Evan had an altercation with the piano bench.

Kids in Christmas PJs. Kate did not want to go to bed--she's not tired!

Christmas morning--Santa came!

I forgot to add a couple of pre-holiday photos . Evan was in a cute school play called "The Martian Christmas." You can see here that he is in fact one of the martians. He had a very pivotal role--his line: "Harvesting snow on our planet requires three solar rotations." He did a super job, and he was the best martian in the whole group. (Yes, I am his mother.)

Kate had a fun Christmas party at her playgroup. Santa arrived on a dogsled, and brought her a gift in his pack--a brand new book. Here she is with one of her favorite teachers.

White Christmas

It looks as though our Christmas will be white this year. Mother Nature outdid herself, and the kids were so happy. Yes, that is a snowball in Nick's hand, and yes, Lizzy is probably the recipient of that particular snowball. What a good brother!

I didn't realize how many children actually lived on our street until the snow arrived and school was cancelled. They were thrilled to start their school holiday early. It was a great day that ended with rosy cheeks and hot chocolates.

Merry Christmas!! Behold our Christmas Tree. Mommy was really proud of these ornaments, so you will look at them and you will like them. We are having Christmas early this year for obvious reasons. The kids decided that having it a few weeks early would not be a bad idea. They are looking forward to the extra stuff.

We had Nick's birthday on November 13th. Friday the 13th, to be exact. Thanks to everyone who came to his party and gave him a gift except that we feel like he got way too much. I have never seen anyone make out that well on a birthday. I was sincerely jealous. So next time, we ask that you just give him a very boring card, at least that's what Lizzy would like.

Here is Nick on the day he was ordained as a deacon. We are all very proud and think that he looks great. He is a little anxious to pass the sacrament next week, but I'm sure that he can handle it. We have been practicing walking with him for weeks in preparation. We hope to add gum in the next month.

We also took some great family pictures with a wonderful Sister in our ward. She did a great job and you should see some of the pictures in the mail soon. We thought that we would post one of our favorites. We hope that you have a wonderful Christmas season and that you are able to have a wonderful time. We certainly have had a wonderful time here and at our past home with great friends and family. Our family tradition is giving a gift to Christ and we hope that you are able to celebrate your best traditions also.

Welcome Back

In case you haven't noticed, we have been here some time. If you were to look at the very first post on our blog, you would see the same kind of pictures. That's right, it's Guy Fawkes night again in England. It wouldn't be a fall in England without having a large bonfire and hanging out. We got a few pictures that should look pretty similar to one year ago. Compare them closely. It looks like our children have changed.

We also have some pictures from Halloween. Our ward had a Trunk or Treat, which is by far the highest yield form of getting candy. Due to this, my children have no idea how good they have it. There is no better way to get a large amount of candy in a very short period of time. Nicholas was "too big" to Trick or Treat this year. Evan wore that same outfit as last year. Lizzy was a hollywood star and Katy was a cat. I was a large, tall person who ate too much chili at the potluck before Trunk or Treat. It was a stretch for me but I pulled off the costume. This is Lizzy, in anguish after a great make-up job.

We have also done a little traveling. I went on a mountain biking trip with some guys from work in Wales. Wales was beautiful and it rained. We went to a place called Coed Y Brenin. Look it up on youtube. We did a ride called MBR. We all finished the 30 km ride, we even had a little bit of our pride when we finished.

We visited another castle here. This one allowed us to walk on the high castle wall. It was a nice view. This castle had quite a history, the home of the family of Anne Boleyn and also her cousin. Nice place.

Fall Hodgepodge

Hello to everyone. We were looking at what we have done over the past month or two and it has been, well, a hodgepodge. Lots of little things here and there that have been fun and interesting. Kris famously finished her first, and probably last, half marathon. She was training extensively over the past three months and finally flew to Ireland and did it. There were some pleasant surprises and not-so-pleasant surprises. She found out that her half marathon was a beautiful, hilly, rugged terrain. She also found out that it would have been better to travel that terrain in a car. Incidentally, she kissed the Blarney Stone at the Blarney Castle on the way to the race so that means she is much more eloquent. If you speak with her on the phone that is probably what you noticed. This is a picture of her on the right actually kissing the stone. She is being helped because the castle is about 5 stories tall and you can fall all the way down while doing the kissing.

Kids all started school. Everyone is enjoying their experience with US schools again. Evan can clearly understand what his teacher is saying. He loves to read. Lizzy has her BFF in her class and they sit by each other and get to talk all day long. She was invited to her birthday party, which was a hollywood party. We got pictures of Lizzy before she went. We think she's beautiful, even when it's just for fun.

Nick is also in the US school and he is currently in Junior High in 6th grade. He has a locker and even got asked out on a date (He said no). We got a few pictures of him playing flag football. He was a good runner and developed a soft set of hands near the end of the season. He is fast, unlike me, so he ran for some great touchdowns. Please notice that he is taller than everyone else on the field. This is helpful.

