Monster Jam

We were able to go to Monster Jam again this year, thanks to Kyle's brother Tyler who still tours with them. We had a blast together and Nathan was so excited that he didn't stop jumping up and down the entire time we were there... Here are the boys with Tyler, sitting on his quad.
More quad sitting when we went to the pits, Zack being cute.This is a pic I got of Nathan when we were sitting in the stands for the show...

School

Pete's been in school since the first week of January, and this is his last week. Starting Wednesday, he's got one major exam every day; the NAIT practical, the NAIT written, and then the provincial. He hasn't been to work since the week before Christmas! He's all frustrated that he's lost his callouses on his hands - he's going to be hurting when he gets back to work. But Pete's doing super good in school, and I'm so proud of him.

I registered Nathan for kindergarten this fall. It's shocking to me that I'll have both boys in school in September. Nathan is SO excited to go - he's going to LOVE it! I can't believe he's growing up so fast.

Zack's doing great in kindergarten, although I know he's kinda bored with some aspects of it. He's quite a reader now; every book he brings home from the school library gets a little bit bigger and has more words. He used to bring home Dr. Seuss to read to us, and now it's books about race cars and how things work. He brought a book this week from the library about how the lungs work, and I'm shocked at his reading skills and comprehension. He hadn't read the book until he read it at home with me, and he reads words like "automatically" and "oxygen" without missing a beat. Then Zack proceeded to tell me that the word "automatically" comes from the word "automatic" which is just like the doors at Safeway... Wow.

Growing Up

Another step for a growing child happened this weekend; Zack has his first loose tooth. Is he really old enough for all of this? Yikes!

December Pictures

Here's some shots from December!

This is what the transmission from my car looks like. I asked Pete to take a picture of it while he was working on it right before Christmas. Doesn't it look so cool?

Zack drew a really cute 2-sided picture of a happy face and a sad face, so I had him pose accordingly. So cute!

This is the first gingerbread house that I've ever built by myself. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out... To bad it only lasted a few days before it got eaten! I made it out of sugar cookie dough instead of gingerbread - I'm not the biggest fan of gingerbread, and it turned out pretty good. I stayed up WAY too late building it, but I had so much fun.

This is the boys sledding on the hill by Pete's parents' place in Rocky Mountain House. We had a blast with them - it was a beautiful day! After supper that day we went for a walk to the Von Hollen's house, a pretty big tourist attraction in Rocky at Christmas, and it's only a couple blocks away. They spend months decorating their house and yard, they even have corporate sponsors and everything for their lights. Their yard has a pathway that goes all the way around the back of the house complete with lit arches all the way through and "lookout points" to see all of the inflatable stuff they have in the back yard. It's pretty cool - the boys went around a few times to take it all in!

His Own Words

We listen to music all the time, and the boys love to sing along. While Zack prefers to sing the words in the song, Nathan prefers to use the melody to sing about whatever he wants. We were on the way home from church this weekend, and Nathan was singing along to the music in the car (loudly, as usual); "I loooooooove dinoSAAAAAURSSS!!! *Fast unintelligible other stuff* Neeeeeerf guuuns!!" He often sings about Lego, fast cars, and monster trucks too (surprise, surprise!).

Scarfy 2.0

He's aliiiive! This week the boys and I finished this year's snowman. It's been beautiful outside, but the way our house sits, our yard is in constant shade in the winter which doesn't make that good sticky snow. We went outside on Friday morning and the snow wasn't sticky, but I was determined to make it work. So I grabbed the watering can, filled it with hot water, and sprinkled the snow with it. I gathered all the new wet snow I just made, and continued to sprinkle the ball I was making and then a path in front of it. So I rolled and the boys sprinkled, and eventually we got ourselves a snowman! Yay! I'll put pictures up soon - it's even better than last year.

Man Supper

Every family has certain names for events/products/etc that other people don't have, and one of ours is "Man Supper." Man Supper happens when I have a meeting/worship practice/other thing and I can't be home for supper to feed Pete and the boys. Zack and Nathan - especially Nathan - love Man Supper because they usually get to eat/drink stuff that I don't feed them. It's funny; if you give a positive name to put to the experience it somehow makes the whole thing easier and fun...

Christmas Day

We really wanted to get the boys something cool for Christmas this year, but not really having a Christmas budget that included presents for our immediate family was disheartening for us. BUT at the end of November one of the guys at Pete's work asked him if we would like to have (for freeeeee) his Power Wheels truck. It was sitting at his house and was never even driven once, and now his son is too big for it. So Pete said that OF COURSE we'd love to have it, and picked it up a few days before Christmas - it even came with two batteries and a charger. All we had to do was get the dust off of the truck and charge the batteries. Well we managed to wrap it (somewhat) and the boys LOVE it! Here they are on Christmas day driving their new truck around.