Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We spent Christmas Eve with the Larsen's (as we do most years). We met at Mom & Dad's between 5 and 6 PM. We ate together, read from the Bible while the kids acted out the story of Christ's birth, sang Christmas carols around the tree, and exchanged gifts. Everyone had a great time, especially Mom & Dad who received new cell phones from Maren & Eric.
Christmas morning, the kids got up around 8 AM. Dell took pictures as the kids rushed for their gifts (and I directed them to the correct piles). Dell loved his digital photo frame. He put pictures on it right away and we all enjoyed looking at pictures of all of us. Brooklyn loved videotaping all of us with her new video camera. She and Savannah also spent the day Instant Messaging each other on their IM-ME's. Savannah also took a lot of pictures of us and her presents on her digital camera. Then she had fun downloading them to her computers. Jordan loved his transformers, especially his Ultimate BumbleBee. He also played his Transformers game on his Nintendo DS Lite. Troy loved his Nintendo DS Lite (a much anticipated item) and played his CARS game and his Little Einsteins game. He also loved his "UnderDog" movie. He kept calling it the UNDERWEAR DOG movie. We tried to correct him, but he insisted it was UNDERWEAR DOG! LOL!

Later, we headed to Dell's Dad's house. We ate with his dad, Bill, and his step mom, Alice Ann, and her children and grandchildren and Dell's brother, Eric, and his wife, Teresa, and their two boys. We exchanged gifts with Dell's family near the end. Alice Ann (as always) gave the most creative and wonderful homemade gifts. She made all of the kids flannel tied blankets and gave all of the married couples pj's with pictures of their spouses on the t-shirt. We all opened them together and laughed and showed each other. Then we put on the shirts and Bill snapped photos of each couple. She also made each family a calender (our third year she's made them) with personalized photos and birthdays and anniversaries. Wow! She always puts SO MUCH WORK into our gifts. Thanks Alice Ann!! :) Of course, all of our gifts were wonderful!

Now we're looking forward to celebrating New Year's Eve with family and anticipating new changes in 2008!

Brooklyn's 14th Birthday

Brooklyn celebrated her 14th birthday by going to the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" movie with her immediate family (& Trevor) and her friends (Melissa, Chantel, & Jessica). Then she had some family come over to our house for pizza, soda, cake and icecream. Aunt Teresa & Uncle Eric came with Alex & Trevor. Uncle Tom & Aunt Tami brought Lily & Jefferson. Uncle Kurtis also made an appearance with his new car (a Toyota Rav 4). He took Brooklyn, Savannah, and Teresa for a drive through the neighborhood. Whee! She especially loved to wear the shirt that mom bought her. It said, "I'm here for the presents". Brooklyn was seen smiling a lot at the party. This was partly due to the fact that she got her braces off the day before. Yeah! She was also seen listening to music often on her new MP3 player. It was a gift from Ashton (a boy she's friends with at school). Overall she seemed to have a wonderful time. Luckily everyone was able to travel safely since we had quite a snowstorm overnight.

Jordan the Climber!

Jordan loves to climb, especially in Mom & Dad's bathroom. What a monkey!

Brooklyn Takes Woodshop!

Brooklyn decided to take woodshop this year (in 8th grade). Here is a pool table she made herself. Can you tell she's getting an A in woodshop? Way to go, Brooklyn! :)

Florida 2007

Dell and I traveled to Florida in November 2007. We traveled all over Florida and spent a day with our niece, Tessa. She moved from Michigan to Florida this past summer. We were so happy that she drove from one side of Florida to the other just to see us (from Rockledge to Sarasota--172 miles one way--and then back again later the same day). Our niece, Brittany, also began working at Disneyworld this past summer (we were unsuccessful at seeing her while we were there, sniff sniff). Here are some pictures taken with Tessa's camera in Florida over the past 6 months (approximately).

Hannah Montana & Jonas Brothers Concert

The girls and I attended the Hannah Montana: Meet Miley Cyrus concert (with the Jonas Brothers) last Saturday. My friend, Shanon, and her daughter, Carissa, joined us. (They are also related to us-Shanon married my cousin, Arthur, so her kids are my kids second cousins-Cool!) Savannah chose a cute pink Mylie Cyrus hat as her souvenier. It went well with her Hannah Montana Halloween costume.

Halloween!

We attended a Halloween party at the church one week before Halloween. The Young Women and Young Men hosted the party for all of the Primary kids. Brooklyn was dressed as Cinderella (from the movie with Hillary Duff: A Cinderella Story), Savannah was Hannah Montana, Jordan was Spiderman (from Spiderman 3), and Troy was a bear. Their cousin, Trevor, also came to the party dressed as Optimus Prime (from the Transformers movie--Wow! we had costumes from three diferent movies). Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, even though the spook alley proved to be more scary than Jordan and Trevor expected. They both came our saying "SPOOKY!" over and over. The pinata at the end was everyone's favorite.

Snow in September?

Well, yesterday we had a surprise snow storm sweep across parts of Salt Lake. Hmmm, I didn't expect that for a month at least. There was even some remnants of snow dusting everything in my yard, including my truck, this morning. I would have included a picture, but Dell has the camera with him in California. Too bad, it was the earliest snow storm I can recall. I'm also very glad it didn't start snowing until after Tom, Maren, and I finished our 10 mile run up and down Millcreek Canyon and on Wasatch Blvd. St. George Marathon (next Saturday) here we come!

