Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We've elected to stay home and spend some quiet time together as a family. Quiet is a relative term I suppose - lets just say we let the kids run around like mad and didn't worry too much about it. A few firsts this year:

1) Adam no longer believes in Santa Clause. He's been wondering about it for a couple of years and asking some very probing questions. We refused to offer any more than encouragement to solve the puzzle for himself. It finally came down to the fact that the he doesn't believe the tooth fairy is real, so that means that Santa cannot be real!

2) The girls were totally excited about Santa Clause this year for the first time. They made cookies and left out milk and talked about it all day. Adam was a good sport and played right along with them.

3) Ben was old enough to enjoy toys this year and had a ball with his gifts.

4) We ended up with a full size basketball hoop and a larger-than-life Anna doll in our great room (pictures below).

5) Collectively, we ended up with some 20 new books to read. Books are always welcome in our home! Among them was a very touching photo biography of my (deceased) father created by my mother. Thanks Mom! I was glad to have opened that one a couple of days before Christmas - otherwise I would have spent the whole day in tears.

We enjoyed time together on Christmas Eve with a nice big feast followed by an evening program. We continued a Finch family tradition by all opening a gift of brand new pajamas to wear for the night. In the spirit of an Ebbert family tradition, we dressed up and acted out the Christmas story. Then we sang some songs, watched some movies, and finally got the kids to bed.

After about 4 hours of assembling the basketball hoop and other toys, Tammy and I actually made it to bed before Santa showed up.

The morning was fun - with the usual chaos and fun of unwrapping. Following is a short movie of some of the unwrapping fun...


Upload Video at DropShots.com

After the morning, we got all dressed up and headed to church. We combined with a couple of other congregations in the area and had a shorter than normal late morning church. It was a nice service and enjoyable for me to actually be able to sit with my family at church (until Ben started crying that is)!

The rest of the day has been spent relaxing and enjoying watching the kids having fun. All-in-all it was a great Christmas! Thanks to the many of you that gave gifts and letters and cards to our family this year. We hope you all have had a very Merry Christmas!

The Aftermath

No need to comment on this one! 

The two princesses

Here's Anna all dressed up in her new ballerina outfit carrying around Lizzy's new pet cat (thanks Uncle Jeff and family!). Lizzy insisted on wearing the red Santa socks with her dress (only fitting for the day, I guess). 

Merry? Christmas

The whole Christmas thing was a little overwhelming to Lizzy, but she warmed up to the idea after a while and had a great day. 

Stocking Unstuffer

Ben's favorite part of the morning was pulling things from his stocking. He also enjoyed the toys pretty well. He had managed to get many of his unwrapped before Christmas, but enjoyed rediscoving them this morning. 

Hello Christmas!!

Here the kids are arriving first thing Christmas morning. I think their expressions in this picture reflect their true feelings of the morning. Adam - excited. Anna - overwhelmed. Lizzy - petrified (I don't really know why, she just seemed genuinely scared for the first 30 minutes or so this morning). 

Annalina the Ballerina

"And Anna was hung from the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there!"

Anna has been really wanting this ballerina outfit (although she really doesn't much like ballet - she certainly likes the clothing!). And, with many thanks to Hairy Grandpa and Grandma, she got it. We wanted to make sure it caught her eye first thing when she woke up in the morning, so we made a little "mannaquin". She was thrilled to find it. 

Christmas Eve

As part of our Christmas Eve celebration, the kids acted out the story of the nativity. The kids came up with their own costumes. Starring:

Little Benjamin as the wooly sheep.

Blue the dog as the three wise men.

Captain Big Mac as the innkeeper.

And Little Red Riding Hood as Mary with the babe.

