P365 24 Video

Here is our Picture a Day Video for 2024!!

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December 2024

12/1/24

Getting the Christmas tree - here we are warming ourselves with hot cocoa after picking one out.  Anna also has our honorary pet ladybug from the trip - we left him at the farm though.

12/2/24

Fakesgiving!  When we don't host our own Thanksgiving dinner we often end up having a scaled down Thanksgiving at home so we can have a few leftovers about.  Mostly people are interested in the turkey.  I used a different brine this year and it was really good - so we might use this one in the future.

12/3/24

Anna got to put the start on the tree this year

12/4/24

Emma's choir concert was tonight - she did a beautiful job!

They sang lots of fun Christmas songs

12/5/24

Emma and the choir got to perform their songs at a school assembly today

She looked very festive!

12/6/24

The downtown tree lighting.  We went to see Grant's friends perform in the middle school jazz band and hear the middle school choir sing.  They sounded great!  We also got some ice cream and hot cocoa.  Anna was there too but running around with her friends.

12/7/24

Our high school football team played for the state championship in Seattle tonight.  And the marching band was right there to support them.  Matthew wasn't that excited about the long trip up (3ish hours each way) but it sounds like it was exciting to take the field for their halftime show in Husky Stadium (University of Washington).  Here they are performing - Matthew is on the right side in the back - he might have to help us find him as they are all in motion here.  The football team ended up losing, although it was a close game and the marching band got glowing reviews from a Seattle sportscaster.  So that's nice.  Way to go Papermakers!

12/8/24

Tonight was a music recital for Grant's guitar lessons and Emma's piano lessons.  John also recently started piano but not in time to prepare a song for the recital.  Grant and Emma both did great.  Grant was slated to go last (the grand finale) since his song was one of the more difficult pieces.  Way to go you guys!!

12/9/24

Tonight was the middle school band concert - we've been having so many musical recitals and things.

John did a great job playing in the school band - this is his first trumpet performance with a band.  He said he was nervous, but did a great job!

12/10/24

High school band concert night!  The high school band put on a truly amazing performance.  The high school band is HUGE - over 100 kids and they played a bunch of festive songs and sounded so great.  Throughout the evening Matthew played both the standard french horn and the marching horn.   Here he is with the marching horn.  It was hard to get a picture.

12/11/24

Emma had a Book Bowl competition - a school wide scrimmage - and her team won!!

Way to go ladies!  This is one of the books Emma read - and she's wearing her blue team shirts.

12/12/24

I have had pneumonia for the past week or so and been feeling quite miserable.  I've been on antibiotics for several days and finally felt a bit better today.  I got up and attended a parent meeting for the upcoming play!  Anna is in the cast of the spring play (Hadestown) and Matthew is doing lights. 

12/13/24

Emma got a school award for being a good "self manager"

Maybe she can give me some tips - that's something I'd like to do better

12/14/24

I was excited to see the Camas High School marching band as the banner picture for the local paper facebook page.  This paper is for all of the Vancouver area - not just our small town.  So that made me smile!

12/15/24

Making gingerbread houses - I wanted to get this done earlier but I was feeling to sick to get much done.  The kids made some really creative, and at time disturbing, house creations.

12/16/24

Our elves ran a car into one of our beloved gingerbread houses. :(

12/17/24

Emma wanted me to give her some festive fingernails

I did my best.  Her ambitions always outweigh my abilities

12/18/24

Working on my new class - machine learning.  The first topic is linear regression.  My most recent previous classes we covered linear programming quite a bit (lines, lines, lines) and used some linear algebra (more lines).  And Grant is currently taking Algebra while Anna is in algebra 2 (lines thoroughly covered).

So I feel like there has been a lot of discussion lately about equations for lines and good old y = mx + b.  It warmed my heart a little bit to see it show up again in the wild (sort of).  Lines are something I can always wrap my head around.  Hello old friend.

12/19/24

Dinner at Gustav's - Christmasy German vibes and fondue!

12/20/24

Last day of school!

