The Question at the End of the Year

How Did We Do on Our 2010 New Year's Resolutions?

Not only did Son #2 "Write a song", he wrote 3!
Our favorite is often sung to his little sister in the car to make her happy. The title of the song is "Bee'z Business". When this song is performed, there is often more than just 2 people singing.

"Read the Old Testament" was Very-Involved Mom's goal. Let's just say ... she's reading the Old Testament and currently in 2nd Samuel.

Lovely Daughter's goal was "Go to potty". We're happy to say that she learned in about 2 weeks in August and has been very successful ever since!

Son #1's priorities changed over the year and "the fridge and microwave" goal just wasn't as important as other goals. He is beginning to save and is learning how to wisely spend the money which he works so hard to earn.

"Publish Numbers" took on a different meaning throughout the year for Son #3. Instead of inventing his own number system, he has been enjoying math work involving comparing fractions, lattice multiplication, and long division.

"Hang up 3 pictures in our house": Hard Working Dad's goal. He hung up 5! (see picture below) Okay this was not his intention to hang up photos, but to actually hang 3 pieces of his own artwork. However, we love this family tree artwork that HE created from a fallen branch of our curly willow tree in our front yard.

~See you in 2011~

December Reflections

A wonderful and amazingly patient man offered to teach basic drumming to the children in our area in his garage. Eighteen children performed on December 16th for their families and friends in the "T.N.T.: Tap N' Trap" Bucket Band. We're happy that our children were able to participate in such a fun experience!

The boys from the Byrd Flock got to see Santa at our annual ward party, however our lovely daughter got freaked out about seeing him that evening. She waited to see him at her weekly music time preschool called Cherubs. She was super excited and very willing to sit on this sweet Santa's lap.

We had a very relaxing Christmas this year. We just stayed home and enjoyed being together as a family and trying out all our new gifts.

We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!

Lunar Eclipse with the Winter Solstice

10:20 PM

"Ghostly shading of the moon, marking the arrival of Earth's faint out shadow, or penumbra"
(Quotes are coming from descriptions from National Geographic.)

10:35 PM
"Dim 'bite"=Earth's shadow advancing across the moon"

11:05 PM
Bigger "bite"

11:45 PM
"Total Eclipse-when the entire moon is dimmed by Earth's shadow"
(Blurry photo because I could not keep the camera still above my head and there was a constant cloud cover during this time! This was the best photo shot of the 10 that I took.)

12:00 AM
(Blurry photo, again)

12:15 AM
"Moon plunges into the Earth's umbra-the dark center of our planet's shadow."

12:30 AM
The glow of orange.

For Family Home Evening last night, we went about 30 minutes away to walk down 2 streets that had Christmas lights and a ton of cartoon wood cutouts! Most of the cutouts were Disney, but we saw Calvin and Hobbes, Nightmare Before Christmas, Wallace and Gromit, etc. too.

We got home around 9:30 PM, started to get ready for bed and then we saw that a friend on Facebook posted about the lunar eclipse and saw that it would begin at around 10 PM our time. All of us except for Hard-working Dad were able to see this spectacular view of the moon until 12:30 AM when the moon's color appeared orange. AMAZING!!!!

Christmas Read Aloud