This summer we took our first big family vacation that did not involve a trip to visit other family members. It was also Ethan's first long car trip. We left Cedar Park at 4:00am on July 27th and headed to Carlsbad, New Mexico. Along the way we stopped off to eat breakfast in Junction, TX at Isaack's Restaurant (a place where William always used to stop when traveling with his family to visit his grandparents in Plainview, Texas). Here is a picture of the boys outside Isaacks.



We stayed on night in Carlsbad and visited the caverns. We took a park guided tour of the King's Palace which was really great. After our visit to Carlsbad, we were off to Roswell, NM to go to the International UFO Museum.



After our brief visit to Roswell, we continued our drive to Taos, New Mexico where we stayed four nights at the Inn on the Rio. We spent our days in Taos riding bikes and hiking. We went to the some of the BLM lands near Taos and went to the Colorado River Gorge and also did a 6 mile bike ride. You heard it right - Ethan rode his bike for a whole six miles. We packed our lunch and stopped for a rest and snacks on the way. On another day, we hiked down to a natural spring had lunch and skipped stones in the water. Here is a picture of me and Ethan on one of our biking trips. You can see the bridge that goes over the Colorado River Gorge in the background.



Here is a picture of William and Ethan stopping to enjoy the view.



Here is the trail we hiked down to get to the natural spring where we had our lunch and skipped rocks.



Here is a picture of Ethan throwing a big rock into the river.



We left Taos and headed to Red River, NM where we stayed in a cabin and did more hiking, mountain biking, and rafting. Here is a picture of our cabin.



We had a stocked pond in front of our cabin, so William and Ethan also enjoyed fishing (catch and release).



During our stay in Red River, we took several memorable hikes. William had the brillant idea of bringing Ethan's bike on the hikes (up the mountain to a lake, usually), so that he could ride back down. Ethan was usually able to ride a good bit of the way up, but dad ended up carrying his bike up many times. It always paid off as Ethan loved riding his bike down the mountain. We had one day where we hiked up for 5 hours. Ethan was a real champ - we never made it to lost lake, but we went really high into the mountain - it was beautiful.





Here is a picture of our picnic at Middle Fork lake.


One of the themes of our hikes was rain. We always made it up the trail and had lunch before the daily afternoon rain, but never quite made it back before getting soaking wet. Here are some wet shots of Ethan (two different hikes).




Another exciting thing we did on our trip was a half day guided rafting trip. Ethan had great fun sitting in the front of the raft the entire time. Here are some pictures of our rafting trip. While we were waiting for the rafting to start, Ethan and William played chess with our travel chess set.




We also rode the ski lift at Red River and hiked down and took a side trip to the Indian cliff dwellings at Bandalier National Monument.





We had a wonderful time and would like to go back and do a hiking and camping trip, so we can go on some longer hikes.

Ethan's first day of first grade (August 27, 2007 @ Cox Elementary School in Cedar Park, Texas). Ethan is in the first grade - no longer the youngest in the school. He has a great teacher, Ms. Suffield who puts an emphasis on hands-on science in the classroom. Science is one of Ethan's favorite subjects. Here are a few pictures of him going to school and with dad outside the classroom.





Below he is hard at work at his desk!

We took Ethan and his friend Zane down for a hike and swim in the Barton Creek Greenbelt at the Twin Falls access point over memorial day weekend. We have been getting lots of rain, and the creek is really high. It is a great time to go for a swim. We all hiked down the trail to the creek. They boys both found good walking sticks which proved to be handy.

Here we are at a portion of the creek where the water was flowing pretty fast. Ethan decided to check it out by hanging on a tree branch. No, it is not as dangerous as it looks - the water is very shallow here.

Here are the boys testing out the water with their walking sticks; it was pretty chilly!

They decide to take the plunge!

We both swam with the boys. I even enjoyed it despite the cold water.

Ethan had his Kindergarden show last week on 5/26/2007. Each of the Kindergarden classes assembled in the gym for a series of songs - one song was "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. Then, each of the classes sang a song about colors. Ethan's class was the color blue. The class wore blue tie dye shirts and blue and white whale hats.

After the show, we headed to Ethan's classroom for cookies and juice. Here is Ethan in his classroom with dad.

The big surprise for Ethan was that grandpa Ed from Florida appeared at the show. Ethan was standing in line in the hallway and grandpa Ed walked by. Ethan was really suprised - he smiled and waved really big and then gave grandpa Ed a hug. Ethan's last day of Kindergarden was Friday, May 25th 2007. We are on to summer and then first grade...

Last Friday was Field Day for the Kindergardeners at Cox Elementary. Ethan was so exicted! They had multiple obstacle courses and some water courses as well. Ethan picked out this outfit - glasses, hat, and all for the adventure.

We had Ethan's last soccer game for Spring 07 over the weekend. Ethan's team won (Ethan scored several goals). It was a good game; the teams were evenly matched in terms of skill level. Here is a shot of the team and coach Tara (minus two players).

Here are some shots of Ethan in action on the field. Here is Ethan going for the goal. He gets past the red team member and SCORES!!

Here is Ethan signaling to his team mate that he is open for the pass.

