all your prize are belong to us

When Bekah was born, we entered her photo in the Post Register "Baby Parade" with hopes of winning some sort of awesome prizes. I mean, our baby could bring the cuteness... how could we lose? Well, we pretty much got shafted, despite her being the most beautiful baby in the history of menkind. What the heck.

Anyway, this year, with Analee, we're taking the gloves off. Fake pearls, a huge flower, just a diaper. All the big guns. We'll keep you posted when we get awarded whatever awesome prize our cuter-than-thine daughter wins us. You can check out the best shots from the photo shoots here.

our crazy saturday

We had a super-busy day Saturday that included three members of the family being stars in their own right. Seth's brother Kent arranged for a group of them to play jazz and Christmas music at Barnes and Noble at the Grand Teton Mall. Seth packed up his guitar and amp so he could play, and I packed up the girls so we could watch and listen.



Then we ran home and quickly re-packed the diaper bag so we could go to our ward Christmas party. The organizers had announced in church Sunday that the children were welcome to dress up for a live nativity they would be putting on, so I hot-glued a simple donkey costume for Bekah because I thought she has a firmer grasp on what a donkey is versus, say, a shepherd or wise man. It turns out that Bekah was the ONLY donkey there that night, and so she got to come in with Mary and Joseph while most of the other children had to wait until the appropriate time for angels and shepherds to appear. Apparently Bekah showed too much interest in baby Jesus for a donkey, because Joseph felt it his duty to reprimand her.

Seth again got the chance to rock out on his guitar by singing "O, Holy Night" as a part of the program. Actually, it was supposed to be my mother-in-law and I singing "There within a Stable," but we dodged the bullet because Susan was too swamped with grading to practice a song we had never heard of before. Thank heavens Seth filled in for us.


Analee was a star simply because she's so dad-gum cute. She gets really giggly right before bedtime, so Grandpa Grover was having a blast playing with her at the church.

To see more pictures of our crazy Saturday, go here.

photo ops

I guess I got a little snap-happy the other night; Analee's incredibly messy face set it off, followed by Bekah's bathtime and the girls playing together in Analee's crib. To view the entire album, click here.

It's amazing to me how quickly these girls are growing. Rebekah is saying more and more. A few of our favorite things she utters right now are, "You know!" and "Knock, knock. Anybody come in?" And she's such a good big sister. Rebekah loves tickling Analee and retrieving her "baba" (pacifier) and toys for her to play with.

Looking at these girls side-by-side, you'd never guess that they're sisters. Rebekah was so scrawny as a baby, and her fair skin, blue eyes and blonde hair are quite unlike Analee's robustness, darker complexion and brown peach fuzz and eyes. But they do have one thing in common -- the pediatrician says that their head sizes are off the charts for their age groups. I guess they just need extra room for their genius-brains!

We are incredibly lucky parents to have such beautiful daughters!

thanksgivingness

(Rebekah, Seth and Analee with the turkeys we made for Family Home Evening. Bekah helped to cut out the paper and choose the colors for the tail.)

For Thanksgiving we played musical families and visited with both sides of the family. First we started out the day with going to Grandma and Grandpa Scott's. We (Jessica, Tyson, Grandpa Wirkus, Grandma and Grandpa Scott, plus our family) ate a tremendous amount of food, thanks to Grandma. Bekah loved the ham. We took it easy for a while, and then we packed it up and drove to Great-Grandma Grover's house. There we ate more food and visited with Rachel, Justin, Kent, Grandma and Grandpa Grover and Old Nana (as Bekah calls Great-Grandma Grover).

The day after Thanksgiving was at least as eventful as the Big Turkey Day itself. We loaded up the truck with fifty layers of warm clothes apiece and met up with the Scotts to hunt for the elusive Perfect Christmas tree. It was actually warmer at Fall Creek than here in Idaho Falls, so I went easy on the layers so we wouldn't be sweating. Bekah tromped through the traces of snow on the ground, held hands with Daddy or Aunt Jessica or rode on shoulders. Analee was strapped on my stomach inside my coat. The Scotts and Grovers both found handsome trees, and then we ate lunch before packing back up and heading home.

