Annette's big 50! 11-27

Annette (Michelle's mom) finally turned 50. So sorry. But it's okay because she is a wonderful grandma, and wonderful grandma's can turn 50 with no problems! It was a pretty exciting day, and Ralph wanted to have some people around to enjoy it with them.Ralph got a cake made that said "You can't run from your Age Annette" with a bunch of graveyard themes and a skeleton running. "He did a good job," says Annette.
For our present, we let her hang out with Samuel all day!
Well Ralph wanted to "go for a ride to see some lights"

The salesman said that Ralph had been giddy about this present for weeks!

So Annette got her brand new red toyota camry.

Hooray!

The first ride.

We love you Annette, congratulations!

Thanksgiving 2007

Happy Thanksgiving! Can you believe Thanksgiving has come and gone? Most Thanksgivings, Michelle's extended family (the DaBell's) does some sort of vacation. Well this year the vacation was to stay over at the Pond's home. A lot of the extended family stayed over night a couple days. We decided to stay over Thursday night, which was a lot of fun.

Another fun thing was my family did their first "Church Thanksgiving." You know, the family is getting too big to do the get-togethering at the house, so they reserve a church? Yeah, the Lynn Droge family is blossoming I guess, so we got a church. I think the main reason was so we could get together and play basketball/football and race our X-Mods. Most of the boys in the family have an X-Mod (a small and upgradeable radio-controlled car). So we played games and raced cars, played some Elimination (aka Lightning or speed -- basketball where you play with two balls and shoot from the same spot to get each other out). It was a lot of fun. We should have taken pictures!

Then around lunch time we went up to the Ponds for the feast. There was plenty of food and fun. Here we are one of the nights playing some games.

Well hello!
Here I am.
The game is killer bunnies -- crazy, nutty, and random.
Ralph -- If it's not risk or liars dice, there's probably something better on tv!
Heather -- Right, mmhhmm, sure, okay, yeah!.
(She's trying to get me to go away -- for clarification see Strongbad's emails -- Office Dullard)
Spencer in deep thought...
Hooray! People are visiting which means my favorite grandson must be close by!
Brandon (and Kimberly) -- Bwahahaha! I got them to play Killer Bunnies!

DaBell Family Labor Day Hike, BBQ 9-3-07

On the morning of Labor Day weekend we always try to go for a hike with the DaBell extended family (Michelle's mother's family). This year we went up Big Cottonwood canyon for a short little hike. Michelle and I were the only ones from her family that came, but we love Dan & Jean and their family so we had a great time anyway. We were a little late because I had to set up flags with the young men in the morning, so when we finally made it everyone was ready to go. Hikers: Dan & Jean; Jed & Tanna -- with Pete and Abby; Mike and Megan -- with Blake; Marci; Dave & Michelle -- with Samuel. These pictures are curtesy of Dan DaBell. Thanks Dan! Afterwards we went back to Dan's house for a wonderful lunch, and everyone else from the DaBell clan met up with us.

Here we go!

Dan wanted a picture of the four different ways we carried children up the little hike: carrier (Dave-Sammy), in your arms (Jean-Abby), shoulders (Jed-Pete), makeshift carrier (Mike-Blake).

Here is the Jed & Tanna family with children Abby and Pete

Here is Mike and Megan with little boy Blake.

We were worried about keeping Sammy out of the sun, but he just slept the whole time and I tried to keep the hat positioned so that it put him in shade. I think he got a bit sunkissed anyway.

Yeah! We made it. I think it was actually only a 1/2 mile to where we went, but it was fun to get out and breathe some fresh air and have a good time with family.