Christmas Tree

I got my tree yesterday and finally put it up and decorated it today.

Our little baby is rolling over!

Tonight, Avary started rolling over from both positions of face down and face up. She hasn't been doing it really from any one position until tonight. Now she is rolling over at will.

I can't believe she is growing up on us. It is hard to see the last child grow up.

The Poser of the family

Lately, Alayna has been very interested in pictures.Not only has she been stealing our camera when we're not looking and taking 200 or 300 shots behind our backs, but she has also been focusing on posing for every picture that she is in.

When we were on a recent hike with Adee and Adam, I snapped this picture of Alayna on a small bridge. This gives you an idea of the types of poses that she is into. What a cute girl!

Reader Theater

Aliece 's class performed a readers theater event at the school the other week. Amber and I took Jace and Alayna to the school to watch Aliece take part with her class.

Aliece was one of the narrators of the event. She and her companion narrator were dressed up to look just like a narrator would. Aliece did a terrific part, of course, in her portion of the readings. It was a fun little event.

Post Series Party

The day after the World Series took place, Amber and I took our kids to the Golden corral restaurant to celebrate the occasion.  We had all worn our Yankee shirts and hats during the day. That night, we all continued wearing the Yankee gear as we went out to the Golden corral for dinner. We told the kids that we were celebrating Johnny Damon's birthday.

We had a blast stuffing our faces full of the food available at the trough. We waited through the slop of the dessert bar, and came away feeling really good about ourselves.

You can bet the kids will be looking forward to a Yankee win at next year's World Series!

World Series

As most of you know, the World Series took place a couple of weeks ago. We typically do not get baseball on the very limited stations here at our house. But since it was the World Series, it  came on loud and clear. We watched the last two games of the World Series here at the house with the kids. We popped some popcorn and donned our Yankee hats for the occasion.

The kids loved watching the games. They really got into it. Needless to say, Amber also was glued to the TV during the games. In fact, the final game was taking place on her temple night. She was dressed and ready to go to the Temple, but in the end she decided that her evening would be better spent watching the games and cheering for the team with the rest of us. We were glad that she stayed. We had a great time together. All the kids got their pictures taken in front of the TV while the player listed on their own shirts was up to bat or otherwise showing up on the TV. 

Even Jace was very excited for the event. We got his picture during the World Series. He was swinging his bat and throwing his ball all over the place during the game.  He was the first one to ask for his hat, and his eagerness for the Yankee paraphernalia got everybody else wearing theirs too.

Christmas Lights - v. 2009

Last week, I took advantage of the lovely fall weather by working with the family on getting our Christmas lights up on our house and in our yard. It took us about three or four total hours to get the job done, but we were excited with the results. It's the most hip hop, rockin' house of Christmas lights on the street.

We were going to wait until after Thanksgiving before we turn them on, but we love them so much that we have kept them on instead of waiting for the holiday season to start.

A new accessory for John Jr.

When we were in Seattle with Reed and Michelle last month, we all took the kids to the children's science Museum.  As we were playing with different exhibits there, they had an explanation of how I exams are conducted. As part of that exhibit, they had a line where you would stand on the floor and read the standard I chart that doctors use. I was explaining how it worked to Aylee and Johnathan with Johnathan standing at the line. I quickly realized that Johnathan was unable to read even some of the biggest letters on the chart.

A week or so after we returned home, Amber scheduled an eye appointment for Johnathan. Sure enough, the verdict was that he needed to have glasses. They ordered the glasses and we received a call this week that the glasses had arrived. Amber took Johnathan over to the Dr. to pick up the glasses.

Johnathan is pretty excited about his new glasses. He has been very good to take care of them and put them in their case at night. He looks pretty studley with them on -- especially when he is wearing a suit. They really make him look a lot older. Every time I looked at him and his church clothes, I swore he was one of the young men in the Ward. I was amazed at how old he looks.

It is too bad that are kids have so far chosen to inherit the poor genes that Amber and I have offered them. At least our eyesight isn't too terrible and we can live without our glasses for casual, everyday activities.

Another Pound Party!

Amber reached yet another milestone -- a very important one actually -- in our quest to shed the pounds. Amber is now at her pre-pregnancy weight for when she was pregnant with Avary. This is a really exciting milestone and probably the quickest she has ever been able to bounce back after having a baby. It helps when you know this is your last one and you're not going to lose all this way and then turn around and get big with another pregnancy.

In an effort to celebrate the milestone, we took an hour last night and had popcorn and played some family games. The kids were all excited that Amber was able to meet that goal -- mostly because they got a party. 

