How many?

1214!!!!!

This would be the number of times from Christmas morning until Jan 18th that Caitlin sent and received text messages. Unbelievable! How did she even have time to get out of bed every day????

I'm told though that this is minor. I talked to someone last night who has a 16 yr old son who normally texts 16000 messages a month. How??? What is he saying to people??? I'm pretty sure that I don't even say 16000 words a month!

Fifteen years is some sort of milestone isn't it?

Our fifteenth wedding anniversary! Wow! It's flown past!

Don't we look like such babies here? Now we are fifteen years later with a few more wrinkles, a lot more experience at life, and still together! Rik is a saint for putting up with me all this time! :)

We aren't doing anything really special today - it is Wednesday after all - one of the busiest kid running around days out there. In fact, Rik is at church right now taking kids to activities. We did go out and do some grocery shopping earlier today, but I suspect that wasn't because he truly wanted to be with me, but wanted to be with the new car! Maybe we'll get to do something this weekend.

Honda Civic...

After trying for more than a year to sell our Suburban in a $3 per gallon gas economy, we finally decided to go looking for new cars and trade our Suburban in. First try at the beginning of December was a bust with the dealer that is 2 miles from our house giving us a *laughable* amount for a trade. So, a friend at work suggested a small town south of us as they are a ranching community and are more in need of bigger trucks. I started emailing the place around Christmas and got a deal settled - MUCH better than the deal in town! The only hold up was that he didn't have what we wanted in stock, so we had to wait a couple of weeks for it to come in. I got home from work Friday to find the email that said the car was in! First thing on Sat we drove down and completed the deal! It went SO smoothly - I highly recommend internet dealing as the only way to buy a new car - there was no sitting in the showroom for hours negotiating a deal - it was all done in the comfort of my family room over a couple of days. And, from talking to other people who have done it this way, it is a super smooth way to do it!

Anyway - without further ado... the first brand new car ever owned by any of the Brenton household...


We are going to miss the room the Suburban gave us, but I certainly won't miss planning every trip I take as to how close the next gas station is!

Slackline...

A what you say?

It's this thing Rik watched a bunch of how to's on the internet and figured out how to make. It's some webbing used for climbing and carabineers and some knots - all made into a tightrope like configuration and the kids LOVE this! They have spent several hours trying to balance on it and walk like the guys in the videos (who are amazing - they jump and flip without effort - I can barely stand on it with people helping me!) Hopefully you can see these pictures - they are cell phone shots...

This is the set up for any who are interested. Direct all questions to Rik about this!

And our family trying to balance - both kids actually really good at this - well, actually everyone but me!

As you can see - I'm the lame-o that still needs help balancing!

High School Musical - the Broadway production

Last Wednesday night - very fun and high energy! I must admit, I am the one who fell asleep during the movie - so I didn't have a really clear grasp of what it was about, but, I caught on quick during the show - I didn't have even a tiny bit of trouble staying awake! Very well put together and fun to watch! We got to go to the Meet and Greet with some of the cast first... the kids all got to ask questions of them - it cracked me up as some of the kids there were asking "What's your favorite color?" type questions! Then the kids all got to line up for autographs and photos...

The girls were all really happy to be there - they all think I should win tickets to events more often!

Book recommendation...

I read a really good book this winter break (instead of doing a bunch of stuff I *should* have been doing!). It's one of those that should have taken at least a week to read, but I managed to do it in 2 days by ignoring most everything around me because it was such a good read (bad mom!). If you like Shakespeare and like novels similar to The DaVinci Code (the book, not the lame movie!)... this one's for you!

More Blockus...

One of Rik's presents....



Blockus Trigon!

Caitlin is disappointed - she hates playing - Philip was thrilled about a new variation on the old, well played game. All in all it's nice to have a new way to play!

Christmas at our house...

Was pretty nice! The kids got a lot of stuff for us to make a family trek to the Grand Canyon this year.

Here's Philip modeling with his new backpack!

And - even the dogs got presents - Dixie is known for getting a toy and destroying it immediately if not sooner. Poor Elsie just lays there and watches.

And the hit of the day...

Yes, the cell phone.... and with that - who would have guessed - text messaging! It's not included in our plan - so she has to pay for it herself. Last week she had done so many she upgraded her part of the plan to include a whole bunch. *sigh* A 12 yr old with a bill! *sigh* So, if you are tech savvy and want to talk to Caitlin - she'd love to text message you!

In case you didn't get it...

Here's our family Christmas photo and a (very) late Merry Christmas from us to you!




(I had to jump back into posting somehow!)