My Wife Rocks!!!

Rachel ran the White Rock Marathon this past Sunday, December 14th. She had a great race and was strong throughout. It was great to see the fruition of her commitment and training that she has put in. She is a dedicated woman and can do anything she puts her mind to. I am so glad to see her be rewarded for her dedication. Congratulations also go to her two running partners, Maren and Kelsie.

Our Cute Girl (Who is Growing Up Too Fast)

Just a few pictures of the cutest little girl in the world.

Gingerbread House

Our friend's, The Melbert's (thank you Miles, Allie, Marlie, Mace & Sawyer), gave the kids a gingerbread house kit for their birthday. We have been decorating our house for Christmas and decided that it was time for the kids to decorate their house. This was a fun family project. We let each of them have two sides of the house to decorate anyway they wanted to. It is always neat to see the differences in the way they each do things. Now if we can only keep them from eating the house until Christmas!

Annual Pizza Night with the Sargeant's

Every year at Christmas time we have a pizza dinner with our friends The Sargeant's. Bob and Joyce were our neighbors at our old house. Their daughter, Carol is married to Don and she has been the kids swim teacher. Knowing this family has been such a blessing and through them we have our great friends, Tyler and Kelly Sanderford (Carol's daughter), who are currently missionaries in Kyiv, Ukraine. (we miss you guys!!). Bob and Joyce are a great example of marriage and have been an inspiration to Rachel and I.

Look Who Turned 6 Years Old

Yes, that's right, 6 years old. When I asked the kids who let them turn 6 so quickly, they said "God did". Hard to argue that one. They had a great time celebrating with a friends party at ASI Gymnastics and then a family party at Chuck E Cheese. Rachel made each of them an amazing cake that truly showed what a great talent she has. It has been a fast 6 years, but I can say that we have enjoyed and cherished every day of their lives.

Halloween 2008

Here are a few pictures from Halloween. Abigail was Daphne from Scoobie Doo, Caleb was a Transformer named Bumblebee and Ethan was Mr. Incredible. We started the evening by making our annual Halloween visit to our good friend, Ms Pennie. We then headed back to the neighborhood and were joined by Stephen, Melissa, Garrett and Holden for trick or treating. We got a couple of great pictures of Holden's 1st Halloween.

Super Dog Goes to Work

Ethan asked me if I would take Super Dog to work with me, so we buckled him in this morning and off to work we went. Found out that he really likes ESPN sports radio and that he feels like something really needs to be done about Dallas traffic. He got a little too wired on coffee and then told me he could build a better spreadsheet than the one I was working on. I just hope my boss doesn't figure out about his skills.

Recent Pictures

Here are some recent pictures of the kids. The ones with Rachel are from the morning of her birthday, October 16th. The others are from a nice day out when we stopped by Firewheel Town Center for awhile.

Longhorn-O-Lantern

Couldn't let the kids have all the fun carving pumpkins, so I decided to create my own. Now we know why pumpkins were meant to be orange.

Jack-O-Lanterns

We were decorating the house this past weekend for Halloween and the kids asked if we could get pumpkins and carve Jack-O-Laterns. It was neat to see each of them create their own and we even had some kid friendly pumpkin carvers so they each got to cut out their own designs.

Alien Pancakes

Rachel recreated a kid favorite breakfast we had one time at Denny's...Alien Pancakes. Kuddos to the chef!

Murphy's 50th Birthday Celebration

Our town, Murphy, celebrated it's 50th birthday this past Saturday. We went out to the festival they had at City Hall. The Longhorns were playing Arkansas that day, so we made sure to represent UT by wearing our burnt orange. Papaa Herbie joined us and enjoyed the classic car show they had. They even had his favorite car, a 1950 Ford. Rachel's mom loves pink and probably would have tried to steal the car in the picture.

Green Means Go......to Amazing Jakes

Our elementary school has a behavior color chart they use to track how each child behaves in class each day. They use Green to signify good behavior for the day, Yellow shows that they had some challenges that day, Orange means very tough day and Red means that something really bad happened. They also have a Blue color for outstanding behavior over and above good behavior for the day. As a way for the kids to follow good behavior based on the schools system, we gave them a team challenge that if they all came home with Greens for 7 straight school days in a row, we would go to this new Pizza / Arcade Game place called Amazing Jakes. I am proud to say that they completed the challenge on the first try. They even each came home with a Blue on one of the days. It was neat to see them work together and support each other as a team to reach their goal. They would tell each other at breakfast each morning to remember to get a Green in class and they would congratulate each other at the end of the day when they did. Here are some pics and a video from our outing to Amazing Jakes.

Froggyopoly

Caleb challenged Froggy to a game of monopoloy. Froggy wanted Caleb to be the banker. Whom do you think won??

The Dog Ate My Blogwork

No, really, he did. Sure we don't own a dog, but it's the only excuse I could come up with for not posting a blog in the 4 weeks since school started. School has definitely thrown an additonal element into our lives of more things to stay on top of.

