Just for Fun

Did this as a challenge on Wetcanvas.com the website I post all my stuff.

Gingerbread Incident

We built a beautiful house and the boys destroyed it. Thank goodness for insurance! WHAT?! Our policy doesn't cover 'natural acts'? Destruction at the hands of boys is considered natural?

Hmm, they have a point.

We can rebuild...

Christmas Morning

We had a relatively peaceful Christmas morning. The boys were pretty excited and got some pretty good stuff. I think we all did, really. Grandma got a calendar of the boys. Seems it was her second calendar gift this year (although I think she likes ours better). Maybe next year the thing to do will be to have one shot of each grandkid and do a calendar that way.

Well after the gifts, we played and played. The boys even got along for the most part. The excitement of the day slowed in the afternoon with Jakob falling asleep on the couch watching TV. I went over to Grandma's and hung valances. They look nice. No more sea-foam green!

School Visitors

The boys each had special visitors to their schools before the Christmas break (I told you I was behind with this stuff). Erik had Grandma come to his school on Grandparent's day. He learned a few things, and among them the fact that Grandma's favorite TV show is 'Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?' Well that gave us a great idea for a present for Grandma. We had a good time playing the game and Karen and I are (hard to believe) smarter than a fifth grader! At least one time. Erik probably won't believe it for long as he approaches those teen years where parents don't seem much smarter than a second grader.

Jakob had quite a diffferent sort of visitor at his school! I'm not sure if Jakob was excited to see the big man in the red suit or the candy that usually comes with him....He seemed pretty happy either way.

Guest Blog - Gramma's Corner

Merry Christmas to all. Christmas Eve was celebrated by my house with our traditional pork roast dinner. We remembered Grandpa by lighting a candle in his honor, and hanging a special
ornament on the tree. After opening gifts, we all came home to Dan and Karen's house. Later
we walked around viewing the Christmas displays.
After a good night's sleep, we had a nice breakfast and opened some more presents. After lunch, we played with some of the gifts. We will later go back to my house, where Dan will do some
household chores for me.
This week, I will be busy with gatherings of friends in the park where I live. It is good to be
kept busy. Next month I look forward to visiting with my sisters in Florida.
Love to all. Grandma Gronseth

Links

If you have a blog and want me to post a link to your site, just let me know!! Anyone wanting to post a link to mine feel free to do so.

Merry Christmas

The Phoenix Zoo puts on a Christmas light spectacular every year and people just pack the place to see it. For some reason this year hasn't been as big a draw, but I've been in a few times and this is some video of the 'dancing trees'. One of the perks of being a Ranger!

We are headed to Mom's for Christmas Eve dinner - those in the know don't need to guess - pork roll. We are planning on the Alvin & the Chipminks movie for the early afternoon. After dinner we will open a few presents and drive around and look at lights then take Mom back to our place overnight. Then Christmas morning we'll be opening the rest of the presents at our house. Hopefully there will be time in there to post something. Maybe I'll get a guest blogger behind the keyboard and have Mom post a few words.

Arizona Snow

If this works I may think I'm a genius. Well, I'm no genius, but you may go ahead and think so, just to humor me. The boys just love the snow and we do too. Especially when we can walk a few feet stand in the sun and just observe. Our church puts on the ritz at Christmas time. They truck in snow and fill up a small retention basin with snow for sledding, snowball fights, a fort and just to stand in for a moment until you remember why it is you left the cold country in the first place. There were hay rides and bouncy things too. The boys probably would have stayed all day if we had let them.

Erik's Bowling Ball

Our last game was over a week ago now, and it's time to get caught up (make that start getting caught up) on this blog. Lots of good stuff to add if I can a). figure out how to get video from my phone to my computer and b). figure out how to upload it here. OK, I'll let you place your bets now on how long that might take....Anyhow, Erik finished up strong getting two games in a row over 100! I managed to get 3 games total over 200 during the time we bowled and only 2 games per week I feel that isn't too shabby. We finished 2nd place but no tophy as it is only a fun league. Might bring Jakob starting in January.... He could get a Spiderman ball.

Latest Drawing

Here's my latest. A colored pencil drawing-or painting as they often say-of koi from a picture I took at the Phoenix Zoo.

Wii-Hoo!! A Wii Party

Erik had a nice cake with the mario bros and eleven blue candles.

Five boys overnight and we had to have hot pretzels on a cool rainy night. A fine time to open some presents.

Five boys overnight and no mass destruction? Wow! OK, minor destruction, but inbetween was the calm of video gaming.

Wii'd Like to Play

Yep, we beat the holiday crowds and found a Wii! Well, Karen found it with quite a bit of phone calling. Anyhow, we have it in time for Erik's sleepover birthday party. Should be quite a hit.

Erik is already figuring it out. At least he's more active doing this than the other games. Not too worried about Jakob as he doesn't sit enough to play many games.