Adam and basketball

Adam has enjoyed playing his first season of basketball this winter. He was a member of the "Snakes" basketball team for 1st and 2nd graders. It's been a great experience for him - he's really developed a lot of new skills playing on this team. He had a great time even though the team didn't do so well through most of the season - they lost their first 5 games - usually pretty badly. But during the last game of the season (yesterday), the whole team stepped up and pulled out a victory (38-30). Adam was the star of the game (in my opinion) - he scored 14 points, grabbed about 10 rebounds and had a couple of steals. He really was hustling around the court - and chasing after rebounds. At one point he even dove around another kid to save a rebound from going out of bounds - he ended up with skinned knees from that one, but was proud of his battle wounds.

The reason he scored so many points I think was not so much skill as brains - he figured out the system. You see, in first grade basketball, it is illegal to steal the ball while your opponent is dribbling - you can only steal passes. You also can't block shots. So every time Adam would get the ball, he would dribble kind of nonchalantly up to the basket, pick up the ball, focus and shoot it. It would go in most times. He figured out he could just keep dribbling forward and the opponent couldn't really stop him. Here are some pictures (and even a video) of Adam playing ball. These were taken two weeks ago...


Here's Adam on defense. He was real good at defense - he would stick with his guy no matter where he went - even if he ran past half court while the ball was under the basket. We'll have to work on keeping an eye both on his man and on the ball, but pretty good for starters!




Here he is defending again. Notice the seven footer on the left of the picture. This was the real reason Adam's team lost their first 5 games. Every one of the teams had a 2nd grader who had hit an early growth spurt. This particular team had 7 foot twins that got almost every rebound.


Upload Video at DropShots.com

Okay, so this video doesn't show Adam at his best, but it's still kind of fun. He's taking the ball down the court, dribbles it off the opponents foot. His coach kicks it back to him. He loses it again, but then grabs it and hands it to a teammate. Then he skips (literally) around and gets in perfect rebounding position - grabs the rebound and promptly throws up an airball - then runs back for defense.

Anna dancing!

Upload Video at DropShots.com Note: There's no sound on this video. Our camera doesn't do sound!

Anna and her class (and one other class)

Can you find Anna? Here she is with some of her classmates performing. 

Anna performing

Here she is right in the middle of one of her songs. What a fun day. 

Anna's preschool program

Anna just completed her first half of preschool this past friday. They had a fun program presentation for all the parents that day. Anna goes to preschool at the children's museum in town. It is an arts-based program so they do these incredible art projects. (That is one of the main reasons we chose this preschool for Anna). They have a kiln there in the building so they have made a few ceramic items, including a self portrait in clay. In addition to the art projects, they have dance once a week. This half of the year was ballet and starting in January it will be tap. Anyways, for their program they sang some cute little songs, but they also did some dances for us. They have been watching small segments of the nutcracker ballet in class once a week and they did a simple dance from the nutcracker suite. They danced to the Russian dance. It was a lot of fun. She has really enjoyed preschool, which has been quite a relief to us, since she initially was very resistive. She didn't love ballet though. She is looking forward to the change to tap. She was very nervous about performing in front of so many people. She was even in tears the night before, not wanting to go the next day. We talked her through it and put her teacher on alert to keep a special eye out for her, and she did it! We were so proud of her. We are hoping this preschool experience will make for a smoother transition to kindergarten next year.

Oh, I do have to mention as a little aside that the room mothers went a little crazy with the food for this little event. They had these two long tables filled with food. There were all sorts of ethnic foods made by some of the moms. We had food from the Phillipines (Lumpia), India (Samosa), Finland, fajitas wherever you want to say they are from, and a few others that I can't even remember. That doesn't include the regular cookies, punch, fruit kabobs, veggie tray. It was out of control!! But it was very yummy! They also had crafts for the kids to make and take home. It was crazy! What did I do to contribute you ask? I brought the veggie tray. That's about it. I also brought more kids than anyone else to enjoy the fun!!

We are so proud of Anna. We love her uniqueness. We love her desire to create beautiful things. We hope you enjoy some of the pictures of her at her program. We wish you could have seen her in person, but this will have to do.

