Merry Christmas from Grant

Grant's 7th Birthday LEGO party!

Building their LEGO cars that they got to keep.

Racing to build the tallest lego tower in 2 minutes

Grant and his gravity defying tower

Lego dude cake

Green Vipers finish 8-3!

For those of you following the Gila Valley AYSO U10 boys league in Safford, Az you know about the Green Vipers. These guys battled 2 leg casts, 1 arm cast, 1 thumb cast, 2 H1N1 flu's, and 3 guys moving away during the season to finish in second place to the orange panthers after a winner take all last game of the season for first place in the division. We lost 6 to 5 at the wire against the Green Slime who we had beat in another close game of 7 to 6 earlier in the season. This was the most fun I have had in a long time. The highs were so high and the lows were so low! These guys battled every week and for the most part rolled every team we met. Great job Vipers!

Camping this weekend

Here is Eric loading his potato gun (cannon). We launched one potato over the mountain down the wash from us. It was cold at night but I had a lot of fun with the boys.

The boys have been busy

Andrew and Grant are in Awana's and they like it. Grant is soooo proud of his vest.
My trusted keeper in a close game with the purple dragons. I know... it should not be a close game with another team named the purple dragons. Drew had a good game. In a game last week that we lost, Andrew was completly horizontal like Willie Magee (St. Louis Cardinals) diving to stop a goal. He did not stop it; but if it was possible to stop, he would have had it. I was sooo proud of his commitment.

More Green Viper sideline drama.

Hans Solo

Yoda

Soccer, the Grand Canyon and Santa

Grant on the left with the Blue Scorpions

The Grand Canyon. I attended the recent Arizona Town Hall held on "Government Revenue in Arizona" at the Grand Canyon. Our state's financial situation is as deep and vast as the canyon but not as bad as California or the Nation.

Merry early Christmas. My friends at the Gingerbread House needed a Santa to hand out "bling" and entertain the crowd before their Christmas Open House. I handed out "bling" but entertaining is up for interpretation. Andrew and Grant did not like it. Drew yanked my beard off and Grant punched me in the gut upon seeing me. Not the greeting I was expecting. These are forced photos for the camera.

Catch up posts

Homecoming week at school. Andrew and Grant had their hair dyed for 3 days. In Andrew's case - Neon day, crazy hair day, and blue and white day. We nearly had a crisis on the first day as it was neon day and not crazy hair day. Luckily, Andrew's teacher picked up on the situation right away as Drew was nearly in tears being the only kid at school with crazy hair. Mrs. Taylor said, "Andrew I love your 'neon' hair, that's cool"! All was fine after that. Drew did let me know when he got home that I had messed up. Thank you Mrs. Taylor.

Deanna and Abdullah

Grant offering me a knuckle sandwich

Im too old to go over the handle bars of my bike

So this morning I was riding back from town and I had a stiff neck so I was cruising sitting up without holding onto the handlebars. I discovered that that is a fine plan as long as your right foot does not slip off the pedal. Once my foot struck ground my handlebars were already cocked sideways before my hands could get to them. The begininnig of the next scene was like something from Cirque de soleil. Following a very quick blow to the gut from I forget what, I stuck my landing with precision on my right elbow with feet in the air so as to keep the forehead from hitting first. I then rolled onto my bike wich is odd because I had just left the bike. Struggling to figure out what hurt the most I calmly gathered the four pieces of my phone while laying on my back in the road. I do know that no one saw me because if they had I would have heard sirens. I quickly walked along dragging my bike to my open garage and shut the garage. Luckily I am fine except for the bruises and scrapes. My neck still is stiff.

Victoria, BC

Andrew onboard our ferry the "Coho" from Port Angeles to Victoria. They pack in 120+ cars, motor homes, Semi Trucks and motorcyles. In fact the cars are packed in so tight, I broke my moms fingers when I slammed them in the door of the suburban when I was a little older than Andrew on this same ferry boat.

Our hotel

Parliment at night

The Empress hotel from our hotel in the harbour

Butchart Gardens north of Victoria. Darrin Grandpa and Grandma and I went here when we were little. You don't have to be into flowers to appreciate this place. It is mind boggling.

The price of gas was so low I had to take a picture. Donnie and I smartly filled up before we left Canada. We could not figure out why the dollar numbers were spinning so fast on the gas pump as we were filling up. It turns out that its 101.9 per liter! We had a good laugh.