Here's Orion sledding down the slope in the backyard. Below is our snowman.

Orion is becoming quite a reader. It's fun to see him reading to Jessi.

Yes, we got snow! several times! We've had 6 snow days in the last month. We've learned that in California if it snows that night (no matter how little the amount) school will be cancelled the next day. The kids have been loving it. We've made a snowman, slid down our slope in the backyard over and over, made snow angels, and made snow cones. In Lancaster we got snow only once for a couple hours in the 2 years that we lived there. I guess living in the mountains now we'll be getting more snow. Lots of fun! Here's Ethan and Jess eating snow on the trampoline.

Here's the kids out in front of the house and below is Meri making a snow angel.

a Sunbeep, a Sunbeep!

Here's Princess Jessi in her new princess dancing outfit - she is a girl who loves to do dress-ups!











Here is Jessi already for her first day as a Sunbeam.
- she calls it "sunbeeps". She did great! Since the move to Tehachapi she has been completely anti-nursery probably due to the fact that Mom and Dad were her nursery teachers for her whole nursery experience until the move. After a month or so of trying to get her to go to her new nursery class here and exhausting the nursery teachers with her tantrums we finally decided that she was a nursery drop out and she just started coming to primary with Mom. Anytime we'd even go near the nursery door she'd start to cry. So today when it was time for her to go to sunbeams we held our breath and hoped for the best, but kind of expected the worst. Luckily Mom was busy at the piano in primary and Dad was busy subbing for the CTR6 class so both of us were pretty unavailable when the sunbeams exited the primary room for class time. To our great surprise she walked right out the door with her teacher, no tears! Her teacher is wonderful and Jessi obviously trusted her enough to go with her which after her nursery fits was pretty shocking! After class she was so excited, just raving about how she got to go fishing and even got to color her own crown which she wore all the rest of the day! Hooray for sunbeams! Meri was in complete shock that Jessi actually went on her own - Meri has had her share of fits going to classes on her own. Tonight as we were getting ready for bed Meri asked Jessi "how come you went to class with out mom and dad?" and Jessi simply said "because I just wanted too." A sunbeam, a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for Him!

Our Christmas

Welcome, new family members

Sophie (may also be Pipa or Mazey) the rat
Angel and Squeaky the guinea pigs
Slick Slack the leopard gecko
Padmé the kitten

You don't have to live in NY to get snow

Thanksgiving slideshow

Live Nativity

Orion and Meri with their friend Shelby at the Lancaster Creche festival. We loved seeing all the nativities and enjoyed the children's room with lots of fun activities. Christmas is here!

Halloween lineup

Watch out neighbors, these trick-or-treaters are about to be set loose.

Cast of the year

Due to a plethora of favorable comments, here is a close-up of the cast. Even the missionaries signed it.

Jessica, Dorothy Jr

Meri, Dorothy Sr

Orion M&M, color: red

Jango "Ethan" Fett

Brayton, Clone Trooper

Broken bone number 2

A first in our family - a leg cast. This is Orion's second cast (he slightly fractured his wrist when he was three). After a fall from some playground equipment, Orion went to the doctor. No bone breaks were apparent from the x-rays but they said sometimes bones grind together enough to cause a problem. They recommended a cast for two weeks. Once he got the cast, he tried to stand on it and collapsed in pain so something is going in there. They thoughtfully applied a festive orange and black cast. Trick-or-treating should be fun.

Jessica

First baby tooth to go!

Orion's first tooth loss.

Hoop dreams

Orion and Meri are attending a basketball class.

Walking amongst the stars

After almost three years in the greater Los Angeles area, we finally visited Hollywood. We saw the Hollywood Sign, the Walk of Fame, Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater, random people dressed up as movie characters, Rodeo Drive, the Los Angeles Temple, among other things. Everyone had a good time (except Meri was upset by a giant Elmo).

One more room

Not sure why all the house photos did not upload together. Here is the last one. We are missing a photo of the master bathroom which is not a room to be missed. Stay tuned.

More house

Boys' room, other side.













Fish bathroom.













Girls' room.


















Garage.

The greatest decade in history

Hard to believe but the decade of our youth is being memorialized. Friday was 80's dressup day at Tompkins Elementary School. These kids look great. We will continue to play 80's music (and that is some great music!) in the car and in our home and maybe they will want to dress like this all the time. I just wish I had some parachute pants to share with the boys. Awesome!

Continue the house tour

The great room. Kitchen in on the left.













The great room from the other side. Front door in the background.













The library/conservatory. The piano used to be in the great room but we moved it in here to enhance piano lessons and practice. This room is actually intended to be the dining room (it's behind the wall at the right of the front door in the picture above). We thought, "what are we going to do with a dining room?" And now it's a library.








The boys' room.

Shannon Shots part 1

Due to repeated requests from our good sister, we are introducing the first in a series of interior photos of our new home. The main delay has been remembering to take a photo when everything was cleaned up.

This spread shows the kitchen and eating area. I really like the tile - our old house's eating area was carpeted. The original floor-plan had a wall around the kitchen. Fortunately the wall was not structural and the builder was able to omit it. We lost some cabinet space with that change and made up for it with the full-height cabinets by the table. We also added the built-in pantry at the last minute. I think we ended up with even more storage space. We still haven't filled it all up.

Getting a little loopy

Behold, the world famous Tehachapi Loop. We went to visit one of the most famous railroad landmarks ever (it fulfilled a Cub Scout requirement). The Loop has been in use since it was built between 1874 and 1876. It was a novel solution to the need for the train track to climb 80 feet of elevation in a small space (there is a limit to the steepness a train can handle). The top photo is the view from the small pull-off-the-side-of-road area with a couple of historical markers. I was a little disappointed - I was expecting a park or something. You can't even see the whole loop because of that little pointy hill in the middle. Also we saw no train traffic.

That all changed on our way home. We saw a train approaching the Loop and we stopped for a photo. What you see in the lower photo is a train crossing over itself. The back end of the train is going into a tunnel while the front of the train crosses over above. That was much more exciting than the overlook spot.

The Loop is about 10 miles away from Tehachapi in a small town called Keene. Why it is not called the Keene Loop is not clear. By the time we got back to Tehachapi, the train we watched cross itself was just getting into town.

First self-portrait

Jessica is shown justifiably proud of her first self-portrait. I thought she captured her blue eyes especially well.