Meet Mr. December

I love I love I love my calendar boy!

Every year the school district makes a calendar with a specific theme. One year it was music, one year it was art and this year it is technology in the classroom. I always go through the calendar and look for pictures of kids I know. I almost missed this picture. I freaked out when I realized it was a big picture of my Travis. Isn't he cute!

Thanksgiving Weekend

This blog is about the super, awesome, 4-day weekend the Wagners had. Two Wagner boys made it a 5-day weekend because yesterday they were home from school sick.

The boys and I celebrated Thanksgiving at my brother David's house. Bert was flying for Alaska Airlines (so sad!)and spent Thanksgiving in Southern California, David and Stacie had a full house, the food was wonderful, and I didn't take any pictures.

"Black Friday" (I hate that name!) was spent decorating the house for Christmas. The most exciting thing was our brand-new, pre-lit Christmas tree. It is awesome! I have been wanting a new, fake tree for years and every year I would tell myself "I am going to buy a new tree after Christmas when they are on sale and save a bunch of money" but every year I forget to go out and buy a new tree so this year I just bought one before Christmas and paid full price for it. Nathan and I set it up in a few minutes and we shaped the branches a little, and presto! It is up.

Travis got stuck behind the tree.

It is against every moral fiber of my being to go shopping on "Black Friday". I am especially annoyed that many stores were open on Thanksgiving for shopping this year. That is why I was very unhappy when I remembered Travis needed to buy a birthday gift for a friend's party on Saturday. We waited until Friday evening to go to Walmart to buy the gift. By then the store was back to normal and I didn't feel so bad about breaking one of my rules. The only bad thing that happened was I got pulled over by a police officer because I forgot to turn my car lights on. I felt so stupid! The police officer was very nice and didn't even give me a ticket.

The highlight of the weekend was seeing the Nutcracker in Seattle. Four years ago, Bert and I took Nathan to see the Nutcracker when he was 10. Now that Travis is 10 it was his turn to go. The ballet was wonderful of course. Travis wasn't as impressed, but he enjoyed spending some alone time with his mom and dad. I asked him where he wanted to eat after the show was over. McDonald's was his answer. A real classy way to end the night!











On the way home Travis shared his Christmas wish list with us. He still believes in Santa by the way. He wants 3 different Nerf guns, new camouflage pants (his other ones became shorts after his first paintball experience), a camouflage necktie, camouflage underwear, an army helmet with netting, and a package of bacon.

I am still cracking up about the bacon.

School Pictures

Soccer and Cross-Country Pictures

San Diego Part III

Legoland Day 2

After a crazy night, the Wagners (including Nathan) were still excited about another day at Legoland. We decided to take it easy this day and make sure we didn't over-do it.

We arrived at Legoland at about 10:15 in the morning. Pulling into the parking lot was a surreal experience. Hardly anyone was there! It was like the scene in "National Lampoon's Vacation" when the family finally gets to Wallyworld and the park was closed. We started wondering if Legoland was closed for the day, but we had paid for parking already, so it must be open.

Cool! We thought, we will have the park almost to ourselves! How fun will that be! We walked up to the front gate, and they were closed. We were so confused. All the signs said the park opened at 10:00, and it was after 10:00.

That is when we realized that it had been daylight savings the night before. Everyone had turned their clocks back an hour except us and a few other weird families from Arizona who have never heard of daylight savings time.

OK, here are pictures of the very, best, awesomest, coolest, part of Legoland. Miniland!

Daytona

Washington DC

President Obama's Inauguration

Check out the trick or treaters!

Southern California

San Fransisco (my favorite part)

Las Vegas

New Orleans

New York City

Other cool stuff we saw on our boat ride

The rest of the day

By the end of the day, Nathan was done in, so we went back to the Navy Lodge. After a rough night, Bert and I both came to the same decision, we needed to go home early. We were really bummed that we wouldn't be able to go to Sea World, but we hope to get back down to San Diego some day soon.

It has been over two weeks now since Nathan got sick, and no one else came down with the flu that Nathan had. Isn't that wierd?