Emma brought home her Washington State diorama

12/21/24

Emma, Grant and John helped me make Christmas pretzel treats

Grant is the fastest Hershey's kiss unwrapper I've ever seen, so I always try to get him to help me

12/22/24

Cookie making in full swing

12/23/24

We went to see Wicked with the Keeler side cousins

It was really good!

Now we are all singing, "Pop-u-ler, you're gonna be Pop-Yooo-Ew-Ler"

If you know, you know ;)

12/24/24

Christmas Eve!

We had a nice dinner with the Guptill side of the family in the late afternoon.  When we have large get togethers, especially if we're hosting, I always forget to take a picture.

12/25/24

Christmas morning breakfast!

Merry Christmas all!

We had a nice dinner with the Keeler side of the family at my mom's in the evening.

12/26/24

This is a picture from Christmas Eve (before our big dinner) but the house looked pretty similar the days after Christmas.  Emma got strep throat which altered some of our plans but we were able to start antibiotics for her before Christmas and she felt better pretty quickly.  The house has been full of treats - like no counter space full of cookies.  And we've enjoyed some slower days.

12/27/24

Some lego creations from Christmas

12/28/24

This picture is fro Christmas morning - but lots of after Christmas time was spent trying to figure out how to safely mount this to the wall.  Anna made this creation by painting and then glueing individual wood blocks.  It looks so amazing but is a bit heavy and fragile.  A labor of love - we are still figuring out the wall mounting (it's a sword from a video game - Stardew Valley I think?)

12/29/24

Anna made this beautiful new year creation for Japanese class

12/30/24

Anna got her ears pierced!  This actually happened on New Year's Eve but on Dec. 30th Anna took her driving test final for her class and passed!  I didn't have a nice picture of that - but she worked hard - lots of driving practice with mom and dad - mostly in the dark, rainy fall and winter evenings.  She still has to take the state test and can't take it until March when she's had her permit for 6 months, even though she is already 16.  Good job Anna!  We also had the Jensen's over for dinner tonight and had cousins spend the night - so I guess I was too busy to take a picture today with all the exciting things going on.  Gotta do better at that.

12/31/24

New Years Eve 2024!!

As is our custom, we ate cheese fondue for dinner and then had chocolate fondue while playing board games and watching musicals.  Anna was off at a friend party but the rest of us had fun at home.  

Happy New Year!!

November 2024

 

11/1/24

Emma made a sword out of cardboard and paper.  

She even made a scabbard to carry the sword in.

11/2/24

Matthew went to a Halloween party with friends, held a few days late.  He quickly threw together this waldo costume.  Dad had the shirt from dressing up as Waldo 13 or so years ago.  He got a lot of compliments on the costume.

11/3/24

Older boys playing Catan

11/4/24

Hiking over the hill.  Our neighborhood is built on a hill.  A new development of homes is being built on the backside and a street now connects front and back.  I wanted to walk all the way over the hill to the other side which ends kind of near the elementary school.  It's about a mile one way, so really not far.  It's just that you have to go uphill both going out and coming back (you go up and then back down in each direction - the peak of the hill is in the middle).  So its uphill both ways.  :) Here I am at the top which has some nice views of both the Columbia and the countryside.

11/5/24

Anna's perfect plate of pork chops, smashed potatoes and homemade applesauce. 

Need something green on there

11/6/24

I've been loving eating pumpkins seeds post Halloween

11/7/24

Emma performed in a choir concert with Anna.  Matthew was also supposed to sing but got waylaid at practice for the play and didn't make it.  Here are Emma and Anna after the show.

11/8/24

Happy Birthday Emma!  It was a short day for the elementary school so I had time to take Emma on a special shopping trip.  We went to Cascade Station near the airport and shopped for new shoes (which she needed) and went to Claire's and Crumbl for some birthday cookies.

11/9/24

Olive Garden for Emma's birthday

11/10/24

We celebrated Emma's birthday at home a little late because there was a football game the night of her birthday and Matthew had to go play in the band.  We got an ice cream cake from Menchie's this year and Emma was very happy Scott was home this year.  Since Scott has been in the Air Force reserves he has often had to travel on her birthday as it coincides with the new government fiscal year.  So happy to have him here.  Happy Birthday Emma!!