It has been fun to work with Amber side-by-side as we have tried to lose weight. I have about five more pounds to go before I reach the weight that I was that when we got married. That will be the first time in our entire married life that I will have been able to get back down there. Once I do, the kids get yet another party. They are ready trying to think of ways to help Amber and I lose weight so that we can meet our party goals more quickly.

One more Picture of Lucy

Here is one more picture of Lucy. She is a Lhasa Apso, 2 years old. She belonged to the owners of a house that I looked at buying. The house was being foreclosed on. The house was nice but She was the best part of it. She was so friendly and fun. I later contacted them about where they got the dog, hoping that I could find a puppy from the same parents. They said that they were moving into a rental that didnt allow pets and had to get rid of Lucy. So I told them I would like to have her.

New Family Member

I would like to welcome the new member of the Joe Andersen Family. Her name is Lucy.

Halloween Costumes

This is a subset of the costumes that were worn this weekend by the kids. A few of them changed costumes for school on Friday. However, these costumes in this blog are the costumes that they wore trick-or-treating.

Novell did not do their annual trick-or-treating event to the office this year partly due to a substantial layoff that took place on Wednesday. The other reason was that Halloween fell on a Saturday. The kids were worried that they wouldn't get much Halloween candy this year since they were not going to be hitting the mother lode at Novell. However, they still managed to nearly fill up a cardboard box that held 20 reams of paper.

There is still plenty of sugar to go around!

Hike up Pleasant Grove

Adee and Adam and Beck came over to our house this weekend and spend the Halloween holiday with our family. We had a great time with them. On Saturday morning, we went on a hike up a small canyon in Pleasant Grove. We have never been up there before, and it was a fun place to go. The hike was not too strenuous and at the top you got to get up close to a beautiful little waterfall. It was an awesome morning. The weather was just perfect.

During our mini photo op sessions there in the canyon, Amber lost her glasses. As luck would have it the brown frames mixed very well with the fallen leaves that coated the canyon floor. We spent a lot of time looking for them, but were unable to find them.

Luckily, our insurance has Amber listed as being due for new glasses anyway. She was planning on already scheduling an appointment with the eye doctor to get new glasses. So, no harm done!

Pumpkin Heads

We had a great evening last Thursday night carving pumpkins as a family. It is probably the latest time during the Halloween holiday that we have ever carved pumpkins. However, life just seems to have been running away with a slightly. I had a missionary meeting that night, but since we still have not carved pumpkins I stayed home for the first part of the meeting in order to complete the task with the kids.

We had a great time working on their creations. When we were done, we took some creative photos of the kids and I doctored up one of the pictures as you can see here.

Halloween

I am finally all ready for halloween. Finished my pumpkin this morning and then got my big bowl of candy all ready. Last year I ran out of candy twice and had to run to the store to get more candy. This is a fun neighborhood because we get a lot of little kids trick or treating here.

Welcome Baker City, OR

Well, we have entered Oregon and are having pizza at the local pizza hut.

At about Boise we hit some heavy rains that have followed us into Oregon. We are wondering if we will be wet for the rest of the trip!

Modesto Storm

We are currently having a big storm passing through town. We typically don't have storms like this until after all the leaves have fallen off the trees. But due to the high winds and the sail in the trees, this is what I came home to. The picture above is the house right across the street.


This is the house next door to mine. The other house next door to mine had a limb break and land on my power line. My landlord was able to get the power company over here within a half hour to chop up the branch and get it off my power line. I am now left with a mess in my back yard.
The thing that I love most about where I live are the great big Ash trees in the neighborhood. Any more big storms like this and there wont be many left.

Heading to Seattle - finally

Due to throwing up issues we left 5 hours later than we had planned but, Jace has not thrown up for 12 hours.

Jace looks like he's doing well so we are going to try it out.

From A's

Time to pay our respects

We have been hosting Ashlee and Brett's kids this week.

While I was off to work today, Elyvia asked Amber where I was. Amber told her that I was working. Since Brett works from home, working somewhere besides a room in the house is foreign to their kids. When Amber claimed I was working, Elyvia knew that I wasn't in our office room of the house. Instead, she shook her head sadly and concluded, "No, I think John-Daddy must be dead."
Sent via my blackberry

Jace gets a Promotion

These last few days we have been having Elyvia and Gretchyn staying at our house.  Today, Gretchyn kept asking Amber where "Jesus" is.  Amber worked on trying to answer her to a level that would satisfy Gretchyn's question. After a few minutes, Amber realized that Gretchyn was really trying to ask where "Jace" was.

Man, that cousin sure has high esteem for little Jace :-)