What are we up to?

Obviously we aren't blogging much! Really there hasn't been a whole lot of exciting stuff going on with us as of late. But here are a few things we have done.

Kaleb is a sports fanatic. He loves playing in his soccer and tee ball leagues.

Here are a couple of shots of him playing tee ball.



I like to imagine him grunting in this picture. It was actually a great hit, it went over all the kids heads that were in the field.



A month or so ago we went to Vegas to have some fun and visit friends down there. We did a little swimming



and spent a day over at Circus Circus so Kaleb could enjoy the amusement park. We were surprised that he enjoyed all the rides, but as you can see he loved them!



...and what do you know, Batman and Elvis were hanging out on the strip. Nice fanny pack Elvis.



It was nice to get away for a few days and enjoy ourselves. It was great to visit and and catch up with our friends as well.

Back a little bit longer we put an exercise mat in our basement, Kaleb thinks it is the coolest thing because, well, you can see for yourself why he likes it so much.



We had our backyard put in a month or so ago and we are really enjoying it. I'll snap a few pictures to put up here once the rain decides it has pounded us enough. Until then, you get a picture of Jim and Kaleb dressed in our twinner Sunday clothes.



oops, I almost forgot to include the lesson I had prepared for this post. In life there are those who can bring the rock, and those who can't. As demonstrated in the video below, if you can't bring the rock (or if you are easily confused by a guitar strap) it is best to just hang it up. Leave the rocking to the professionals.

Thanksgiving and Christmas

This year we had a great Holiday Season that were accompanied by some sad times. Thanksgiving was great! We had Thanksgiving over at the Abbott's house this year and there were lots of Joelle's cousins at the house and all of Kaleb's cousins were there as well. Kaleb has found that he has a knack for making his younger cousins laugh insanely hard, here's a picture of him having fun in their car seats:



Christmas time rolled around and it was time to head up to Temple Square and see the lights.



trying to be fancy with my cheap camera


Shortly before Christmas Jim's Grandmother passed away. This was a sad time as it wasn't expected, but she had battled so many physical ailments for so many years that her body was tired. We'll miss her very much.

A few days before Christmas we got together with Joelle's family to let the cousins exchange their gifts with each other. Kaleb got presents from Lincoln who gave him Spiderman roller skates that he can use to break his arm in our basement and a roll of bubble gum to stick in our carpet, THANKS LINCOLN!



That night we attended the viewing for Jim's grandmother, it was nice to see all of the family gather together. Kaleb had an earache pretty bad that night and wasn't happy to be there, so he found a place to hide-out....under the sign-in desk.



Christmas finally rolled around and we opened presents that morning at our place and had a great time that evening at the Tracy's house with the whole family.

Kaleb got his Cars Race set that he wanted so badly.


Why a 3 year old wants a "Cars" shaving kit is beyond me.


As they happily sang Jingle Bells, I realized they were all little "Terminators"


So I am glad to report that we all survived a wild ride through the Holidays.

The next week was Kaylie's Birthday party and I only have one picture of the event. Kaleb was holding strong in a girls world by playing with a ball. I think Kaylie was demonstrating proper bedtime safety in case of an unexpected "roll out of bed" incident.

The Latest

After fielding multiple complaints about our insufficient blogging updates we've decided to actually do something about it. We finally moved into our house and it's been great.

Here are a few pictures of the finished product.

From the street

The Kitchen

Back Deck

We have a decent sized basement that we wanted to be able to let Kaleb play in during the winter, so we decided to finish the floor in the basement by puting a cement paint down. After breaking my back sweeping, mopping, mopping, mopping, and more mopping, we painted the floor and I think it was worth it. The floor is awesome and Kaleb wants to spend all of his time down there playing baseball and football.

Kaleb's new play area (before Kaleb turned it into sport central)

For Halloween Kaleb was a football player, he had a blast running around trick or treating and at Grandma and Grandpa Tracy's trunk or treat. He also went to his Uncle's workplace to go trick or treating where he met some of his cousins and had a blast.

Here is the only picture we got from the event.

Tom Brady and Napoleon Dynamite (Zach) chilling in the bubble chair. Tom Brady has a subliminal message for all you Patriot haters out there. See if you can find it!

Here is another picture of our future football player.

A few days ago Jeff, Julie, Kaylie and Ashley came over to check out the new house and the kids played all evening. Ice cream was the kid's favorite part of the evening.

Maybe in another month we'll get some time to blog again, and something more interesting than our house to blog about...but don't count on it!

California Vacation

Last week we took a trip with Grandma and Paca Tracy to southern California. We stayed a couple of days in San Diego then went up to Anaheim for 5 days. We ran ourselves ragged at all the parks but had a good time.

