Merry Early Christmas

Posted by Justin

Here's Nancy! This picture is actually from three weeks ago, but she sure looks great in the picture and we never posted it.

I'm out of school now, so Nancy and I have had lots of time together. We are still building our own family Christmas traditions. Here's a new one that we added this year: Gingerbread Baking.

We had so much fun making the cookies. We decided to tell the story of the Gingerbread Man as we made them. Neither of us remembered all of the story's details, so we had to improvise as we went along. Nancy, however, had the best impression of the Gingerbread Man when she ran in place and said, "You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!" The cookies were really tasty.

When we baked the cookies, we were looking forward to a Gingerbread House Making party at our friends' house later in the week. Nancy and I enjoy a good competition, so we decided to use some of our gingerbread to make the walls, roof, Mr. & Mrs. Gingerbread Men, a tree, a snowman, and a picket fence. Ultimately, some of those elements didn't make it onto the house, but our carved-heart window did (seen at angle on right)!

We had a great time at the party.

Travelling was a bit of an adventure, however, because we had a snowstorm last night! I'd guess that there were 5-6 inches piled on top of cars when we left. It was light and fluffy. Nancy was busy working on the computer when it started snowing, so she didn't know that there was any snow on the ground. I ran outside, made a snowball, then came back inside and called for her. When she came around the corner, whamo! I threw my first in-house snowball.

Here's a picture of our tree. You can see the snow out of our window. Unfortunately, it rained later in the night, melting most of the snow.

Finally, yesterday our apartment complex had a holiday luncheon. It was at an unusual time at midday on a Friday, so the party was not very well attended. We went, though, and had a great time. The food was delicious. We met six or so neighbors. But the best part was the holiday raffle. The apartment complex bought lots of prizes for everyone they expected to attend. However, since there were only eight of us, we got to draw several times. In the end, here's what Nancy and I won:

• 3 Scratch-off Lottery Tickets (brining in a total of $3.00 in winnings)
• One ten dollar Starbucks card
• One ten dollar Target card
• One box of chocolates
• Two hundred dollars off of our January rent (!!!)

Merry Early Christmas!

Teeball 101

Growing up our family spent a lot of time at the ball field. My brother played ball from the time he was 4 or 5 until he was in Middle School. That meant I spent most of my early years at the ball fields with lots of time to play in the dirt, make great friends with the other siblings, and learn to love the game of Baseball.

This year Hayden started Tee Ball and boy oh boy is it fun to watch. Hayden in general is entertaining and genuinely a funny guy, but throw some organized sport in there and you have yourself a party. Here are some key points to being a successful player and spectator.

1. Practice your swing before you get up to bat.

2. Hit the ball like a champion, (Hayden is a great hitter) then run as long as you can until someone makes you stop. (In this case I think Hayden had to go all the way back to 1st base)

3. When in the out field you catch the ball then throw it in as hard as you can. If you are up to show off a little victory dance to show the spectators some additional skill they didn't know you had. (Justin saw this video and thought it was hilarious, he stole Hayden's moves when we won the Newlywed game at our Ward party...... Thanks Hayden for sharing your skill with us).

4. Now for the spectators...... eat as much greasy, fatty, but most importantly delicious food you can. You only live once right!!!!

It was really a lot of fun to relive my childhood all over again with the new and improved Shaw family. I love you guys and can't wait till next season.

As the World Turns

Nancy at the Hospital: Prelude to a Baby

Posted by Justin.

Nancy went in for a external cephalic version (ecv) on Wednesday. That's the fancy name for a procedure in which the doctor puts his hands on her tummy, lifts a breach baby, and turns it to face the right direction (head down).

We had really wanted the baby to flip over. We had been praying about it for a while. Our Bishop suggested that I give Nancy a blessing, which we did with the help of our neighbor Chris the night before the procedure. Miraculously, the procedure the next day worked. It was awesome to watch. It's hard to describe in words what it looked like, so I decided to show Nancy while she was still laying in the bed. A picture's worth a thousand words, so here it is:

Step 1: Lift that baby.

Step 2: As if holding a football, push on top and bottom in counterclockwise direction.

Step 3: Let that baby complete the flip into the head d0wn position

Honest to goodness, these pictures looked just like the real thing. I'm so proud of Nancy. She didn't complain about the pain once. It must have hurt, though, because our doctor was dripping sweat from the procedure. I thought about what would happen if someone pushed on my body long enough and hard enough to pour sweat from his face. It wouldn't feel good. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to have that happen to your tummy.

