who's team are you on?

Well.... did you like it? Why yes I did, of course!

Was it better than the first? Much, much better

Did you take your husband? No way

And have you also made the switch to team Jacob or what? Absolutely


I give it 5 cliff dives out of 5. How about you?

Disco Inferno Santa Baby

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Yo, yo, yo... Merry Christmas!

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Dance Jackson, Dance

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Logan's Favorite Christmas Dance

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Happy Thanksgiving!

What are you thankful for today?

where's my trophy?

Logan's soccer season has officially come to an end. It was his first year playing "Under 10s" and a longer season. He had a blast at all the practices and games as he improved his soccer skills. He was lucky to have a talented coach that loves the sport.


The last game was quite intense. The crowd was on it's feet for most of the game. The other team scored a goal in the first half and with a minute left in the game our team also scored a goal. Wow. The energy was thrilling! The game ended with a tied score 1 - 1. And we were all happy with that. They played their best and that's exactly what we're after.
Here's one last picture with Logan and daddy, who was one of the assistant coaches this year, happy with their performance and happy it's come to have finished with such great effort!

Way to go Logan! You are our soccer superstar! (And don't worry...you'll get your trophy in one week at the team party.)

BMX Bike Park

Trevor and Logan have found a new passion. Riding bikes at the BMX park. It's a great in-town location out at Woodward Park. The park itself is full of tons of professionally installed dirt mounds for doing all those cool bike tricks.

Got our helmets on for safety!

A few action shots...



And only one battle wound so far. Trevor tells us, "It doesn't hurt - just looks bad." He is toughening up!

The boys love going out there with their daddy. Jeremy equally enjoys spending time out there enjoying nature, biking, and quality time with his boys that are finally old enough to enjoy these types of activities. He's been looking forward to these moments since we first talked about having kids - finally a dream has come true!

Trevor's 10

Trevor turned 10 years old back in September. It must have been a busy time for us because this most important birthday did not make it onto the blog! Trevor is acting older and more mature every day. He loves all the new extracurricular doors that have opened for him at school, the prestige of being a 5th grader and a varsity football player, and has been reading the Harry Potter series and LOVING it! He's preparing to start babysitting for us and is very interested in cooking all of a sudden. He knows this is a major responsibility of a babysitter so he's been begging, "please, can I learn how to make mac and cheese??" at least once a week. These are all character traits of a boy that is growing up too quickly. I finally had to tell him to just slow down a bit and stop getting older already! We can hardly remember the days when he looked like this:
(You'll have to scroll up and down to get a great look at this baby picture compared to his birthday picture. Boy! Where has the time gone?!)

To recognize his aging process, Trevor had the traditional week of birthday celebrations.

1. He began with a birthday party with the Duran side of the family...

where he got a crisp $10 bill for being 10 years old,
a fancy schmancy new chess board game - his new passion thank you to Gramma Elizabeth,

and the most awesomest wonderful gift a 10 year old boy could ever want.... a BB gun.
Here are some of his cute party guests:



2. The next celebration was a party with the Ward side of the family (sorry no pictures from that one!) when we did all 5 September birthdays at one big party.

3. Then on to his actual birthday morning that began with a small family party, a pile of presents, and a cinnamon roll to start the day!
4. That night Trevor got to choose his favorite place to go out for his birthday dinner with mom and dad - his very own date night! He chose the greatest most best and delicious location of all time.... Me 'N' Ed's Pizza! It was divine dining and a perfect way to end his special day.

5. Trevor's last birthday celebration was a repeat from last year's party - Laser Quest. Trevor invited some good friends to come out for an evening of laser tag and fun.

We got to play 2 games back to back - It. Was. AWESOME! Even Jeremy and I got in there and ended up whooping all the kids. Who says adults can't have fun at a kid's party?
Trevor's menu item of choice for dinner was $5 footlongs from Subway. (Those ads and commercials must look so tantalizing on TV because those sandwiches are always requested at our house.)
We finished off the night with some cupcakes and mint & chip ice-cream - Trevor's favorite! - then headed home.

Laser Quest was a great finish to a week of celebrations.

