Thanksgiving 2010

Every year as a family, we try to alternate Christmas and Thanksgiving between Shafter and Sonora. Thanksgiving this year was spent in Sonora.

We ate at the Cummings house, who also had a couple other families over for the feast. The guy in the green sweatshirt came all the way from Japan. He was James' host parent when he lived in Japan.

Connor enjoyed spending time with his cousin Trent. They spent some of their weekend watching Thomas the Train...

...while Brenna enjoyed eating all the mash potatoes she could handle.

We also celebrated Trent's second birthday. Aunt Christina made him a special Thomas cake.

And finally the boys helped Grammy and Papa put up their Christmas tree. A few ornaments were broken and only the bottom half of the tree got decorated but they sure had fun helping.

Overall, it was a great weekend, except for the flu and cold that Christina and I caught. We are better now and are ready for the next big holiday.


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Now playing: Caedmon's Call - Thankful
via FoxyTunes

Family Picture 2010

Weekend Fun

Last weekend we traveled down to Oakdale to have a BBQ at Bryan's house. The Evans joined us, along with James' dad and wife. Below are the pictures.

Auntie Cho (Michelle) playing cornhole with Dillon. Bryan's backyard runs up against the Stanislaus River, making for a great place to have a BBQ.

Connor and Trent wore matching baseball outfits. Glad that they were Dodger colors and not the Giants.

These two aren't quite old enough to play together, but they are good at running around.

No, James is not taking a nap. He is just notorious for having his eyes closed in pictures.

The three little ones couldn't resist sitting on the ATVs.

The mandatory group picture. Thanks Bryan for throwing a great BBQ.


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Now playing: The Cars - Good Times Roll
via FoxyTunes

Catching Up

This past week have been really busy due to family visits, birthday dinners, and chasing three kids around which adds up to not having time to update with pictures. Below are photos from the last 10 days.

This picture of Brenna reminds Christina of a sleeping Connor.

We captured the one moment on film where all three kids were calm, cry-free, and chilling.

Part of last weekend included a surprise 50th anniversary party for Christina's Aunt Lenny and Uncle Larry. They flew down from Alaska and was surprised by friends and family from all over the United States.

Brenna and Connor were dedicated at church last Sunday. Our friend Nate from our small group lead the dedication.

Me praying during the dedication. All three of the kids were good during the dedication. I was a little nervous that Connor and/or Brenna would start crying.

After church we took our first picture as a family with Brenna.

Sunday afternoon was spent at the Cummings house with some of Christina's extended family.

Here are all of Christina's cousins that were at the party and there are 10 other cousins that were unable to attend!

Connor had fun playing with his second cousin Stella, who was 22 months old. There was five children under the age two at the party which created tons of entertainment.


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Now playing: Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure
via FoxyTunes

One more video

I know my last couple of posts have been videos but I took a lot of pictures during the week. The best way to view those pictures are in slide show form. Plus, Dillon loves watching these kinds of videos. Below is Dillon and Connor's Christmas week.

Christmas with Barbara's Bunch

This Christmas, all of my Mom's siblings were in Shafter for my Grandma's birthday party and Christmas. Below is are highlights of both events and everything that happened in between. And yes, that is a 70 year old jumping rope.

Merry Christmas

Below is our Christmas card picture. As an added bonus, I have also included the card the Cummings sent out this year.




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Now playing: Bing Crosby - I Wish You A Merry Christmas (2006 Digital Remaster)
via FoxyTunes

New (to us) Car

After a month of searching the Internet for a new vehicle, the Nixons are now owners of a 2006 Honda Odyssey. With kid number three on the way, we were growing into a bigger car. We needed something that could hold three car seats and Christina could access the back row easily. A SUV looked appealing but would make it difficult for a pregnant lady to buckle in the kids. After getting over the stigma of driving a minivan, we settled on the Odyssey because of its reliability and features.

Some of those features are dual control air, power sliding side doors, and bucket middle seats. We were able to find a local seller who turned out to be the nicest couple. Below is a picture of a van similar to ours.



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Now playing: The Cars - Just What I Needed (LP Version)
via FoxyTunes

Connor's Big Day

On Saturday we threw a birthday party for Connor. I would have posted the pictures sooner but I left the camera at the Cummings' house.

Just like with Dillon, Grandma Sharon made Connor's cakes. She has kept up the tradition of making the grandkids their own cake.

Connor and Dillon with their first cousins - Trent, Kaleb, Taylor, and Bradley (not pictured).

At first, Connor was unsure of what to do with his cake. He soon discovered the great taste of frosting.

It was almost impossible keeping Dillon out of the pictures. We finally gave up and took a family picture.

The grandparents and great grandparents gathered around Connor for a picture.

Connor with his second cousins, Heather and Keith.

Finally, we got all the aunts and uncles to take a picture with the birthday boy.

The boy enjoyed making a mess with the icing of his cake. I will post more pictures of him opening presents at a later time.


