Happy Birthday Andrew

 Andrew is a great kid.  He is smart, funny, happy, easy going, and an all around wonderful person.  He is the baby of the family, but we've never babied him, so he isnt the typical spoiled, cant do anything for himself, whiny, carry me, baby boy.  He is strong, independent, and laid back.  He's my friend.  I love having him in our family.  He's growing up SO fast.

 I am on William's laptop, so I dont have many pictures of Andrew for this post, so I picked out 3 old ones that show Andrew in some funny moments.

Andrew turned 11 years old on the 27th.  It was a nice birthday, but he didnt get a big party or anything.  Maybe (hopefully) next year we will plan something for his friends to come over.  On his birthday we went out to lunch at Round Table Pizza for their lunch buffet, but it wasnt very good and the restaurant was really crowded, so it wasnt the big, fun lunch I had planned.  We did get to sit at the big King Arthur's round table with the one big king chair, so that was nice.  For dinner, we let Andrew choose where he wanted to go and he picked Subway.  He enjoyed it, but got sick the next day and Scott got sick the day after that, so I dont know if we will be going to Subway any time soon.

For a gift he got a really fun trike made by Razor Scooter, so it's like a scooter bike, but what it really reminds me of is a "Big Wheel" that my brothers and I had growing up.  I remember doing destruction derbys or crash up derbys or whatever we would call them, where we just rode into each other over and over and over until someone quit or got hurt...I'm glad we dont have two of these bikes!  haha

Christmas Morning

I am blogging on William's laptop right now and on this one, I can highlight as many pictures as I want to load to my blog and dont have to choose them one by one, so here are all the pictures from Christmas morning...a sneak peek into our present unwrapping fun-

my gift from the boys

it was too small, we then gave it to Andrew after he struggled to get it off.

Good Bye Christmas Tree

Andrew really wanted a Christmas tree.  Him and Scott picked a REALLLLLY nice one our at Orchard Supply a few weeks ago.  I am not a gung ho tree person mostly because there is no room for one in our house, but it was really important to Andrew.  He did most of the decorating himself.  It made our house smell wonderful, at first, but soon dried out (even though we watered it) FAST.   It was starting to worry me, so we rarely even turned on the lights.  There were a TON of needles on the floor.  It wasnt even a pretty green color anymore.  At first you couldnt see through it at all because it was so thick with healthy green needles, but by today, you could see right through it, the needles were hardly there any longer!  So, today is Christmas, we got the in front of the tree Christmas morning pictures.  We were done with the tree.  So we did what most anyone else would do, right?  We took the tree out front and set fire to it!  10 seconds later it was gone!  

Skyping

We love the inventions of Skype, webcams, laptops, and all the technology it takes to let us see and talk to our son in France.  He told us in an e mail that he would call us on Skype between 9-11 in the morning on Christmas Eve.  We got up before 8 and were ready in case he called before 9, .... he didnt!  He actually didnt even call until 11:30, so it was a L O N GGGGGGGGGGG morning.  I didn't even want to get up to go to the bathroom.  But when he finally called, and we saw his beautiful face, we were so excited.  We couldnt hear him at first, but he could hear us, so I bet that was comical (for him).  Then we tried to do a 3 way Skype session with Melanee and Dax, but it wouldnt work...so we ended up just holding her up on another laptop for her to see William and him to see her.  Andrew didn't really want to be in the picture, and all 5 of us couldnt really fit all that well because we were holding the laptop, I guess we should have had a table to set it on!!!!  

Here we are Skyping!  

We started out all talking at the same time!  But we figured out how to ask and answer questions so that everyone could take part.  We talked for 50 minutes, but it seemed like 20!  It went by so fast!  I cant wait to do it again on Mother's Day!  

In this picture he was showing us how whenever you get a haircut in France, you also get a head massage.  

He was very happy!  He looked great!!!

Surprise Gifts

On Saturday afternoon, we were just sitting around and Neng Tong appears at our door with hot, fresh made, delicious egg rolls (my FAVORITE Hmong food!), then before he even left another friend arrived with Great Harvest cinnamon swirl bread, and before he even drove away my visiting teacher arrived with a bag of goodies.  On Sunday, Michelle and Jace came over with a bowl of presents and Jennifer Norris brought over a basket of goodies.  Guess I better get some return favors prepared and delivered in the next little while!!!!!

