jacob the ukulele player

 Jacob learned to play the ukulele last year at school and has continued to enjoy it.  Our elementary school started a ukulele club this year and Jacob is part of it.  They performed a small Christmas concert and did a pretty good job -- especially considering that some of the kids are learning ukulele for the first time.  Anyway, since Jacob is already pretty good, the teacher lets him play the bass ukulele.  It's amplified and very cool!
Jacob also spent some time playing ukulele with his cousins, Kaymi & Colton, at Christmas.  They really added some good singing!

thanksgiving fun

 G&G V filled a pinata with candy and let the kids whack away.  It was great fun!

 Mark's cousin, Pam, was here for Thanksgiving with her family.  Her kids match up in age darn close to mine and they had a wonderful time playing together.  This was a new game they invented with Jacob's soccerball-on-a-rope.  The center person swung the ball around and everyone on the outside had to jump over it as it came around.  If the person missed, they traded places with the center person. 

The boys also had a foosball tournament in the basement.  They can't wait to play again at Christmas!

photo

Here's the photo.  A quick family photo from Thanksgiving day. 

update

I was going to post a photo, but apparently I'm out of space according to blogger here.  I'll try to fix that and get a photo up.  Too bad, it was a nice photo.
Anyway...We had a nice Thanksgiving with Mark's family.  The boys had a great time playing games with their cousins, and it was really fun to have Pam (Mark's cousin) and her kids join us. The boys were loving the foosball table that Grandpa dug out and had a good time making up jumping games with Jacob's soccer-ball-on-a-rope too.

In other news, I was finally released from my Relief Society calling back in September.  It had been close to four years serving in that calling and I was starting to burnout, so it was a welcome change, but I do miss seeing and talking with some good friends every week.  My new calling was finalized about a week and a half ago.  I'm the new Bear Den leader for our ward.  I have some mixed feelings about it -- I'm really glad that I get the opportunity to hang out with Jacob, but the leader who was released was doing such a great job and loving it, that it makes me sad to replace her.  Although I really feel like the more I get going with this calling, the more I'm going to have fun with it.

And finally, after three plus months of pain in my heel and foot, I decided it was time to see a doc.  Diagnosis: mild case of plantar fasciitis with a particular point of painful scar tissue in my heel.  Pretty much expected that's what was going on.  I got some arch supports for my shoes and some home exercises to do.  I was also told to roll my heel around on a frozen golf ball to work on the scar tissue.  Anyone have an old golf ball hanging around?  I swear it's the only kind of ball we DON'T have in the garage!  Hopefully with time it will feel better and if not, I'll sign up for some physical therapy.

basketball time

 My boys love basketball, and its basketball season around here!  My camera stinks for action shots in the gym, so I take what I can get.  This is Jacob.  He has a couple friends on his team and the rest of the kids are from all different schools.  They have done a good job of getting to know each other so they can play as a team.  Unfortunately, they haven't won a lot of games so far, but they go out and do their best every time and its fun to see the improvement over the last month.

Ryan started basketball again too, but I don't have any pictures yet.  His team is playing in a league that is for older kids, so they are currently on a losing streak -- very much so!  Most of his team consists of the same kids that he's been playing with for the past couple years, but there are some new players too.  Hopefully his team will be able to play in a different league this winter where they will all be the same age and be able to compete better.

happy time of day

 One of the happiest times of the day for me is meeting Matthew after school.  I love to watch him come out the school doors and race down the grassy hill to meet me!

On the way home we'll talk about what happened at school or recess and he'll tell me the new words he learned in Chinese class. It makes me happy.  Matthew, I love you...VERY MUCH!

ho ho ho halloween

 Ho! Ho! Ho!  Happy Halloween!  Jacob wanted to be Santa Claus this year.  It was the best idea ever -- very clever, and VERY funny!  But wouldn't you know it, the one year we come up with a WARM costume, the weather is actually unseasonably warm and the costume downright hot!  Oh well!  Our Santa had a great time trick-or-treating and brought home a sack full of goodies.  Matthew chose to be Captain America - awesome!  I love his "grin".

 The kids are ready to start knocking on doors!

We had to get a picture of Captain America sitting on Santa's lap letting him know he's been a good boy this year.

 We carved pumpkins the weekend before Halloween.  Maybe we should just call it "decorating" pumpkins, since Jacob was the only one that actually did some carving.  His Jazz logo turned out pretty good!  Matthew's "Y" pumpkin did get gutted though, so that we could put lights inside to make it glow up. Me, I just opted to stab my pumpkin with a few sticks this year and bag the gutting!