2006 Year Review

For a 'Year End Newsletter', I thought I'd just link to some of the more memorable events in 2006 that ended up in this crazy blog. Feel free to poke around a little if anything piques your interest. We are looking forward to an adventure filled 2007, and I hope you and your families are too....Happy Holidays!!

Bass fishing in the spring
Shanna catches her first salmon
Memorial Day at the Oregon Coast
Joel and Cheryl come to visit (1) (2) (3)
Fourth of July spent boating, of course (1) (2)
Sam and Shanna's first bass tournament
Mia turns six!
Mia learns to ride a big bike
Sally comes to visit in August
Cooper turns three!
Labor Day in McCall
Shanna gets fit
Sam takes a road trip in search of the Salmon (1) (2) (3)
Thanksgiving in San Diego

Family pictures

While in San Diego, we got the whole crew coordinated for some family pictures. These are not the "official" pictures because those are in Andrea's nice new Canon EOS 30D , but they will give you a little preview of things to come anyway. I'll make an album when she sends me the CD (hint hint).

Yes, that is Matt making the 'rabbit' face for the kids...

Kenrick and Mia being very normal.

We spent most of the time staying clear of the errant wave!

Somebody call a plumber

At 12:06a on the day before Thanksgiving, I walked outside to greet Steve as he arrived from San Francisco. Not only did I find a Steve, but I also found a river of water running down the street, over the curb and into the ocean. So we went searching for the source - and we found it promptly: not 10 minutes before, someone had driven their car quite carelessly over the curb, the street sign, and finally the fire hydrant. Busted that bugger right off clean. I always pictured a lot of water coming out of a hydrant that was busted off in the middle of the night before Thanksgiving, but the reality of this one far exceeded my expectations. There was a column of water shooting easily 30 ft in the air (I remember noticing that it was twice the height of the nearby light pole, however high that is). The firemen, police officers and pajama clad onlookers were just kind of standing around doing nothing. I believe they were waiting for some utility dude to turn some valve somewhere because when we brought Dad back a few minutes later, it was dwindling rapidly......yes, I woke him up, because yes, he would have been mad if I didn't.

The Full (of turkey) Report

Sally invited the whole crew to San Diego for Thanksgiving this year - of course no one even considered turning her down! Even Steve, who isn't technically family but Uncle Steve nonetheless, made an appearance.
We (the spambananagrits crew) decided to drive instead of fly for some reason that has since left my reasoning. The drive actually wasn't too bad, but it took about 10 to get to Las Vegas and then another 5 to San Diego, so needless to say it was still a lot of time in the saddle. We stopped at Bass Pro Shops on the way through Las Vegas both times to stretch our legs and shop around a bit. Highly recommended if you've never been - even for non-fisherman.
Matt and Sally's place is just a touch too small for 13 people so we rented a house on the beach for the week, which worked out just splendid. Sally stocked the fridge with a ton of groceries, so we just ate and played and ate and played until everyone was fat and sandy.
Activities for the week included eating at the beach, surf lessons, Sea World, eating on the roof balcony, nightly family photo/movie reviews, kid crafts, eating in the front yard, snorkeling, football on the TV and on the beach, and as many fruit smoothies as we could eat. Wow, no wonder I came home tired, sore, fat and sunburned.
Here is the full album. Sorry there are so many pictures, but I started with almost twice as many so consider yourself lucky....be sure to poke around a little because there are some real gems that I need to retract later when certain spamily members complain...