Christmas 2010, Better Late Than Never

I haven't had the time to put together a proper Christmas post, so this assortment of pictures will have to do. Christmas seemed to fly by this year but we were able to have lots of fun and see lots of family! 

Naomi was so excited to be a Shepherd with James.  I think they spend most of the family party sitting together, and loved it!

Gray and Jaren are reading the Christmas memory books that Grandma Bronson wrote.  What an amazing treasure, to learn about the Christmas's of Grandma's childhood.  Speaking of childhood, Corey sure looks young. 

Aah, the wise man.

A very serious Mary, at this point she is "great with child".

See how happy she is now with her cute baby?

Christmas morning was fun, Gray loved his Vans from Aunt Steph.

Guess who has made waffles every morning for the past month?  In case you're interested, this is the best Belgian waffle mix out there.

Naomi barely made it through opening gifts.  She was so sick all day, she spent most of Christmas day asleep in bed.  It was kind of funny cause the next day she started looking through her presents and it was like Christmas morning all over again.  I think she was pretty out of it the first time she opened them.

Isn't this how Christmas afternoon looks for most of us?  I think this year was a record for us, we didn't get up until 7:30am!

The Last Day of 2010

The last day of the year was a busy one.  We spend most of the day at Beaver Mtn.  Kory and the kids braved the cold (it was below zero much of the day) while I spectated.  After getting home and cleaning up, we went to a USU mens basketball games with the Hills.  Great time hanging out with friends!  The kids were determined to stay up till midnight so we fixed some treats and played a new wii game.  At the stroke of midnight we toasted in the new year with sparkling cider.  Here's to an awesome 2011!

 

Naomi with Kory getting ready for her first fun of the season.

Kory and Naomi finishing up their first run.  Naomi chose to skip a warm up on Little Beaver and went right for The Face.

Gray and Kory went down the backside.  This was Gray's first time and he loved it.  I need to add that at the point where I say "Gray ate it" he made it clear that he did not crash, just kind of got stuck in the powder.

Autumn Saturdays

I have very distinct memories of autumn Saturdays as a child. Maybe it's because fall seems to be full of scents, crisp and clear. Raking leaves, apples, burning fields, the air in the morning ... I could go on. Something else I always associate with fall is the sound of a cannon. For a number of years we lived close to a university football stadium and the sound of the cannon with each point scored is directly tied to my memories of working and playing in the back yard during autumn. Last Saturday was one of those perfect autumn days. We skipped out on bike racing and just stayed home.

The kids caught leaves as they fell from the trees. I realize that from this picture it doesn't look like we have that many leaves, but don't worry just out of sight is a field of orange.

I'd been hoping to get up into the canyons for some family pictures before all the leaves were gone but this picture on the back porch might be as close as I get this year.

Naomi, our little monkey loves to climb and be in the trees. Gray has been a great teacher. As soon as the snow hits, they'll take to the pine trees. I have no idea why, but they only seem to climb them in the winter.

The kids and Benny.

When Kory got home from work, he and the kids headed up to the jumps and rode bikes. It's so much fun to have this stuff in our back yard. And even better, it's a common area for bikers to not only ride, but build anything and everything they want. We never know what fun new trails or jumps we'll find, but we always go check it out after we've heard lots of hammering.

Halloween

This year since Halloween was on Sunday, we did our celebrating on Saturday. We started with a 7:30 am workout. Since this was a special Halloween workout, families were welcome and the kids were not about to pass up a chance to do CrossFit. It was so much fun to have the kids there. Naomi spend some time on the rowing machine, calling us over to see that after 20min. she had rowed over 2000 meters!

Gray impressed everyone with his killer box jumps.

