June Road Trip pictures

Rather than add even more pictures to Sarah's picture thread here are a few pictures from my road trip in June. (more on the trip tomorrow)

The above picture was taken in Penn Station in New Jersey

Looking toward the financial district in NYC, if you view in full size you can see the Statue of Liberty as a little dot to the right

Random farm in PA we passed

Niagara Falls

Sarah's year in Pictures

2007 started off with Nick and Will deciding not to cut their hair

No! I do not look like my grandma! You just don't know modern hairstyles!

but mom.... all the cool guys are wearing their hair this way!

Mr. Cool.....need I say more?

The scariest pirate ninja I have ever seen......also the cutest one

Molly pretending she's a man pretending to smoke..... talk about a good role model....

What's up dude.....if you dress like me....

you will end up in jail....hence the sad face

Also....that was the craziest gift Sarah got..... A LIME GREEN DO-RAG??

William has now stolen it..... along with a hat I (Sarah) received from Bethany!

Bethany's hat:

A Cake!!!!!! Yes, it was yummy!

There are no words.......

Ditto.....

My little bookworms.....sooooo cute......I might be a teeny bit biased......

What my family does for fun!!

There are no words to describe this incredible time that we are having.

Don't you wish you knew what we are doing?

And yes that is a stuffed dog that William is holding.....

Me getting completly covered in snow.....

Thanks Olivia!!!! :)

Baumans visit in October......We decided against posting all the wild and crazy pictures we took...it would scare people..... see we all look relativly normal...

A Bird!!!

Matthew's first violin concert

Umm.....me getting ready for a concert????

Outside I look fine....but I feel dead inside........Our mother said this picture disturbed her

The Red Lobster

Picture with the best story behind it. Don't you wish you knew what the story was??

A typical lunch for Willliam

Best concert of the year...

Normal loot from the library.....

Snow......it was sooo much fun!!!!

My brother Nicholas

Today is my brother Nick's 18th birthday. Nicholas and I have been sharing a room for 15 years, I still remember the day he moved into my room and we started our wonderful brotherly love filled experiance of rooming together. (For people who don't know us that well, that last line has some sarcasm ;) ) Nick and I don't always see eye to eye you could say, sometimes it is like mixing oil and water personality wise. Because I am older, I have on occasion been a bit of a "my way or the highway" brother. :p But I have learned, and am still learning to listen to Nick's thoughts and opinions.

There is a 5 year difference in age between us but we look enough alike that people who don't know us that well have a hard time distinguishing between us. I get called Nick and he gets called Will more often than not which is actually quite funny. Even though he is now slightly taller than I am, he occasionally steals my clothes without asking and I sometimes want to toss his bed out the window, I still love him as a brother and I can't think of a better one.

This past week I have been doing some end of the year cleaning and I came across all my many badly spelled papers I wrote growing up. Here is one I wrote a little over 10 years ago:

My Brother
My brother Nicholas is quite a character. One of his favorite activities is swinging on tree branches at least 10 feet above the ground. This fearless achievement may account for his slender build. He is quite sociable and good humored and may shout a greeting to anyone he sees below. His normal attire consists of blue jeans and my well worn shirts. His green eyes come from my mom, but he looks just like my dad. After living in the same room with him for five years I have found him to be hard to provoke and quite to forgive. He may be 7.8 years old but he is one great guy. :)

I know there are people who read this blog who have known us for a long time and while cleaning I also came across some older pictures of him I thought I would share: :D

Both of us:

I guess if you have no idea who Nick is, it might be helpful to post some more recent pictures :p

This is not edited in any way, that was the real size of that chair!

Even though we are brothers we are both very competitive...

Me (on the left) trouncing Nick in chess

Nick, well... eh... he is about to block me :p (I am the lone guy in red)

Some more pictures :p I should also mention Nick sometimes drives our mother nuts with his clothes....

