Wobbly Blade

And what does that say about Army quality control?

Snow Day in Southern Alabama!

The forecast called for snow today and I immediately thought it might be the kind that comes down and doesn't even stick to the ground and then turns to rain after about an hour.... not today! This stuff was real, honest to goodness snow! It stuck to the ground and continued most of the day. It started snowing in the morning, and we got an early bus back from the flight line, obviously not flying today. And so now I can say officially that I've had a snow day at least once in my life :) The snowfall continued until about 4:00 in the afternoon. There was plenty to play in and even build a snowman. I got pictures of the kids and me in the snow. But I got the snowman built too late in the day to get a good shot of it. I'll have to post that later.

It's a Girl!

I know this is putting the cart before the horse how I just wrote a post about Noelle's blessing when I never even posted her birth. I'll just mention that she was born at 1452 Central Time, 23 December 2009. At birth she weighed 7 lbs 0 oz and measured 20 inches long. We were lucky to get Amy and baby home by about 9PM on Christmas Eve, which meant we had a lovely new baby for a Christmas present.

In the week and a half she has been alive, I doubt she's been awake for more than a few hours, other than being awake to eat, which she barely does that as well. But she's a cutie and we love having her in the family. The kids love her so much and love to give her kisses and otherwise annoy her in loving ways :)

Noelle in her Blessing Dress

This morning we gave baby Noelle a name and a blessing in Sacrament Meeting. Mom (Andy's mom) had crocheted her a dress, which she was in for the blessing. Just thought I'd share some photos we took of her in the dress after church.

Lauren in the Hospital

I realized that we hadn't chronicled this event in Lauren's life on our blog. I do believe we sent out an email about the event, however, it should have an entry here as well. Plus there are some cute pictures to show.

The short version of the story is that Amy and her family did the classic "I thought she was with you" thing and briefly lost accountability of Lauren at her family's house, where they have a pool. The pool area wasn't fenced at the time and Lauren slipped out the door that everyone thought was locked and went for a swim. After looking all over the house and then following that gut wrenching thought that she might be in the back yard Amy found Lauren floating on her back, unconscious, and her stomach full of water.

Lauren came to and vomited all that water, but Amy and the family rushed her to the hospital, which was actually just around the corner to be sure everything was okay with her. All this took place in the morning and she was released from the hospital around 5 in the evening.

I tell this story using third person because I wasn't there myself. I was at SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school where we're locked out from the outside world completely for three weeks. This news was a week old before I heard about it.

Ward Talent Show

Here's Isaac singing Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree. Lauren's singing wasn't planned. She just decided to do an impromptu singing of her own rendition.


And here's a video of me playing Seitz's Concerto No 5, 1st movt. It's cut off because Amy had to attend to Lauren while I was playing. And you'll notice a lot of out of tune notes. That's because I haven't played much in years and I was nervous.

Halloween

This year Isaac was Peter Pan, for the third year in a row and Lauren was a purple bug of some sort, for the second year, I think. We went around our neighborhood, but to our chagrin trudging up and down the hills hardly paid off as it seemed that most folks were out for the evening, or at least not participating in the candy delving, for whatever reason. I reckon it's partly because our neighborhood is so far removed that folks were probably taking their kids off to other parts of town with more fertile spots for trick-or-treating.

Here's a short film I took from my new ipod nano (Happy Birthday to me from Amy!).