A busy, fun, hard, and adventurous year

Our big vacation was a visit to San Diego to celebrate my parents' 50th

Our clan has survived another year and we'd like to give you a short summary.  Consistent with past years, we stayed busy with work, scouting, karate, reading, board games, video games, and church activity.  But we also had several new developments in 2011 that combined to suck up every last minute of our collective free time. Collin entered high school and began seminary.  Cora became a curious toddler.  We finished two big home improvement projects.  Nathan got into adventure cycling. Sydney and Owen took after-school Spanish.  Randy played tennis and became a deacon.  To top it off, Robyn signed us up for a summer exchange student.  Nils came to us from Germany for five fun and informative weeks.

Nathan remains with Intel and Robyn is a full time mom.  Our kids Collin, Randy, Owen, Sydney, and Cora are  14, 12, 9, 7, and 2 respectively.  We feel blessed to have this group of children.  They each bring something different to the family.  Dad has to fight dirty rooms and mom has to fight homework procrastination, but for the most part they are good kids.  These photos show a little of what we've been doing.

Randy (right) was ordained a deacon

Owen wins pinewood derby

Sydney learns to ride a bike

Brian, Sherman, Nathan, Randy, Collin, Nils, and Robyn (behind camera) ride the Jordan River Trail 

Nathan and Collin at Fort Laramie Historic Site during a 100 mile cycling trip

Nathan at Ayers Natural Bridge, WY after a solo cycling trip

Cora, so cute we had to include it.

The funniest photo of 2011

This is intended to be short and sweet.  But if you want to know more, you can indulge our vanity by viewing a more detailed picture story of our year in this album.  

YouTube Fun

By Randy

Recently I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube on my new IPod and I like it a lot. On YouTube I am capable of watching episodes of shows that I am not capable of watching on TV. Also recently my family has watched a lot of home videos. We watched a funny home video when I am play sword fighting my older brother with some new toy swords we got. Collin is doing it sort of unwillingly but I’m really into it. We edited the video and we are going to put it on YouTube. The clip is called Sword points.

Baby Wonders

By Randy

Before Christmas my baby sister who had just turned 2 in October started to talk really well and my family could nearly understand every sentence she said. Also she started being capable of recognizing us. On top of our entertainment center we have a picture of mostly everyone in our family. Sometimes we will pick up Cora (my baby sister), point at one of our pictures and ask who it is. She is very capable of saying our names. She can’t say our names really well but she is really good for a two year old. For example my name is Randy and my name is very similar to mommy so when Cora says my name it sounds like mommy. My older brother Collin is very tall so when Cora says his name it sounds like Tollin. But Cora is not all that good because she used to say my sister Sydney’s name as Just “eee!” Cora has gotten a little better at saying Sydney’s name but it’s still not the best. But Cora seems pretty good at saying Owen’s name.

Christmas Surprise

By Randy

Last year for Christmas I got my first I pod touch ever! When I opened up my present I thought it was going to be clothes of some kind especially sense it was in a box that I usually get clothes in and it weighed like clothes. But when I opened the box and saw the new black 8 gig I pod still in its plastic store case along with a new nice looking black normal case and around 4 screen protectors my face brightened with astonishment and surprise. My older brother got really jealous that he had not gotten an I pod and I had. But he still had one more present he picked it up in hopes that it would weigh like an I pod but then his smile seemed to fade when he said kind of unhappily that it was too heavy to be an I pod. When he opened the present he was expecting it to be something not very cool but when he opened it he had the same astonishment and surprise as when I had opened my I pod because what he got wasn’t an I pod but something better, a Smart Phone!