The most amazing Christmas program ever!!

We were able to spend a some time with Santa this holiday season.
The Christmas program year was amazing!! We have a little bit of a bias because Brody did have a solo, but it was completely amazing to watch all of the kids perform. The greatest advantage at having the kids in a private place is having such an amazing community to share our lives with.

Everyone did a fantastic job! We are in the process of converting the video we took into a DVD that we can upload.

The program was also amazing because we had all of the special people in our lives come to watch! Our surrogate grandparent, Pat, Brady's Godparents and Tim's Godfather as well as Mamina and Papa Nick all came to watch. We had just an amazing time!

Brady didn't have a solo (which was a major point of contention in our home for a bit), but he did a great job nonetheless. He didn't do all of the sign language (that he had been practicing in the car for weeks!), but he sang his little heart out! And the next day he had a fever of 100 degrees, perhaps due to the fact that he was up waaaay past his bedtime!! At one point he almost fell off the risers because he was falling asleep on his feet.

Thanksgiving in Idaho

This year for Thanksgiving we traveled to Idaho to meet up with the rest of the Garretts. There were elk and deer everywhere. In particular there was a very pleasant herd of elk that frequented Tim Sr.'s property. We spent a lot of time watching them out of the windows.

The primary purpose of our journey was to meet the newest member of our family, Bella, and her Daddy, Cody. Here they are having a little time together in the middle of the fray.

All of the kids had a great time together. There is nothing quite as wonderful as a cousin!

The big kids colored lots of pictures together and they tried to get Grandpa Tim to buy them. While they were coloring, the little girls had some together time, too.

Tim Sr. has an enormous mountain at the back of his property behind his house. My Tim had a chance to sneak up there the day after Thanksgiving. It's about an hour's hike, straight up. We've been talking about doing the hike for a couple of years. Due to the snowy nature of the day, and Brownie's delicate immune system, I stayed in the house and we watched Daddy go all the way to the top. It was very impressive. So was the herd of elk that was watching him from the top of the mountain.

Some family time for Cody, Bella and Emily. And Austin was watching close by.

Brownie enjoyed watching Daddy have some turkey. She even enjoyed having a little for herself. She was especially impressed with the mashed potatoes.

Hailey and Brownie had a great time together!

And I think that Grandpa Tim just enjoyed all of it. It was really great to have all of the family together, even for a very short time.

Brody turns six!!

Brody decided that he wanted to have a Phineus & Ferb birthday party for his sixth party. Usually, we don't have very many people from school come to his parties because we live so far away. This year, we had the amazing experience of having if his classmates as well as his soccer team come to help him celebate. What an amazing day!!

This was Brownie's second costume~the exotic cat. Don't ask why it won't stay upright....it just won't.

We even broke down and got a bounce house. It was a whole lot of fun for the boys to watch it go up. They bounced until they could bounce no more...and about ten minutes after that, the man arrived to pick it back up. It was perfect!

Daddy did the decorations on the ice cream cake. He is really good at that stuff.

Halloween fun!

Our scary costumes at the city of Fernley city hall event. We got to go through a very scary haunted house.

Our pumpkins this year~we were a little busy with the end of the soccer season, so we did some rather wimpy pumpkin designs. The good news was that we actually got them done.

Brody is officially old enough and strong enough to help punch out his own pumpkin design. Brody chose a bat this year.

Brady was able to accomplish a lot as well. He chose a Frankenstien as his pumpkin design.

Brownie got to be a spide this year. Mommy was a witch and Daddy was a wolf-in honor of the Nevada Wolf Pack and their amazing football season (except in Hawaii...). Our busy Halloween weekend was completed with the end of the soccer season, two soccer parties (the one on Sunday was a costume party!) and fun trick or treating with our good friends, the Shawes.

Soccer fun!

The boys have had a great season playing soccer. Because mommy coaches both teams, she made sure they were both the same colors: silver & black.

Both boys have scored in every game and had oodles & oodles of fun this season! We have had practices two nights a week and so they both play for an hour and a half two nights a week (until recently when it's been too dark to play for so long).

We have a great stretching routine which we know to be really important after watching Daddy pull a hammy in the CO football game.

And now Brady only has one more game and one more practice. Brody has one more practice and two more games.

Next weekend we are having pizza parties at our house to hand out the team trophies. It will be so exciting.

Surprise! It's Grandpa Bill.

Last weekend we had a great surprise on Thursday afternoon: Grandpa Bill came for a visit.The boys got to stay home from school on Friday and play with Grandpa Bill. He came just to watch the boys play soccer, but we went to Fallon to Lattin Farms, too.

