A Visit With Santa

Despite the drizzling rain, we set out today to visit Santa Claus down at Cannery Row. My sister, Brooke and her son, Sage, is visiting with us right now, so it was a great treat to have them experience it together. You may be thinking you've never seen a picture of Trey with Santa before and you'd be right. Last year he was terrified of getting anywhere close to him. This year however, he went right up to him and told him he wanted a train. He even told him "Happy Halloween!" which must mean he likes him. Enjoy the pictures.

showing Santa his sweater...

"So boys, tell me about those days your were on my naughty list..."

Brooke & Sage, Santa, Susan & Trey

Ashlynne, wondering how she was talked into this again...

Lance's graduation

Time really flies! Not only has it been almost a month since I've posted (sorry!) but we've also been here in Monterey long enough for Lance to be an Naval Post Graduate School graduate. Yay, Lance! He now has his Masters in Defense Analysis. My camera gave an extremely disappointing performance and failed in zooming. Here's the best of the lot. But I did shoot some video and as soon as I go through them I'll post 'em. They did have a photographer and videographer at the ceremony so we'll be getting those pics too. ... which will be muuuuch better!

Fun With Right Ventricles

Ashlynne's science teacher, Mr. Tanaka, has a great website where he posts the kids' topics, assignments and homework for the week. He's also good about taking lots of pictures. Here's one of Ashlynne from Friday when they had to dissect a pig's heart. You can see how enthusiastic she is. Pretty much the same expression I had when I was in biology!

Halloween '08 pics

Here's a few shots from Halloween. Ashlynne was a "Killer B", Trey was "Woody" from Toy Story although, I think he wishes he was a robot. Everytime he saw a robot, transformer or storm trooper he got all excited and said "HIIIIII-YAH!!!" (like a karate chop). Lance and I were scared he was going to haul off and chop some poor kid! He loved all the super heroes too and stopped to inspect each costume and cape! Lance was Twister Man and I was Daphne from Scooby Doo. (click here to see more from our night! http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j220/st965/Halloween%202008/ )

Halloween '08!

Lots of pictures and videos to sort through, but here's the highlights of our little cowboy, "Woody", from Toy Story trick-or-treating! Hope you all had a great Halloween!




*update!* We also went to a Halloween Party with a bunch of the families that Lance goes to school with. You'll see Trey was delighted by all the sweet treats and when Ashlynne and her friends, Tiffani and Emily arrived (it's not cool to go trick-or-treating with the parents anymore), they took over the karaoke! They're big fans of the '80s as you'll note in their song choices. I have to say we all dropped what we were doing for a sec when "Rock You Like A Hurricane" by Scorpion started up (featuring Ashlynne on the invisible cow bell)

Smile Smile Smile

Here's some highlights of our outing to the park yesterday (remember to cut off the music to the right!)

Ashlynne babysitting the girls next door

I got a Flip video camera today and have had fun figuring out all the neat stuff it does. Here's a little movie of the kids playing in the front yard a little while ago. This thing's so easy-- expect to see lots of videos now! (cut off the music on the right before watching this video)

I Knew It Was Too Quiet In There

This 16oz. bottle of Cremora was bought just last Thursday for the visit from the Grandparents and was used approximately 4 scoops. You know which ones you are, we place the blame squarely on you. ;-)

THE WEAPON

(notice the fine print)

THE AFTERMATH

Trey Gives All His Peeps A Shout-out From Timeout

Go Raiders!

Sunday we went to the family's first NFL game, the Oakland Raiders against the NY Jets in Oakland. Lance got an email on Friday that the school was getting 200 tickets to give away that afternoon so he was able to get four! We took Ashlynne's friend, Tiffani with us and had an amazing time! (she got a few strange looks for her NC Panthers jersey) Trey loved it and got right into the hang of saying "RAAIII-DERS"! (although he slept through most of the 2nd half) It's a good thing we weren't Jets fans or we might have found ourselves in some altercations in our section-- those were serious Raiders fans! They won 16-13 in overtime. Whoot! We're hoping to get to a 49ers game before our time is up in California. Here's some pics- the 3rd one is the winning field goal!

Harvest Festival at Earthbound Farms

What a fun day! Along with our neighbors, Holly & Dan and their kids, Hannah and Abby, we had such a great time racing for pumpkins in the Pumpkin Scramble, running around the Corn Maze and riding the choo-choo-train. Ashlynne painted an excellent spider and jack-o-lantern on Trey's cheeks and he spent the afternoon running around like a crazy person.