Christmas at the Toppings'

For our third Christmas celebration of the season, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Mike's house.  It is always quite the festive and active venue for getting the family together.  My (Brent's) sister and Uncle Karl and their kids drove up and usually Aunt Lou Jean and her family join in the fun as well.  Here is Tara and my mom in front of the Christmas Tree and all the stockings hanging on the fireplace.

Here is a picture of the cousins all together before we let them tear into their stockings.

After opening stockings and presents it was time for a nice meal together.  This is all the kids eating in a fairly orderly manner because I think they the TV was on in the background.  As you can see Madison and Sarah have their princess crowns on.  Thanks for hosting us mom!

Christmas at the Wills'

We spent Christmas day at the Wills' this year.  We were also joined by Uncle Rick for dinner and presents.  Here above, Gavin is helping Grandma open up one of her gifts and Gage is rocking some real short hair for the occasion.

Gage also loves to help others open gifts and was eager to aid Grandpa Jim.  The kids also love seeing Rick and showing him everything they get for Christmas.

Did Santa come visit?

Christmas morning is always such a fun time together with family.  The kids left out extra special treats on Christmas Eve for Santa this year.  There were cookies and milk for Santa on the table and then there was some granola with glitter (created at Gavin's school) for the reindeer.  We are not quite sure how Santa was able to get into the house without a chimney in our house, but he must have some sneaky ways to get the job done.

Here are the guys giving Tara a special gift that they made for her.  It was a Pottery Christmas Tree art project that they had made.  Tara obviously loved it and we had a great morning together reading the Christmas story and then opening gifts together.

Christmas Lights

Tara absolutely loves taking the kids around to see the most impressive Christmas lights that people have put up each year.  Apparently, this house has built up their display year after year and has built quite the reputation.  This is the first time I (Brent) have visited and was given the grand tour.

The boys loved looking around at all the lights and just being out and about at night.  I have to say it was a pretty impressive display, but I enjoy ornately lit up trees a bit more than the old-school displays like this house had. 

PRA Christmas Party

Here is me (Brent) wearing one of the most amazing sweater vests I have ever set my eyes upon.  It is actually Tara's and I was the lucky person that had to wear it to Tara's Prospect Ridge Academy Christmas party that turned out to be at some dive bar in Denver.  The theme was ugly sweaters and though it's hard to believe by the end of the night I was barely in the running for worst sweater.  Where do people come up with these things?  As you can tell, I was just thrilled to be wearing such a fine piece of clothing to meet a bunch of people I had never met before.  It was all in good fun, mostly, and we had a pretty good time, however I think we are still questioning the location chosen for the Christmas party.

AppleTree Christmas Show

It is always a job to see our boys in the AppleTree Christmas program.  The school always does a good job putting on a big concert and play.  Here is Gage with his class singing some songs, although he seems to be a bit distracted by being next to the shed.

Now that Gavin is in Kindergarten, he gets to be apart of the big play.  We thought this would be right up his alley because he is good at memorizing things and loves to sing, but apparently he is always a bit shy about these things and opted for a smaller part despite our encouragement.  He tried to be a sheep at first, but at least we ended up with him playing the part of something a bit more exciting.  He was one of the three wise men.

Gavin did an awesome job with his lines and singing and seemed to enjoy himself up there.  Here is the picture of the entire class together after the show. 

Gavin's 1st Lost Tooth!

It's hard to believe that our little men are getting so big these days.  Here is Gavin after he lost his first tooth.  He wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy saying "Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost my first tooth today.  Love Gavin".  He truly did lose the tooth, as we are not quite sure what happened to it.  He was running around in the Garage while eating some food and realized it was gone.  I guess he either swallowed it or it fell out somewhere along the way.  He was actually a bit embarrassed by this fact, but w did our best to comfort him.  After a nights sleep with the note under his pillow, I believe the Tooth Fairy still visited him.  Funny enough, he tried to later trick the Tooth Fairy and put other notes and fake teeth under his pillow to see if the tooth fairy would visit him again.  I guess the Tooth Fairy is too experienced to fall for such tricks...

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Tara always loves decorating the Christmas tree together as a family and always pushes to get the tree up as early as possible.  I think this year we found one about a week and a half early, which I (Brent) think was pretty good.  Both of these guys (Gavin and Gage) also enjoyed the adventure of hanging things.  They did a great job of working together hanging all the ornaments.  We helped them hang the light weight ones or the mostly non-breakable ones in hopes that nothing would get too damaged.

They obviously had a great time with the whole thing.  These are the only Christmas lights we can put up in our house because our outlets don't work on the front of the house to put up house lights.

Here is a picture of Tara also getting in on the action.  She mostly stayed out of the camera's view because she wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion.

Indoor Soccer with Gage

Gavin had recently been grown a bit tired of soccer (though I think this was mostly due to consistently playing against people that were older than him), however Gage had decided that he missed playing.  We decided to drop Gage in for a quick session.  Here he is stretching with the two instructors and a few other kids.

Obviously they needed to practice their "Donkey Kicks" after doing some drills. Gage is actually pretty good at these and never passes up the chance to be wild and kick around.

Here is Gage getting ready for the next drill.  He does pretty well with listening and typically has a good amount of patience while waiting.

They finished off the session with a short scrimmage.  Gage seemed more interested in playing defense and running around, but eventually he got the hang of it and went after the ball.  Unfortunately, with the indoor soccer place being in Boulder and having to coordinate busy schedules with both kids in Broomfield, there wasn't really the ability to keep on coming for more sessions after this one.  Hopefully things will settle down a bit and we can get back to some soccer for the kids again.

Flood Damage

This past year brought what was later determined to be a "1000 year flood" event to the front range of Colorado.  Although our personal house made it through without any problems in Broomfield, Tara's dad's house was located at the base of a mountain canyon and just a few feet from the Big Thompson river.  This river has had a history of infamous flood events, though their house had previously withstood them all.  Unfortunately, this one was different.  The sheer magnitude of the flood is hard to imagine with water remaining almost 15 feet above it's normal level for nearly 10 days straight.  This put Terry and Sandra's house almost entirely under water.  The result was a devastating total loss.  We finally were able to make it up in person to witness the damage and it is hard to describe.  Here is Tara standing next to what is left of the center section of the house near where the kitchen used to be.

This is a picture from farther out where you can see the rough of what's left of their house.  Tons and tons of dirt, rocks, and rubble was carried down by the flood and literally raise the ground level by nearly 6' to 8' above where it used to be once it was deposited.  This is why the house appears to be almost hidden under ground.

The garage remained mostly intact, though buried, and through some heavy equipment excavation work, Terry's classic car "Jenny" was able to be recovered.

Here is a picture of Terry and Tara together.  It was a pretty sobering trip, but good to be there to support them going through such a hard time with losing everything.  We are truly sorry for their loss.