Merry Christmas to the Galactic Republic

Christmas cards are printed

Oh this is going to a good year. Our card (photo) looks awesome. You will be amazed.
If you don't get one from us send the Jedi mom an email and we will send you one (if there are any left).
I guess we can post one here. Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday Jongr!

This year Jongr enjoyed celebrating his birthday on Thanksgiving or the other way around whichever way you want to look at it. His celebration really started the week before school got out. Jonli, Jonev, and I went to school to eat lunch with him on Friday. The pictures in the lunchroom didn't turn out though.

He requested a Thanksgiving theme birthday poster, so the first part the letters are made up of food on Thanksgiving plates, thanks to dad's creative talents. Here are all of the kids for the traditional morning birthday picture.

The birthday poster generally has the number of the birthday on it, but we forgot to put it on this year so here are Jonli, Jongr, and Jontu holding up 9 fingers instead. It's hard to believe that our wonderful little boy is now 9. He can read large chapter books, loves science and math the most at school and can ride his bike too. He is a big helper at home also and loves cub scouts. It will be fun to see what this year will bring.

Since it was also Thanksgiving Jongr got to blow out his candle on his requested chocolate pie (he didn't want cake this year). Here we are at the Stucki's house enjoying the holiday with our cousins.

October - Happy Birthday Jontu - Halloween

October has been filled with lots of fun things:

Here is a picture from a balloon festival that we went to, it was lots of fun seeing the balloons. I think that my favorite thing though was the model rocket launches.

Jontu turned 6, it is hard to believe how big he has gotten.

The boys school had a storybook parade, on Jontu's birthday, here is a picture afterwards when we are coming to pick them up. Jongr is wearing Jontu's hat from the parade and Jontu is wearing his birthday crown.

We celebrated Halloween at the zoo.

We also celebrated Halloween Plants vs. Zombies style at our ward Halloween carnival. What fun! Jontu decided that he didn't want to be a pea shooter, but a ninja instead. So much for the family theme. LOL!

July - Summer Part 2 - Vacation

Finally getting the rest of these pictures posted, still have a couple of more posts to catch up the rest of the summer so that I can post the back to school pictures. It is hard to believe that it is already that time of year. Here are the rest of the pictures from summer vacation to Idaho/Utah, we had so much fun and are grateful to have been able to see so many of our friends and family while we were there.

Jonli playing in the cold irrigating water, almost all of the cousins that were there got in the water, even though it's cold you just can't resist.

Celebrating the 4th of July in Paris, ID.

Near Bloomington Lake, we had a snowball fight on the 4th of July, so much fun!

Jontu watching the parade with cousin Rohan too.

Pictures with my Grandpa and Grandma Stucki.

Jonli enjoying the porch swing, I've spent many hours on this very swing.

After the parade in Paris, we drove back up to Shelley so that we could go to the fireworks in Idaho Falls, here the kids are getting out some energy after the car ride.

Playing Uno with Uncle Daniel and some of the cousins while we wait for it to get dark for the big show.

We enjoyed another visit to the Tautphus Park Zoo.

Saying goodbye to cousins as we head back down to Utah before going home.

Enjoying a day at Bridal Veil falls with cousin Brinley, Aunt Kelly and our friends from Houston who are also on summer vacation. It was so much fun to enjoy some time in the water and the beautiful views.

The boys collected snail shells and didn't want to leave them so they lined them up for a picture. Then they could leave them.

Family Picture at Bridal Veil Park

Double rainbows on the morning we are departing for home.

This one is kind of out of order, here Jontu is sporting the beautiful bowtie that Aunt Jen made for all of the nephews for the 4th of July. They matched Grandpa too, so cute!

The boys on a hike near Bridal veil

Enjoying the ride home.

June - Summer Part 1

Beware, this is a heavy picture post. June went by so fast, before we knew it we were leaving for vacation; we tie dyed shirts and played with our cousins here in Houston to kick it all off, then Jongr had cub scout day camp the second week, and the third week we flew up to UT/ID. We flew in early and were able to meet Aunt Leonora and baby Katelynn at Temple Square in SLC for a picnic and as much sight seeing as we could squeeze in before the kids called it a day.

