January 2017

A new year brings new opportunities. While we were visiting CA, Jason's uncle gave Jason his grandfather's shotgun. We brought it home and tried it out with my uncle Kent at a (semi)local outdoor shooting range. This place isn't very far from Kent's house but it is a one hour drive for us. January 2nd Kent and Jason taught us how to shoot the shotgun and then we shot skeet until we ran out of targets. Everyone had fun but Caleb and Sarah were a little disappointed with how heavy the gun is for them and how much it kicks. Anna, Jaron and Darik took to it easily but this wasn't their first exposure. They all had shot rifles or shotguns at their summer camps. We all had fun and then went to lunch with Kent afterwards.

January 9th was another XC meet.

January 13th is Darik's 13th birthday. This is an odd year so no formal birthday parties for the kids this year. We did, however, invite the Hodsons over to celebrate with us as January 13th is Andrew's 12th birthday. It's always fun to get us all together. We were down three this time because of Rachel, Nathan and their oldest, Caleb, all out on missions but that still left 11 kids and 4 adults to celebrate the birth of these awesome young men.

The 20th I flew to Sacramento, met my mother there as she flew in from Portland, and drove the 2 hours north to Redding to watch my sister graduate her masters program. Caryn knew I was coming but didn't know that my mother was going to be able to make it. It was AWESOME to see the look on her face when my mom walked into Caryn's office. Graduation was Saturday at 1 and it only lasted about 2 hours total. We didn't leave until Sunday morning around 11 to fly back to our respective states so we had a wonderful weekend together. More XC on Jan 23. And Anna started a new job! She is working at Chik-fil-a and loving it. They promise they will work around her band schedule when marching season returns in the summer, we'll see if it's true, but in the meantime, the little girl is growing up.