Arlington National Cemetery

I uploaded the pictures from my camara last night and remembered that I wanted to post some pictures from Grandpa's funeral service at Arlington since most of you weren't able to be there. It was a really nice ceremony. There was the horse-drawn caisson and the 21 gun salute and everything. At the end, the officers folded the flag you see draped over the coffin and presented it to Grandma.

Unfortunately, my camara battery died as soon as the services started, so I don't have many pictures. I had to keep turning my camara back on and quickly snapping a picture before it died again. Sorry there aren't more pictures, especially pictures of the family.

This picture is of the officers folding the flag. They folded the flag completely without ever looking at it.

Here is the 21-Gun Salute. I got scared for a second because they fired their guns directly at us! I knew they were blanks but it is still scary when there are 7 guns pointed at you!!

And this is just a general picture of one portion of the cemetery. It was amazing to see so many tombstones all in a row. Adam and I stayed after and took a tour and learned that the lines of the tombstones represent soldiers standing at attention in uniform alignment.

We are finally on!

Okay, Tiffany showed me how to blog - dad's not here, so it may be awhile before we get him on. But we're all okay! We had a wonderful time at the temple Wednesday, Oct 24, when Sheree got sealed to Robert Willey (who died a year ago) 24 Oct is their actual wedding anniversary and the anniversary of his confirmation for his baptism three years ago. Sheree felt his presence there and Mom Lambourne felt the presence of Dad Lambourne, also. It was a very nice day. We had a great Halloween birthday for Crystal. She thanks all the family for her presents - especially, purses, galore, and coloring books.... Mom Lambourne & I made Halloween Placemats and used them on Crystal's Birthday and at our spooky Halloween, Dinner in a Pumpkin, dinner with the new missionaries in our area. Dad took pictures and maybe we'll get them developed and be able to show you these cute placemats. At our dinner we had pumpkin cookies and ghost merangue cookies as well as the meat mixture cooked in the pumpkin, with a jack-o-lantern face. We bought terriyaki chicken on a stick and pretended it was bats on a stick with our spooky dinner... Adam says they really had bat on a stick in Africa, but he never ate it. MOM

Pictures

I took some pictures of Lynnea this weekend, and I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself. I think I got some good ones! It definitely makes me want to learn more about photography and keep trying.

Camping!

This weekend we went camping with some friends to a place called Valley of Fire. Much more pleasant than it sounds, it's named that because everything is red- the sand, the sandstone cliffs, etc. It's a lot like Moab and Arches Natl. Park in Utah. The girls had a ton of fun playing in the sand and climbing all the rocks. You can even see petroglyphs from the Indians who used to live there (from 300 BC to 1150 AD, to be exact). There's lots of little caves and nooks for the kids to climb in and play house. Caitlin was especially bold and adventurous, she was a regular boulderer by the time we left! Between us and the other two families, there were 7 little girls- no boys! It was sort of a Princess camp out! Unfortunately, our camera battery died after only a few pictures, but it was still a lot of fun!

This picture I took after church last week. I love Elizabeth's smile! I made Caitlin's skirt she's wearing and so I had to photograph it, I thought it turned out really cute (she thinks she's showing off her bubbles she got at a birthday party). Soon I'm going to make Elizabeth a dress out of the same fabric, so they can match. I'm finding this irrepresible urge to dress them in matching clothes! I hear this is normal with moms of two cute girls...

Halloween Fun

Wow, there's been a lot of activity on here since I last posted. I'll have to start checking more regularly. It was fun to read up on everybody this morning!! Our general conference tradition is doughnuts -- I like the idea of cinnamon rolls but I don't usually want to spend the time making them, so for now, the kids (and me too!!) look forward to doughnuts.

Here's a recent pix of the whole family. Scott's co-worker does his whole yard up really big for Halloween, so we went to see it. It was pretty cool, but it was night and raining so I don't have any great pictures. There were skeletons, a hearse, ghosts, etc. The little kids were a bit scared at first, but Nathan brought his gun to shoot any bad guys & did a good job of protecting his family! :-)

House Pictures

Your yard looks awesome, Cosette. To keep up, here's a picture of our backyard. (We also moved about four months ago.) And let me tell you, it's taken a TON of work to get it looking this good!! See all that nice dirt and those pieces of pvc pipe sticking up? And you might be able to make out a sprinkler head if you look REALLY closely! Yes, it's winter & raining and we've never used the sprinkler system, but hey, it's in the ground. (No, we did not do the fence in back -- we'll strip & re-stain it next spring.)

Here's a pix of the fence we built -- our latest project. We were happy to get a 3-day break in the rain over the weekend so the boards had a day to dry out, we had a day to stain them, and then they had a day to dry -- perfect! We still have four gates to build, but otherwise the fence is completed -- Yeah!! Once the gates are up, I'll finally be able to keep Lisette from going out to the park or to play with her friends without permission (the main catalyst behind the fence project).

And here's a picture of our patio -- Nice, don't you think? And it's actually pretty empty now! When he finishes the gates, Scott gets to buy a firepit for roasting marshmallows to put on the cleared patio. We're definitely looking forward to that! :)

Sushi and Black Widows

Rod and I love sushi. There is a restaurant here, Osaka's, that has incredibly good sushi. The best. But it's also expensive! So, when we need that sushi hit (and we find that sometimes a little sushi just hits the spot), I make some. It's really easy and a lot of fun. So tonight after our date night, we picked up the girls from our friends, put them to bed, and put some sushi together.

Just some random info on our life in Vegas: this past summer, sometimes Rod and I would go in the backyard after dark to go "black widow hunting" as I call it. See, we spray for bugs like everyone does here, and it's been effective for the past few years, but this summer we noticed we'd spray and it wasn't making much of a difference in all the widow webs in the backyard. So the best way (and most environmentally friendly way) is to go out after dark with a flashlight, see them in their webs, and smash them with a shoe. In one night I did four. I felt like a conquering hero!