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Now playing: Cake - Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
via FoxyTunes

Family Bus

I never mentioned this on the blog before, but at Christmas James' family came to Sonora. We borrowed our friend's bus to take a trip up the hill to the snow. We had a great time visiting with everyone during the trip. Afterwords, James and I talked about trying to find a vehicle that our whole family could fit in. Now that we have two kids and James and Michelle have one, it was hard to go anywhere without taking two or three cars. We joked about getting a bus like the one we had just taken to the snow.

This week I caught wind of an auction the county was having for old vehicles. On the list was a few old transit buses. I was able to prearrange a meeting to look over the buses before the auction on Saturday (my only perk of being a county employee.) Three of the buses were in excellent condition. The county was having to replace them earlier than planned because of California's emission standards. It didn't take much convincing to get James and Mike on board to the idea of splitting the purchase of one of the buses.

Saturday morning Mike and I showed up at the auction ready to start the bidding process. We staked out the one we liked the best and was hoping no one else wanted it. Turned out someone else did want it so I participated in my first auction bidding war. After a few going back and forth bids, the Cummings, Evans and Nixons became proud owners of a used 2001 transit bus.

Here's the front the bus. We have decided to keep it at the Cummings' house for storage because they have the most room.

The county painted over the logo they have on the side of their buses, leaving us space to put in something clever. If only we were clever enough to come up with slogan or logo.

The bus came with an automated wheelchair lift. We are hoping to take it out and sell it on Ebay or Craigslist to help offset the cost of the bus. Is there a market for used wheelchair lifts?

There are 13 seats on the bus, plus the driver's seat. The seat belts will allow us to properly secure the children's car seats. We also will use it to take visiting family members and friends to the lake, snow, or any other local landmarks.

The bus only has 181,000 miles on it, which is very low for this type of vehicle. Thankfully, the county keeps their fleet well maintained and had just put in a new transmission into this bus.

The Evans are visiting Sonora soon, allowing us to take our bus on it's maiden voyage. Here's to many good times to come.


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Now playing: Eddie Kendricks - Keep On Truckin' (Part 1)
via FoxyTunes

Big News

Are you eager to find out the special news? Well, Christina is pregnant. Her due date is October 18th, which puts her at 12 1/2 weeks along.

We are very excited but the last six weeks have been very trying. Christina has been very sick just like when she carried Dillon. She was hospitalized once for dehydration. After her overnight stay in the hospital, her doctor ordered a take home IV for her. This was a huge help in keeping fluids in her system. She also had to be given medicine through shots because medicine taken orally was not staying down. (Yes, I got to administer the shots.)

Her sickness has taught me two important lessons:

1. I could not be a single parent. Working all day then coming home to take care of a toddler, making dinner, and cleaning up was hard work. I now have a greater appreciation of my spouse. There is no way I could do all that over an extended basis, which leads to...
2. Our families are awesome. Christina and Dillon have been staying at Mike and Ginni's house during the week while I am at work so someone is watching Dillon and bringing food to Christina. My mom, grandma, sister, and aunt have all come up to Sonora to also pitch in to relieve Mike and Ginni. A thank you from the bottom of our hearts goes out to everyone that has helped.

We are praying that Christina is about to turn a corner with her extreme sickness. About this time in her pregnancy with Dillon, she was able to return to work because the constant vomiting let up. She still had some "normal" morning sickness but the all day sickness went away.

All of her doctor appointments have gone well. We had an early sonogram a few weeks ago to confirm the date of conception and last week we listened to the heartbeat. More updates on Dillon's new sibling will be posted as they develop.

Lack of Blogging

The past week I have been slacking on the posts but I have reasons, even if they are lame. The first reason is because I spent the weekend in Shafter visiting family. The occasion that brought us to Shafter was my Aunt Lynn's 50th birthday party. (For those of you who don't know my aunt she can best be summed up in four words: Oklahoma, NASCAR, beef jerky.) All of my mom's siblings were there, including my Uncle Joe, Aunt Felicia, and cousin Robert. Everyone was excited because it was our first time to see Robert.

The party was on Saturday but Friday my mom and grandma threw a baby shower for Christina and Aunt Felicia. We came away with a car full of stuff (literally) and are very thankful to everyone who gave us presents. I used the baby shower as an excuse to hang out with John and watch basketball. Dana was also supposed to be there but he got "sick". I just think he wanted to stay home so that he could continue his redneck science project.

One of the great things about my family is that everyone knows how to cook and there is always plenty of food. Whether it is my mom's tacos, Aunt Lynn's fried fish, Aunt Susan's Rice Crispy chicken, or my grandma's biscuit and gravy our family is always full.

The second reason I have been behind on my blogging is because we have started the first season of 24. This is a show that I wanted to start watching at the beginning of the series but for some reason I did not catch the first few episodes and have been hesitant to jump into the middle of it. But now we are 18 hours in and are hooked.

I hope to not have such sporadic posts in the near future. So stay tuned.