11/11/24

I watched Matthew march in the Veteran's Day parade.  I was hoping Scott could come with me, but he had to work.  Grandma and Grandpa Keeler met me there (at Fort Vancouver) and the parade was so fun.  I had trouble getting a picture of Matthew since he's on the far side, but here is the high school marching band going by.  They sounded great!

11/12/24

Grant completed Castle Crashers (a game he's been working on) in hard mode

A big accomplishment!

11/13/24

Exploring a giant puddle after piano lessons

11/14/24

More over the hill hiking - wait, I don't like the sound of that!

I hiked a literal hill :). Very steep!

11/15/24

Anna made this beautiful pizza at home - she learned how to make it in foods class.  Anna was put in a foods class this year, somewhat against her will.  She had wanted yearbook but it was only offered the same period as Japanese 2, which she needs to graduate.  So she got saddled with foods.  She has actually learned a ton of cool things and brought her own pre-existing food knowledge to the class as well.  I wish Matthew could take this next semester as he has an open spot in his schedule - but we've been told that can't be arranged.  Sometimes the large school problems at this school frustrate me.  Nice pizza!

11/16/24

Today we had a friend party for Emma at a local party place (Sky Zone) and in the evening my mom bought tickets to a local kids production on Finding Nemo the musical.  I took Emma and my nephew to see it.  I think they had a good time.  Here we are at the show which was held in a local church.

11/17/24

We made a chocolate peppermint bundt cake.  It didn't look totally perfect but got eaten very fast.

11/18/24

We made our own homemade Chick-n-minis - a Chick-fil-A breakfast menu item.

Everyone liked them

11/19/24

My clearance mums

I bought some mums at the garden center - they were on clearance because its so late in the fall season now but they still looked good and ended up lasting a long time - maybe because of our more temperate late fall temperatures this year.

11/20/24

Sheet pan chicken gyros - I really loved this dinner and want to make it again soon

Eat everything in a pita or serve it over rice or orzo, or by itself

11/21/24

Emma and one of her neighborhood friends wrote "hi" with some of the leaves.

The two of them are supposed to be the exclamation points.

11/22/24

We got to the see the high school play.  Matthew did the lights and will be doing the lights for the next show as part of his senior project.  We even got to briefly see him in the projection booth although he slipped away before I could take a picture.  Good job Matthew!  Here we are giving hugs after the show.

11/23/24

Experimenting with Emma's hair.  She didn't want to take her headphones off.

11/24/24

An art creation by Emma

11/25/24

Couch to 5K program

I injured my knee about a year and a half ago (a little more than that now) and being able to run again was very much in question.  I learned a new thing about running as you age - the joints also need to become "accustomed" to changes in your running schedule.  I used to think if you could tolerate the cardio level difficulty (how hard you are breathing or the level of tiredness you feel) then it was fine to proceed.  And that may have been part of how I hurt myself.  The joints need to get used to the new work load - so proceed slowly.  This of course was not a problem in the younger days.  So now I am working my way along a couch to 5K program, careful not to go too fast and being ever vigilant about how my knee feels.  I'm at the end of week 2 and running veeerrrrrry slowly.  So far so good.

11/26/24

We spent sometime getting passports this week for un upcoming trip into Canada and beyond!  Matthew and Anna have old passports with their baby pictures on them from when we lived in Japan.  The other kids have never had them.  Exciting!

11/27/24

Having a nice baby shower for my sister-in-law who is expecting their third boy in February.  It was fun to get together with all the ladies.

11/28/24

Big Thanksgiving dinner with the Guptill side of the family - most everyone was there.

11/29/24

Having a post Thanksgiving feast with the Keeler side - my parents built this shed and we've been watching its progress.  They have now completed it and it looks great!

11/30/24

Emma went to a birthday party this evening and got her face painted.  The party ended up being all boys so she felt a little awkward but had a good time overall.