Christmas is here already?!

Okay, so I'm bad. I didn't realize how long it had been since I updated this blog. I tend to quickly post things on Facebook and neglect this, so if you like to read this, I apologize!

November and December have literally flown by. Thanksgiving was great...had a fun time in Southern CA and enjoyed seeing all of my extended family on Thanksgiving Day. December has been crazy and busy...but filled with fun! Spent my birthday in San Francisco, with Kenny, and we had such a great time walking all over the city. We estimated that we walked almost 12 miles in a day and a half. We have now finished our rounds of recitals and parties...and Christmas is almost here!

Nathan was also baptized and joined our church this month. What a blessing to see him grow in God's grace. He was baptized with two of his friends, so it was a special day for all.

We've been reading a great book, as a family, called Jotham's Journey. I highly recommend it for families to read during this time of year. Helped us to keep Christ in focus, and was a daily reminder of how God sent his own Son as a little baby...a helpless baby...to be our Savior. It's easy to forget that, with the busy times of Christmas...and it was good to be reminded as a family that it is because of HIM that we even celebrate this holiday.

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of months...MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!

December

Union Square in San Franciso
San Francisco...on my birthday! We had a great time!

After Nathan's baptism - Kat, Pastor Trummel, Nathan and Emily - December 6

Our family, after Nathan's baptism

We had snow in Brentwood! This was taken from Nathan's bedroom window...very much zoomed in, but we rarely see snow here! It was pretty!

November

Tim has taught himself to play the ukelele...he even bought one with his own money and never seems to put it down.

The kids on Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day

Dan and Lizzy with their cousin Kyleigh

Halloween Fun

Nathan as The Joker

Tim as The Mailman

Dan as a Mime

Lizzy as a little Black Cat

Dan carved most of this pumpkin by himself (with a template). We hadn't ever tried those templates before and they were hard!!

This one was a group effort, again using a template.

Visiting Grandma at Eskaton earlier in the day.

Nathan and Tim's Excellent Adventure

Skillet concert

Nathan drove....

Friends!

This past Sunday, Nathan and Tim went with a group of their friends down to Fresno. They left early in the morning to make it to church there, and then spent the day with the Troupe family. In the evening, the group of teens went to the Skillet/Hawke Nelson concert in downtown Fresno. They had a great time! They returned on Monday morning; tired and with scratchy voices. :)

Tagged by Stef...and Jess too...

So, I saw this a LONG time ago...but just now getting around to doing it. :)

~Couple's Quiz~

♥ What are your middle names?

Anne and Lance

♥How long have you been together?

We've known each other our entire lives; started dating about 2 years before getting married. We have been married for 20 years!

♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating?

See above...

♥ Who asked who out?

He did the asking.

♥ Who made the first move?

He did.

♥ How old are each of you?

Jill - almost 43 (write it down Stef! haha)

Kenny - 44

♥ Did you go to the same school?

Yes we did!

♥ Are you from the same home town?

yes.

♥ Who is the smartest?

Kenny is smarter as far as technical things, but I have more common sense. ;-)

♥ Who majored in what?

Me- Spanish

Kenny - didn't major in anything...was in the Navy and learned Nuclear Engineering there.

♥ Who is the most sensitive?

Me

♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple?

Panda Express

♥ Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?

Mexico - Mazatlan

♥ Who has the worst temper?

probably me, but neither of us really have bad tempers

♥ How many children do you want?

the four we have...looking forward to grandchildren in the future!

♥ Who does the cooking?

Me.

♥ Who is more social?

Kenny; although I have more friends, Kenny will talk to anyone. ha!

♥ Who is the neat-freak?

Me.
Although I'm not as neat as I used to be...

♥ Who is the most stubborn?

Kenny

♥ Who wakes up earlier?

Kenny

♥ Where was your first date?

Um...a little restaurant in Fullerton called Rutabagorz

♥ Who has the bigger family?

Kenny

♥ Do you get flowers often?

No...not anymore.

♥ How do you spend the holidays?

Thanksgiving in La Habra with my parents, Christmas at our house with all the fam here.