It was Brownie's first time at the pumpkin patch. She loved watching the animals, but we went at the end of the day, so they were out of food.

The boys got to ride the cow train.

Which is really a lot of fun. And mommy got a break from holding the baby, so she actually got caught up on her grading.

Brownie's First Meal

Brownie is pretty happy all the time, but even more so when food is around.

Trying out Daddy's favorite meal: ice cream. Brownie has proven herself to enjoy ice cream just like everyone else in the family. Greaaat....watch out Diabetes, here we come.

Well, it's taken us a few weeks, but have finally gotten Brownie used to regular food. Just like the rest of the family she has welcomed this new challenge with fierce enthusiasm. We've even taken her off of the calorie supplement in her bottles at school, so it seems that she is really growing.

Brady's Special Day

Tim was very lucky and received some tickets to the Raiders game vs. the Texans in Oakland. His wingman for the trip? Brady! No one was more excited than our "Middle Kiddle" so, the two took off early one Sunday morning for the bay area.

Brady loved watching all the preparations for before the game. There was so much going on on the field.

The players look so small from the sidelines. Brady couldn't stop watching. The Black Hole was pretty amazing, too! Brady even got to shake hands with a guy we call "Hulk Mania" who sits pretty close to where our seats are. He's rather a local legend in that section.

Brady was also pretty happy because he got to eat junk food ALL DAY!! While mom, Brody and Brownie were at home trying to find patterns for Halloween costumes and hanging out in the McDonald's playground, Brady was watching some serious football.

His favorite player? Why, Darren McFadden, of course! What a special day this guy had!! It was even more exciting before the day before we attended a sporty birthday party and Brady was in the "superbowl" of the football throwing game at the party. He was very proud!

An uninvited guest

Recently we found ourselves with a new tenant who wasn't interested in paying her share of the rent. Living in Nevada, we know that we have to look out for black widows, but this one was a little bit bigger than we were prepared to keep around. I decided I should take a picture of this beauty one morning on the way to school only to realize that she really is too big for comfort. Later that night we went on hunting expedition. Tim caught a moth and then we realized that this lovely lady was too fast to properly dispose of too. We ended up getting her into a jar and suffocating her.


We were planning on dissecting her later, but she was disposed of before we could get to her. Shucks! Lucky for us there are always more black widows around here.

The First Day of School!

So, while Daddy is home in the beginning of the week teaching Brownie to walk and understand football plays...

The boys are spending their days in school.

They were not quite ready for school last week. They had some sillies to get out before the day began on Monday.

However after a little bit of cajoling, they settled down and got ready to learn. They learned so much last week-Brody in 1st grade and Brady in pre-kindergarten-that Brody started reading. Brady has made lots of friends and both boys are really looking forward to spirit week next week and getting to wear strange outfits. Last week they got to vote for the Student Body Officers and they can't wait to run when they get older...something that made me laugh as I thought of my own experiences of that sort.

A New Family Hobby

Brady received a plastic set of golf clubs for his birthday this year. They were well used and loved to pieces in short order. So a new set was purchased for both boys.

The boys keep golfing in the backyard, so they enlisted Daddy's help in getting some skill (perhaps it was all the yelling Mommy was doing as the balls would come flying at her off the hill).

The best place to start: miniature golf. We made a family day of it (although clearly Bronwynn's not quite ready for it, yet).

Almost everyone (including Mommy!!) ended up with at least a hole in one.

Daddy even had two! I'm sure there will be many more golf lessons in our collective familial future.

End of summer visits

We were very lucky to have Grandpa Bill and Nana Joan come to visit recently. We had a great time. Nana made the boys Prince costumes.

Grandpa was a little intimidated by Brownie's small size while she was in the NICU, but this time he didn't really put her down (unless her diaper was yucky).

We went over the their motel to go swimming a couple of times. That was a lot of fun.

We also went the Sierra Safari Zoo. We fed some deer (and were lucky two little boys out of the petting area).

We even got to watch a cheetah give herself a bath. The lion across the enclosure was incredibly jealous and a little less than friendly towards the bathing beauty here. I guess they have to take turns in the tub because we live in the desert. There was only room for one at a time.

Grandpa even brought Brownie her very first Elmo. Each of our kids has had one and has been reluctant to share it. The visit was a lot of fun. We were rather sad to see them go. If Grandpa ever gets around to retiring he can come visit a lot more often. You'd think after 33 years in a hospital he'd be ready to be discharged, but so far he's not budging....