Looks like the week coming up has everything available in the weather spectrum. We’ve got your wind, rain, lightning, snow, sun and partial clouds!

The boys start up soccer tonight. They have Monday practices and games Wednesday and Saturday. I don’t know if I’m ready to be a ‘Soccer’ family, but it will be fun to get them out there running with the bunch.

Sledding at Grandma’s

Rocking New Years

Gavin and Mommy strutting their stuff

Getting silly with the popsicles

We even got 2 smash cakes for Gavin. He didn’t really dig in too much, but he was definitely messier with the second. Something about the frosting just didn’t jive with him.

Owen "helping" Gavin play with his toy.

Not too sure what to think of the candle. But he did try to blow it out.

Silly Uncle Steven

We had a great time, and Gavin got some cool toys. His favorite is a dinosaur ball ramp thingy  .

You can see all the photos here

The drive down was a little hairy (passed 3-4 accidents along the way) but we made it alright. Once there we had a good time talking with family while we waited for Santa to arrive. Yeah that’s right, SANTA came to Benjamin UT for this party. The boys were very excited to go, and because of the relatively small number of kids there they got to be right up in the middle of it all. Even so much as helping Santa with his sack.

Both of the boys got to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas (Owen:Shake and Go Racer, Braeden:Dinosaur Factory). Gavin was NOT a huge fan of Santa, so we get to add to the “Kids afraid of Santa” pool. When you think about it though, Santa is pretty freaky. And the whole “Breaking and Entering to leave presents” concept could easily be misinterpreted :).

Besides scarring Gavin for life, we had a great time down in Benjamin. We even got a nice family picture with the big guy, but you can see that Gavin is still very aware of where Santa is at all times. You never know when he might try to get you!

And one more of Tammy, because I think she looks really hot in this picture:

I am one lucky guy I’ll tell you what! You can see the rest of the photos here:

Saturday Nov 17

We left on Saturday the 17th at a reasonable hour (not 4am or 5am as Tammy’s Parent’s are known to do). Thanks to the DVD player and DS the boys were actually really good for the whole trip. The last hour got a little rough when all the boys together decided that they no longer cared to be in the car. Owen and Braeden expressed this by hitting and fighting each other, Gavin resorted to monotone talk/yelling over and over. But fortunately we had a nice GPS (thanks Mom!) that could give the boys updates on how close we were to getting out of the car (we still averaged 3-4 “Are we there yet?”s per hour, but it could be easily deflected by pointing at the map.

Sunday

Attended the Vacaville Stake Conference and afterwards took a nice walk at Lagoon Valley on the West Side of Vacaville. The Owens have 3 dogs, so with the addition of our Winston, we had quite the pack of dogs/boys going through the park.

Monday

I took Winston out “hunting” at Dad Owen’s hunting club. Bill wanted to see if Winston was gun shy so we had him out on a leash. Once it was established that he wasn’t gun shy we hit the field. For a city dog he did ok, but the best part was when Starr flushed a pheasant while Winston was falling into a ditch. I heard a yelp, and saw him pulling himself out of the ditch soaking wet, while Starr brought back the bird.

After hunting we took a trip to the Jelly Belly factory. We had a great time looking at all of the many different robots and belts that produce some great Jelly Beans.

Tuesday

We went into San Francisco today and spent the day at the Exploratorium. That place is HUGE! We all got to do a bunch of fun experiments. One of the boys favorite was the bubble wall where they could make some massive bubbles. Even Gavin was having fun, even though he couldn’t get down and dirty like the boys, he still was having fun watching everything that was going on.

After the Exploratorium we went to Ghirardelli Square to get some ice cream. With 5 hungry boys we ordered 2 “Earthquake” plates. 16 scoops of ice cream total! and those boys DEVOURED it! As you can see from the picture, we were the entertainment for the onlookers that night.

After ice cream we went over to Pier 39 to walk around and see the Sea Lions. Got some great pictures of the boys and Tammy (smoking hot I may add).

I wanted to get a bread bowl with clam chowder, delicious.

Wednesday

Took it easy, did a little shopping to prepare for the big meal.

Thursday

Had some great Turkey and delicious cheesecake.

Friday

Tammy and her mom braved the Black Friday mob and actually found everything on their list!

Saturday

Went to Chris and Erin’s house and then over to the Northstar Christmas Tree farm to help Mom and Dad and Chris and Erin pick out their Christmas Trees. There was a merry go round for the kids and we all went on the wagon ride OF FURY!! (read: nice and slow to start, but scary fast in the middle/end portion)

Sunday Nov 25

On the road again! Now packed in twice as tight with the presents that Tammy and Mom found on Friday. Once again the DVD and DS proved invaluable for the entire ride. We even visited a Redbox in Elko and got another movie for the boys for the ride home. Not too shabby.

We had a blast in Northern California and can’t wait to go back again. It’s always fun to see the family that you don’t get to see as often.

You can see all the pictures we took from the trip on my flickr account

Christmas tree farm

Pier 39

Exploratorium

Lagoon Valley

So today I decided to do just that, scoop the poop. The boys decided that today they wanted to go out and help me with my task. They both grabbed old boxes and resolved to follow me around collecting the artifacts.

Naturally, we had to take turns depositing the poop. Because of course, fairness is the fundamental law when dealing with chores. But we didn’t take turns in order to spread out the awfulness of the task, oh no, we took turns because each one of them thought it was a great thing to be holding the box while I dumped in dog poo.

Things were going well until Braeden ran into the house to get some shoes on. (I suppose he didn’t want poo in his toes, wimp). While he was gone, Owen slyly grabbed his brother’s box of poo and began to dump it in to his box. Braeden came out of the house during the middle of this and started to SCREAM bloody murder. Because, you know, HIS BROTHER WAS STEALING HIS DOG CRAP!

This ended up requiring parental intervention, because it was such a contentious issue. Never in my wildest parenthood dreams did I ever imagine that I’d be breaking up a fight over a box of poo, but there you go. Make lemonade out of that!

Gavin in the High Chair 002, originally uploaded by Dan Cramer.

The messy eating? Yeah, he gets that from me.

Hunting for Babies from djcramer on Vimeo.