Rilan, Rilan, Rilan!!!

supposed to be a video of Rilan running his electric car Thain bought him, but so far

it hasn't uploaded, not sure it will work!

                               Rilan having bath time fun aka destroying whatever he can, gotta

love that smile though!

 Out on a walk on a nice day!  

 In his electric car, he can seriously drive it and steer it around kitchen corners and everything, the video is supposed to show that but I don't think it will download right on here don't know why!   loves all his big cars though....our living room looks like a toddler

parking garage!!!  

With Amber on his favorite car the one Grandad and Grandma got him for Christmas!

This and That from Dad and Mom!

This is out of order as I accidentally deleted it! It's the real (there are two) golden spike from the joining of the Union Railroad's easterly and westerly divisions in Promontory, Utah. It was of special interest to me as the Blaines and Jill took Granny and me there a few years ago and we got to see 'the' spot that joined the two. This spike is in the Railroad Museum in Sacramento and automatically goes down into a vault every evening at 5:00 pm when the museum closes and comes back up at 10:00 am when it reopens.
Bronco, Nate, Jill, Thain, and Rilan prepare for laser tag at Emily's 10th birthday celebration in January! They did great!
Emily is attempting to control the ball in one of her great gifts.
Deven built this fire station almost all by himself from the many pieces in one of his Christmas gifts.
Nate, Ben, Deven, Emily, Jen and Bronco in a family picture in front of the font after Benjamin's baptism.
Colby wearing his letter jacket - the Bobcats were the divisional champions this year, and Colby was key as their offensive guard!
I had the honor of sewing on his letter!
This is one of the aftermaths of our beautiful snowstorm a month ago. Two huge oaks tumbled and crashed. Unfortunately they damaged some fruit trees and Dad's electric fence around the bee hives. He spend many cold hours repairing that fence because we were leaving the next day for our Road Scholar "Trains across the Sierra" trip and wanted no bears dining while we were gone.
While touring the capitol in Sacramento we passed all the countys' displays. This one for San Mateo County has a picture of the Pulgas Water Temple near the center, which happens to be where Dad proposed to me!
A picture of California's Governor's office

Dad and I loved the railroad museum with all the different cars and engines - a few we walked through were a dining car with samples of china from the different lines, a Pullman (sleeper), a mailcar, etc. Upstairs are wooden trains and tracks for kids to play with, and this working display of different sizes of Lionel trains. A Lionel electric train was big in the lives of my brothers growing up - for years they and our dad had one going around our Christmas trees!
Dad and I had a yummy meal at Fats Restaurant in Old Town after our afternoon at the museum .

On our Amtrack Zephyr trip across the Sierras we saw oodles of snow and stately trees, beautiful clouds, traveling along the Truckee River and Interstate 80 in parts, and went through many tunnels, one several miles long.
Yesterday Brianna's school's choir put on a wonderful program. This is a scene from their segment on Star Wars.

Happy Birthday Jeremy!!

Just wanted to wish you a very Happy Birthday Jeremy!!  We hope you have a wonderful day!

Happy Birthday Bronco!

 Bronco's fishy cake.  I got the idea from the Family Fun Magazine Mom!

 Thanks for the super cute monkey Jeremy and Kathryn.  He loved it!

 Checking out his reflection in the game cube from Grandma and Granddad, thanks Mom and Dad!

 Bronco's cute puppy from Aunt Jill.  So fun to watch him do a flip!  Great idea Jill!

 This is my favorite picture, he's trying so hard to blow out his candle.  He hated getting his hands all sticky in the frosting.  I gave him a spoon.  He liked that a lot better. I cut everyone pieces from the big cake before he got to work on it.  As you can see in the video, he did really good at making a mess of it!

 I've put in a little video of him feeding himself with a spoon for the first time.  

When should we teach him how to chew with his mouth closed?

It's a Girl!!!

Just had an ultrasound today and  the tech said it was deffinetly a little girl!  Yeay.  Also everything looked and measured normal and healthy!!    Which is always wonderful to hear.   None of the pics turned out that good so I won't blog them but I wanted to share the exciting news!    Love to all.  The Anderson's!

Merry Christmas from Mantua!

This year we made a gingerbread house from scratch.  There are even rolled out gumdrop stained glass windows on the side of the house that unfortunately are hidden from the camera. We are enjoying picking off treats.