After unloading the truck, taking a shower and changing clothes, our family set off to Rexburg to celebrate Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary at a family party at their church. All of Grandma and Grandpa's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were there (minus one grandkid who is serving a mission), and there was much merriment in eating, talking, looking at photo albums and successfully taking a monstrous group picture.

Today the girls and I are taking it easy at home (and trying to clean all of our messes up) while Seth tries one last time to get an elk this season. Hopefully we'll be eating elk steaks soon!

polish up the spanglish, we've got mission photos

For a while now I've wanted to scan all of the photos from my mission to the Rio Grande valley in South Texas, but many things stopped me from doing it. Okay, mostly it was one thing: being lazy. Aaron Burr told me to keep putting it off, so I did. But no more, Mr. Vice-President!

Over the last few days I've done a marathon of sorting, scanning, resizing, cropping, renaming, removing duplicates, and converting, and have come up with 431 photos which span the two years of my mission. Once they were digital, I thought, "Why not let Big Brother have a look?", so off to the inter-tubes they went.

I've arranged the photos into 5 albums:

• MTC


• Roma


• McAllen (part 1)


• McAllen (part 2)


• Laredo

I haven't got any captions on the photos (yet), but the filenames contain the date (for some I was only sure of the month, not the day) and the photos are in chronological order in their respective albums.

Anyway, I hope someone out there on the Endless Wire enjoys this glimpse into the happiest/saddest easiest/hardest years of my life. If you do, leave a comment or drop me a line.

-Ciao,

Seth

time for a sugar high

Rebekah got to really go trick-or-treating for the first time this year with her dad. After they made the rounds, Seth and Bekah ended up at Grandma Grover's house where Analee and I met up with them. We then drove to Grandma and Grandpa Scott's house, Great-Grandma Grover's house, and Great-Grandpa Wirkus' house. Bekah got to shake her tiny booty to show how she could wag her tail, and Analee was quite the complacent little leopard.

At our house we only had four sets of trick-or-treaters all night, so between Bekah's bounty and our leftover treats, all of us have had enough sugar to keep the dentist busy.

my sister can beat up your dad

I just have to mention that my sister is the toughest chick on the planet. My sister can beat up your sister. My sister can probably beat up your dad.

We (Dad, Rachel, Rachel's husband Justin, and I) loaded up yesterday morning to venture out in search of the monster buck which will become Rachel's first. Early in the morning, we parked the pickup and walked up on top of a ridge. There we saw a herd of a dozen or so deer, including a really nice buck.

Rach got lined up for the shot and took it. She just missed. I was watching the deer through the binoculars, and wondered, "Why isn't she reloading for a second shot?" Then I looked over at her and saw the blood...

The shooting stick monopod-thing she was using to steady herself had been set a little too short, so she had placed her face a little too close to the scope. The recoil of the gun had thrust the scope backwards into her face, cutting her and blackening her eye.

We got the bleeding stopped, got in the truck and sped down the road to try to cut the deer off over the next ridge. She ended up getting another shot, but the deer was running and quite a ways off, so it just wasn't in the cards for us just then.

To make a long story short, we hunted the rest of the day and Rachel didn't complain a bit. We saw 129 deer (but only two bucks worth shooting at). We got home well after dark, after which Rachel and Justin drove to the hospital where she got 11 stitches. Now that's a woman.

So, here's to Rachel, my tough, beautiful sister.

shootin' people

The other day I shot engagement pictures for a former student of mine, so I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with the world. We shot these at Sportsmans Park and Constitution Way in Idaho Falls. We chanced upon railroad cars while we were up on the bridge, so we decided to mosey on over there. I made sure there was no engine attached before we started climbing around on them ... I didn't want to end up on an unexpected train ride.

what's this?

Man, I just get lazier.

First the image gallery goes to Picasa, now pretty much everything else goes to Blogger... I keep offloading the work that goes into maintaining this little piece of Grover heaven.

Andrea and I decided it would be easier for us to keep this thing up to date if posting something didn't require editing the HTML of the page, which is what I'd been doing before. So, here we are at blogspot... er... blogger... er... spotblog... whatever it's called. Plus, now Andrea and I can both post as our respective selves. Woot!

The old site is still available here and I'll probably somehow integrate some of the other features (well, it didn't have too many features, but you could download the GroverTunes and anonymously e-mail us) over to this site.

Later.