Snowing in Tahoe

We’re up in Tahoe for Paul to do some extended study time on Galatians and to have some nice family time in the evenings. And this morning is started snowing. We totally weren’t expecting snow in April and it has been really warm here. But it was really coming down for a while. Check it out – it was really beautiful! [flv:/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/snowing_flash.flv 320 240]

Lightning McQueen Birthday

Silas is really into Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars. A few months before his birthday we were in Michael’s and he saw a Lightning birthday cake pan. I told him I’d make it for him on his birthday so we bought it. Somehow I forgot that cake decorating is something that people go to school for – it’s not a trivial matter. All the same I was pretty proud of my Lightning McQueen cake and we had a great birthday celebration for Silas.

Christmas Eve Hike

We started what may end up being a family tradition today: a Christmas Eve hike. In between getting some last minute stuff done in the morning and other errands and getting to church by 5 PM, we got away to Fremont Older Open Space Preserve in Saratoga. It is so great to be able to be at a beautiful and easy hiking spot in 20 minutes from our house. Ava got to ride in the backpack, but the older kids walked up to a great vista and had a really fun time. It was a beautiful chance to get away and enjoy some time outside during the busy time of this season. If you want to see some more pictures (there are some REALLY cute ones of Eliana and Silas holding hands on the trail) click on the picture to see our whole album.

Fireplace

The holiday projects continue. We had an old fireplace insert in our fireplace when we bought the house, but it didn’t work because the fan on it was broken. We wanted to be able to sit by the fire, so we took it out and just replaced it with a fireplace door. Today I installed it and tonight we sat down by our first fire. S’mores are forthcoming, but we feel an obligation to eat dinner first. Take a look. The funny thing is that the picture actually looks prettier than real life (perhaps because the picture doesn’t show the normal chaos of our family life in the background).

Eliana’s kindergarten picture

We got this a few weeks ago, but I just now thought of posting it. Our little schoolgirl…

Christmas Lights

Well, after several mishaps, including (but not limited to): not having enough lights; having to wait for another weekend since it gets dark at 5 PM here now; realizing that the new sets of lights I got were shorter than the old ones; thinking that the gutter would be a good place to store some extra lengths of lights until realizing that every time I plugged in the lights they went out because they were sitting in water and tripping the GFCI outlet that they were plugged into; and trying to figure out how to run extension cords across my roof … I finally got our icicle lights hung up on our house. I had much greater ambitions for this year, but since there is less than three weeks until Christmas, I guess I need to stop here and save my further ambitions for next year. Ah well.

Turkey Jerkey

My latest thing is to call Ava a “turkey jerkey” just to hear her response. I think it’s the cutest thing. Watch this video and listen for yourself… [flv:/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/ava_turkey_jerkey.flv 320 240]

Cutting our Christmas Tree

Today we had another first tradition as a family: cutting down our own Christmas Tree. It was really fun. We traveled down to a Christmas Tree Farm just south of Los Gatos called Black Road Christmas Tree Farms. It’s amazing that we can drive for 20 minutes and feel so deep into the woods. The farm was beautiful – our only concern was whether the minivan would make it down (and back out) on the dirt road leading into the base area of the farm. The kids had a great time with their hats and mittens on (it was 35 degrees). We found a try, cut it down, and hauled it back to the car. Everyone agreed that this would definitely become our new tradition. It was great.

Here’s our tree just before we cut it down:

And here’s the tree, in its new home:

Everyone was bundled up:

Taylor Thanksgiving

For the first time since we’ve been married, Rachel and I hosted Thanksgiving at our house. It was a really fun experience. Rachel’s mom, Karen came the Saturday before and her brother, Paul, and his wife, Sarah, arrived on Wednesday morning. I volunteered to be in charge of the Thanksgiving dinner (mostly so I could watch football while everyone else cleaned up in the afternoon). I made the whole works: Roast Turkey, Sausage-Apricot Stuffing (from The Best Recipe cookbook), oven-baked Mashed Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole, Fresh Cranberry Sauce, and White Dinner Rolls. It turned out to be a pretty good dinner. I think my turkey came out a little dry, and the stuffing had too much bread, and the mashed potatoes needed more milk. But other than that, it was great.  And I think everyone had a good time.

I definitely enjoyed my first Thanksgiving Dinner cooking experience and am looking forward to more in the future. It’s fun to start establishing our own traditions as a family. Rachel made pumpkin pie with the kids for dessert (which was great as far as pumpkin pies goes, but I’m not a huge fan of pumpkin taste).

Our bird, before and after . I’m definitely glad we ate it after.

Another new website

Hey there. I’m working on redesigning our website again to make it easier for us to keep it updated. Let me know how you like the new look and check back in a bit to see it when its totally up and running.

-pt