rd boy and it's so exciting to have that in common with them. On our drive up north Spencer had to drop off some supplies to his store in Shelton so we thought it would be fun to take the ferry from Bremerton across the sound to downtown. Our friends live on Lake Washington and so we were able to use their dock to light off some fireworks. After dinner we played sports games on their kinect for the xbox. Kinect is awesome, controller free, it was great. Later Amanda and I put in dance dance revolution for the kinect and had a ton of fun! The next morning we drove into China town and had a wonderful lunch of dim sum. Mike's Mom, who we dearly love, came out and joined us for lunch. Unfortunatey, our boys were quite sold on dim sum, but Spencer and I sure love it! We had such a great visit and cheers to a new year!

Christmas Day

Christmas morning!!! Seriously, can any other day really compete with Christmas morning when you're a kid!??? These kids almost look intoxicated, they're so happy! This year, however, the kids woke up in Grandma & Grandpa's house and they were relieved to know that Santa did in fact get the memo. They all made out like bandits, like always. A highlight for Austin this year is his new snowboard. He was pretty excited to get it and strap himself inside. He has already had his first "daddy taught lesson" up at Mt. Hood and did awesome. I think he'll be picking it up really quickly. Grandpa was kind to fix us a big, wonderful breakfast before we trekked back home for the remainder of the day.

Every Christmas we try to uphold the family tradition of shooting clay birds with our shot guns. This year was no exception. The Ridgeway's invited us out to their property for this event and we had such a great time. Both Kyle and Justine were able to take leave from the military and spend Christmas at home. It was great to see them! Later that evening we headed over to Jeff & Marie's for dinner. Marie has taken on the tradition of hosting Christmas dinner at their house, which makes us all happy because she is such a great cook!

Not all gifts were opened in the morning. Spencer and I had a present waiting for the kids at home. We got them a 26 gallon fish aquarium for their room. It's really a neat tank and we got lots of fun accessories, including a large, bubble-blowing dragon. Unfortunately, we lost about 7 fish in the beginning while the tank was trying to get established, but now we are going strong. Fish tanks are so soothing and eye catching, we all love it. The boys fall asleep to watching the fish eat every night.

Christmas Eve

Geez, I am having to resort to my pictures to spark all the memories from this past Christmas. To me it feels like the holiday season was 6 months ago. Time sure has a way of flying by rather quickly. Lets see ... Christmas Eve this year was a little different from normal. We still held the traditional bowling and lunch at Burgerville with friends, but then afterwards we packed everyone and everything up and headed north to my Mom's for the night. Many years ago Spencer and I established that we were not going to venture away from home during Christmas. This year we ate our words. I had a long aching desire to spend Christmas Eve with my parents up north and Spencer was kind enough to oblige. Christmas Eve dinner was held at my sister, Robin's house. She made Mandarin Chicken (a Reed family tradition). It was yummy. She had quite the turnout too. A lot of her husband's family, who I had never met, were there. So at first it was a little awkward, but kids have a way of breaking the ice and soon we all felt at home with each other. After dinner we all sat in a circle around her family room and did a gift exchange. The boys got new Jammie's, which they didn't waste anytime getting changed into. Once back at Grandma's house, they each got to open a gift from Grandma & Grandpa. I thought that the excitement of the night would be enough to keep them up all night, but it didn't. We all slept well.

Mom Play Time

For the first few months of the school year Sherene and I had a standing play date every Wednesday afternoon. Kid free. Sherene had an arrangement with her friend where they did a trade every week. Sherene and I were talking one day about all of the things we'd like to do and that's how the idea popped into her head to ask Brandi if she'd be willing to watch my two kids as well. Brandi was totally on board. That gave us 2 hours a week to go play. We had all kinds of fun. We hit every little shop in town that we've always driven by but have never had the time to go in and check out. We did the same thing in the next town over. We ate lunch at different restaurants. We did some grocery shopping without the hassle of kids. And probably the most fun outing was going to the driving range at the golf course. Those were good times! I was sad to see them end, but Brandi no longer needed to do the trade. It's amazing how just a couple of hours a week of Mom/Friend time can really make a difference.

Looking forward to ...

I am so looking forward to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this week!!! I can't wait! Ever so slowly I have become a huge fan of the series, almost a tad bit obsessive at times. The books and movies are soooo good and if I had enough money to just throw away I would fly my family to Orlando and visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It just sounds like so much fun. At any rate it's always nice to have something to look forward to and this week it'll be Harry Potter. Yippee!!

Cameron's Award Ceremony

This past Wednesday was the SCORE award ceremony Cameron was invited to attend. It lasted almost 2 hours and was a really nice event. The high school offers a Catering Class and the students prepared a very good breakfast for us to enjoy; Egg & potato casserole, sausages, cinnamon rolls, fruit cups and juice. While we were eating the school superintendent spent a little time talking about the meaning of the SCORE award. We then had a guest speaker, retired Portland Trailblazer, Jerome Kersey. He shared a little about his journey to the NBA and encouraged the kids to get involved and make a difference. He then presented each student with a medal that was engraved with their name. It was so neat to sit back and watch my little boy be honored, thinking the whole time "whose child is that?"!

Andrew turns 3

Andrew today is your third birthday!

It seems like just a few months ago you were a little toddler running around in diapers not really being able to express all the things you wanted. Today you seem like a little man to me. You are smart & confident. You know what you want and will do what ever it takes to get it. You have such a great imagination. You listen to the words we tell you and then you aren't afraid to use the same phrases back to us, "Just one second" and "wait a minute" are just a couple. We absolutely LOVE your evil laugh. I don't know what it is about your laugh, but it makes us crack up every time. And finally, I absolutely love your smile! Your smile is so contagious. You are a very happy little guy. I love you with all of my heart and wish you the best 3rd birthday possible!!

Love, Mom