Oh, I forgot to mention that Dell and I were able to get away overnight to the Anniversary Inn for Dell's birthday last Thursday. We had a free night's stay thanks to Worldmark by Wyndham (yes, we attended their timeshare presentation). My sister, Maren, was kind enough to stay overnight with our four kids and get three of them off to school the next morning. My sister-in-law, Tami, then babysat Troy until the afternoon for us. Their help was really appreciated. Our room was the Carriage Suite and it was very nice. We watched "The Princess Bride" on the television built into the bed. It was nice to enjoy breakfast in bed without the kids jumping on us or trying to eat our food. LOL! The evening of his birthday, the kids and I gave him a Star Wars singing birthday card. On the cover it said, "A Long, Long, Long Time Ago..." and inside it said, "YOU WERE BORN". We thought it was hilarious, but Dell faked anger and chased the kids around and kept saying, "Not Funny", hehehe! He's really feeling his age now that he's 38!

Cake, More Cake, and The Bunny

A week ago, Savannah had to come up with a project for a book report for her sixth grade class. The first book of the year was a free choice book, so she read one called "Serpent Tide". It was a book with 391 pages (only 150 were required) and a lot of large vocabulary words. Not an easy read for an eleven-year-old, but the story was interesting and kept her attention. She decided she wanted to make a cake book report like her sister had done two years ago with the same teacher (same grade). Here is a picture of her with her cake.

Then a few days later, all of the kids wanted a chance to make and decorate a cake. Savannah and Kamber (our friend Kurt's daughter) mixed and baked the cake with Kurt's help. Then all of the kids helped decorate it and eat it. Kurt and three of his kids have been staying with us for a couple of weeks. His sons are Kyler and Kayden. Here is a picture of most of the kids decorating the cake. Savannah even helped clean up afterward (an agreement she had with her dad in order to bake the cake--what a good girl). I know, we're crazy for letting the kids make such a mess and eat so much sugar. Well, once in a while I think kids need to have fun and be kids. =)

Finally, yesterday we had a visitor. Troy and I watched a cute bunny hop around our yard and then it came right down to our back door and ate some plants within a couple of feet of us. Troy, of course, wanted to chase it. He wasn't able to because there was glass between them (luckily for the bunny). So I convinced him to just watch the bunny with me quietly until it hopped away a few minutes later. We were able to get a quick picture of him through the glass before he left.

Bear Lake & Camping

Dell & I went to Bear Lake (at the top of Utah near Logan) this past weekend for a paragliding competition Dell was participating in. There were a lot of great pilots in the competition, many of whom took their stunts all the way to the water. Dell didn't want to get the brand new equipment he was flying wet, so his stunts were shorter and less risky, believe it or not. To make a long story short, Dell didn't place in the top three. But Dell did very well and had lots of fun flying anyway. And Dell & I both enjoyed some time alone without interruptions from the little ones. We had a nice room was right on the beach. We spent our time watching the flying at the beach & on video, drinking free RedBull (they sponsor a lot of paragliding events), eating out, renting a movie to watch in our room at the local store across the street (where we also got the kids Bear Lake T-shirts), and attending a barbeque with the other paragliders in the evening Saturday.

The kids had an adventure of their own. They went camping in Nana & Grampa Larsen's back yard. When Nana asked if they wanted to sleep inside or in a tent, all four of them decided that they wanted the tent. Nana even reported that they survived the entire day Saturday without getting on the computer once (an unusual thing for our kids who are SO computer savy). They had fun with Nana and Grampa, but still ran to give mom & dad hugs when they came home.



Video shot at Great Salt Lake--Summer 2007
(This video isn't from Bear Lake, but it demonstrates what an awesome pilot Dell is.)

Totally Awesome Schanze Family Blog

(Photo taken Autumn 2006)

Sunday, September 2, 2007

With the kids back in school, life has a routine again. Brooklyn is in 8th grade (middle school), Savannah in 6th, and Jordan in 1st. Savannah and Jordan ride the bus together and she is his protector and buddy. At first she wasn't so sure she wanted to be, but as the week went on she began to enjoy her roll. And Jordan is happy to have her help. Troy (he's 3) enjoys having mom all to himself during the day and loves dragging her around to do things for him. Mom is hopeful that he'll potty train soon and go to preschool a couple of days a week (so she can get a few things done without kids constantly needing something). Of course, he is her last one and so she tries to remember to enjoy all the cute things he does because he'll grow up way to fast. Dad has been helping out, too. He drives Brooklyn to school often and even changes diapers when he isn't working hard selling paragliders and flying them. Yesterday, Dell flew for 8 hours and 8 minutes (a new personal record) on a trike (paramoter with 3 wheels) and had a ball. When mom isn't busy with kids, she's off attending births as a doula (someone who provides comfort measures to a woman during labor, as well as help before and after birth). She has attended 6 births now as a doula (in the past year and a half) and has loved every minute of it. Two of those births were for friends from high school so they were even more special to her. Teresa is also training for the St George marathon with some of her family (brother- Tom, sister- Maren, and sister-in-law--Teresa). This October will be her 4th time running the marathon. Needless to say, we're all busy having a Totally Awesome time! =)