Naomi did lots of hanging on the bars and even threw in some pull-ups, she's got some serious upper body strength.
After our workout, we loaded up canning supplies and headed to Kory's parents house to make applesauce.
Honestly, fresh applesauce is so much better than stuff from the store. I have no idea how many quarts we did, probably somewhere around 40. Notice that Gray and Naomi are nowhere to be seen? They were glued to the tv, trying to make up for all the tv they don't get to watch at home. I attribute that fact that Naomi can do pull-ups and Gray can hang with the adults in a crossfit workout to the absence of tv in our home. Finally, we headed out the door ready for parties and trick-or-treating. Gray spent the evening with friends at a party and Naomi and I braved the rainstorm to do some trick-or-treating.

Kory met up with Naomi and I then we headed home for pizza and a movie. It was a fun day and we all had no problem falling asleep that night.

First Day - New School

Gray and Naomi both switched to a new school district this year. When we moved about a year and a half ago, they didn't want to change schools and since it worked out pretty easily to get them to and from their old schools, we didn't move them. This year however, they decided it was time to change.

Here's Gray bright and early on the first day of 7th grade. It's been a difficult transition for him but he has had some good friends who try to make sure he doesn't sit alone at lunch (probably the number one fear of any middle school student).
Naomi was sure that no school could ever be as great as Hillcrest Elementary, but after just one day of 3rd grade, she was loving her new school (or maybe she was mostly loving riding the school bus).

Let the growing begin

We've had an incredibly wet and chilly spring. Last year our garden was ok, but I lost much of it to weeds and then half our tomatoes to an early frost. This year we finished building our grow boxes. Brooke, my cousin, has had grow boxes like this for the past few years and they always have lots of produce with very few weeds. I'm hoping to document my garden through the summer to see how it goes. We've been following the direction of a book called More Food from Your Garden by Jacob Mittleider. If you're interested in reading more about this kind of growing without buying the book, Food for Everyone is a great website that goes along with Mittleider's growing methods.

We started building our boxes last year then finished by building a few more this year for a total of five boxes. We put some gypsum on the bottom then filled them with 75% sawdust and 25% sand. On top of that mix we added some premixed Mittleider fertilizer and some more gypsum. Pretty much a custom soil mixture that doesn't involve any dirt and as of yet, not weeds.

Here we are filling the boxes. Gray's friend, Brian helped out a ton. In the end we used two truck loads of sawdust and load of sand. Gray and Brian would be quick to point out that it was two thousand pounds of wet sand carried to the boxes a shovel full at a time.

Here the boxes are, all mixed and ready for planting.

On Memorial Day we planted the garden. The seeds are all covered with burlap until the first sprouts show up.

After some gardening the kids stopped to play a few rounds of Ninja Attack. I'm really not sure how this game works, but it's amusing to watch and usually end in fits of laughter.

Here we are a week after planting. Since it's rained so much, watering hasn't been a problem. The three cats and I are now at war. I am usually armed with a hose, they have no chance. We still have some work to do with gravel. Probably another truck load will cover the rest of the space between boxes and make it look a little prettier.

The far box has the first of seven trellis's that we'll put up over our tomatoes, beans and cucumbers. I'll train the plants to climb the trellis strings, using vertical space instead of building bigger grow boxes.

I've removed most of the burlap. Amazing little seeds... Too bad I'm going to have to thin some, I'm sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere. More pictures to come as my garden hopefully keeps growing.

Sport-o

Gray and his friends formed a triathlon team. They participated in the BeWell/Joyride Triathlon. Brennan did the running, Gray biked, and Jordan swam. It was a cold, wet morning but they toughed it out and did great. I also think they had fun.

After the triathlon, we had enough time to pick up lunch and head to the lacrosse field for the first of three games. Gray's got a whole lot more endurance than I'll ever have. He does love his sweet pork burrito!

The sun was shining, but the presence of this campfire is evidence of how cold the day was. Gray and his teammates powered through two dozen hot dogs, a bag of marshmallows and then anything else they could find to roast (including Slim Jims and Oreo's). Oh, and they also played Lacrosse. Good games too.