Bobbins' View of Our Hike

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Booch's Balloon B-day

 

 

 

AZ March for Life

Bobbins' brother Mark and his family were in town to see family (who had come in for Paul's wedding, which didn't happen). They joined Bobbins and our kids to do the AZ March for Life. I had to work, unfortunately. They had a great time.

Booch in Sombrero

While we were doing the electrical project, Booch found my old WYD Denver sombrero (which is stored in the attic). He and his mom had some fun with it.

 

Electrical Project

Our garage, as a former carport, didn't have any outlets, and the lights on the front of the garage were wired to the front porch switch. The garage door switches needed to be moved to by the door to the house, rather than on a post toward the front. I also wanted to run a line to the west end of the house so Bobbins could have power & light for her chickens. While at it, I wired a light into the attic and we ran a line to the east end of the house. I had to pay an electrician $400 to put two new circuits in the breaker box and run them to 2 junction boxes in the attic. From there we ran all the wiring, and put three new outlets in the garage, along with a floodlight and outlet on the west side and a motion-tripped floodlight on the east side. Still need to get new automatic night-time sensor fixtures for the garage front, but overall it was a fun project and I was pleased at myself, my dad, and uncle Jack. I had a quote for the whole project and it would've cost $1600. So we saved roughly $1K doing it ourselves.

 

It was quite a task crawling around that fireplace, but I made it. The pic at right is the tricky way we had to run the garage opener switch wire.

T Fish and His Cousin, Georgia

They're only two weeks apart.

 

 

Shots of the Boys

 

 

 

Afternoon at the Track

We spent Sat. afternoon at the , which we hadn't been able to do the last couple years. The kids had fun at the playground and we got a few bets in, with one winner. Karin enjoyed the new experience. I don't think she heard when Coach talked about how the track was assembling point for Japanese-Americans interned during WW2. The girls were excited to see this license plate for Nana T.

 

Rose Parade

It wasn't as crowded this year, nor very cold, so it was a perfect morning. We walked right up and got a good spot on the sidewalk, and had a chair for MM, with Booch on Coach's shoulders and Jip on mine. Karin loved it and filmed every float rather than just watching them. I soaked up the bands. T Fish was warm and snuggly with his mom. We didn't have as many cars slamming the dip back at the Villa, but still had a couple good ones. This year we also went to Mass at St. Philip's, which was fulfilling, since it's for our Bl. Mother.

The band on the left is the Marine Corps band, which is always near the front and fun to watch, while the band on the right is from Jenks, OK, near my relatives.

Northwood's Dinner

Another tradition, and delicious food as always.

To CA for New Years

We made the annual trip to California for New Years, this year with Bobbins for the first time in three years. Bobbins and the boys and I stayed over at the Villa, while Karin and the girls stayed at my mom and Gen's apt. We were too many to stay in one place, so the split had to work.

Our first stop was to California Science Center to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour. My mom got us reservations and we got there early. It's actually a pretty cool museum overall, right next to the USC campus. The shuttle was awesome and the highlight of our whole trip. You only get to walk around the bottom, but even that is cool. I could've spent a couple hours in there. Bobbins took some pic's on her new camera but they got digitally misplaced. Watching the video of how they moved the Endeavour from LAX to the Center was really neat as well.

Visit from Harold

Our 'adopted' seminarian, Harold, came over for dinner and fellowship after X-mas. It was also when Mike and his kids were here. Bobbins had wanted to set Mike up with our friend Justin, so they could trade crazy Catholic thoughts and ideas on FB. So it was a large group, and we ate a lot of pizza, and it was loud. Good to see Harold, to check in and encourage.

Evangelizing the Cards-Pack Game

The Sunday after X-mas I took the girls over to Univ. of Phx stadium to hand out rosaries and evangelize. It was a nice outing and we saw a lot of people. Juan snapped this photo of JoJo and sent it in to SPSE HQ, which posted the photo (with caption) on twitter and FB.

Christmas Day

The girls were a lot of fun and were content with just their stockings, let alone all the gifts under the tree. Booch enjoyed opening presents but was more into playing with the new toys and eating all his taffy (wrappers intact) from his stocking. T Fish hung out. Karin was Japanese. She did get us some nice gifts from Japan. Booch loved his red truck and Bobbins got some nice clothes. Booch and I relished our new ASU hats; T Fish stole one for a while. I also liked my Brazil t-shirt. I think Bobbins appreciated her earrings, but you never know with her.

 

 Bobbins made peg dolls of each of us, including Karin.










We decided to make a puzzle a tradition. I bought us a new one but it proved too difficult. We only got about 1/3 of it complete.