Just for cuteness

He was watching me very intently while I brushed my teeth, so I got his toothbrush out. He did a pretty good job!

Just plain cute. You can tell he was teething that day.

His first experience with snow. He finally reached to pull some grass out from underneath. He wasn't phased at all by the snow!

Like mother, like son.

Again, just plain cute!

Well, I hope all of you are doing pretty well. (I hope you're still reading this blog!) We're doing pretty well here. Jeremy is working hard on his new project at work and on his calling at Church. Elijah is finally realizing that he can actually travel if he squirms, wiggles, and rolls just right. I see crawling in the not so distant future - I best make sure things find homes around here! He already has 7 teeth!

I feel like I am just moving right along with the same stuff as always. I was recently called as the Mia Maid advisor but I have yet to teach a real lesson. I have been asked to teach piano lessons but I have yet to figure out the logistics for that. Wish me luck!

We love you guys! Hopefully we won't blow away in this Oklahoma weather!

A few fun pictures:

Count your many blessings! Name them One by One!

Hello everyone, I haven't been on here in a real long time. I wanted to share the good news with everyone about my Career at Bizjet. A couple of weeks ago a company called me and offered me a job at Nordam. This is a well known company here in the Tulsa area. I would be working on Airplane Engine Thrust Reverser's. In case you didn't already know they are what helps the airplane stop so quickly during landing. The aircraft can stop without them but more then likely will melt the brakes. Even with thrust reverser's the brakes get very hot.
Anyways the job would start me off at $5 more an hour then I was making at Bizjet. This was a golden opportunity that I couldn't just let pass by. The only down side was that I would be taking a risk that I might not get the job since I would be contract to hire. Then if they decided to keep me I would be evaluated and my pay would be adjusted accordingly. Since I haven't had experience with Thrust Reverser's before there would be a good chance they would give me a lower pay.
After much prayer and thoughtful consideration both April and I felt it was the direction that God wanted us to go. After I signed on and put in my 10 day notice my Bosses at Bizjet had a meeting with me and asked me what it would take to keep me there. I asked for a $3 an hour raise and I liked the other things they were offering me also. A two week Boeing 737 course worth $26,000 and a chance for a leadership position with a new job coming up. The job was scrapping old boeing 737 aircraft which sounded like lots of fun. I told them I needed the weekend to consider the matter and they told me that they needed some time to approve my pay raise.
With much more prayer we felt it was in our best interest to stay with Bizjet were I have job security, expensive aircraft training and the chance for leadership positions. As long as they approved my $3 an hour raise.
They did and we decided to stay. It's nice to have a company which is willing to fight to keep me. Since then the contract for the old boeing 737 scrap project was approved and I now I'm the one in charge of the project. My current job position is "Project Manager/Supervisor/Working Crewcheif" I didn't expect them to give me that much responsibility. Its nice that they trust me and my work enough that they are willing to put me in a position over what could be the newest branch of Bizjet if everything works well.
Today I also had a big surprise. I was working on the air compressor that Gary gave me when he bought a new one. Well while I was drilling a hole in a mounting bracket I had a strong feeling that I should be holding the bracket the way I was. Unfortunately this was one of those times I didn't listen and the drill bit slid off the bracket into my leg. Unfortunately our drill trigger button gets stuck in the on position even after letting off the trigger. This was one of those times. Do you know what happens when a high speed rotating object gets a hold of clothes? It grabs hold, pulls in and wont let go. There was nothing to keep the drill from going into my leg. In fact it should have went into my leg. I have 2-3 inch holes in my pants and under garment to prove it. It was almost as if God made my skin as hard as steel. The only evidence I have of what could have happened is my clothes and two small round abrasions on my right inner thigh. I should be in the emergency room right now... I must count my many many blessings!!!

Christmas at Our House

We just thought we might send along a walk through of our front yard and inside to show how we were decorated for Christmas this year. I made use of the after Christmas sales to get a thousand or more new lights for the outside. Also Andrew gave me a fantastic programed LED color changing light set that I have to plan a place for next year. So we should be close to or excede the 5,000 lights outside. I also really want to do a Nativity for the front yard since this is really all about the birth of the Savior. I enjoy turning down our street at night seeing our home all lit up. Too bad it all has to come down today.

Back to Branson

Nancy and I made a quick trip to Branson over the weekend. Our friend, Bella Dutton, had insisted when we were there in September that we come back for the Christmas show. So we drove up Friday afternoon, met her and the four kids for dinner then got front and center seats at the show. I think she was anxious fro me to get pictures of her kids in the show. Afterwards we were treated to ice cream at the snack bar next door. We were supposed to stay with them but they had water leak at home that messed things up so we stayed at the hotel. Accomodations in Branson are pretty inexpensive this time of year.