A film I want to watch in 2008

I am not sure if anyone who reads this even knows who Ben Stein is, if you have never heard of him, he has been a writer, a commentator, an actor, a lawyer, a White House speech writer...lot of different things in his lifetime. He has been working on a documentary called "Expelled" due to hit theaters in February. The documentary focuses on the the great political intimidation taking place in academia against any mention that a) Darwin was wrong and b) the existence of a Creator is a plausible explanation for the complex universe in which we live. Here is a very short teaser:

Of course I think most Christians already know there is "political intimidation taking place in academia" so it is not a new subject, but the film looks like it could be very interesting. There is a much longer trailer on the film's website If you have time, check it out.

Post-Christmas post :p

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, I know I did! :D Because most of our family is in about an hours drive radius from us we usually have quite a gathering for Christmas. This year was no different. On Christmas eve, my mother's family came over so we had 30+ people running around, about half of them under 18. It was a little loud but I guess we are just used to the chaos that comes from large family gatherings. I was talking with my cousin and the subject came up that when all the cousins get married if they just have 2 kids each we are going have to rent a gym or something as there will be 80+ people!

Christmas day was actually much calmer, Sarah Nick and I (the older three) tried to sleep in, but the younger crowd having been up since 6AM had other plans. We ended up having to get out of bed at 7:30! :( Actually for me 7:30 is a bit late, but I have been on a Christmas time schedule which is something like go to sleep around 12:30-1:30 and wake up whenever so 7:30 was a little earlier than I would have liked. :p

After an hour so of opening gifts, the younger crowd disappeared to their rooms with their gifts and I decided to eat some breakfast. I would post some pictures of people opening gifts but we all look a bit strange :p Right after breakfast, I was walking past the front door and glanced out the window to see my grandparents getting out of their car some two and a half hours before we were expecting them! Everyone rushed about cleaning up wrapping paper and getting out of their pajamas, well except me, I decided to just stay in my PJs the whole day. I had no socks on and the whole day my grandmother kept asking me if my feet were cold. :p

After visiting and opening gifts with my grandparents as well as eating lunch, my services as an expert Lego builder were called upon. For something like 8 years growing up, every birthday, every Christmas, my one wish was Legos, if I had my own cash I would buy Legos. I was a Legoholic! I am serious I have something like 30,000+ pieces or some other out of this world number. I could and still can, just look at a picture of something and build it with Legos. There was this one time I took over almost our whole two car garage building this Lego town......

Anyway Matthew and Sam had received Legos from almost everyone, quite a lot of Legos totaling over 1,700 pieces. Since about 9:30 they had been camped in their room building but at their current rate of construction they would be building for probably an other whole day to get everything built. So I came to assist them. Entering their room was a bit of a disaster area, for some reason they had decided to open the Legos up all over the room rather than just in a contained area where they could be organized for construction. It took a little while just to find pieces. Several hours later I emerged from their room with not only a sense of accomplishment but also rather sore knees. :p Crawling through piles of Legos searching for that one elusive piece is fun but can be painful.

Yesterday we headed up to visit my Grandmother's sister who lives just over an hour away. It was another day of more turkey and ham and gift giving with around 30 more relatives. The last few days have been fun and I really enjoy visiting with folks we don't see very often. My mother declared today to be a rest day before we start back up with events for the end of this year and the start of a new one. I think we have something planned everyday until January. Because of this I am not sure how many blog posts will be posted to end out the year. I have some things I want to post about, I just need to find time to type. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS

Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday dear Jesus
Happy Birthday to You.

Happy birthday Jesus
I'm so glad its Christmas
All the tinsel and lights
And the presents are nice
But the real gift is You.

Happy birthday Jesus
I'm so glad its Christmas
All the carols and bells
Make the holiday swell
And it's all about You
Happy birthday Jesus
Jesus I love You!

Listen to the song!

Merry Christmas Everyone! :D

(This is probably the last post for a few days, we have family things going on tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday)

Family Christmas Photo

For several days we have been trying to coordinate a family photograph and this afternoon we finally were able to get it done:

Sisters, Anna, Sarah, Molly:

The following pictures don't really need captions :p

Close up of my great tie :D

Yes I know I am making a silly face, Sarah had this idea that I should try to look like the Reindeer on the tie.....did not really work :p