Ornaments 2012

Another year, another Christmas. And another year of GREAT ornaments by dad. Ornament 1: Anita (Sister-in-law), graduated from college with a degree in elementary education. This is her diploma at a MUCH smaller scale.

Ornament 2: With a diploma comes work. This is a the white board from Anita’s Kindergarten class with all the kids names that appeared on the board the first day of class.

Ornament 3: Kindergarten was kind of a theme. Sydney started Kindergarten this year so he made her a really cool crayon. If you look really close you can even see the logo Sydney plans to use on her art so that people know it’s hers.

Ornament 4: Riker and Sydney go with dad (95%) and who ever else (normally Grandpa) to Lowes to do little projects (if you are on Facebook you have seen pictures of many of these projects. When they are there they get a patch for each project that mom sews onto there work aprons. Grandpa made a small version of the apron.

Ornament 5: This was a BIG year for the parents. They have been married for 40 years. CONGRATS mom and dad. And to symbolize that dad made a Rose.

Ornament 6: This year dad is the president of the Lions Club. As president he has to call each meeting to order with a gavel, but normally one of the members has stolen the gavel by the time the meeting starts. So to make sure he now always has one (at least at home), he made one.

Ornament 7: Ben (Danny’s brother) is an actuary and with that comes many many and did I mention MANY tests. As of this year and the passing of some more of those tests Ben now has letters after his name. Dad created him a name plate. (Name can be removed to add a new one with more letters).

Ornament 8: Riker is our little boy. And I say boy because he is about 150% boy. He likes bugs, snakes, lizards, dragons... But his number one love is dinosaurs. Grandpa made him a T-Rex Head.

As you can see. Another year of amazing ornaments. Unbelievable what our family has done, and what dad can do to show it off.

Celebrating 35 years in Vegas!

It was decided long ago that for our 35th birthdays the Reichenbach’s (Brian and Heather) and us would go on a trip together. And we decided to jet to Las Vegas for a long weekend. The date was chosen the plans were made and we were all set to go...

...then on a Thursday evening we headed to the airport for our 8:00 flight. All was going great. Then the flight was delayed by about 20 minutes, no big deal. We boarded the plane and we taxied out onto the runaway, and after sitting there a while the captain came on the speakers and said that one of the two engines was not functioning properly and we would be heading back to the terminal.

We then spent the next 8.5 hours in the terminal playing games and "sleeping" on the hard floors. While waiting for a new plane to come from Las Vegas and pick us up. At least the airline bought us all some Papa John's while we waited!




We finally arrived in Vegas at 6:00 AM local time. We hit the ground running knowing we were flying out again on Sunday and had to make every minute count. We checked into our hotel by 6:30 AM. It was fun convincing them we were late and not early for check in.

We headed out right after check in to see the sites. We went on a nice "short" walk down to the Stratosphere. It was "only" 3.5 to 5 miles one way. (Jamie is adding all the quote marks for sarcastic emphasis). That end of the strip was a bit of a let down -- and fairly run down but the rest of it is pretty interesting (for example: see sign in back left LOL)!




We looked at a lot of nice casinos hotels on our walk, and saw lots of great dragons (many of the resorts were decorated to celebrate Chinese New Year).







We looked through a lot MORE cool casinos and did a little gambling (here Brian is trying to figure out just how to win at the digital roulette - he always came away $5 richer).



After walking a total of about 10 miles we headed back to our hotel to rest for a little bit.



Yes, that canal was INSIDE our hotel. We stayed at the Venetian and our rooms were very nice too (with sectional couches and huge bathrooms)!





The reason we needed the rest is because we had tickets for that same night to go and watch (or experience) Cirque De Soliel's show “O”. It was very, artsy yet amazing - I don't think we will ever see that much human talent in one place ever again! And the stage alone was mind-blowing, it went from a pool deep enough for 4-5 story tall high dives, to a solid stage! The show went from 7:00 – 8:45 and we were operating on little to no sleep. (Don’t forget that is Vegas time and we were still on our first day there and the plane arrived at 6AM after not really having a night's sleep. )

Our second day was much more relaxing. It's amazing how much better you feel after a good nights sleep! We spent more time looking at the sites (Jamie was limping along as fast as possible - the first day did her in!).




Danny even got into the act with the biggest slot machine we saw the whole time we were there.




Mid afternoon we decided we had enough of the glitz of the main strip, so we headed to check out the old strip. Otherwise known as Freemont street. Which, surprisingly was a lot more "family friendly" if you can say that in Vegas. There was a lot less bare skin being displayed on fliers there. It was a lot of fun. They even had a live band that we all really enjoyed. Heather started dancing and then eventually all 4 of us got into dancing on the streets there and had a good time.



We(Danny and Jamie) decided quickly on our favorite slot machine while we were there. It was a Star Trek theme - with battles and everything -- so it was more fun -- yes we are geeks!




It is only because of this slot machine that we came out about $5.00 ahead overall on our gambling for the trip. So, sometimes being a geek pays off. That number would have been a LOT better if Jamie hadn't have gotten drawn in... :-)

Overall it was a great 35th birthday trip with our good friends the Reichenbach’s. It's nice to do things with friends that you can just be silly around :-)

My Preeecccioooouuuss...

We always report all the cool fun things that go one, well this time it wasn’t cool and it wasn’t fun.

