fender bender

Ana and I were heading off to ballet and I was talking to her and not paying attention and I backed right out of the garage into our tutors car. Odie is cashing his check and buying used parts and fixing it himself. As for me, I took it to the garage and they had it back to new in two days. Now that that is out of the way, I tend to wreck every car -- hey, just once, I should be good to go for the rest of the Suburbans life. We are planning on having it a longggggg while.

Grant and Colin baking

How to keep two 13/14 year old boys entertained. They want to hang out with girls and I'm not quite ready for that, they aren't yet 14! Plus I've explained and explained that meeting up with girls somewhere without adult supervision is a date. Right? Someone back me up on this, please. I like the no dating till your 16 rule and Grant knows it. So to distract them I listed a dozen things they could do... not including toilet papering or egging which they continually kept adding in. We found a happy middle ground with making cookies. We did get a couple nice batches out before they began making crazy faces with red hots. And secretly I enjoyed spending the hour with them in the kitchen. Hopefully baking cookies will distract them for the next two years...

If this video downloads it is of Grant singing at the assembly. And for the first time ever he is in the front instead of hiding in the back!!

Victor

Victor moved up to Young Mens in church and received the priesthood on January 17th. Very exciting. Then next week he passes the sacrament and did a great job. He said he was a little scared, but seems really comfortable these past couple weeks.

Tuesday night is Young Men/Young Women and last Tuesday they had a big ettiquite dinner. I guess all the boys were assigned girls to escourt into dinner and sit by during the meal. Victor of course loved the food, but wouldn't sit by the girl the entire nigtht. Thus he was running from table to table with a quick stop at his for food (he loves food!). He was laughing the entire time he was telling me about the activity. I just kept thinking he'll grow out of this too, right? Just a little reminder that emotionally he is just a child. I tried to ask him how he thought the girl felt and he just laughed... so we'll have to try again when he's calmer.

Happy 12th Victor!

Victor turned 12 on Tuesday. It was a busy day, but we did grill hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner (requested by the birthday boy). It was actually very tasty, nice hot hamburger on a cold day. We then had cake and ice cream (he knew the rutine, he kept waiting for me to get my pictures before we sang or he blew out the candles : ). Then of course it was time for presents. As you can see Ana was just as excited, or more so, to see what Victor got. The big items, scout uniform and air soft gun. Although we have already played numerous games of Sorry in the past three days! Happy Birthday Buddy!

puzzle

The Ukraine kids love to do puzzles, not for enjoyment, but as a competition as to who can get certain parts of it done first. But everyone has gotten into it lately and this was the latest. Some sail boats.

Ski Day

Saturday I took Victor, Morgan and Ethan up the canyon for some ski lessons. I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around teaching three kids to ski, so in October we signed three of them up for all day lessons (a good preseason package). It was a cold day, but with no wind, not even a breeze was blowing, it was a great ski day. The kids loved it and did great. Here they are with their instructor.

Here they are getting on the lift again for one last run of the day, pretty much so I can take a few photos of them.

Green is Ethan and black is Victor, Morgan is super cautious and slow thus not in the picture. She skiied a couple times two years ago and was so fast and crazy, I was worried she would be an out of control skiier... guess I was wrong.

Heres Morgan...

As we headed out of the canyon it got really quiet, I thought maybe it was my 80's music choice, but no they were just exhausted.

Happy 2010!

We had our friends, the Tufts, over for New Years. Lucky for me she took lots of pictures, I never even got my camera out. We ordered a four foot sandwich and had lots and lots of treats. The kids played Rock Band (which the Tufts got for Christmas) and some new Wii games. The Adults had a round of Settlers... it was a slow game this time. Then of course we made a lot of noise and had dessert at midnight. Fun fun fun. Happy 2010!