First, there was the adjustment to everyone in the house getting up at 6:30 am. It's actually great to be able to spend time as a family in the mornings now even though we don't recall any of the conversations because we are all half asleep.

Next, there was the mountain of paperwork you have to fill out the first week. At this point, we have no idea what we signed up for or given permission to, but I am sure the school or PTA will let us know what we did and didn't do.

Then there is the amount of papers the kids bring home on Thursday each week telling us of everything going on, what we should talk to our kids about that happened in school and what activities or groups we should be getting the kids involved in. This is the day designated by the school to make you feel inadequate as a parent.

We know it is getting close to the next phase in life where we will be taking the kids to all types of activities. It's hard enough right now to get home from work, try and spend a couple of hours of quality time together and then get the kids in bed by 7:30pm so they can get a good nights sleep. We have tried to hold off as long as possible because we know how crazy it will get, but they are definitely starting to show interest in doing things. Abigail is very interested in taking a gymnastics or dance class. We are also looking at the Upwards basketball and cheerleading program at our church for the kids.

Many of you know that I have started a new business called Captured Memories doing customized video & photo productions. I have really enjoyed doing video projects for our family, transferring tapes to DVD and also making picture slideshows and thought this is something that most people would like to do for their families, but just don't have the time to invest in it. I am looking forward to seeing how this hobby turns into a business. You can check out some of what I do at my Captured Memories blog site http://www.capturedmemoriestx.blogspot.com/

Thank you to those of you who check in here from time to time to see what is new with our family and I hope to keep it more up to date and have some new pictures for you to see.

Kindergarten

Ready or not, Hunt Elementary, here come the Youngs. Yesterday started a new era for our family - elementary school. The kids were very excited. We had the chance to go up to the school last Friday to see where their classrooms would be and meet their teachers. Each of them are in a seperate classroom. Abigail has Mrs. Allen, Caleb has Mr. Garbarini and Ethan has Mr. Gomez. It felt crazy setting alarm clocks to go off at 6:30 am to get them up, especially when it is still dark outside. In fact, when Ethan got up, he came downstairs half asleep and says to us "my alarm clock went off, but it is still night time." They all came around and we had a great time getting ready. On the first day, parents can go in and make sure their kids get to class ok, so we got to see them meet some of their new classmates. I am looking forward to getting to spend some time as a family in the mornings before having to leave for work now. I used to have to sneak out quietly so I wouldn't wake anybody up. Those days are over and now mornings are about helping get everyone ready for school.

Things Rachel Does That I Don't Tell Her Enough How Much I Appreciate

- Subtle comments of love and support
- Remembering our friends and family's birthdays and sending them cards and gifts
- Keeping our household calendar up to date
- All the laundry she takes care of on a daily basis
- Being at home to raise our children
- Grocery shopping and meal planning
- Her desire to take care of things herself and help us save money
- Taking care of all the children's needs - school, medical, clothes
- The way she prays for our family
- The random phone call during the day at work just to see how I am doing
- Handling the constant requests of our children
- Giving our children the attention they desire
- Being my wife who is committed to a life long marriage with me

Who Did This To Me?

I have been reading about Joseph in Genesis and really like the lesson God is trying to teach us through his story. Here is a man that was sold into slavery by his brothers and then later thrown into jail even though he was innocent. He never doubted God and ultimately he was released from prison and put in charge of Egypt. The amazing part to me is when he reveals himself to his brothers. He doesn't point the finger at them and blame them for the troubles he went through for so many years. In Genesis 45:5 Joseph tells his brothers "And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you." And he further says in Genesis 45:8 "So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt."

It feels like society trys to tell us that there is always someone to blame for what we are going through. Furthermore, that someone is responsible and needs to pay for what happens to us and that there has to be some sort of immediate resolution. It's not easy to put our faith in God's plan and purpose. As Joseph showed, we may not get resolution or answers for quite some time; however, God has a plan and one day we will look back at the trial we were going through and say "...it was not you who sent me here, but God."

Meet the Elephants

The circus has come to town. No, No, No, I am not talking about the daily events of our household or those of us in it. I am talking about the real circus. One of the cool free events they do when they arrive is have a meet the elephants out front of American Airlines Center for everyone to see. They also have clowns entertaining and this year they had the star of this year's Circus, Bella, perform a highwire act between the buildings that align the plaza in front of the AAC. This guy was about 5 stories up with no net under him. The greatest part was right when he was about to make it across, he says: "I would like to thank the One and only, Jesus Christ." Pretty awesome.

Grandpa Dave and Uncle David Come to Visit

We had the chance to spend some time with my father and brother this past weekend. They came up from Houston to visit and we had a great time catching up. I don't think it was 5 minutes they were at the house before Caleb had convinced David to play cars with him. David finally had to cry "Uncle" after quite awhile of crawling around the floors racing Caleb. Abigail loved sitting with Granpa and Ethan had fun joking around and playing with both of them. It was a great visit and we miss them already. Oh yea, check out Caleb's cap in the pictures. He gets out of the car and says to me: "Hey dad, do I look funky?"