New Job

So Aaron got a new job at FedEx working 3rd shift! He is taking 17 credit hours on top of that and hardly has any time to sleep. Poor man. And yet, we find ourselves very grateful for our life, each other and our beautiful children. We frequently look back at our life 'before kids' and realize how selfish we were. It will be good to look back in a few more years and see more progress and growth (hopefully.)

Our reasons for doing what we do!!!

clever little boy

Jacen likes to bargain with us. Whenever we tell him it is time to stop playing he will say "5 more minutes" or something similar. He will ask for cheese and we can tell him that he can have 3 slices of cheese he will say "no 6 pieces of cheese" and we eventually settle on a number in-between. Bathtime-5 more minutes; get out of the bath-2 more minutes.

Us: Jacen you can bring 2 cars with you.
Jacen: ummm...I think 4 cars.
Us: No, you only have 2 hands so 2 cars.
Jacen: How about 3 cars?

You get the picture. So last night as I went to read to Jacen before bed I told him we would read 1 book. It was late and we wanted to hurry and get him in bed. Of course Jacen began the bartering, "2 books." We went back and forth for a few minutes me standing firm in my position, Jacen in his. I finally told Jacen, "UNO!" and held up one finger. Jacen's response? He held up two fingers and said, "No DOS!"

We read two books.

autographed copies available soon

The scan quality isn't the greatest (I think our scanner died on the trip back from Texas) but you can at least see what we got.

Jacen's pics

I scanned Jacen's pictures together and uploaded them. I honestly wasn't sure this would work because of how our scanner works but I finally figured it out. I'll scan and post the family photos and Ian's pictures tonight.

be it ever so humble...

Well, the holidays are over and we have returned home. Actually we came back several days ago but I think it has taken us that long to recover. We went to Texas for the Christmas holiday this year and had a wonderful time. We spent several days in Dallas and got to see most of the Upshaw clan: Robert and Dawna, Dave and Ginger, and Tommy and Tiffany -- who shacked us up for our stay in Dallas. Jacen and DJ (Tommy and Tiffany's oldest boy) got along really well and that made for a much easier stay. We also rented Guitar Hero III and THAT made for a much easier stay too. We all totally geeked out playing it, even the girls. And considering how much Shanna mocked me for wanting to play it I was especially grateful that she too channelled her inner Eddie Van Halen. We had dinner and watched the Cowboys game at Dave and Ginger's, went to a Dallas Mavericks game and sat in a luxury box, and opened Christmas presents with Tommy and Tiffany. And of course Tommy and I insulted each other repeatedly the whole time.

After several days in Dallas we drove up to Hale Center to visit my Dad and sisters. Again we had a great time. No more Guitar Hero but we did play Apples to Apples and Pit. We introduced Apples to Apples to my family last time we were there and everyone loved it. This time we took Pit and again everyone enjoyed it. Something about shouting at one another really brings my family together. j/k. But it WAS a lot of fun especially because we had so many people playing. While we were there I started scanning photographs that my sisters and Dad have that I don't. I wanted to preserve them in a digital format but was overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos so I started to get pretty selective. When I had the idea to scan all the photos I was going to scan a photo and keep a spreadsheet of who was in it and the approximated date the photo was taken. Instead I piled as many pictures as I could fit on the scanner at one time and scanned. Rinse and repeat. It will be a near-Herculean task to sort and edit all the photos now but many of them are safely digitized in my laptop.

After Hale Center we drove north a bit to Amarillo and stayed with Totch and Kathy Upshaw. No games but a lot of talking and sleeping. It is always nice talking to Totch and Kathy because they have amazing insight and perspective.

We drove back to Dallas and had dinner with Tommy and Tiffany one more time before going off to an airport hotel and we flew home the next day. The plan was that if we stayed in a hotel near the airport then we didn't have to get up as early to get to the airport for our 8:30 am flight and we could avoid Dallas traffic. Good idea, poorly executed. We were moving pretty slowly in the morning and after getting the kids up and dressed, eating breakfast and turning in the rental car we made it to the check in desk at 8:04. In order to get your bags checked you have to be checked in 30 minutes before. 4 minutes. Shanna and I recounted the numerous ways we could have shaved 4 minutes off our morning. So that was $50 a ticket for us to catch the next flight. And to add insult to injury our bags were too heavy so in front of all creation we got to rearrange our luggage to get two of our bags below 50 pounds. Wonderful. We were now on the 11:30 flight. After waiting for a couple of hours at our new gate a gate agent came up and announced that the plane was having mechanical problems and they were rescheduling flights. Ugh. So now we have to move to a new gate and our flight now leaves at 1:15. But we did make it home finally.