THE PROUD LOSER

Jeffrey lost his very first tooth yesterday. He was sooo excited that the tooth fairy could now bring him money too. (Niklas is hard to beat in the tooth losing department and Jeffrey has been watching his example with some envy for years now.)Yesterday, before he lost the tooth he said he was too sick to go to Kindergarten for the day. Ten minutes later he came down and showed me that he had lost his tooth. As the realization dawned on him that he would not be able to share this great news with his friends if he didn't go, one could literally watch the recovery happen. All of a sudden he was feeling quite better and definitely wanted to go to Kindergarten.

JET-LAG SUCKS

After 4 flights and over 24 hours of traveling we arrived back home and made it through the first day and the first night ok, probably because we were so exhausted. But day two was really tough. The kids literally dropped in the middle of the day and were up in the night because they were so hungry. Here's what that day looked like...

10) WATER POLO AND SWIM MEETS

I have finally reached the last of my best of. The very first thing we did after we landed in Salt Lake was to go watch my neice's and nephew's last water polo meet. And one of the last things we did before we left was a swim meet too. I really enjoyed watching them and participating in a relatively big part of their lives.

As we are avid sports fans, although none of our children swim competitively, we are not strangers to competition. Jeffrey jumped right in to it - almost literally. By the time our visit was over, the entire swim team, probably most of the cheer team and most sideline observers knew who Jeffrey was. He can cheer with the best of them and has an enthusiasm for sports that is not hampered by him only having half a heart. The fact that he could cheer on his cousins of all people, of course tripled his enthusiasm. Go Kali Go!! he yelled with all his might over the sound of the blaring music and cheering audience.

For me, I am interested in sports photography. It is not my favorite, but there seems to be a demand for it here for our local papers and for the sports and teams my kids play on. Oft times I am confused with someone from the press due to the size of my camera. I find it quite a challenge to get really good action shots, so here are a few of my attempts at the kid's water polo meet, before I upgraded my camera.

Kira goes for the ball.

Kyle moves to quick and injures his shoulder.

Is there such a term as "Swimmer's Shoulder" - something like "Tennis Elbow"?

The world's greatest fan! GO JEFFREY - we are your fan.

Kali in posession.

Mom and Dad are avid swim supporters.

9) WE LOVED BELLA

Bella was a novelty for my little boys. We don't have a dog anymore (Benny's parent's dog passed away in summer) and I don't think they've really been around a puppy before. She wasn't so big as to give them a scare if she came up to them and they could get their arms around her. Jeffrey assumed a caregiver role and was always concerned about her food and water. Just today he told me he wanted to fly back to America to visit Bella. She sure made a lasting impression.

8) THE BEAUTIFUL INDIAN SUMMER WE HAD

Although they had forcast snow for the weekend we flew into Salt Lake, it turned out to be soooo gorgeous that I never even pulled out our winter coats. At times short sleeves and shorts were even enough. It was so GREAT!! Here are some of the beautiful pictures of fall...

7) BEING AN AUNT AGAIN

Although her due date wasn't supposed to be until after I left the US, Reni surprised us all by going into labor early (10 days - gee could it have helped any that we painted the whole upstairs together just 2 days before?) and delivering the smallest baby she's had yet. On that point especially I am extremely happy for her. I think ALL of the other kids were around 10 pounders. Thaddeus Ray Kimball was born on October 24th, 2008 at 1:48pm. He weighed in at 6lbs 14oz and 21in long. We do forgive you Reni for not making it to the "White House Reunion", we did miss you though. I still can't believe that an hour before you are supposed to be there you call and let us know you are in labor and about 2 hours later you call again to let us know the baby was there. We sure appreciated being in the close loop on all the happenings. We are all happy everything went so well too (especially since you are in the middle of about nowhere having a home birth.)

A very beautiful baby - 9 days old.

Lot's of "mommy kisses" as they are known at our house. (There are butterfly kisses and Eskimo kisses and mommy kisses.)

Auntie Gusti gets her turn to hold Thaddeus.

6) HALLOWEEN

As far as holidays go, Halloween is one of my favorites. There is really very little stress involved, no huge meals to prepare, no traditions that MUST be preserved, pretty low-key. You get to dress up and dress your kids up and dress your dog up if you want - or have one. You get candy for free and can scream at anything you want to or might find scary. You can stay up really late with a good excuse and watch scary movies or even "Thriller" videos. lol

Here's my very scary skeleton Tyler, too bad you could never tell that some of his face paint GLOWED in the dark - or it was supposed to. (His gloves did though.)

Add Ninja Jeffrey and Witch Bella and you have a foto nightmare. I don't know how many pictures I shot trying to get them all still.

Here's Ninja Jeffrey being really tough.

