Tylor's flag football game

Here are some pictures of Tylor at football. Yeah I think his mouth guard is a little big for him... but then again I've never worn one so maybe its right. I don't know...

Congratulations Tylor!

As you may know Ty is no longer a cub scout he's a boy scout and has been for like 10 months. He's been working really hard and the troop hasn't had a court of honor in like 6 or 8 months. At the last one his NEW to the job leader (me) didn't know how to turn in the paperwork or who to give it to, to get him recognized for the work he'd done before that. But 6+ months have gone by and he's done A LOT more and I've learned the ropes a little better...
So last Sunday the troop had a court of honor, and Ty got recognized for his hard work and all the merit badges and ranks he has earned over the past 10 months. He received his...
1) Scout rank badge
2) Tenderfoot rank badge
3) Second Class rank badge
4) First-Aid merit badge
5) Swimming merit badge
6) Communications merit badge
We're really, REALLY proud of him! Congratulations Tylor!


His scout master droning on about the merit badges -I think I was asking him which was his favorite... I think...


The scout handshake.


Pinning the mother’s pins on Mom, upside down of course so he can do a good turn...


The requisite hug from /for Mom...

Sports again

As the weather here in winter is more amenable to outdoor activities -for the most part than the middle of summer, we've got the boys involved in another season of sports. This season Ryan and Kyle are playing soccer and Tylor is playing flag football. So our Saturdays are a divide and conquer event, often with us both running in different directions. At least Ryan's and Kyle's soccer games are at the same place... Games started up on January 10th.


Ryan chasing after the ball.


Ryan loves being the goalie.


Ryan just made a G...O...A...L!!!!


Just before Kyle kicked the ball.


Kyle is running after the ball.

In the pictures you can tell that Kyle thinks the day is a bit warmer then Ryan does... The funny thing is that their games were back to back so there's only one hour difference between these shots... Yeah Ryan has acclimated to the temperatures here and anything below 60 is cold...

This Saturday I will be taking the picture of Tylor at his game. So far we have not had our camera with us at his game. Sorry Tylor.

The Polar Express

Yesterday we took the boys on a road trip. We didn't tell them where we were going or what we were going to do, yeah I'm that dad... But they figured it out when the conductor yelled "all aboard the polar express". We had a GREAT time!
Although it was cold, much colder than we're used to. The high in Williams AZ yesterday was 44 with a low of 19. And it felt like it got very close to that low right after the sun went down...
So here is our short (about 2.5 mins long) little photo/video show of us on the polar express, enjoy.

Playing the Wii

As promised here are the boys playing the Wii. Although Ryan has toned it down a lot over the past week. He used to be so much more all over the place than this...

A new Christmas tree

So I'm going to make you wait till next year to see it, but last night James and I went up to Target and perused their Christmas clearance isles at 75% of it's hard not to find something you "need". Well we found a tree, a beautiful prelit 7 and 1/2 foot tall blue fir. It's VERY pretty -we debated between it and a "Norway" pine that was more green in color other than that I think they were the same. James and I liked them both (but not enough to get them both -although at 75% off maybe we should have...) the boys all liked the blue fir. As the box was opened when we bought it I had James set it up -just enough to check to make sure everything was there. It's so easy to set up all you do is plug each section in to the previous one and the branched all fall down into place! -you've got to spread the smaller branches out a little and make the tree look the way you want it to but it's a lot easier, bigger and more realistic looking then our last tree -not that it was a bad tree it served us well for years and will be kept as a back up (retired from active duty). I mean our little Charlie Brown-esque (as James calls it) tree was nicer than anything we could find in the Northern Arizona woods last year when we went up to cut our own tree down... which was a fun and funny adventure of it's own.

CHRISTMAS!

It's HERE! The boys favorite day of the year (followed in close second by their own birthdays...).
So Santa brought them a wii, and it wasn't on any of their wish lists or letters to Santa. So James, with encouragement from his friend Jon, decided to tell them that he was asking Santa for a wii, but that he was worried that Santa wouldn't get it for him and so he asked them if they'd all forgo getting any presents for each other, or from us and EVEN from Santa so that they could get him a wii... Yeah he's on the naughty list...
The best part was Tylor saying to him, "well, Dad... I don't know a wii is kind of expensive..." with that you might want to lower your expectations look on his face. Priceless.
Here's our Charlie Brown-esque tree with all the gifts around it and under it (our living room isn't all that big so it's actually kind of nice that our tree is small...)


Here's the wii in all it's boxed but not wrapped (Santa should have wrapped it...) glory. Oh and don't tell the boys but Santa may have played the wii a few times -he got it back in May... and that's all I've got to say about that.


Here are the boys opening presents and/or showing them to me for a photo op...






So normally it takes the boys a day or two to clear their new acquisitions out of the living room, this year because of the physical movement involved in playing the wii (especially for Ryan -whom we'll need to record some of his bowling, tennis, and boxing events, stay tuned...) they boys cleared out the living room before James even started thinking about starting Christmas dinner. Here's what the remainder of the day looked like.