Jakob has found a new pasttime he can sit still for, at least for a few minutes at a time. Puzzles. Nothing too challenging just yet, 100 pieces for now, but he does them pretty well.

Jake's Agave

OK, this is the agave stalk I was talking about. Pretty tall. One of the ribbons came loose during our all day rain yesterday, but that happens.

We got ahead of ourselves and did some of the red before the silver. If we do it again, we'll do the whole stalk in silver then the branches with red and run the red onto the stalk.

The main thing is having fun and that we did!

Big Helper!

I thought it would be Erik helping decorate, but Jakob wanted to help. We cut down an agave stalk and wrapped it with ribbon. Got too dark to show off the stalk, but will get a nice shot up tomorrow...Jakob really did a pretty good job on it too.

Had I thought of it earlier I could have a good shot of him consentrating on the task.

Thanksgiving

Alright, no pictures, but after working most of the Thanksgiving weekend, we managed to get together with Grandma and have a real thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. Erik wasn't too happy about Thursday's drive-thru and meeting Dad at the park for dinner. That's not what its supposed to be!

After eating and playing some games, we went to the pool only to find it was closed for repairs - it was supposed to be closed starting Monday. We ended up playing pool instead. A first for the boys! Going to need some practise I can tell you that! But they weren't the only ones in need of practise!!

Never Too Late for Halloween?

OK, so halloween is past, most everyone's candy is faded memories by now. I got one of those fake pumpkins and had a little fun a few years back. This is Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) as his alter-ego, Spaceman Spiff with a few monsters thrown in for good measure.

This year I got another post-halloween pumpkin and since the boys or at least the other little boy (Erik 'owns' the first one) is way into SpongeBob, this is what I came up with. Oh, and in case you can't tell, since my monitor is so bad I certainly can't, the crabby patty 'monster' has sesame seed eyes, lettuce teeth, a tomato slice tongue, and Bob is holding a spatula and his hat is jumping off his head. It shows up fine on the camera image, so it should work here. If this stinks, I'll work on getting a better shot and getting that up here.

Anyhow, enjoy this little post Halloween treat.

OK, so this is what I've been up to lately. The back room was originally a room off the garage and now houses the pantry, freezer, water heater, and washer/dryer. The closer room which was the pantry/laundry and entry off the garage (and doorway to the back yard) is still an entry/egress (but now with new doors) and houses the stove/micro and fridge. The cupboards are all new, plus one more to go in in front of the stove and one to go above the fridge.

Lots of new water lines - new and moved electric - new flooring - well, you get the picture. Very near to finally finishing this part of the house and moving into what was the kitchen/dining/family room and making it a great room. The cabinets will go into this room from the room you see in the picture, but the existing cabinets separating the kitchen from the family room will be removed and the whole room opened up. Lots of work ahead, but it feels good to have most of the first stage complete!

This is another time consumer - or hobby. Finished this drawing in pen & ink and once I make a few copies I hope to hand color them with color pencil and see how that looks. The bell has that light green-blue patina that I think would give me headaches trying to get right.

Bowling

No pictures (yet) but Erik & I are doing a Saturday morning bowling league, and Erik gets a ball at the end. We are several weeks into already and Erik is doing ok. I am just about to be where I used to be. In fact today I just bowled a 223. Not bad! Erik's average is about 80. Good thing we have the rails up or I'm sure he wouldn' t be anywhere near that (he would be a whole lot more frustrated too). Even though he is missing watching Saturday morning cartoons live, we tape them so he isn't out on his favorite activity. He sometimes wants to get out of the commitment, but a Sprite and a hot pretzel & cheese usually perks him back up again!

Coronado Beach

Instead of yet another day at SeaWorld, we opted for a beach walk at Coronado Island. The famous Hotel Del Coronado is where Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz. Right outside the hotel is the beach.

Well, finally a bit of time to add another post. No ring toss win this time, but plenty of fun. The rotating elevator thing was finally working, so we did that.

Atlantis, Jake's favorite ride, was on and off during the day, but we got to ride once together and bought the photo even though Jakob refused to smile.

Erik petted the stingrays and wasn't afraid to pick up an urchin (we learned that they aren't supposed to taken out of the pool like the starfish)

Jakob made a new friend in line for Shipwreck Rapids. she and her mom walked with us over to the sky ride and Jakob went with them in one gondola while we went in the next one.

And of course, I can't go anywhere without some flower or nature pictures!

SoCal Time

Its time to go to SeaWorld! In January we went and found that year-long passes were the same price as day passes. Kind of a no-brainer there. This will have been our third time over and maybe not our last for the year...

We won a large prize on the ring toss atop a two liter bottle, so I guess what we'll HAVE to try again...(It's a giant stingray, btw)

So, the kids are off for fall break. They'll both have friends overnight on Thursday. That aught to be interesting! I'll post back up when we get back.