Still Alive

Alright so I haven't quite met me goal of posting every month (Thanks for pointing that out Jaron :). I'm not really one to rant on a blog and since it's been a tribulatious couple of months I've refrained from posting anything. (Yes I just invented the word tribulatious) I'm more the type to blog after the fact so that's what I'll do. Other than life in general there hasn't been very much for me to blog about as Manda pretty much keeps up with our small happenings.

Since I'm here I'll get some kid pics out there.

Here is Vance doing what he does best, making a mess out of whatever is closest to him. This started out as a clean and harmless chocolate chip cookie. He is very aware that he's worked his magic on it.

Pictures really make kids look older.... Obviously Joel is much cleaner than his brother and only ended up with a French mustache.

Yeah, we like gadgets in our family.

Living in Florida does have some advantages, we get to do the following almost daily.

Rain is also a daily occurrence, but if you have the right set of rain boots its not that bad.

Trying to meet the goal

I told myself when I started a blog that I would try and post at least once every month and since the end of January is right around the corner (where did January go?) I figured I better get my butt in gear and get a post up even though I really don't have a lot to blog about.

We are looking forward to 2009. We have a new city, new place to live, new ward, new callings, new job, new weather to experience, and two growing/changing boys. It's going to be a good year. Those that know me know that I love change, I could change domiciles every year and be perfectly happy. Manda on the other hand could never move again and that would be her dream (as long as we were living somewhere West of the Mississippi at the time). So all of this change really has been great for me. It will also be an exciting time for our country to see how we deal with this recession that we've gotten ourselves into and what the future consequences will be for the government messing with free enterprise (is anyone else perturbed that private companies are getting government bailouts instead of using the government protection that has always been provided, and worked, in the past called Chapter 11 Bankruptcy where they can reorganize, get out of strong union contracts (ie auto industry) and become profitable on their own? /rant). It's going to be an exciting ride, at least we're all in the same boat eh?

Finally all of those expensive licenses for being a pilot are paying off :) So far I've worked 2 days since coming home from training on November 22nd. Here's a video of one of those days, my Dad sat at the end of the runway and took some video of us departing Naples last Tuesday.
(I should post the rest of the video where Dad is falling off of his car and rolling down the windshield as he's trying to keep the airplane in view as we went right over his head :)

Part of me really wants to be flying more so that I can feel more productive and I can actually remember how to fly our airplane (comes in handy during bad weather) but for the most part I'm grateful that I've been able to spend a lot of time with my family. We're really trying to take advantage of all this time since I'm pretty sure this job won't always be like this. It will probably get to the point where I'll actually have to work (be gone) 10-15 days a month and at that point I'll probably be blogging to complain about having to work so much.

We've been staying fairly busy. My parents gave us gym memberships for our birthdays and we've been going to the gym 6 days a week. It's really nice because they have babysitting there and that makes it very easy to go since we don't have to alternate trips, we can just take the boys and they love the play area and being able to make new friends. Plus it's been good training for Vance who starts going to nursery in a couple of weeks (HALLELUJAH!!)

We spend quite a bit of time in Grandma and Grandpa's pool and the boys are really turning into fish. I'll get some video up of Vance jumping into the pool by himself (and by 'by himself' I mean with enough flotation devices attached to him he could tow the whole family behind him) and Joel swimming by himself with the help of a buoyant suit that he wears.

Last week we took a trip over to the Miami MetroZoo and had a great time. This was the best zoo I think I've ever been to. There are hardly any fences and the ones that they do have are very short and out of view. The animals are kept in place by really deep moats that surround them but remain out of view to the public so when you're standing on the path looking at the animals it really looks like there is nothing separating you from them.

Vance and I looking at the Elephant. They were feeding them tomatoes and having them do tricks, it was pretty neat.

Look how close Joel got to this one! Ok it's plastic.

You can really tell it's plastic here, Grandma wouldn't have gotten within 100 yards of a real one :)


The boys riding frogs and me being a typical Blackberry addict.

Everyone had to be a Jaguar!

Including Great-Grandpa.

The tram ride was one of the funnest parts, we got a 'behind the scenes' tour and saw a lot of the park without having to exert any energy other than the energy required to keep to boys from bailing off.

Vance stole this from Grandpa. Grandpa cut himself out of the picture :(

Another thing we have done for a couple of Family Home Evenings is grab some KFC and head down to the beach to watch the sunset with Grandma and Grandpa. It really is nice to get out and do this and the boys love it, we've done it twice now and hopefully it becomes a tradition. When we lived in Daytona Beach we were always waaaaaay too lazy to get up to watch the sunrise. It's one of those things that sounds great the night before when you're planning your day out but when the alarm clock goes off at O'dark thirty it usually means having to buy a new alarm clock.

This was from our first trip a couple of weeks ago.

The sunsets really are spectacular down on the beach you should all come and visit us to see for yourself (blatant plug for people to come visit).