♥ Who is more jealous?

Neither one of us is of a jealous nature.

♥ How long did it take to get serious?

I can't remember...a year maybe?

♥ Who eats more?

Kenny

♥ What do you do for a living?
Kenny - Water Treatment Sales and Service for Garrett Callahan
Jill - Home School teacher, Mom and multi-tasker extraordinaire!

♥ Who does the laundry?

Me

♥ Who’s better with the computer?

Neither of us...Nathan...haha!

♥ Who drives when you are together?

Usually Kenny

♥ What is "your" song?

We don't really have one...we like Third Day though.

Fall

Wait, what happened to September?? It passed by so quickly...we've been busy with school and all of the kids' activities and I neglect to update this blog! I put so much stuff on Facebook now, that this falls by the wayside.

Here are a few pictures from our Capitola trip at the end of September. We had a great time, as always...great weather and fun memories made. Kenny and the boys made some huge sandcastles.

We celebrated Tim's birthday while we were in Capitola...hard to believe he's now 15 years old.

The kids enjoyed the (COLD) water...

This is a small part of the huge sandcastle that Kenny and the kids made. Sadly on our last day there, some people stomped all over it and ruined it. :(

It feels like Fall has finally arrived, with the cooler weather...nice!

Lizzy's New Haircut

Lizzy got a cute new haircut yesterday...it will be so much easier to take care of (since she seems to have an aversion to brushing her hair on a regular basis.









After her haircut, (thanks Gretchen!) Lizzy got to hold baby Gabriella Yimbo for a while!

New camera...

I got my anniversary gift in the mail this weekend...a new camera! Ever since my old camera was stolen, Kenny has been on the research trail to get a new one for our anniversary. The one we chose was not even out yet for purchase, so we had a wait a bit, but I think it will be worth the wait! It has tons of features, and will take a while to get used to. But, so far, it takes really nice pictures. I look forward to having some printed! :)

20th Anniversary Trip

I'm finally getting around to blogging about our anniversary trip last weekend! We had a fabulous time! We left Friday right around noon, and started our drive up the coast. We drove up Highway 1, which is a very WINDY road (and I was glad I was not driving!). The views were beautiful! There were several places that we stopped to take pictures and walk on trails that led right to the cliffs overlooking the sea. Breathtaking!

We spent Friday and Saturday nights in the little town of Gualala, which is a bit south from the Point Arena lighthouse. Our Bed and Breakfast, The North Coast Country Inn, was wonderful...we highly recommend it to anyone traveling up that way. We enjoyed the area sights, drove up to the Point Arena Lighthouse, visited the Gualala Regional Park which included a few miles of trials and a nice walk on the beach. We'd love to go back up there someday.

Sunday we headed back down the coast, and cut over to spend the night in Sebastopol. We spent Monday in the Sonoma Valley, where we visited three different wineries to taste wine. The vines were all loaded with grapes, as their harvest is very close. We took a great tour at our first stop, The Benziger Family Winery. Again, we'd highly recommend their tour; it was well worth the money! We also visited the oldest winery in Sonoma, Gundlach Bundschu and one other called Viansa, where we enjoyed walking around the grounds and tasted the wines there. Very fun!

God blessed our time with perfect weather - unseasonably warm on the coast and unseasonably cool in the valley. We really had a great time relaxing and just hanging out together.

And...the kids did great at home! :)

20 years ago...

Today (August 12) is our 20th anniversary! It's hard to believe that it's been 20 YEARS since we got married. How the time has flown by...and now, four kids later, we can thank God for His blessings and mercy to us!

We've lived in four different states in our 20 years...Idaho, South Carolina, Washington and California. We've moved 6 times and owned two homes. We've had a total of 4 cats, 2 dogs, a few fish and 2 hermit crabs. :)

We'll be celebrating in style in a little over one week, when we take a little getaway trip to the north coast of California...stay tuned! :)

Back home...

We just got home last night from a week spent in southern CA with my parents. We had a nice time, even though it went by really fast! That was the first time I had made the drive without Kenny...and it was much easier than I thought it would be. God was good to bring us down and back safely!