Here Ethan is ready for the kick off. Probably the funniest moment of the entire game was when Ethan put two fingers towards his eyes and then pointed the two fingers back at an opposing team member just before the kick off as if to say "I have my eyes on you." The entire crowd was very amused.

After the game, the team had a cook out and awards ceremony with cupcakes.

Here is Ethan showing of his medal (complete with blue cupcake frosting on his face).

After eating and awards, the kids headed for the playground. Ethan is doing one of his playground favorites - the monkey bars.

Here is Ethan jumping on a inflatable bouncer with his friend Zane during his 6th birthday party.

Ethan had his sixth birthday party this year. I cannot believe he is already six. Time really goes by fast. We had his party at a jumping castle place. It was two big rooms full of different inflatable bouncers. We invited Ethan's Kindergarten class, some kids from the neighborhood, and a few friends from his old school. It was a great time. Ethan had a Lego theme. Dad made a Lego Starwars fighter jet to put on the cake.

Here is Ethan with Dad blowing out the cake and the kids eating.

There was a little kids plastic car at the inflatable place. The kids seemed to spend just as much time with this car as with jumping on the inflatables. I love this picture of Ethan.

The Huies were in Austin and stopped by for the party and so was grandma Sharon from Florida! Here are the Huies.

Grandma Sharon was in town for the whole week! We took Ethan to SeaWorld for the first time. We had lots of fun - despite the long lines. Grandma and Ethan played a water game and won a stuffed Shamu - here are some pictures.

We went to the Shamu show. I thought it would be fun to sit in the splash zone. We got splashed alright. In fact, we got totally soaked with cold salt water from head to toe. Ethan was not happy about this at all. He wanted to leave the show right away. We had to buy him a dry outfit in the gift shop. Here I am wet and Ethan in his new outfit with wet hair!

It was a great birthday and an excellent week!

Ethan had his first big homework project to build a rocket. It was a family affair with dad helping during the initial design stages. Ethan and dad found two large wrapping paper tubes and cut them to size. They also used some balsa wood for the cone nose and fins. The picture above is Ethan standing outside of his school with the rocket.

After the boys finished gluing the pieces together. Ethan and mom worked on decorating. We used foil and construction paper. We cut out designs in the construction paper and layered with different colors.We were all very happy with the rocket. Ethan's rocket was the biggest rocket in Ms. Collin's Kinder class. Ethan also reported that his was the second biggest in the whole school! The picture above is of Ethan in his classroom.

The January 2007 Ice Storm in Cedar Park, Texas shut down Austin and the surrounding area for three days. Monday was a holiday already (MLK Day), but Tuesday and Wednesday were Ethan's first "no school for bad weather days." William and I were also off of work and school for the weather. We also were lucky enough to get some snow in the mix. In the picture above Ethan is checking out the ice on the bushes.

We did not get much snow accumulation. If you look closely you can see the snowflakes.

Above are some examples of the big icicles hanging off the house. Ethan ate a few icicles, and we still have a big one in our freezer that we are saving.

Here is Ethan and his friend Zane as they head out to play in the little snow/ice that was accumulating. At one point, Zane's mom called and recounted a funny thing Ethan said. Zane's mom asked Ethan if we had a fireplace. Ethan responded "we do not have a fireplace, but we have a big warm dog." Ethan came home a bit later, and immediately started petting Holly to warm his hands.

We had a nice visit with my grandparents and Ethan's great grandparents Baevich in San Antonio over the Holidays this year. Ethan had fun opening the cool presents from his great grandparents and putting together his Lego Batmobile with the help of dad. After present opening, Ethan and dad headed outside to pick some delicious tangerines on G&G Baevich's tree (which they planted themselves). We brought a great big bag home with us and are germinating the seeds. Our little minerature pinscher "Ginger" loved grandma. I have never seen her so excited about one person before. Ginger kept running around the house and asking grandma to pick her up. It was very cute. We had a great dinner from a nearby mexican food restaurant and enjoyed catching up. It seemed Ethan was playing and not paying attention to the conversations, but he was listening. Every once in a while Ethan added a funny remark.

Part II Christmas in Corpus 2006 - While in Corpus Ethan had is first piano lesson from Grandma Gail. Ethan enjoyed learning about the piano. Aunt Claire was in Corpus as well, and Ethan and Aunt Claire played several challenging games of Othello. I am not sure who won, but to hear Ethan tell it he won every game! He is quite the competitor. We also played a few games of croquet in G&G Billy's back yard. Christmas morning Santa visited and left lots of presents for Ethan. This year Ethan got to use dad's stocking from when he was a kid. This was a real treat especially since "the stocking is huge." Everyone had fun opening presents on Christmas day including the dogs who got to open two wrapped presents each. It was a doggy christmas! Ethan loved his Christmas gifts, and we thank all of our family and friends for sending us gifts, cards, and well wishes for the Holiday season. Last but not least we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary this year! To commerate our anniversary, I ordered us matching Dunder Mifflin Paper Company t-shirts! Those of you who watch "The Office on NBC" will know what I am talking about. Here we are. Happy New Year everyone - Love, Stephanie, William, and Ethan