Katy is in playgroup, the equivalent of preschool, which is free here. She gets to color and she was also able to celebrate Harvest Festival. She sang some songs down at the local church and dropped off some goods for the poor. This was all done in between her waving at her mother about 2,000 times. We have pictures of 1,000 of those. We will only show you one.

End of Summer

The summer has finally come to a close. Due to the late year that we had in the British school program and the early return with U.S. schools, the children only had less than 2 months off from school. We were busy with church activities and trips here and there trying to cram as much in as possible before summer was over.

We went to Sandringham, which is the winter residence of the Queen. They have quite a collection of things that are very important and that was only in the rooms that we saw. We saw a gun made out of gold and a clock collection. The kids loved the intrciate details of the clocks and their riveting description of their inner workings, including but not limited to precision movements and odd little snippets that kept the kids firmly attentive. Okay, I think you can tell that I was kidding but it was interesting

We finished our summer with a combined birthday party for Evan and Katy. They both turned 6 and 4 respectively on the "same day." And if you tell them that they didn't, I will hunt you down. They had a great time at Legoland, except for Katy on the last roller coaster ride where she white-knuckled it throughout. We're not bad parents, we just pretend like ones when we go to amusement parks.

True to form in England, we had a one and a half hour rainstorm. We thought about leaving but none of the locals did. We ended up having a great day and doing all of the rides that we wanted to. All of the children got wet, Evan had a gluten free sandwich of his choice and Katy wanted to eat in a castle but it closed so we had bbq instead. She still felt special.

We have a massive statue here made entirely out of legos. This was one of our more favorite rides where you ride in a jeep and get to shoot targets during the entire ride. Katy and Evan both had fun shooting and scored some hits.

Our Tuscan Summer

We have done quite a lot since our last posting here on the blog. Our computer broke down and we have been saving up until we were able to download our pictures. The biggest thing we did was take a family trip to Italy. I wanted to take the kids down to where I served my mission and prove to them that I really can speak a foreign language.


We flew into Pisa with a bunch of drunk people on the airplane. We rented a van and drove to our Tuscan villa. We didn't know how nice it was until we woke up the next day and looked around. Tuscany is beautiful. Rolling green hills with castles and churches here and there.


Our first day we went to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Nick, Liz, and Kris walked up to the top. It's still considered safe from falling for the next 300 years.



We then drove to Rome. We were told we could save money by parking in an unsafe area of town in a random gas station parking lot. So we did and left it there for two days. We saw the normal stuff for Rome and had a great time. Evan and Kate liked the Vatican because they could chase pigeons. Kris and I liked it for other reasons.
The art was good, the collosseum was amazing but we also had italian ice cream (gelato) at least once per day. Most of the time twice per day. The car was still there after two days and we drove back to Pisa to take it easy. We went to the beach, saw Cinque Terra, and saw a city called Lucca. We loved seeing the sites but also really enjoyed taking a break and had lots of fun.


It was hard to come back home especially since we didn't pull into our house until 2:15 a.m. The next day the kids did what they do best and slept in all the way until 6:30 a.m. Luckily, I had a few days off work to recover.

We had lots of fun, and enjoyed it all.

Soccer and Birthdays

We have been pretty busy lately. Dave had his birthday and then Lizzy recently had hers. Both parties were successful but obviously different. Dave asked for a bouncy castle, but did not get one. Dave wanted to have friends over, but couldn't. Dave was able to have one present only. Lizzy had a bouncy castle, had friends over, and received numerous presents. Dave was fine with this but still thinks the bouncy castle would have been good. Overall, everyone was happy.

We also have two children in soccer this year. Nick has done well and his coach is very strict and makes them run excessively. We support him 100%. So far, Nick has scored a few goals and enjoys himself. We tell him it's not about winning or scoring goals and having fun ( we think that he believes us).

Evan had his very first soccer game this last week. He had to receive a pep talk to go out and play in front of "all of those people." He was told that if he played through the game he would receive treats... he finished without any problems. He is just starting to understand the game. His coach has stressed the importance of staying in the correct position. Evan was told to stay on the corner of the goal box. He did for about 15 minutes of the game, even if the ball went right past him. He did not move. He had a wonderful time and the treats were well worth standing in place for so long.

Finally Made it to London

We finally made it to London. I know that it seems sad that it took so long but we just wanted to see a few other things first. We woke up early, found some great friends from our ward, and hopped in the car. It's about a one hour drive to get to a subway stop and then a thirty minute ride to get to downtown.

For our first trip, we went to Hamley's, which is a really large toy store. It was five stories tall and we went with the intention of "just looking." We ended up buying about $60 worth of toys. They had salesmen everywhere and we were easy targets. The salesmen had toys out that you could play before you bought them.

We then went to the London Eye. That is the large ferris wheel that was built for the year 2000 celebration. It usually doesn't stop moving. It takes about thirty minutes to go around and you get on while it is still moving. The views were fantastic. I think that when we were at the top of the Eye, we were much higher than Peter Pan.