Twenty-one years!

Today is our 21st engagement anniversary! Who would have thought that now: with five kids; two zebra finches; a dozen chickens; no four legged pets; two Master's degrees; up-to-date teaching certificates; after pounds of consumed chocolate (including white); doing Jr. High youth ministry, College & Career, AWANA; one diesel truck; one diesel tractor; and one big diesel engine in the boat; hours of crafts; hours of knitting; technology starting out with an Apple IIc; then a Macintosh SE; to now where we don't have any Mac's (unless you count the Shuffle, Nano, and iPod) and the PC's almost out number the humans; considering that we have never bought a TV (the 13" color TV that was given to us years ago still works though we did recently upgrade to a 32" flat screen - but that still doesn't count since we don't have cable and probably wouldn't sign-up anyway); one player piano; one Yamaha keyboard; zillions of books; yearly watching A&E's Pride and Prejudice...all this and we are still madly in love with each other!

Engagement Photo c.1986

Shuffle shuffle

It’s understandable that our iRiver U10 failed after it fell into the toilet – we didn’t even ask Rilla (3) about the details on that one. Colin (6) perhaps was the most upset since he was the undisputed champion of the pre-loaded Flash games. But when the Apple iPod Shuffle (albeit 1st generation) started to fail intermittently and then came up with an unknown 1418 error when connected to iTunes and then totally conked out – we felt cheated.

You see, that shuffle was better than a stick of gum (…okay, admittedly it does look like a pack of gum) especially at events like gymnastics meets and trampoline contests where the kids that weren’t competing needed some entertaining. I confess to even plugging in Rilla, the iRiver deviant, to the shuffle at a church event to quiet her down(!). Anyway, the kids really appreciated the entertainment value – even, not unlike gum, it was good ear candy. So much so that Emma (8) chose an iPod Nano over MyTwinn Doll accessories for a birthday gift (to go with her iDog – another birthday gift). Now even Caleb (10) who rarely asks for anything is looking into an iPod for his birthday. Though instead of wanting an iDog to go with it he is asking for an iFish instead.

So anyway in the meantime we were able to figure out how to resurrect the Shuffle…after hours of internet searches and trying this and that we let the battery die, preformed the “bang-it-on-the-desk” operation and plugged it in. iTunes was able to recognize it and started syncing it up with no unknown errors. Interestingly, my iMac at work was little help for its Shuffle cousin where as the IBM laptop with XP ended up being the Shuffle’s Good Samaritan. At least it looks like we won’t need to resort to gum at all those up-coming meets!

Snow!

Yup, we had some snow this year. It wasn't measured in feet, but it was enough to slow things down a little. Here's an image of our back yard...and the last of the snow...we think.

Snow 1.16.07

Christmas Day 2006

Another Christmas tradition has been spending Christmas day at Gail’s family’s house on Whidbey Island. Since Gail’s Dad was with us we all packed into the van and drove up Christmas morning and joined the rest of the Ostling tribe. Here is this year's tree:

Christmas 2006

Christmas Eve Concert

A Christmas tradition that started on Jack’s side of the family where on Christmas Eve all the kids played their instruments for a family concert. I don’t remember whose idea it was and whether or not the motive was just to keep those pesky kids engaged in productive behaviour leading into the holiday festivities; but it was fun and memorable for me as a child. This year Caleb (10) worked out the order of the performance and Emma (8) finger-typed it all into the computer (with Dad’s help) for the program. Mom & Dad even played a duet! The audience (Grandma Dot, Aunt Debbie, and Uncle Rich) even participated in the final number (Silent Night).

Neighborhood Caroling

A Christmas tradition that we’ve started since moving into our house is taking plates of cookies to our neighbors and signing Christmas carols. Gail whips up half a dozen different varieties of cookies (many from her favorite award winning website). This is a great way to say “hi” – fortunately we live in a small neighborhood – but it still takes a good portion of the evening. This year the kids pulled the wagon and wore either reindeer antlers or elves hats.

Christmas at the Brenchley’s 2006

This year marks a major Christmas decorating victory; only two glass Christmas tree decorations were shattered! Much better than previous years! But the outside icicle lights had whole sections burned out and we couldn’t find our bulb tester! So our house had less of a gingerbread appearance this year…picture something more like a Lite-Brite checkerboard! Anyway, here are some of the traditions we engaged in this Christmas:

Christmas cards & newsletter
Each year we try to have a Christmas newsletter just to let family and friends know that we are in fact really busy and that’s why we didn’t come over to visit and eat fruitcake. Anyway this year’s theme was the Incredibles so we had a picture and matching newsletter. See it here.
Gail’s Dad and Mrs. Thew arrive to spend the holiday with us though we don’t know if they really knew the Incredibles were so near!

The Brenchley's
Christmas 2006