Utah 77 Duke 75

I just sent the following in a Sunday night e-mail to my brother.  It is sugar coated a little because I was super stressed and uptight yesterday.  Had on been more chill and had adults to converse and enjoy the moment with, I probably would have been dancing around my house!  I don't even have a TV with the right channels.  I listened to it in the car, then on my phone, then on my computer because my phone quit working.  Sports are a fleeting thing, but man I love me some Utah Basketball:

Ok . . . Biggest news of the week!!!!!  Are you ready!!!!  

The Utes beat Duke at Madison Square Gardens on Saturday!  It went to overtime.  It was a little ugly . . .  homered calls, way too many turnovers, nearly blew it at the end, etc. . . . but oh man, they did it!!!  Can you believe it!  It made all those losses to Kentucky over the years and last year to Duke feel totally redeemed.  Jimmy Fallon was even at the game.  It had to have been the happiest basketball day since 1998 and I Annie and I danced around our Mildred house after Utah beat Arizona in the NCAA's.  I was a little excited!  Jakob Poeltl had 19 points and 14 rebounds and played one of his best games ever.  He also played most of the 2nd half with 4 fouls and didn't foul out until 30 sec left in the OT.

Yukon Cornelius

Final Product

Afterwards

Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Eve, we met Annie and the boys at the West Val Train Station and rode the train downtown.  The activity itself was the train and lunch at City Creek.  After that, we headed home.  Grandma Judy was able to meet us for lunch and we may have gone to the Disney Store afterwards.  The kids had fun on the train, though.

James worked on Thanksgiving Day and at my mom's direction we decided to pretty much break all Thanksgiving traditions.  Instead of going with our extended Huber family, we decided to just have Thanksgiving with the smaller lot of us.  Annie hosted.  I made rolls.  We ate roast beef.  It was delicious.  Before dinner, we made some Target crafts.  

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we got to celebrate again (with Turkey and Ham) at the Binggeli's.  I guess I didn't take any pictures the whole day, but the kids had fun playing with Joesy and Preslee, the food was good, and the company, as well.

We also started Christmas celebrations with the Petersen Extended Family.  Uncle Paul was our host this year and he invited us to all meet up for bowling then back to his place for lunch.  It was a fun time!

100 Days

The first 100 days after any presidential inauguration are always looked at closely and heavily measured.  100 days is significant.  It is slightly more than 3 months and is a good chunk of time to start accomplishing things.  Why 100 days?  I don't know.  It is just a good number, I guess.

Well, we are now celebrating the next 100 day mark!

My parents FINALLY got a letter from the Baltic Mission Office to say that my brother will be returning home from the land of Lithuania on March 3rd.  I think my mom is much relieved to finally have a date and I'm sure she cried when she read the e-mail.

We are so excited to talk to him on Christmas and then it will only be another 70 or so days until we get to see him in person.

I'm a little worried that he's not going to like any of us and that we won't be "spiritual" enough for him.  Hopefully within a short amount of time we can corrupt him back to the goofy brother we once knew (while he somehow manages to keep the good attributes of a missionary, as well).

His letters have been consistently excellent throughout his two years. He seems to be serving his heart out.  I told him I'd tried to read the Book of Mormon before he gets home.  It's going slow, so I must be gettin' on with that.

Here's to the LAST 100 days!

November Adventures

We are busy.  We are crazy.  We don't blog much.  Here are some pictures to document life in the Binggeli House in the last few weeks.

One Thursday night, the kids and I had a marathon night.  We left school right when the high school students got out to head to an appointment at Primary's and then decided to get flu shots and eat dinner in the hospital cafeteria while we stalled to go to the first Utes basketball game.  After we waited for honestly 45 minutes for our stinkin' flu shots, we really didn't have any choice but to eat at the cafeteria because my children were about ready to eat each other and traveling to a different place may have been deadly.  After the fun and excitement of appointments, shots, and hospital cafeterias, we went and parked our car for the ball game and decided to just ride the train around.  

We walked across the big Olympic Bridge and the kids thought that was cool.  We hopped on the train and rode west a stop, got off, got back on, rode east 2 stops, got off, got back on, and then headed back west a few stops.  My kids like the train and were super well-behaved.  They had fun. Willie's friend Chunky happened to get on the train so we talked to him for a minute, too, and that was fun.

One Saturday, Annie hosted a "Pop-Up" Show in her house to sell her bags and host a variety of other vendors.  It seemed to be a huge success and she did really well.  My mom kidnapped the Howden's for the day of the show and we met them for a movie.  We saw Charlie Brown in 3D.  It was cute.  Jack and I may have dozed off, but we still liked it.  Afterwards, we went to Grandpa's to rake his leaves.  The kids were not exactly helpful, but I think they had fun.

November included College Application Week.  This was the first year our school participated.  It was a big deal and our counseling center did a great job.  Teachers were encouraged to participate in the door decorating contest.  Most of the other math teachers were super lame and didn't do it, but I was pretty happy with how mine turned out.  I liked it and thought my T.A. and I did a nice job.  I didn't win the contest (I never do), but I thought my door looked good.

The basement . . .  is SLOWLY moving.  James and his dad worked hard to get the drywall all hung. Now is mud time.  I have yet to finish mudding the bathroom.  I have watched a plethora of youtube videos on the subject, but it just never works out as easy as the people on the videos make it look.

That is it for now.  We are excited to have some days off for Thanksgiving and are looking forward to getting started with the crazy Christmas season!  Hooray!

We spend most of our time at work and school, doing homework (kindergarten homework can be intense), eating, bathing, going to church, and sleeping.  We try to get along as life goes along.