11 Year Anniversary

2010 was 11 years for Candice and I, and to celebrate we went to our favorite new restaurant in Minneapolis called Fogo de Chao.  It's a brazilian meat buffet where the servers dress up as brazilian gaochos and bring the different types of meat around and cut it off right at your table.  We usually don't have to eat the next day either.  Michael took these of us after we got home a few pounds heavier.

Holiday decorations

For Family Home Evening this week we made ribbon Christmas trees for our holiday decorations this year.  Kids had alot of fun making these (after the arguements were over).  See if you can pick out whose is whose.

Tom, Michael, Candice, Megan, Rachel

Tis the season for snow also...

We got our first snow around Thanksgiving and its been white ever since.  A few weeks ago we had the biggest blizzard in 19 years where it dropped about 17 inches in one day.  The only problem is it was really windy so that 17 inches turned into 3 and 4 foot snow drifts on our driveway.

This is the view out of our (really old) living room windows.

Me outside using the snow thrower.  Notice the 4' drift infront of the door...

Have to bundle up with all that cold snow.

The best part is after the driveways are clear, the snow plow comes by and drops another 4' wall at the end of the driveway!!

Candice standing infront of the mailbox next to my nicely carved out wall, so we can still get the mail.  Yes, to that snow wall is about 5 feet tall.

That's the view from the front of the house :)

Tis the season for Christmas cookies

Making treats each season is one of the favorite family traditions.  We've done Gingerbread houses a few times so this year we tried a gingerbread tree.  You'll get the see the results below :).  Candice always comes up with really good cookie ideas also, and this year we used the Charlie Brown cookie cutters we had from when I was a kid.  I even included "the making of" video.

Rachel, or is it Candice?

So Rachel is the same size as Candice now, which means she likes to wear Mom's clothes, especially for church.  It's weird when at first glance I think she is Candice from the back sometimes.  Here she is reluctantly posing for a picture before church. I took it because she likes to wear the same thing over and over and over again and it was nice to see her dressed up :)

Our first "couples" half marathon

So, earlier this year I talked Candice into doing her first half marathon with me, and we both trained all summer for this.  This was my second year doing it and Candice's first and longest race to date.  In fact, the longest race she had done before this was a 5k (3 miles vs 13 miles in the half).  It was great weather and a perfect day for it.  I dropped about 28 minutes off of my PR and Candice beat her goal of 3 hours by a ways.  She would have gone even faster but the last 3 miles really started to hurt her shins.  She's already signed up to do it again next year.

Here we are pre race at home.

You can find the results below as well as a video of each of us crossing the finish line on the far right.

Candice's is here and Tom's is here.

Michael becomes a Bear scout

After Michael turned 10 he graduated from Wolf Scouts to Bear Scouts and for the first time actually got to pin his award on Mommy.  Somehow he missed that the previous two times.  Candice is shown with one of her "older" hair do's here :)

Michaels soccer season

This season was Michaels "break out" season in soccer.  He has always liked defence because he thought he was really good and it, and didn't like to run as much as a forward.  But this year ended up playing forwards a few times and really liked it.  He has always had a strong kick as a defender, and now got to use it as a forward, scoring 3 goals in an early game this year, one of them being at center field.  Being how 10 year old kids are impressed easily he got the mantra of "best player on the team" after that and really enjoyed playing soccer as forward.  Below is his picture and team picture I made since I was one of the coaches again this season.

Michael turns 10

So this one is really late, but I am wanting to use videos more often now and that just seems to take longer.  However, after Rachel becoming a teenager a week earlier, Michael decided to keep the trend going and become the 2nd double digit in age child.  We had a family party at home for him where he got to have us come to school for lunch during the day and then he gets to pick dinner and activity at night.  Below is a short video of him actually "turning 10".

A few days later we had his birthday party with his friends over where he played soccer in the backyard, followed by a rousing round of "guns", then a game called "5-10" which is like hide and seek in the dark.  A little earlier he wanted to do some target practice with shooting his bb gun at soda cans and also using the bow and arrow to shoot some cardboard deer with his friends.  It was a really fun time, but parties are really hard to plan now we are finding out!  After the outside festivities we came inside for some bobbing for apples and some Halloween inspired treats.




The surpise of the party was how quickly Megan took to the bow and arrow.  She basically picked it up and started shooting better than the boys at Michaels party!  A total tom-boy.