Snow Day!

This is one of those days you dream about. School closed. Dad stayed home from work. Four inches new snow!

We started the day off with Mickey Mouse Pancacks. Mattie made this one herself.

Then we went sledding with the neighbors. Even Hazel went.

(Emma and Mattie are the two kids there, and if you look closely you will see me w/Hazel, the rest of those are neighbors whom you don't know, but they'd give you some figgy pudding if you asked ;-)

The video is of Sam who decided to start going down all by

himself after about the fourth attempt. Really, it's quite brave of him.

Christmas Tree Hunting 2008

We headed out for our annual Christmas Tree hunt this weekend. There wasn't much snow, so we could drive pretty far in and found some great trees fast.

Taylor measuring his tree.

William and Kenny hauling our tree out.

Carrying all the trees up the hill.

Jerome and Chloe holding hands helping each other to the truck.

Anne and Grandpa waiting in the truck.

Jerome, William, Anne, and Chloe finishing up their hot chocolate.

Funny Video

This was posted on Laura's blog and is a friend of hers. Tom and i laughed pretty hard so thought you guys might like it as well. And I think someone in our family could come up with some pretty good stories like this as well. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkzbLUWXK9Y&eurl=http://socialexplosion.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded

Sequoia National Park

A memorable Veteran's Day vacation. A sequoia - General Sherman tree - is the largest tree (not tallest) in the world. We are standing in front of the Fallen Monarch. The inside was once used stable for the cavalry, a bar, and even a settlement site at one time. There's a reverential/fantastical feeling around these quiet giants. In the picture on the right, you can see how they dwarf pine trees, at least in width. I would recommend visiting the sequoias, at least once in a life time, to everyone. This park happens to not be too far away from Yosemite, if you wanted to hit both of them at the family reunion time. Details on when that's going to be will be coming shortly.

Apple Smashing

Thank you Mark and Marianne for inviting us. It was worth the drive, we loved it and loved seeing you. So here are our pictures from it.

I tried to upload a video of Mark turning the grinder, it was amazing to me, but I couldn't. Sorry! Holland was pretty good himself. :)

Our Halloween Pics

The result of last minute digs out of the costume box, Ahh the memories!

Allison on the right, Brianna on the left (shirtless) playing peek-a-boo.