William's Clothes

Even Andrew has started wearing the clothes William left behind!!!  He's not going to have ANYTHING to wear when he gets back!!!!!!

Away Game Dress Clothes

When school basketball teams have away games, they wear shirts and ties to school on game days.....so for Bradley's team's first away game, he got up, got dressed, had a nice shirt and tie on, but was wearing his blue jeans.  I said, "You have to wear slacks, too."  He didn't agree, but wouldn't call any of his teammates to ask what they were wearing.  (A girl totally would have done that!)  So, I called my friend Tina, who had jr high basketball player sons in the past and she said, "yeah, they wear jeans"....So we gave in and let Bradley wear his jeans with his nice shirt and tie.  Then we went outside to get in the car and he put his sweatshirt right on top, so no one could even really tell if he was dressed up at all!

(Ahhh, haha, look at Scott in the background)

Melanee, remember the time when you were a freshman and the varsity girls told you guys to wear your WHOLE uniform to school???  And you did, but all of them were just in jeans and their jerseys???? And laughed at the freshman!!!  meanies!  HAZING!  haha!

Learn to Open

Nowadays lots of things have easy open packaging and zip lock closures to help keep things fresh and allow them to last longer...Well, this is how my family opens things....we gotta eat them all in one night because there is no closing THIS package-

Ugly Sweater Day

Andrew's school had an ugly sweater day, he wore this most of the day.....so funny!

Melanee's Present

I did all of my Christmas shopping this year at Target.com because I could get 5% off and FREE SHIPPING.  So I sent Melanee a cheese grater.  She got THREE.  Woo Hoo, Jackpot!  Her and Dax and another person can all grate cheese at the same time now!  LUCKY them.  haha.

Melanee must have thought I was crazy, though, sending her three.  Scott wanted me to ask her which one she liked best.  They are all the same thing, and the invoice says "1" and I was billed for only 1, so someone in Target's packaging/stock/order filling area made a mistake.

I got a text Christmas morning saying something like, "hey mom, did you MEAN to send me 3 cheese graters?"  haha!  "No!".

The Rest of the Basketball Pictures

He was under the basket and flipped the ball up and made this one.

He made this one, too.

I don't think I've written much of a game summary or anything on the past two posts.  Yesterday was the last game before Christmas break.  It was also the second game of a back to back.  We drove 45 minutes to Red Bluff.  The gym looked really nice, but it ended up being a really slippery floor, the rims were too wobbly, and the nets were too long, so they kept getting tangled up.  They only charged $1 for admission, which was nice because at Bidwell, they charge $3.

Bradley was a starter again.  Vista came out and got the first 4 points and I thought they looked really good. Bidwell kept doing bad passes, traveling, and missing their shots.  Bradley scored the first Bidwell basket about 5 minutes into the game.  It was obvious that Bidwell was the better team on the floor, but they never really pulled away on the scoreboard.  At one point they were leading by 10, but a few minutes later they were only leading by 7, so I was getting a little nervous.  Like most teams, Bradley's team has a fairly steep drop of between it's starters and subs, so the coach does a lot of subbing and adjusting all game long.  Unfortunately for Bradley, him and two other guys play the same position, so he has to share playing time with the other two "tall" guys.  I think Bradley is the most trusted of the three, though, because the other team had one standout player and whenever Bradley covered him, he was stopped, I think he only scored once on Bradley, but bunches on the other two.  Also, there was a point in the game where on about 4 or 5 CONSECUTIVE plays Bradley did a steal, or a block, or a rebound, or something to get the ball back for his team after the other team had it.

I asked him if he was sore after the game (because they had games two nights in a row) and he said only his mouth hurt from when the Orthodontist tightened his braces....then I remembered, he got the braces on, then had the bike wreck about a week later, with the loose teeth, the orthodontist didn't do anything to the braces to put stress on the teeth, hoping they would tighten back up, then he said to wait 7 weeks, so this is really the first time Bradley has had the braces tightened....so, OUCH.  But no basketball injuries or soreness.