The Andrew Family: Finally, another Post!

Ok, don't die of shock because I am finally posting after so long. I have 4 months to catch up on, which is the longest I have gone with out posting. So this post will be long and have a lot of pictures. :)

A friend of mine took some pictures of us for our Christmas Card. Here are a few of them.

OCTOBER
My parents took the older boys to the Miramar Air Show. The boys were in heaven. They had absolutely no interest in watching the Air Show, they preferred to get in as many planes, trucks, or vehicles that they could and push, pull, twist and turn every knob, lever or button they could get their hands on.

There was a few "dummies" in some of the vehicles. This one stayed motionless while they were in there then waved to them as they left. Here he is with the boys.

Zander turned 3 years old! Here he is showing you (it is much easier to do it this way then all 3 fingers on the same hand, what a ham!).

Zander was born on my Dad's birthday so we had a combined party.

I started taking piano lessons recently and the kids love to play on it too, which makes practicing quite challenging.

I spent the day of Halloween in the ER getting fluids after a food poisoning/dehydration/fainting spell I had, that I think was stress related (I was sort of in charge of a Trunk-or-Treat at church with over 300 people). Everything was fine, but I stayed home to pass out candy and Jeff took the kids trick-or-treating.

NOVEMBER
We went up to Escondido to pick persimmons. It was really fun. The kids had a great time stomping around.

DECEMBER
Alison was screaming in the other photo with Santa so I had to hold her in this one. She still isn't so sure about him.

We decided last minute to drive out to Utah to visit Jeff's family. There wasn't much snow and it was a lot warmer than last year. We played at the park . . .

found some snow to have a snowball fight . . .

Visited temple square . . .

The boys love their Uncle Brian.

The lights were so pretty

Here is the bench Jeff proposed to me on 8 1/2 years ago . . .

and our family now . . .

JANUARY
We went to the Zoo's Safari Park for the morning. There was no one there and the weather was perfect. The kids loved the petting zoo.

Although, Ali wasn't so sure at times.

Back in August we decided to get some backyard chickens. Here they are on the day we bought them.

A week older . . .

getting bigger . . .

and almost full grown. Zander loves to feed them his food and annoy them any chance he gets (hence the lock on the coop). He also likes to wear his dad's shoes.

We got our first egg this last week and have been averaging 2 eggs a day from our 3 hens. It is fun to see how excited the kids get every time they go out and find another egg in the coop.

Sad Day on the Andrew Farm!

I posted this on Facebook two weeks ago and thought I should update the blog too. We found one of our hens limping around one day and realized Zander must have got to her and broke her leg. Jeff put her down. Zackery cried his eyes out and I couldn't help but tear-up too. Jeff had to go to work so I got to prepare Goldie for dinner. Apparently all you need to do is boil some water and dip the chicken in it and the feathers are easy to pull right out. Later that afternoon I gave Zander and Ali some to eat. Zander said, "Hmmmm, Goldie tastes good." I couldn't get myself to eat her too, I was a little grossed out with the process of it all. Here was the last picture we had of her.

With the passing of Goldie, we had to fill the void we were feeling. These Americauna chicks were purchased the weekend before last. We will probably keep three and sell the others. These chicks will eventually produce blue/green eggs. It will be exciting!

This last weekend Jeff went snow camping with the Young Men. It was freezing and very windy. He didn't sleep much and was freezing during the night, but he survived (he realized he needs to get some better gear). Here some pictures on his hike up to Tahquitz Peak.