First Bee Stings for Marcus and Lucas

 Marcus got his first bee sting ever on his pointer finger.  He was pretty sad.  He was playing in our backyard on the play set.

  Not many days later, Lucas got his first bee sting ever right below his right eye.  His was also from playing on that play set.  His stayed visible for a few days.  So now all three boys have been stung by a bee.  Angela was stung for the first time when we lived in Pennsylvania as an adult.  Brian's been stung a couple times when he was younger.

Fall 2013 Soccer

Marcus played his first season of soccer for the Green Giants team.  He was fairly timid most of the season and enjoyed watching his teammates dribble the ball.  Towards the end of the season he started to get a bit more aggressive and actually scored 4 goals.

  Here's Marcus giving 5's to the other team at the end of the game.

Here's some video of Marcus scoring 3 goals, though you can only see him in the video scoring the last goal.  Hooray for Marcus.

Lucas played for Arsenal with 1st and 2nd graders, so he was one of the younger kids on the team.  He did pretty well and enjoyed played solid defense.  He assisted many of his teammates on scoring goals but didn't score many himself this season.  Last season he was constantly scoring goals.

Here's some video of Lucas playing hard.  He's the one wearing the jacket, under his jersey, with a hood.

Travis also played for Arsenal but for the 3rd and 4th graders team.  Brian was the coach of the team.  At the end of the season Brian handed out personalized medals to each kid.  Travis earned the Policeman Award for stopping the "bad guys" and taking the ball away from them (good defense).

 Here's a team photo of Travis' and Brian's team.

Here's some video of Travis dribbling up the field and then running back to be on defense.

After the last game of the season, Travis' team wanted to play a game against the parents.  So all our boys played on the kids team and Brian played on the parents team.  Here's some video from that fun game.

Rafting and Abbiqu Lake Trip

We decided to spend a Saturday rafting down a river that flows into Abbiqu Lake that is about an hour's drive from our house.  Angela was going to drop us boys off at the start and drive down a ways to read a book while waiting for our arrival.  Brian and the boys got into the raft, wearing life jackets, and set off as you can see in the video.  Soon after the video ended and Angela drove away, Brian realized that this wasn't going to work out well since the river wasn't deep enough.  So they got out and had to walk back.  Well Angela couldn't see that this had happened and had no idea where they were.  Finally after a prayer was said, Angela found the boys where she had left them.  At least nobody got hurt.

We then decided to go swimming at Abbiqu Lake.  Here's Travis jumping in.

 Lucas and Travis swimming.

And here's Marcus clinging to a rock.

Travis again

It was nice to be able to sit on these rocks right at the lake level.

Angela got in and swam a ways with Travis and Lucas.

And here's some video of our swimming.

Happy Birthday Brian

In August we celebrated Brian's birthday.  We had his favorite cake, Angela food cake (I mean Angel food cake).

Annual Interviews, First Day of School, and Primary Program Parts

Borrowing an idea we leaned from our good friends, the Bakers, we have been doing video recorded annual interviews for the past three years.  Here's the 2013 edition highlights.  You'll notice that one of our children is not camera shy and is quite thorough in his answers.  The entire video clip of this was to long to upload here but is quite funny in its entirety.

Also as an annual tradition, Angela makes signs for each boy for the breakfast on the first day of school that she places in their glasses.  She makes a fancy breakfast and puts decorations all around the table.  Here's the boys holding their signs.

Now the silly picture with the signs.

We also recently did the ward's primary program.  Each of our boys had a part.  We recorded them saying their parts after it happened.  Marcus did much better in the real thing than in the video below.  We had to have him repeat it many times before we got one that was decent.  Angela was the pianist for the program and Brian was even asked to sit in for kid crowd control.

Day at Cliffs Amusement Park

Angela's sister Heather visited us from Las Vegas (the NV one not the NM Las Vegas) and we decided to spend one of the days at Cliff's Amazement Park (as the radio commercial calls it) in Albuquerque.  The first ride the younger kids wanted to ride was the log ride.  Angela had to stay behind with Travis to finish some homework so Brian rode with Marcus and Heather rode with Lucas.  I don't think the boys quite knew how scary it would be on the downhill.  However they did have fun.  Here's Heather and Lucas coming in at the end of the ride.

 Our kids always enjoy the bumper cars.  Unfortunately Marcus was too young to ride on his own so he rode with Lucas.  Apparently they didn't read the "One Way" sign in the background.

Here's Lucas and Marcus again on a small race car ride.

Cliffs also has a water park that we spent some time at.  The water was VERY cold though.

Brian and Marcus basically stayed long enough to get this photo taken before exiting the water area.

We have determined that Lucas is our brave child.  He was the only one willing to ride one of the real roller coasters with Heather and Mom.  Here they are clinging for life as they round a sharp turn (obviously for Heather this was simply like leisurely driving around a corner in the neighborhood).  Brian was the designated "stay with the scaredy cat boys parent"since he gets motion sickness on these kinds of rides.

Here's a family photo at the end.  It was quite a fun place.

Finally, here's a video of Travis and Heather who rode the log ride just before leaving the park.  You gotta love Travis' response after the ended.

Denver Trip for Cousin Ryan's Baptism

 Angela and the boys drove up to Denver to go see our cousin Ryan's baptism.  They got to see lots of Pippin family while they were there.  A bunch of them went to see the U.S. Mint in Denver.

Our boys enjoyed the mint since they love coins, especially Lucas who looks for coins everywhere.

Our kids got to go miniature  golfing with the Hoerler kids.  From L to R it's Travis, Christopher, Eric, Lucas, Marcus, Abby, and Amanda.

Then they spent some time with the Pippin kids and apparently enjoyed some tablet time together.

Here's Angela and our boys with Ryan.  A big day for him.

Here's most of the crew there for Ryan's baptism, including some of Mary's family.  Pretty neat that Ryan got to be baptized by his bishop (his dad).