We did a lot of swimming while we were there, thanks to a friend of my parents letting us use her pool every day. We also went to a fun new pizza place, called John's Incredible Pizza, in Buena Park. The kids had a fabulous time there! I met up with some old friends, and did some scrapbooking too.

Our dog had an accident in my parents' backyard; she jumped up onto a brick wall and gashed open her leg, requiring stitches! That was a bloody mess...and an expensive vet bill.

Now I need to get my focus back on starting school...the first day of school going to come quicker than I'd like it to! :)

What have we been doing?!

How can it already be July 18th? Time goes by so quickly, especially in the summer.

The past two weeks have been a little slower than the first part of the summer, but we still seem to fill each and every day with something! The kids use our pool a lot...every day in fact. I've been trying to take an hour each day to enjoy it with them. Sometimes I have to force myself to stop what I'm doing and get in...and then I'm glad that I do. :)

I've also been getting stuff ready for our upcoming school year; ordering curriculum, cleaning off our shelves and putting things away from last year. Nathan is planning to take a class or two at Los Medanos (local community college) this fall, so he's turned in the application and taken the assessment test...now we wait until August 3rd which is the day to register. Hopefully he'll get into the classes he wants, but high school students are the low priority students.

Unfortunately my camera was stolen this past week. :( Tim borrowed it to take on an outing with some friends, and while they were swimming in a creek, someome came along and stole the camera and another friends' iPod. Sad!!! Tim felt really bad about it, and offered to give me his camera (which he didn't take with him b/c it was being repaired). I wouldn't take away his camera, but told him he could maybe share it with me until we get a new one. :)

Nothing much else is new here...just enjoying the summer days while they last. Before we know it, it will be time to start school again.

4th of July

We had a fun 4th...fun picnic with friends, fireworks and relaxing! We even went to Red Robin for dinner as a family that evening, which was a treat!

We are done with swimming lessons, and are enjoying this week of relative inactivity. We have a couple of park days this week, but not much else. NICE!

Enjoy the pictures...Nathan made the collage from our picnic, and Tim took the fireworks picture.

Swimming Lessons

Lizzy has been taking swimming lessons; she just finished her first week with one more week to go. She's doing great! We started her out in the Y3 Class (youth, level 3 of 6 levels). She was able to do everything in that class by the third day, so the teacher moved her into the next level up (Y4). What a difference! The first class was taught in the shallow pool, where the depth was about 4 feet. In her new class, it's 13 feet deep...in the deepest part of the lap pool!

Yesterday was her first day in that class, and the teacher said hello...and then told her to dive in and swim freestyle across the entire pool! As I sat watching in the bleachers, I thought to myself..."there is NO way she's going to do that." But, to my delight and surprise, she jumped right in and swam! Pretty cool! Lizzy also swam backstroke, and attempted the breast stroke. They also got to jump in from the 1 meter diving board, again..."there's no way Lizzy will do THAT!" Again...she did it, with only slight hesitation. Great job!! :)

The first picture is of Lizzy and her friend Jackson. He's taking lessons too!

VBS

Dan and Lizzy went to VBS all last week and had a fantastic time! They were sad to know it's over...but, on to next week and swimming lessons! I think summer is often more busy than the regular school year.

We've also enjoyed picking local fruit...our favorites are apricots, and since it hasn't been terribly hot, we're hoping they'll last longer than normal. Yummy!

Nathan and Tim are away this weekend, in Fresno, on a 'missions trip' to help out at a church plant down there. They are having a great time, and helped do some yard work for a couple of elderly ladies, held a car wash and passed out over 1000 Bibles in the community. Wow! Hopefully they took some pictures that I can post when they return.

That's all for now...

Fruit Picking!

Lizzy enjoying an apricot

Dan and Tim enjoying some cherries!

The trees were loaded...easy pickin'!

Such a pretty day...clean and sunny! But only in the high 70's! So unusual for June. This is Mt. Diablo.

Beautiful!