Brayton turned 10 last week! What a decade it has been! It's hard to believe how much he is growing up. He has been talking about building a robot for a long time. He is always been a big science man. He got a robot for his birthday that he can build and program to make into different shapes and do different things. He has decided to use it in the science fair this month. His hypothesis is: Will a robot make a better worker, or a human? The robot will be sorting M&Ms for it's job. We will see what happens! Brayton enjoyed having his friends Jarod and Daniel sleep over for his birthday and they played with the robot a lot and definitely played their share of video games that night too.
P.S. Slick-slack, Brayton's lizard shed her skin for the first time a couple weeks ago. All the kids were very interested and excited about this event. And even more interested that she actually eats her old skin when she's done shedding! Below is a picture of her shedding.

Tea Party time! The girls love to do tea parties, especially with their pets. Here is Jess having a tea party with her guinea pig, Angel. Below is Meri having a tea party with Padme, her kitty. Lately Meri has been calling herself "momma" for Padme. She'll say things like "come to momma" to her. Well, the last few days she will pick up Padme and bring her over to me and say "you wanna see gramma?" Yes, she is refering to me as gramma!!! Good one Meri.

The Pine Wood Derby! This was Ethan's first and Brayton's 2nd derby. Brayton car is "The Squid", and Ethan's is "Boba Fett Bobsled". They both were great competitors in the races and Ethan's won 2nd for -best in show. It was an exciting night!

Here's Orion with his birthday gifts. Below is a picture of what the rocks looked like when we started them on his birthday. They are agates and petrified wood. We are now doing the final polish that should be done in a few days. We'll post a picture of the finish rocks soon! He loves doing all the steps with the polisher and looking at how his rocks are coming along.

On January 20, 2008 Orion turned 7 years old! To celebrate his birthday we went bowling as a family. We got to do the "Cosmic" bowl with the fun black lights and disco ball. Orion was the only one of us to bowl a strike which I even managed to get on video! He was a very happy boy. He was very specific that he wanted a United States cake so we did our best with that! He is our geology boy. He LOVES rocks.
He got his wish and received a rock tumbler, some rocks, and a couple of cool rock books from Grandpa Teare for his birthday.

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