Last night I (Danny) went and played ultimate Frisbee after the kids went to bed. During the game I had pretty severely bent back all 8 of my fingers. It did NOT feel good. But out of all my fingers the one that took the worst of the impact was my ring finger on my left hand. And yes, I do wear my wedding ring all the time. (Well except when I want to take it off and spin it on the table at a restaurant :-) )

As soon as I got off the field from playing (of course I finished out the point!) I tried to take off my ring, but I was too late. The finger was already too swollen.
I got home at about 11:15, and with Jamie’s help, I got ice on it and took some Ibuprofen. I even had the joy of a bowl of ice water that I got to dunk my hand in. And THAT did NOT feel good. But no luck on getting the ring off of my finger.

I slept all night with my hand over my head to try and help the swelling. I woke up this morning and things were definitely not better.



After trying many home remedies for getting the ring off my finger (vaseline, windex, compression wrapping, ice, etc. etc. etc.) it became clear that I would need to have the ring cut off my finger. Not something I was very happy about. So off to J.R. Fox Jewelers I went. I took a quick picture of my finger right before they went to cut it off (the ring that is!).


Here it is pretty evident that it needed to come off.

It was pretty cool how they cut it off, they use a really neat little tool. Jamie said it looks like a can opener.


Here they are cutting the ring off my finger.


Once they got it cut they bent it a little and took it off my finger.

"My Precious"

The surprising thing is that they removed it for free and said it will only cost me about $20.00 to get it fixed!! I am glad I got it taken off. Next time I may not wear my ring when I do sports!!

Dad Egg's Christmas Ornaments 2011

Every year my Dad makes ornaments for the Christmas tree that signify what has gone on in our families lives. This year was another great year of ornaments.

First up. My brother and his wife bought a house in Fort Wayne. If you have seen their house you would agree that this looks just like it!


My dad and I do building projects every year, and this year we did two. We built lockers in our laundry room, and we built a shed. But instead of doing 2 ornaments he did two ornaments in one.




As our family becomes more technologically advanced we seem to have more and more "i" products. IPhones, IPads, IPods... So we needed something to signify this.


This year my brother had a trip to the Emergency Room and some time in the hospital, because of not taking in a enough of the right liquids when playing tennis. He found out that you have to drink and equal amount of water when you drink Gatorade (he was only drinking Gatorade). So hear the scales to remind him to keep balanced.


My dad is heavily involved in Red cross. He has even done deployments to help out where crises have occurred. This spring he went to Joplin, Missouri to help the Tornado victims. What he did every day was help take meals to people in an ERV (Emergency Response Vehicle). If you wondered what and ERV looked like, well, here you go.


My brother and his wife were unable to go on a honeymoon when they got married, so they finally took their honeymoon this spring and went on a cruise.


The last big event of the year took place in October when we took the kids to Disney World with my parents. We all loved it, but there is nothing more iconic about Disney World than Cinderella's Castle. Check out all the detail!


Hope you have enjoyed seeing these ornaments as much as my Dad enjoyed making them.

Great job Dad!!!

Last Years Ornaments:
2010
2009- a video
2008
2007

Kids Meet Santa With Smiles

The kids needed a chance to meet with Santa. We were hoping that it would go better than last year (Sydney bawled and wouldn’t even walk up to him). We saw a sign on a local café that said Santa would be there over lunch.

We decided it was worth a try, we had been wanting to try their food anyways. When we got there Sydney again was not thrilled about seeing Santa (crying in the parking lot). But we convinced her to go in to eat and that she didn’t HAVE to see Santa. Well, thankfully, that was the low point of the lunch.

About 5 minutes after we got there who should walk in but MRS. CLAUS! Sydney almost jumped out of our booth so she could see her. Mrs. Claus came around to see everyone at their tables. We had to pretty much hold Sydney down until she got to our booth. Aparently Syd is a much bigger fan of the Mrs.!




After we finished eating we went over to see Santa. I could explain how that went or just let you watch the video.




As you can tell both kids were just thrilled. It went so well. Riker was always happy to Santa, he didn’t care much for Mrs. Claus (there was some eye-rolling LOL)




We were so grateful for an awesome, very personal and long visit with BOTH Santa and Mrs. Claus! Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas 2011

It the Christmas season again!! Every year for the past 4 years we have done some kind of Christmas video that we have posted on our Blog or Facebook. Here are our videos from the previous years:
2008

2009

2010


This years Christmas video took on a life of its own. I could explain the video or I could let the video take care of that.


We had planned for 12 days, but with a 3 and 5 year old we were happy with 7. At least it covers a whole week, right!? :-)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Our little man is growing up!

Riker is growing up (Sniffle Sniffle). And the person who will tell you that, more than anyone else, is HIM. And one of the key factors to him of becoming a big boy was getting a big boy bed. He asked and dreamed about that for months. Well, we made is dreams come true in October.

(In this video he had NO IDEA what was going to happen....yet everything he said was so perfect!)

Do ya think he was excited?!??!?

I am not sure about the rest of you, but if I was a 3 year old I would be SO ENVIOUS of his room (or 8 year old, or adult...)!


He especially loves his T-Rex.


(He is roaring).

If you ever want to learn your dinos stop over and Riker will take you around his whole room and tell you what every one of them is, scientific name and all (except the Compsognathus is just a Compy around here). :-)

Here's hoping he loves dinosaurs, and his room, for years to come!