Surprises, surprises!

All right, so there are really only two surprises. The first is that I'm posting again without waiting the usual 2 months + and I'm not going to start out with an apology. On to the good stuff! First, a couple of shots of the boys at Fogarty Creek, our favorite beach.

On my short vacation, we took the boys to California to see Grandma and Papa Phillips. This is somewhere near Whiskeytown Lake. It was great to see family, and we can't wait to see Suzanne's side ASAP!
McKay tried to dress himself one night. Look carefully: that's a sweatshirt - one leg through the sleeve, one leg through the neck, one arm through another sleeve, and I'm not sure if he's crying because he can't figure out how to wear it or because it's uncomfortable. Poor little guy!

While in California, the boys got hooked on bubble baths.

Pony ride - Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, that's all I know (Ow, McKay, let go of my hair!)
The boys got a combined birthday in California, too, with WAY too many presents.The got seperate parties at home too. I don't know where the pictures of Carter's party are.
This is a shot of the boys on Thanksgiving. We went to the church because our apartment is so small and invited a few couples to come along for dinner. The other couples both have little kids too, so there were plenty of toys and all the kids had a blast. When we got home, Suzanne and I were ready to fall into a Turkey coma, but Carter looked up and said, "I'm hungry, Dada." They had so much fun they forgot to eat!Here's the real surprise: We got a much better digital camera, and we should be able to do video now. This is the first test. Don't expect one every time, only when we happen to get something super cute, like this one of the boys on Thanksgiving Day.

We hope this worked on all of your computers. We love you all!

Post from California

Though this excuse will sound really feeble, I lost the cord to our camera. I couldn't hook it up to the computer to download pictures. Then I was covering for the other guy's vacation for a whole month, blah, blah,blah. I hope this extra long set of photos will make up for it. First off, anyone who wants to come up and visit, please do! We'll take you to the aquarium. They put you in a tank so the sea creatures can come and see what people look like. Yes, that crab really is the size of my head. But you should see the big ones - Japanese Spider Crabs!The rest of these will be in chronological order, more or less. To begin, before we moved again, McKay discovered pudding. Enough said.Then while we were in the middle of moving, the boys decided they were going to sleep in some of the cardboard boxes. We put a stop to it, of course, but thought it was a kodak moment anyway.McKay sleeps just fine in our new home, but how he does it in that position I'll never know. He's practically vertical.Carter is getting big.

He had his fourth birthday just a few days ago and Suzanne took cupcakes for snacktime to his preschool class. He caught on quickly to the fact that we were more willing to give him things and tried it every chance he could afterwards. We ended up skipping the free birthday sundae he was offered in order to get him home before he got any more spoiled.We took the boys on a whale-watching tour. You won't see any photos of whales because I was holding on too tightly to the boat to risk any more pictures. The ocean was very choppy that day and we rolled and rocked this way and that for a very unpleasant 60 minutes. Carter was violently sick all over that nice blue bench and all over me. We were all feeling sick before the end but Carter definitely had it worse. Poor little guy. Suzanne no longer wants to buy a sailboat.
The highlight of the trip was actually before it began - seeing seals swimming around the dock while we waited to get onto the boat!Halloween saw McKay as a monkey and Carter as an alligator (he said he was a green duck, but he still pretended to eat people). They were very well-behaved when they went out and as you can see they were the cutest trick-or-treaters in Newport.Sorry for the black corners - the lens cover sometimes sticks. The boys like to ride on my feet down the hallway sometimes, but their favorite is when I climb the stairs. It really gets them laughing and I get a great workout. Feel the burn!
And finally, something totally unrelated: My pinewood derby car for the Elders' Quorom activity. I don't have any power tools or even hand tools except for my old Boy Scout knives, and I forgot to work on my car until the morning of the race, so I started whittling as fast as I knew how when the boys went down for their naps. After 30 minutes, it was clear I wouldn't get my block to look like a car, so I made it look like what it most resembled - a thumb. Out of 20+ cars, I got 3rd. Weird, huh? (Getting third with such a poorly-made car is weird, not my car.)

I found a solution to the missing cord problem, so I hope to update more often. Call me on it if I don't, ok?

Remember when I said you could subscribe to the blog way back when? Well, here's how - leave a comment under this post and be sure to put your email address in the box where it asks for it. I'll put you on a mailing list and email you when I update. I promise the only thing I'll send to that mailing list is announcements when I update this blog. Any questions email me at gphill79@hotmail.com but don't expect an overnight response. I only get to a computer every couple of weeks.

To Emily P. who wrote to Suzanne through the blog last month: She tried writing back but we didn't have your email address! If you leave a comment or email me (see last paragraph) I'll make sure you get the email she tried to send.

I hope you all like the pictures. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Phillips for letting me use their computer in California and for the cool crab picture up top. We love you all!