We had so much fun!

Jonli at one of my favorite spots.

Jontu up close for some reason he posed like this in almost all of his pictures this day.

A beautiful view of the fountain and the temple.

Jongr inside of the Tabernacle.

Jontu with the Christus, I was trying to get all of the kiddos in a picture, but they didn't want to cooperate. They all wanted to touch Jesus' toe (the only part of him that they could reach)

Aunt Leonora and Katelynn, they were troopers and we had so much fun with them.

Nephi's boat exhibit at the children's area in the Church History Musuem. After the museum tour we drove down to Orem to stay with Leonora and Kevin for a few nights.

The next morning we went to BYU campus and toured one of the museums there, the kids loved all of the animals and insects. Jongr wanted to have his picture by all of the bears that were there. Aunt Kelli and Brinley also joined us for our tour.

That evening Aunt Leonora invited Uncle Brian and Aunt Kelli over for dinner, the boys were so excited to see Uncle Brian again, we had a great time visiting and eating dinner with some of both sides of our family.

Kelli and Brinley, so cute!

The next day we drove back up to Idaho after stopping to see Aunt Carol and Uncle Noel and John for a quick visit and then stopping for a play date with my girlfriends from the SLC area. The boys were so excited to play on a real piano (we have a keyboard), they practiced pretty good the first week we were there.

Jontu and Jonev watching for the cows, there is so much fun to be had outside in the summertime, especially when there are hammocks and cows around.

We walked along the river with Aunt Rachel, Anton, Zachary, and Isabel and Jonev learned about throwing rocks into the water. They make big splashes mom!

This is Jonev with his face in the water during swimming lessons, we are so thankful to have been able to take lessons while in Idaho. It was so much more convenient for us. The boys are doing much better in the pool and are always happy to be able to go swimming.

Jonev during lessons.

We also enjoyed many fun made up games on the trampoline, here they are playing "peach cobbler", a game that Jontu made up to be able to chase people around on the trampoline. They had so much fun being able to play with Anton and Zachary for hours on end.

Dad's iPhone Tip of the Week #4

Locking the screen orientation

It can be very helpful to lock the screen of the iPhone so it doesn't rotate when the screen is turned. Most of the time you may want this but there are times when you find yourself laying down and the angle is just right to make the screen turn and you don't want it to rotate.

1. To enable the screen lock, double tap the home button to bring up the multitasking bar.

2. Swipe to the right. (finger starts on the left and moves to the right). At the bottom of this screen you will see the iPod controls along with the orientation lock button that looks like a circular arrow.

3. Tap it to lock the screen in portrait mode.

When you return to the main screens you will notice a new icon by the clock that is the same circular arrow and a pad lock.

Note: When rotation lock is enabled apps will not respond to the accelerometer sensor.

Dad's iPhone Tip of the Week #3

Save images from email or website.

Email attachments.
Photos that come as email attachments can be save to the camera roll by touching and holding the image. The options appear to "Save Image" or "Copy." Touching "Save Image" will place the photo in the camera roll as if you had taken the photo with the camera. It can then be downloaded to your computer at the next sync.

Photos on websites.
Photos on pages viewed in Safari can also be saved. Follow the same procedure as email attachments by touching and holding the photo for a second. The options then appear as "Open", "Open in New Page", "Save Image", "Copy."

For example, let's say you are browsing this site and see a cute photo of Jonli and want to save it so you can have it on your computer.


Touch the photo and the full size photo is shown. This is a feature of this blog but many times you will not have to do this step. If an image on a website is small you will be saving the size of the image you see. (Caution: The image could be very small) Once you see the photo you want to save, simply touch and hold the photo for a few seconds...


...until the options appear at the bottom. Select "Save Image" to save it to your camera roll.



Open the Photos App, touch "Album" at the bottom to see the Camera Roll album. Notice in the capture below that the photo of Jonli appears as if I had taken the photo with my camera.