Advent Calendar

Posted by Justin.

One Sorrell family tradition is putting up ornaments on our advent calendar. My Great Aunt Babs made the calendar for me when I was a baby. Grandmom and Granddad would hang it every year. You put up one ornament a day until Christmas Day. Most days of the week you put a fun Christmas present. But on Sundays, you put up a special ornament that depicts the Manger scene.

After a few years, Grandmom and I made it a game to see if I could figure out what ornament I had pulled from the bag without looking at it. I know most of them by touch. Some of them, however, like the rocking horse, always give me problems.

I wanted to pass this tradition on to my own family now, so I started with Nancy. I laid out all the ornaments and gave her 30 seconds to memorize them. Then we put them in a bag, shook it up, and then Nancy pulled one out to put on the calendar. Lo and behold, she got it right! And the next one! I missed both the second and third ones! Nancy has taken this new tradition to heart! (I still missed the rocking horse this year when I pulled it).

And as a bonus preview of tomorrow, here's a picture of the tree we bought. We got too tired to decorate it tonight.

Thank you Grandmom for being so good to us by helping us get a tree and sending the Advent Calendar and my childhood ornaments. We love you! We'll keep the traditions rolling! But I'm not sure how Santa will put unwrapped presents under the tree...

Shaw Family River Trip

Florida diaries continued....actual event October 31, 2009 (That's right over a month ago)

Shaw family back ground story......

Growing up we heard stories about my dad water skiing, duck hunting, fishing, and lots of other really fun adventures on the waters of Florida. This obviously created a really great childhood for him since a lot of these things he was able to do with his dad. Needless to say, my dad loves to spend time on the water, it doesn't really matter which one, as long as there is flowing water to paddle, nature, and good time, he is all about it.

He has passed this love on to us. Several years ago he bought a Pontoon boat and started his own business, North Florida River Expeditions. Unfortunately for others the business never really made it, but fortunately for us we got a lot of use out of this great boat. We has a Shaw family of 5 would take it out often for day trips down surrounding rivers. We have been on the Sante Fe, Ocklawaha, St. Mary's, and most recently the Suwannee River.

Shaw family present day......

The Shaw family now consists of 11 fabulous people so we have had to expand our boating efforts to include a canoe. We were missing Laurel/Ida, Isaac, and Justin. One day we will be able to go all together, but we managed with who was available. These trips are so much fun there is no TV, Radio, or Computers, but there is lots of time to enjoy each other and the beautiful earth and all of its creations. We didn't see anyone else on the river that day, it was just us and the river. It was a top notch day!!!

Here we are with our final preparations before setting sail. We packed the traditional egg salad sandwiches, chips, fruit, and lets not forget the brownies (no river trip is complete without these essential foods).

Here are some of the other adventures that took place........

Swimming!! Mostly just by the boys in the shallow parts where we could see the bottom. Did I mention we were on the Suwannee River? Aunt Nancy personally has a gigantic fear of gators, so needless to say I didn't get in, but the boys didn't seem to mind, plus we made sure the coast was clear before diving in.

Photo Ops - Nothing better then a pregnant lady in a bathing suit that hasn't seen the sun in years. Just focus on the boys and how dang adorable they are.

The boys really enjoyed being able to get on and off the boat. The river was extremely low and so there was plenty of shoreline for them to run on. So if they got tired of sitting we would just let them off and they would run along the shore line as dad paddled the boat. Here is little video demonstration. I hate to hear the sound of my voice on the video, but the boys are such adventurers I couldn't resist posting it.

How you might ask do the boys get on and off the boat??? Great question. Here is another video that I just think is great. This scene presented itself many times that day. (Mom, now you can hear yourself on video and understand why I didn't talk on the nursery video, we sound ridiculous)

We had a great time, the boys especially. We all walked away with either some extra bumps, bruises, scrapes, sunburn, blisters, or exhaustion, but won't have changed a thing about the day.

Another great adventure that happened that day was the fact that I locked the keys to the car, which was parked at the take out point of the river in the truck which was about 5 or 6 miles up the road where we put in at the beginning of the day. We might have traveled on the river without most electronics but thankfully we had Becky's cell phone so that we could call for help. A HUGE THANK YOU to Brother Lowery for coming to our rescue. I would like to blame that stupidity of putting the car keys in a "safe place" on pregnancy, but for those of you who know me know that I probably would have done it anyway.