The big waves are in

The boys went out but didn't get in. 15-20' sets. There were guys out getting towed in.

Briant surfing

Cool photo!!!

Briant and Stephen surfing.

New heights reached

Food is something that consumes much of my waking time. What are we eating, who will like it, how much will I need, when will I go to the store again, which store is having a sale, how many people will be home to eat tonight, how can I make it healthier? The list goes on and on.

A couple of week ago satsuma season started, its always greatly anticipated and during the first couple of week we go through quiet a few. The first day I brought home 32lbs worth, it disappeared in 24 hrs, gone, vanished, devoured. I was somewhat awe struck, that was fast.

The next day I make a pan(9x13, none of this 9x9 stuff) of brownies, pull them out of the oven and go outside because everyone was getting home. I head back into the house after I hear all the stories and whamo there is 1 brownie in the corner, the pan and the oven are still warm.... 1 brownie left, I took it, at least I got one, they claimed they left it for me, I don't know about that but I'll go with it.

I cooked 3 Turkeys this past month. The last one was this past Sunday. One of the first things the kids said was wow mom that one is tiny. It was 14lbs, "tiny" right.

I was telling my girlfriend the story and she states
"You have reached a new height in food consumption"
Boy have we!!!!! Tonight it was a double batch of taco soup. You guessed right, gone.
Side note we've leveled off to 50 lbs of satsuma a week.
whew!

Christmas Tree trauma

For years, yes that makes it a tradition, we've gone down to a local tree farm and cut our Christmas tree down. We search for the prefect tree critiquing them all along the way, this one is to small, this one is too wide, this one has hole in it, etc...then once the perfect tree is found, and with 6 of us this can take awhile, we cut it down, each taking a turn with the saw, ride the tractor back to the stand with our perfect tree and then swing on the giant telephone pole swing that is at the farm. It's been something the kids really love and gets us in a festive mood, it's an afternoon spent together.
This year Harvey was given a free tree for giving blood, what a good guy. The free tree was not from the tree farm it was at a lot. The kids were kind of upset by this fact but we kept reassuring them that if it was ugly or to small we wouldn't take it. We got to the lot and they ask us which size we'd like and then say we'll be right back. They come out with a tree all wrapped up with string and ask us which way our car is. Well we ask if we could see it first. They look at us like were from outer space after all it's a free tree. They cut it open and voila there it is, Harvey is happy, its free and tells them to load it up.
Grace burst into tears, "this isn't right we don't get to even pick it out, we don't get to cut it down, we don't get to ride the tractor, there's no swing" NOPE! This is it, 5 min tree shopping. Very anticlimactic!
On the way home were reassuring everyone that its a wonderful tree it smells nice, its a good size, there aren't any holes. Once home we get out the saw and everyone takes a cut, we trim 4" off the bottom so we have cut the tree, we learn to love the tree, we make peace with the tree, it does smell nice, it's free after all.
There are blessing here, it just depends on who you talk to as to what they are.

Everyone had a smile by the end of the evening.

No shave November

Well here you have it folks, it's no shave November and this was the result.

Audra's Christmas concert

Audra's Christmas concert was this weekend. They did a great job.


Second chair, pretty cool.

With the Grandma's
Papa won the raffle basket that was as big a Briant.

Grace in the fall

grace has recently been to 2 table setting classes and so this past sunday we were treated to a beautiful fall table setting.



She also made her first apple pie. YUMMY!

Great job Gracie!!!!

church winter formal

Wilson's group that went.

Birthday party fun

Had the local family over for birthday dinner tonight. Mary wanted Pizza and Wilson wanted "food" so everyone was happy.

CC made the yummy cake

Love those girls cousins, they're so cute!

Surf wax = happy boy

Footsie jammies = happy girl

Love this photo!!!!!!!!!!
Happy Birthday you two!!!!

Halloween 2009

Here is the woodside crew. We had a brand new addition this year, our baby giraffe is one week old.

Wilson worn this cape a few Halloweens ago too.

Grace and Jenea

The loot!!! Grace and Jenea weighed in with 6lbs worth.

The cutest Giraffe ever.

A week in Hair

Grace had CRAZY hair day at school this week.
Audra has been growing out her hair for Locks for Love and got it cut this week.