And here's Hippie Gusti with her Witch Bella. Doesn't she look more like an indian to you? lol

5) PLAYING ROCK BAND / FLIGHT SIMULATOR

We love to be entertained!! But making our own entertainment can be even better than putting on a DVD. Grandpa Rex has built a flight simulator in the spare bedroom and Jeffrey and Kyle had an especially great time playing in it. It was actually a little too advanced for Jeffrey to "fly", so Rex put in virtual skiing for him, which I didn't know till later. He called it ice skating the rest of the time though. Really had me confused, I had no idea why he kept wanting to go back to some house to ice skate.Jeffrey and Grandpa Rex winning the ski race.

Jeffrey on drums. He actually spent about an hour "practicing" by himself. He was so into it that his face was beet red by the time he was done.

Ally, Kali and Riley rockin out.

Jeffrey on base.

Rock Band with the cousins! Asher, Kira, Jeffrey, Kenzi and Kyle

Too bad I didn't get any pictures of Gusti and I or us with the Ally and Anita, but that would have been asking a lot to have someone stay up THAT late just to take our pictures. Keep on rockin ladies!

4) SEEING OLD FRIENDS

I don't have to add much more to the title, it was JUST GREAT!! to see some of my old roommates from BYU. Some of us hadn't seen each other in almost 10 years. Crazy how time as flown by. I would still say college was one of the greatest times of my life and you all played a huge role in that. I am so glad to still have you as friends and after all these years to hang out for a couple of hours or a couple of days and it is like no time has passed at all. Thanks for coming and visiting me and I can't wait to see you all again.

Gusti, Reni, Robyn, me

Jamie, Gusti, Ally, Anita, Deanna, me

Anita, Sierra (behind), Kelli, me, Paisley (front)

Anne, me

3) TAKING PICTURES

I must say, having a photographer as a sister, I guess I'm glad I love to take pictures, talk about pictures, look at pictures, I even don't mind letting Gusti take my picture. So we did a lot of the above and it was FUN.

Here's Gusti at her best... determined to do everything possible for "the one perfect shot."

Here's Tyler in "action". I'm working on my "action shots", getting warmed up for the upcoming soccer season.

This picture looked better in full size, but I'm to tired to take it out, so enjoy.

We really enjoyed the day at Wheeler Farm with all the kids. I didn't get a copy of those pictures home with me though, so here's one of just Tyler and Jeffrey.

I helped Anita start a blog, so I helped her with her picture too. I thought it turned out great!

Gusti's pumpkins were truly amazing. We couldn't lift them by ourselves, so it makes me wonder how many people were involved in steeling them from her porch steps the night after Halloween. At least they were considerate enough to wait for Halloween to be over.

Credit to Gusti on these incredible pictures. I could be an advertisement for fresh fall laundry soap or something. Truly talented!

I loved this picture too.

2) EATING!

It may sound rather odd, but Jeffrey, Tyler and I definately enjoyed all the different foods we got to try and rediscover while we were visiting. (That's the up-side, the down-side was of course barely fitting into my tight jeans by the time we went home.) So what did we eat?? EVERYTHING we could. My special request was seafood. (Hard to come by here.) So we went to the Peppermill Casino in Reno for Friday night ALL YOU CAN EAT SEAFOOD BUFFETT.

What a light show that was!!

Tyler especially enjoyed the parrot that was hidden up in one of the trees.

We all ate our share of lobster, shrimp and crablegs.

Mom's dinner wasn't complete without a baked potato, but Rex stuck to the seafood basics.

Gusti tried the diet version - just one shrimp. LOL Yeah right! Kira had pizza - what else!

A visit to mom and Rex's and Grandma and Grandpa's just wouldn't be complete without Grandpa's Barbecue, complete with all the fixin's - potato salad, baked beans and rice. But wait, where's Grandpa in this picture?? (Unfortunately he wasn't feeling so great.)


Jeffrey discovered American hotdogs. I mean, it's not like we don't have "wurst" here, ha, ha. I think he basically had them for lunch every day and sometimes again for dinner as is the case here.

Tyler would forego the "hotdog" in favor of just the bun.


Ally, Anita, Kelli (and her 2 kids) made it to the Olive Garden too! Oh what memories. Soup, salad or breadsticks Ladies?

Besides what I've already mentioned, we hit Krispy Kreme Donuts (the light was on), Ally introduced us to Sonic's Cherry Limeade, Gusti shared her favorite Café Rio lunch with me with sweet pork and to die for enchilada sauce. During our quick visit to BYU, Kelli treated us to a cone at the Creamery. Ally, Anita and I devoured a huge bucket of extra buttery popcorn and a diet drink while watching Mama Mia, at least most of the butter didn't land on MY hips, but on Ally's jeans - sorry we didn't share with you Kali, Gusti and Jamie. But we didn't leave you behind when we went to Cold Stone Creamery afterwards. And definately worth noting would be Anthony's Swedish pancakes on Sundays and Papa Murphy's Pizza on Fridays. Let's see, did I leave anything out?? ... Halloween candy!! Need I say more?