The first day down there we went to Sea World. Kaleb loved seeing all the marine animals, especially the whales and dolphins because we had seen them in the wild just a month ago in Canada. There is a little part of the park that is Sesame Street themed and the Elmo fish ride was Kaleb's favorite.

Mommy and Kaleb riding the Cow Fish.


The penguins were also a hit.


Then back to ride the Elmo dog-fish, one of us is really excited... I'll let you decide who.


The next day we went to San Diego Zoo where the elephants were the 2nd favorite animal Kaleb found.


His favorite was the cougar. This is a picture of us in front of it's cage as Kaleb is finishing his rendition of the cougar fight song he sang to the cougar that he learned at the football games. gooooooooooo cougars!


That night we traveled to Anaheim where we went to Disneyland the next day.



Paca and Grandma were good sports to deal with all the mid-day heat and humidity induced temper tantrums.


Even though it didn't budge, he still thought he was pretty tough stuff.


Impressing the ladies with his chest tattoo of Donald Duck.


Patiently waiting (Forest Gump style) for Goofy to draw a self portrait.


Thanks for the picture Goofy, you ROCK!

Disneyland is HOT!

California Adventure has a better parade than Disneyland.

SSSSUPER!!! nuff said.


Grandma and Paca had to go home a couple days earlier than we did so we went to the beach before dropping them off at the airport.

Can you hear the Baywatch music?


Hasselhoff has nothing on me!


The last 2 days we went back to Disneyland/California Adventure and hit the beach one more time. It was a fun trip but it was exhausting for sure.

Dude, our house is stoned!

The stucco and rock on the outside of our house went up recently and much of the inside is done as well! It's painted, carpeted, cabinet-ed, and it's looking pretty decent. Just a matter of a few weeks before we move in. Now we need furniture to fill the thing with. Anybody out there have furniture hook-ups? Here are a few pictures we took today.

Trip to Canada

We finally took a vacation out of the country! All the way to Canada. We were excited to go with Grandma and Grandpa Tracy to Telegraph Cove, British Columbia for a week of fishing and sight-seeing. We spent just over a week up there and it was lots of fun. We traveled with my brother Jeff, his wife Julie, and his two daughters Kaylie and Ashley. Kaleb loved having friends to play with the entire vacation.

Right after we arrived in Telegraph Cove, Kaleb and Kaylie headed out to find Paca's boat.



Grandma and Paca with the kids on the boat.


No more than an hour after arriving we found a mother bear and her 2 cubs, here is some video I took while Joelle and I were less than 50 feet away. We left the kids back with Paca for obvious reasons.



Kaleb found all sorts of cool sea creatures, here we are with a star fish.


Early one morning, Joelle and I went out crabbing, this was so fun, you just take your stick, poke it in the seaweed or mud and if you are lucky up will pop a ticked off crab!

Joelle has crabs! :0


...and now we both do. (that does NOT sound right)


Sometimes we'd see Dall's Porpoises and if we got near them, they'd come over to our boat and play. It was amazing to watch, here is some awesome video I got of them flying all around us.



We would also frequently see Killer Whales and sometimes they'd pop up very close to the boat so we had to be very careful. Here are a couple of pictures of the Orcas.




The fishing was a bit slow, but we still had a good time catching the fish that we did. Here I am with a 20 pound halibut I caught.


Kaleb loved being on the boat.


The scenery was amazing.




There was a rusty old truck on the boardwalk that Kaleb thought was Mater from the movie Cars. He loved talking to it, but it never talked back.


Here we are at the little General Store in Telegraph Cove.


Eventually it was time to head home. We drove to the south end of Victoria island, took the ferry boat back to the mainland and drove back to Seattle. While crossing the border Kaleb wanted to take a picture by the flag made out of flowers.


That night we stayed in Seattle and decided to go to a Mariners game! Kaleb learned a good lesson on the way to the game. We parked in a lot near the stadium that was behind a warehouse. While walking to the stadium a seagull walked about 10 feet in front of us all the way around the building. He kept looking back to see if we were there and he refused to fly away. As we approached the cross-walk he wandered out toward the road, a car saw it and honked, the bird was startled and ran into the next lane over and it was then that we witnessed the best hit of the night. It wasn't by a baseball player, but by a black Acura. Did you know that when seagulls are run over by a car they pop like a balloon? Poor seagull. Kaleb stood there not knowing what to think, so we used it as a teaching opportunity, Never run into the street or you end up like the seagull.

On to the stadium! Safeco Field is beautiful, here we are out front.


Kaleb met the mascot Moose.


The next day we flew home from Seattle and we stopped in to see the progress on our house. The prep work for the stucco was done and the dry-wall was in. It's coming along quickly. The picture below is with the stucco wire on the house, I drove by today and the gray layer of stucco is on the house, but I didn't have the camera.



Anyway, it was a fun and very much needed trip. We had a great time in a beautiful place and saw some amazing things.