Catching UP!

For the past three months, I've been bugging Desirae to update our blog.  For some reason she's been slacking....maybe it has something to do with having two kids....Anyhow, I thought that I would take it upon myself to fill in some of the blanks that are missing in our blog!  It's been a long time since I've done it and I can't seem to be able to rearrange the photos in this first blog so ignore the fact that the first photo has to do with the end of this particular post.

Where to begin....well, lets start with the beginning of December.  The first weekend of December we headed up to good ol' Covina to participate in the McKendrick Christmas tradition of gingerbread house making (picture with her cousins Caden and Caleb is at the bottom of this post).  Brooklyn had a great time as she attempted to create a fancy house decorated with candy.  Only problem was that she ate half of the candy that was supposed to go on the house!  That same weekend we delivered all of the presents that we were going to exchange with the McKendrick family because we were going to Louisiana this year for Christmas.

Mark and I had the fantastic idea of driving together to Louisiana with the kids and flying our wives out so on December 19th (Friday) I loaded up our wagon and we headed out to Maricopa, AZ.  We arrived just after midnight and got a couple of hours of sleep before waking up and getting on the road at 4:30am.  Mark drove the lion's share of the trip out since I wasn't feeling a little under the weather.  I actually ended up getting an ear infection and not being able to hear out of my ear for half the week!  What's that all about?  I haven't had one of those since I was 10!  Despite some miss guided navigation on my part, Alyssa (my brother's oldest daughter) asking how much longer until we get there every 20 minutes, and the head phones to the DVD player being misplaced after each and every movie, we made it to DeRidder around 2am the next morning.  (I'm blaming the bad navigation part on my illness...)  If you really want some more juicy details of the christmas adventure, I suggest checking out Mark and Tracy's blog.  

Prior to going to Louisiana, I organized a conference call and set up a calender on google so that everyone would have an idea of when people were arriving and what was going on.  There were a total of 20 adults and 16 children staying at my parents house and our next door neighbor's house (the Kwoks happened to be in China for a couple of weeks on vacation).  

On Sunday, we all got up and went to church.  Since my parents ward is now the size of a branch, TJ and Eric were asked to give talks which were both excellent.  Brooklyn got enjoy nursery with Sister May who just so happened to be my nursery leader way back when.  

On Tuesday, we all headed out to Skate City!  Mom rented the entire skating rink out for a few hours.  Desirae told me that Brooklyn was tired and maybe we should leave her home to take a nap.  I insisted that we all go and be a part of the family activity.  Brooklyn and I put on some skates and made it around about twice before she asked me to pick her up.  

So I picked her up and went around the rink a few more times before she totally fell asleep on my shoulder.  Thus, the picture at the top which shows where I set her down on a picnic bench to sleep....yes, Desirae was right.