We were offered tickets to a morning show but we went to visit them. Turned out they had a Relief Society program, "The Ten Vrigins", so Nancy went to that with Bella and I worked with Jonathan and the kids to clean the church. They have a Tuesday night show and then they all caravan at midnight to Mesa, AZ to do a 4 month stint there, starting Thursday. Tough life!

On the way home we went through Pittsburg, Kansas to vist our dear friend Betty Cook. She's about 86 years old but very alert. She had a stroke and says that it made her forget a lot of her 70's. She is so entertaining to visit and always grateful to have us around, or so she says.

Elijah's first parade!

Well, Mom called me at 8:45 Friday morning and asked if Elijah and I would like to go to the Veterans' Day Parade with her and Dad. That gave me forty five minutes to get the two of us ready, but we made it! It was a lot of fun! Elijah didn't mind the noise at all, it kind of seemed like he liked the noise (especially the large groups of motorcycles that stopped right in front of us)! He really liked having so many people to watch and smile at!

My favorite part of the parade was watching Dad. He looked sharp in his uniform and he had a great big smile on his face the whole time! He saluted the many flags and many of the veterans in the parade and many of the veterans in the parade saluted him and other people thanked him. It was really neat. There was a marine in his dress blues just a little down the street from us. Dad said Jeremy looked better in the uniform - I agreed :)

As a group of Marine veterans drove by, one of them caught my eye, pointed to Elijah and said "beautiful baby". Dad proudly pointed to Elijah and shouted back, "son of a Marine!" (Or something like that - there was a lot of noise.)

I hope you enjoy the videos despite the brevity and the lack of light.

On a side note, Elijah has two teeth!

Shaken but not Stirred

I never would have believed that we lived in "divers places" but after yesterday I'm sure of it. Nancy and I were awakened by what sounded to me like an explosion after 2 AM yesterday. It probably sounded like that because I just got in on the end of it. I thought a house may have blown up, but when I heard no sirens I decided it may have been an earthquake. Nancy recognized it as a quake right off. She says she heard the rumble leading up to it. Turns out to have been a 4.8 Richter quake with epicenter 6 miles NW of Prague, Oklahoma.

After a long day including a temple trip, I turned off the light and rolled over to kiss Nancy and what a kiss!! The heater in our room was cooling down and it sounded like it was surging at first but the rumble got louder until we felt the house shake. For the next few minutes we could feel minor shaking going on. We turned the lights on and went through the house looking for cracked walls and found none. We turned the news back on and they announced that there had just been another quake. It was 5.6 Richter and centered at Sparks, Oklahoma. News had it that andother occured after 3AM but wasn't enough to awaken us or else we were getting used to them. The news today also indicated that there had been about a dozen quakes through the day.

Late news from a lazy blogger

I just wanted to insert a couple of things that I have done this fall. The first is going to a fly -in in Bartlesville the end of September to see and ride in a very rare airplane. Ford only built 199 Tri-Motors and the one owned by EAA is the last flying. It was the first totally enclosed airliner, making a breakthrough in commercial air travel. One of the other ones was restored by the Tulsa American Airlines employees which is hanging in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Daddy designed and built the fuel management system for it. AA flew it for a few years before turning it over to the museum.

The engines are not original but the rest of the plane is. The 1929 Curtis-Wright 300 hp engines are not available so they use 450hp Pratt & Whitney's from the Beech 18s that are readily available. The plane needs little runway and cruises at 85-90 mph. I found out that the rides were $70 but they sell the front right seat for $100. So I put up the extra for that. I told the pilot, who was a Delta A320 captain, that I was a former flight instructor so he knew I could speak somewhat intelligently about the plane. I never dreamed that he would turn it over to me after we got in the air! What a hoot! The control is a big circular stearing wheel that is used to herd it through the sky. It was stable but took a lot of effort to get it to go where I wanted it to.

The next activity was going water skiing at the ward campout. The water was glassy at Eufala lake - perfect for the tow. Walt Bowers had brought his boat because he wanted to make sure I got to ski. The bishop was sitting on the shore and had heard that I hadn't skied in a very long time. So when I instructed Walt to get me up on both skis then come around so I could drop one, the bishop burst out laughing and bet me that I would fall on my face when I attempted the drop.