A lot of rain made a lot of the snow has melt, but we'll take what we can get.  We are hoping most of it sticks around for Saturday.  I would love to get some more cross country skiing in!  It's my favorite snow activity.   The kids can play outside for hours, literally!  The neighbor dogs come over to play and Ben gets mad at them because he doesn't want them ruining the snow hill that Nate built.  It even has a big jump this year.



Santa hasn't even come yet!  This is the benefit to a large and very generous family!  The kids are going to experience another dream Christmas full of everything they could ever want.  I just hope they stay nice kids, with all the things they get.  Thanks for mailing out the packages everyone!  I was expecting to get them from Jill when she came back.  I know shipping isn't cheap, so thanks for doing that.





Bronco had just learned how to crawl, and this was so funny.  He wouldn't put down his sippy cup for anything.  It looked kind of like a cow udder swinging under him as he went along...

We will miss all of you this weekend.  Sorry John, Mom and Dad's tree is going to look void of presents, because half of the grandkids presents are out here.  We hope you all enjoy the peace, because you might not get it next year.  We love you all and look forward to seeing you in Florida!

Oregon Update

Hey Fam! Been awhile, so here are a few random pictures and stories. Hope everyone is doing great!

 We went to a local cut-your-own tree farm nearby in Oregon City, OR to get our first tree for our house. Here is Alisa picking it out. It was fun to go cut it down and drag it back, but it wasn't quite the same as going into the deep woods to find one. I miss that tradition!











Here is Alisa decorating the tree. We have quite a few ornaments, but not quite enough to fill it up. Alisa says that one of the first things she thought of when seeing the little alcove in our main room is that it would be a great place to put a tree. So, there was no discussion on where to finally put it when we got it back to the house!

The tree is starting to accumulate a few presents. Most of which need to get in boxes and sent to Utah for the Blaines. We will miss you all next week (and a few days)!

 I had been taking a picture a day for every run I did. Here is a picture on my last run before my knee (supposedly my good one!) decided to not play along with marathon training and get injured. I've been off it for a good couple of week, and while I don't expect to finish fast in Florida, I do hope to finish! I even was able to run 3 miles today without any pain. Oh, yeah, back to the picture: there is a cool little farm with all sorts of fowl along the bike path/running trail that isn't too far from our house. On that day I saw that there was also a family of otters(?) near the farm. I caught one of them "sunning" itself on the bank.

 Our fence along the house next to us starts at 6 feet and goes down to 4 feet. That is about 4 times as tall as Zoey is, so there is no way she can jump over it, right? Wrong. With the arrival of a new dog next door (a cute pup named Peanut, formerly Mango), Zoey was motivated to try to get over and say hello. Well, she was able to jump over by first getting just high enough to get her hind legs on the little perch there at the top. The neighbors said that she was free to come over any time she liked, but we somehow felt that they would actually get sick of us constantly retrieving her. So....

  Over a very cold weekend we put up a trellis system above the 4-foot section. Thankfully, the length was exactly 24 feet long and three pre-framed 8 foot sections fit snugly in place. I had to extend the short posts by a couple of feet, which looks great on our side, but you can see the metal connector on the neighbor's side. They are a very nice couple however, and even helped us put it up. We had to quickly stain the trellis, no easy task in short wintry days, and here is Alisa showing how much she enjoys the task.

 We are happy with the result and look forward to the spring when we will probably put in one or two vertical trellises (the plural of that should really be trellii as I like the sound of it), and plant some jasmine to climb along the fence.

 Zoey, however, isn't nearly as happy. Here she is checking out the fence. I swear she knows which fence slat she is at by smelling them. Prior to Zoey jumping over the fence, there was a loose fence slat that Bill (the neighbor) repaired after she had gotten through. She would sniff along the fence and return to that one to scratch at it. Anyway, I think the trellis has locked her up pretty well in the back fence. Though now, I worry she will some day learn that she can probably get over the gate we built for her!

  I've been volunteering at the local science museum both in the "featured exhibit" hall and in the laser lab. The laser lab is fun, but I am stuck back in a dark room where it can be half an hour before anyone comes in. I was wiling the time away last time I was there by taking long exposures of the diffracted light we pass through fog creating a rainbow. You can also see green speckling from the laser we use to display a hologram and some fiber-optic light fixtures. 

Finally, I was going through pictures to post on the blog and found this one from our house-warming party and had to post it. Alisa is getting ready to fill those cupcakes with lemon curd. They were great! Anyway, love this picture and it gave me a smile.

Thanks for reading! See you all soon!