Just for the record

We went to the Dr's office yesterday and here are the kids stats.

Wilson- 6'1" 178
Briant- 5'9" 122
Audra- 5'1" 87
Grace- 4'7" 83

They are growing fast!
It's so exciting to see them grow into amazing young people.

This weeks funny surf story

So the boys have a surf website that they use to check the local live surf conditions on, multiple times a days. It gives them a live web cam view, current swell conditions and then predicts the next few days. Usually a daily update goes like this, swells 3-5', on shore wind speed, poor to fair, or fair to good. This past week the prediction came up swells 6-10' with occasional 12' good to EPIC. Not cool or awesome, but epic. They were so excited they bounced around here in anticipation for days. So Friday they head out, they're the first ones there and watched the sunrise as they're paddling out.
"They were the best waves ever!!!"
"It was like living in a post card!!!!"
"Deep wide barrels mom, you could just sit in them and go forever"
"It was the best day of my life"
It was in EPIC day here!

Hope you have an epic day too!!!

A close encouter with the Dorsal kind

Its White shark season around here and there have been several credible sightings lately, one 13-15' even got photographed, so the boys have a healthy respect for there fellow ocean inhabitants. There had even been a credible sighting over the weekend at there favorite surf spot so... Monday they headed out at 6 am cause its late start and they're "hard core surfers" "yea mom". The swell had been really big over the weekend and they'd been out I don't know how many times and where excited to get out again before the big swell was gone. Briant was out waiting to catch a wave when not 6" off the tip of his board a large dorsal fin appears, needless to say his heart left his chest and his bladder emptied. It turned out to be a pod of dolphins, 3 more shot underneath him and one more fallowed the first one surfacing right next to his board. He was still pretty wired about it when he got home, but by the time school let out he was good enough to go out again "before the big swell was gone".

We are so blessed to live in this amazingly beautiful place! Surfing with Dolphins on a Monday morning.

NYC & cottage II

Some of the doors on our street, WOW!!!!

More of FAO Schwartz

Here are some shots of the kids being silly while we waited for the concert in the park. They were really excited with there $5 glasses purchased from a street vendor.

I Modonnari

We had I modonnari this weekend. It's a very fun event and the girls and I have been participating for the last few years. This year we got a 7 x 7 square. We did a violin but it turned out to be a life size base. Harvey even got in on the act this year.


Anne's group did the boy with his beagle puppy. She diffinitly raised the bar this year.

I also had about a dozen students there who did an amazing job!!!!!!!!!!

Summer Holiday part I

We did another Home swap this past summer. I love home swapping!!!! It opens up so many possibilities for us to travel and makes it much more comfortable.
This year we swapped with a family in Brooklyn and their sister's family in Seattle. We stayed in Brooklyn in a wonderful loft/flat of one sister's, and then her sister from Seattle stayed in our home.(A little different then your standard home swap but it worked for all of us so...) We also had one of our previous home swapping families return for a second stay here. We actually overlapped trips with this family, got to meet them in person this time and share a family dinner with them. I can't say enough positive things about the great people we meet.

So on to the trip. As many of you have heard already we lost/deleted the first 4 days of images of our trip in NYC, BUMMER! (If you know of anyone who is pro at retrieving data off a memory card that has been over written PLEASE let me know)
We did Top of the Rock, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, sampled as much NY pizza as possible, went to the Statue of Liberty and got to visit the crown which has been newly reopened to 30 luck people every hour, Elise Island, Wall St, Ground Zero including a train through the actually work site, Grand Central terminal, China town with Chinese dinner, Central Park with Chess games, Natural History Museum, MET, Time Square, Macy's, Several Churches/Cathedrals, Columbia University, The NY temple, NY philharmonic in the park one night. And a ton of other stuff.....

I'm going to start uploading photos in no particular order....enjoy!!!

Chess in Central Park

Grace with her Carousel pony in Central Park

The Temple

Saint Something ( I can't remember right now) anyway it is the largest Gothic Cathedral in the World

One of my favorite images at the MET

The street we lived on, notice impromptu thrift store.

The famous piano at FAO Swartz

Yes those are Lego's my dear Briant