Rotten Timing

We have a story of rotten timing. When we bought our new house, we bought some new appliances to go with it. Thinking we would really like it, we decided to buy one of those ceramic glass cooktop (flattop) ranges. We've liked it pretty well - it's easy to clean. Well, yesterday after we finished cooking dinner we noticed a small crack in the glass cooktop. A few minutes later the small crack had spread all the way across the top in several directions making all the burners virtually unusable.

On any normal week this would have not been a big deal. The glass top has a warranty so we can get that replaced and we could normally handle a few days without a stove. But, we're hosting Thanksgiving dinner for 16 people tomorrow! It couldn't have happened at a worse time! We can still do the turkey - we just haven't quite figured out how to do mashed potatoes and gravy in the microwave. Maybe we can rig up something in the fireplace? We'll figure something out!

Lizzy was a pretty grouchy leopard (oops, I mean "I'm a CAT!") when we headed out for trick or treating, so we didn't get much of a good picture. After the first door, she perked up a lot though and had a ball.

At each door, we stayed back on the sidewalk and let the kids approach the door themselves. At one particular door, the friendly neighbor said, "Hello, kids! You can take whatever candy you would like from the bucket." Lizzy immediately grabbed the bucket from the poor man and dumped the entire contents into her basket (and some onto the ground). I guess the man got some of his candy back from Lizzy, but, according to Adam, similar things happened at several houses. When she got home her basket was overflowing while the other kids were only about half full!

This is our little fairy princess Anna. She got to wear her costume to preschool and was very excited to find that her best friend there was also a fairy princess. 

This is the self-proclaimed Captain Big Mac. Instead of the normal "trick or treat" Adam's door approach was to raise his sword and grunt "Arrrr...Captain Big Mac wants some candy". He usually got his way. Incidentally, Adam's pet name for Lizzy is currently Little Mac. 

Adam

Well Adam has probably had the most excitement in his life the past couple of weeks, so I thought I would let you know what he is doing. He is finally adjusting to his new school and new teacher. He is enjoying things much more now. He is playing with friends from his class at recess now instead of the old stand-bys from church, which I think is a good sign. He has a new love at school. It is tetherball. They didn't have tetherball at his school last year, so this is something new and exciting. He really has enjoyed that, even though, at his own admission, he is not very good at it.

Adam has also started playing basketball through a league here in town. He is loving that, and I have been surprised how enjoyable it is to watch him play. He gets a little excited about things and tends to jump and bounce around the court instead of running. He scored his first basket in the last game they played, but his strength is definitely dribbling (and I don't mean on his chin). His team is altogether pretty terrible, but they don't seem to mind. They are just happy to be out there playing ball.

In a different area of his life, Adam is undergoing some changes. He lost two teeth a couple of weeks ago. It is his bottom two teeth. They came out just two days apart from each other. He pulled them both out himself, mostly because he would not let Greg or I near him. What was he doing while he pulled them out; he was jumping up and down. He is a bit excitable I guess. He has been pestering me to know if the tooth fairy is real (I think he mostly wanted to know if he was REALLY going to get any money). I think he kind of knew already, so I told him, but we still gave him some money (although not the $10 that he claims his friend got for each tooth!). He also has strict instructions not to let the girls on to this little secret.

Adam probably has the most exciting life of anyone in our family. He continues to love the piano and excels at just about anything he does, with the exception of tetherball I guess. He is still working on finishing the Book of Mormon by the end of this year and constantly amazes us at his retention and comprehension. He has been the inspiration for his primary teacher and other adults in the ward to keep going. "If Adam can do it, so can I." He is an amazing kid.

Back in Business

Well, hello there blogsphere! As many of you know our computer has been down for quite a while. After two motherboards and some house calls from the computer doctor, we ended up buying a new computer anyway! Computers are pretty cheap these days, so if you suspect you have a motherboard problem just buy a new computer!! We ended up spending as much trying to fix our computer as we bought our new one for! ARGH!! The good side of all this is you lucky folks out there get to hear what is going on in our lives again, and I get to be more involved in some of yours. I definitely like computers for that reason. We are officially back in business, so there will probably be a string of posts the next little while. Are you ready??