Lizzie Plays Soccer

Lizzie had a great soccer season. She made lots of new friends, scored lots of goals, and got lots of daddy time as he was one of her coaches during her first year of soccer!
She is quite the little athlete. She runs like crazy and pays attention the entire time - no wandering off to pick flowers or anything like that. She really gets into it!

This second picture is classic. The look on her face is priceless. She scored one of her first goals and was so pleased with herself and could hardly believe it - that's what sheer joy and disbelief look like on a 5 year old.
It was a great season and we look forward to many Lizzie soccer seasons in the years to come. Goooooo Lizzie!!

That's My Boy!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Trevor made his mama proud today. He sang in his first real choir performance! Several other elementary schools were there, all in uniform, and they even had to sing in front of 3 judges that scored their performance. They looked so sharp in their new tuxedo shirts, bow ties, and cumberbunds. And they sounded great! The first song they sang was in Latin - wow. That's huge for an elementary school choir! And the second was a fun Christmas song the kids really got into this one. Trevor is front and center - right in front of his music director and also got to stand next to his best buddy, Jacob. Trevor's other good friends are easy to spot. Jacob E. is also on the front row, as is Elder, and cousin Emma is up on the 3rd row (she's the cute blond in glasses).

Seeing Trevor up there took me back to all my years of singing in school. That was my thing. I LOVED singing in choir! I sang in every choir from elementary, to jr. high, to high school and even some in college - sometimes 3 or 4 different groups at a time! Watching him sing brought back so many fond memories. It was such a treat to see him perform. I hope to have this opportunity many times in the future. For now, we look forward to his Winter Program on December 8th.

Pumpkin Carving 2009

We planned to carve pumpkins the night before we left on our big D.C. trip. It was a good plan; we didn't want the jack-o-lanterns to get too mushy too quick, but we did not plan on being exhausted and rushed as we were supposed to be out the door the next morning by 5AM. Of course, it all worked out in the end and the kids didn't notice anything different about the experience at all. They were soooo excited!!

Lizzie saw a great idea online - carve a Jack Skellington pumkin! That's one of her loves these days, the Nightmare Before Christmas, she has a weird infatuation with Tim Burton movies.

Logan also found a cool template online for a jack-o-lantern face. I don't think he liked pulling out the pumpkin guts very much... what do you think?

Trevor decided to go with a creation of his own. Confident boy. This was the same day he played his last GLORIOUS football game (note the undereye marks of a true football player) and he was feeling like he was on top of the world!

I hesitantly put up this picture - oh man, I was sooo tired already!! It had been a long busy week to get us out the door.

Here's Lizzie's finished project. It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself!

Oooooooohhhh... Trevor's is on the left, then Logan's, and finally Lizzie's on the right..
I don't know when our front yard became a graveyard, but those pumpkins did look pretty cool out there next to the headstones.

Joy School Halloween Party!

The week of Halloween we did a Halloween Party for the preschool kids. They all came in costume - so excited to show off their stuff! We had a Star Wars Clone Trooper, Batman, Spiderman, a Robot, Dalmation, and James the Train come to the party! (Jackson loves to "read" this picture and tell whoever will listen all the names of the characters that came to his house for Halloween.)

After a quick group picture we hopped into the car (I use the word "hopped" very loosely... it took us about 15 minutes to first strap in 6 car seats and then each kid, one at a time - whew! That was some work! But made the drive over and back so much fun!) and headed over to the Pumpkin Patch. (You cannot see Jackson's head, but he was in there too; in the center back seat.)


We took a tour through a "Spooky Train" that was all decked out like a haunted house. Then headed over to check out all the different kinds of pumpkins. There were big ones, and small ones, and funky ones...

Then there was one that was the biggest one we'd ever seen! That thing was almost 4 feet tall!!

We had each kid pose for an individual shot - they are sooo cute!


Everyone got to pick out their own baby pumpkin and then we headed back to our house for a sugary celebration. When we got home we dove right in to our treats. First they had to sort out the candies by type, then frost the cookies, and decorate with any fun candies they wanted.
It was a very quiet celebration as they all took their time licking off the frosting and tasting every kind of candy.
What a great way to kick off the Halloween weekend!