I quickly realized that it took a lot of strength to ski and I wasn't going to last long. I bought my own skis since nobody ever had skis to suit me and the ones I got are pretty nice. The ski slipped off so easy and I left the bishop with egg on his face! He later told me that next year he will make sure I have more opportunities to try my skis. It was a fun ride, which I repeated a couple of hours later. Then Walt hit a submerged log and bent the saft on his boat.

Utah part two!

This is what we found at the bottom of the hill. We went inside and found ourselves directly beneath the area where we tok the first photo. It was really neat and very cool (literally - there was still a large pile of snow down there).



The next day we got a big shake, went to Garden City's park and sat on the beach to eat it (the shake) before we headed back to Logan.

On our way back we stopped to hike the Limber Pine Trail. This next picture shows Jeremy and Elijah in front of a tree that is estimated to be almost 600 years old. to give you an idea of the size, Jeremy is sitting onit in the next picture.

We wen to the Logan temple just shortly after we got back to Grandma's and Grandpa's. I had actually never been inside any temple except for the OKC temple (and Dallas just for baptisms). I think my jaw actually dropped when I walked into the dressing room. I'm pretty sure most of the OKC temple could actually fit inside that one room. If it wasn't for the sisters waiting to point the way throughout the temple, I would have gotten lost!

We spent much of Thursday in Salt Lake. Jeremy had never seen Temple Square. It was really pretty. There were lots of sister-missionaries buzzing around. Elijah attracted them like bees to a flower. Three sets asked to show us the "God's Plan for Families" presentation. We only went with the first set, but it was really neat.

That night Jeremy could hardly sleep. When Elijah woke up at 6am Jeremy decided to start packing up the car. We headed out Friday morning much to Elijah's dismay. He sure did hate that car seat. We all had a lot of fun but it was good to get home.

Utah!

We had a wonderful trip to Utah last week. Mom had decided to go with us - it was really nice to have her along! We started out Friday morning. Mom sat in the back and did her best to entertain Elijah. Yes, we drove all the way there - much to Elijah's dismay. Well, he didn't mind the driving so much. It was the carseat he didn't like. Friday night - just outside Denver - I was driving and the car started to wobble as if the wheels were trying to go all different directions. Mom called Dad to see what he thought. Jeremy checked everything he could think of, but didn't see anything wrong. The wobbling persisted as we drove in to the Denver area so we decided to call Kim and see if we could crash at her place and get the car checked out in the morning. Kim and Dennis started thinking of problems they thought could cause the wobbling but nothing sounded right to Jeremy.
Early the next morning we woke to the crash of one of Kim's five big cats jumping on to the edge of Elijah's bed (made the packnplay hit the wall). Then Jeremy got dressed and decided to test out a hunch he had. None of us remembered the car wobbling on the streets of Aurora. So he took the car for a drive and sure enough - it only wobbled on that one highway. So we piled back into the car and went on our way.
We got to Grandma and Grandpa's house about 7:00 Saturday evening.




Elijah got to try some new foods! Mashed potatoes, yams, a tiny bit of icecream, french fries, and frenh bread - and a couple candy sticks to pacify him in the car.

He really liked Grandpa after he got over the oxygen hose scare.

And Grandma helped him practice rolling over.


Monday night we went to a condo on Bear Lake. We explored the valley a little. We found the place where Gutzon Borglum was born (St. Charles, Idaho). We went on a hike to a natural spring in Paris, Idaho! It was beautiful! Near the spring, we saw a sign pointing towards an ice cave. We thought that sounded pretty cool (teehee) so we decided to check it out. The road was long and very bumpy. We started to think it might not even be worth it. But we got there and I was satisfied with just what we found on the surface!

We were pretty excited when we saw what was waiting at the bottom of the hill. But Elijah needs to go home and I've got laundry to take care of. So ------

TO BE CONTINUED

I just thought you would enjoy a nice video of some adorable baby laughter. So far this is the most he's ever laughed! I was just playing with him before his bath and getting a few little giggles here and there and then I sneezed! After seeing his reaction I ran for the camera. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Whenever I can get it downloaded. For now you'll have to settle for more pictures! Okay, I give up! this computer won't take anything off of my camera! So you'll have to wait.

We are staying pretty busy around here. Elijah always goes with me to our line dancing classes at the Church every Wednesday and Friday. He has learned that if he fusses, I will put him in the babypack and he can dance with me. Now he won't play by himself for very long, but at least he falls asleep during the dancing! Jeremy went with us yesterday - I've never seen him so determined in dancing! He was getting pretty good!

Well, we love all of you!