Cinnamon Rolls is our General Conference tradition. We have them for breakfast on Sunday. It's a great tradition! My roommate Emily's mom would make tons and tons of cinnamon rolls for the Sunday afternoon
session of conference and all their kids would invite everyone they wanted to come eat cinnamon rolls and listen to the last session of conference. It was a lot of fun, especially since they have 10 kids, so that was a lot of people and a lot of cinnamon roll consumption!
I thought that was a very cool way for her parents to encourage watching General Conference together and to enjoy some grubbin' cinnamon rolls, so we now enjoy cinnamon rolls on General Conference Sunday (just us- maybe when our kids our older we'll invite people over to enjoy them too, but for now Rod's a little possesive of them. He insisted I not give half of them away to people like I did last conference).

Also to help the kids be good so we could actually enjoy conference, they did some pumpkin painting with watercolors. Lizzie felt very grown up to be doing what she's only watched Caitlin doing before. (It's great with watercolors, you just rinse them in water and they paint them again, and again, and again...

Also, a side note, our Primary Program was last Sunday (I was in charge this year) and it went great! Ok, so that's mostly before the music was awesome, the kids really did a great job, but there were no last minute disasters or anything like that. And all the kids who had talks did great! I was seriously impressed with the kids public speaking abilities. One of the moms told me she was telling her daughter she did a good job, but she should have looked up more. Her daughter says, "But mom, she said we only had to look up twice!" Which is true, I told the kids giving talks to try to look up twice while they were speaking. She took it quite seriously, no more, no less!

Our Blog

Isn't blogging cool? Okay, so I changed who can view our blog- only us and a few relatives: your aunts and uncles and grandparents whose emails I have (I don't have everyones). So if there's ever anyone you guys want to add to the list of who can view our blog, just send me their emails and I'll add them. It's really easy to do. I think you'll probably have to sign on now before you can look at the blog, so there'll be an extra step there, but let me know what you guys think. If it's too much of a hassle, I can take off the restrictions on who can look at our blog. Okay, that's it! We love being so updated, I don't think we've ever been so up to date on the happenings in everyone's families before!

Okay now I'm getting the hang of this!!! Here's two more pics I just took of the backyard...we love our backyard. The playset is new. David built it for Ashley's b'day~not the happiest three very long days of his life (with a crew)! The other pic is our koi pond, waterfall and pagoda. It's really cool!

Dowdy Update - Part 1

I get approximately 2 mintues at a time on the computer before either Brooks pushes some very wrong button, so here's part 1 of the Dowdy update. I guess we'll start with we moved! Four months ago...ahh time flies! I will try putting pictures up of the house. They are pics from the listing a year ago. I haven't taken any of my own. Okay, time's up....Brooks is throwing peaches across my kitchen~great fun! Till Part 2! BTW...Part 2 preview...Brooks is walking!!! :)

I got an award!

I just got an award at work today - the Star Award!!! They give one out each month. It is peer nominated and a committee meets to vote on the nominees for the winner. I got $100, a certificate to put on my wall, a gold Star Award paper weight for my desk (which is nicer than it sounds), and a floating Star Award trophy that I get to keep until next month! The award said I was nominated for demonstrating great leadership skills, taking the lead, and always being prepared. Pretty exciting!!! I may be hitting the mall during my lunch break today!! ; )

What do you think?...

Hey everyone, quick question. If we want, there's an option when I set this up if we only want select people to see our blog, or just us the authors, or just anyone. Right now anyone can see our blog. Should we restrict it or what do you guys think? Comment and weigh in!

Sweet Update

The Sweets are doing good in VA. I am still working hard at my job - I've been assigned to be the lead of some new projects, which is nice. No increase in pay has been mentioned, but it's cool that my bosses trust me and think I do good work. I'll be travelling to Florida at the end of the month for business so that will be fun!

Adam is busy with Home-a-Rama right now. I won't see him too much the next 2 weeks, but from what I hear there are some beautiful houses this year. It's a good chance to get some advertisment for his companies.

Lynnea is 7 months now. 50% for height and weight and 75% for head. She's gonna be as big, or bigger than Brooks soon. Everyone comments on how happy she always is, which she is. She's a great baby! She doesn't cry much except for when she's hungry or tired, then look out!!! She is very adventurous and curious, always wanting to go and see new things. She's a lot of fun!

That's it for now! I'll try to keep up with this; it's a great idea, Carrie!

Bair Update - October 2007

Okay,
we'll give

this a try.

:-)

All is well for the Bairs in Oregon. The rain is starting and our backyard projects aren't finished yet, so we're scrambling to finish -- dirt, sprinklers, fence, and sod all in one summer! Phew! I don't know who will be more excited when it's finished - Mom & Dad, or the kids who have to put up with us being out there all the time.

Jenna, Kaylee, & Nathan are in the full-swing of school. Going to a public school after 3 years of a charter school is a bit of a change for Jenna, but everyone is adjusting well. Jenna is leading her class in Word-Gobblers (reading pages). So far, she's read about 1200 pages every week since school started. (And I thought summer was bad trying to keep her adequately supplied with library books -- now she just goes to the school library every recess and gets new books for herself!) Jenna & Kaylee are my big helpers around the house. Nathan goes to half-day kindergarten every day and is trying to learn how to read and write.

Lisette & Talia get to stay home with Mom & Dad. They are getting bigger and cuter every day, and we certainly enjoy them. We pretty much just try to stay on top of everything and not forget anything very important. Scott is enjoying his work, most of the time, and we enjoy having him work from home so we get to see him a lot more often.