Another day at the office

I think I've found a new calling in life. I want to be an excavator operator! A couple of weeks ago my management at work invited my work team to the John Deere proving grounds to test drive some construction equipment. Working in an office job on computers all the time, it's easy to lose sight of what the company is all about. So every now and then they like to take us out to play with some equipment so that we can feel "connected" to the product. This is the first time I've taken advantage of one of these opportunities. Following are a few pictures of my experience.

Of all the equipment I drove, this excavator was by far my favorite. This is one of the smaller excavators that Deere makes (they wouldn't trust us with anything bigger!) but it was still very powerful. I think it's a good stress reliever, so I'm asking for one for Christmas. When the going gets tough, I'll just say, "Honey, I'm going in the back yard to dig for a while."
All the motion is controlled by two joysticks. The joystick on the left swings the cab and arm left and right and moves the main arm up and down. The joystick on the right operates the bucket and the lower part of the arm. To dig, you basically just move the two joysticks around in circles and the thing will dig in one spot and dump in another.

This is I think what is called an "articulated front end loader" (okay, so maybe I better stick to computers until I learn the proper names for these things). This was the favorite of many out there that day, but for me it didn't measure up to the excavator.
Driving the front end loader was also very easy. You basically have a steering wheel, an accelerator, and a brake (like most vehicles). To operate the bucket, there was just one joystick (forward to raise it up, backward to lower it, left to scoop, right to dump). Since you're constantly going forward and backward, there's a small switch on the joystick - switch it one way and you go forward, switch it the other way and you go backward.
This bulldozer was kind of fun. Going over this little mountain was a bit of a kick. Bulldozers typically move forward (or backward) at a constant speed. You can tell in the picture if I go just a little bit further forward, my front is going to be heavier than my back and the whole thing is going to fall forward. Well, my first time over the hill that's exactly what happened and I almost crashed through the windshield. The trick, I learned, is to push the decelerator pedal when you get to the top, then you kind of ease over the hill gradually. I'll stick to the excavator.

Here I am on a little backhoe. This was the first machine I tried out. It was fun enough, but didn't pack near the punch of the excavator. It could dig holes well enough though.
Here's the biggest vehicle that we got to drive that day. By dump truck standards, it's medium sized but I still think it's the biggest vehicle I've ever driven. You'll notice it is articulated like the front end loader (meaning it bends in the middle). That's how it steers. When you turn the wheel, hydraulic cylinders bend the front end around the corner and the backend follows. It feels quite a bit different than steering a normal small vehicle (I almost hit a fence at one point).

The guy that was riding with me said it would go up to 35 miles per hour, but I got it up to 40 and I think it would go faster if you pushed it. At one point, he said to gun it (that's when I got it to 40). We were cruising down a dirt road and at the end there was a gated fence. He said "Don't let up, don't let up, don't let up". About 30 feet short of the fence he says, "Okay take your foot off the accelerator." I did (as soon as he said the word "Okay" - I was getting a little nervous)! The truck just stopped. It didn't throw you forward like slamming on brakes, but the thing went from 40-0 in about 20 feet - no brakes required! He said it's something built into the transmission that stops the vehicle any time you take your foot off the accelerator (no cruise control in this beast!). I don't suppose friction brakes would last long trying to stop 40 tons of momentum.

All-in-all, it was a very fun day. I was very impressed by all the equipment. The most impressive thing was how simple it was to drive everything. They just gave a two minute orientation to the first driver of each machine, then they expected you to pass on the information to the next driver. It was that easy. They've made driving those complex machines easier than driving a car. Most everything was run by joysticks, and the cabs were all very comfortable. Honestly, I think I would be more comfortable moving tons of dirt around all day than I typically am in my desk chair.

So, if you ever have a chance to dig a basement or a swimming pool for someone, I highly recommend it (only if it's with a Deere of course)!