I managed 680 miles this year

I have been running most weekdays this year and I managed to rack up 680 miles in total.  Haven't set a goal for 2016 yet.  But only a day to think about it.

2013 total 1,160 miles, 2014 total 524 miles, 2015 total 680 miles.

Not many miles in the first quarter!

Boxing Day Sledding

We had a white christmas this year. So I took Tyler and Cody sledding this morning. Cody is getting a little more adventurous and Cody is now building his own ski jumps.

Ready for our run

Approaching Ramp

Ready to launch

Airborne

Ready for landing

Tyler is down

Let me steer myself

High five I made it

Cody, we are going airborne

I told you no bumps!

Take that

Pet Sitting Duties

The boys were asked to look after the neighbors cat and lizard this week.  That basically involved me getting up early and doing the feeding and the boys collecting the money!

Feeding the lizard

Cody passes Kumon Reading BII

Cody has been progressing well on his reading and yesterday he took his reading BII test and passed,

A fast time for Cody

Cody and Tyler take part in the 1st BBC kids tournament

I organized a kids badminton tournament this year. We only had 4 entries this year, but it was a start and hopefully next year we will have a few more entries.  We had round robin doubles and round robin singles and everyone had a good time.  Everyone got a trophy so they all went home happy.

BBC 2015 Junior Tournament

Icecream on a snowy day!

Tyler and Cody were invited for ice cream today. Nevermind that it was super snowy and freezing. Everyone enjoyed it!

Icecream

Snow Day

The boys got their first Snow Day this year.  It is really unusual to shut the schools down, but we had a foot of snow in a short period of time and so we got a text this morning telling us the schools were shut for the day.

The boys spent the morning playing iPad and the afternoon making igloos.

Even the deer were out in the snow

First snow mountain

Tyler finishing off his igloo

Tyler completes his gingerbread man

Tyler is suddenly the king of gingerbread and wants to decorate at any opportunity. We were invited to the markers for Pizza and gingerbread making and although Cody wasn't particularly interested, Tyler was more than happy to decorate.

Halfway through?

The finished product

Letters from Santa

The boys went to the mailbox today, and they each got a letter from Santa in reply to the ones they sent.

Here they are with their letters.

With my Santa letter

Got my letter

Cody and the family

Cody had his family pot luck and sing along at Hulstrom this week.  The kids did a picture of their family as the backdrop.  Here is Cody's version of the Millser family. Not sure why Siew Gin had a space helmet on!

Pretty good proportions!

Christmas Decorations

The boys have been asking for a week to put up the decorations, and today we finally got around to decorating the tree.  They enjoyed looking at the old ornaments we had, and were super excited about finishing it off. There main concern is how Santa will deliver the presents now we don't have a chimney.

Nearly finished

Decorations complete

Santa Wishlist

The boys have been naughty and nice this year, so hopefully Santa will focus on the nice part and deliver them what they asked for!

They have many items on their list..

Cody gets ready to make his own presents!

Cody and Alan complete global 5k

This Sunday when Tyler and Siew Gin went skiing, Cody and I competed in the runkeeper global 5k. They asked everyone who used their app to run a 5k, and they would give us lots of cool data about who ran, from where and so on.

Here are some pictures and results.

Ready for our run on a cold morning

Luckily not all runners in the same place, bolder Boulder is around 50,000!

Just over 5k for our round trip..

Santa Pics

Nearly every year we are invited to get a family santa pic by a friend of ours.  Its good as we can eat cake and sweets, there is no queuing for pictures and we get the real picture to print out for ourselves.

Here are a couple of snaps we took, real ones will follow soon.

The boys

The fanily

Cody and Tyler build a snowman thingamajig

Cody and Tyler had their second visit to homedepot in a week to build a snowman thingamajig. They both finished it in record time as no gluing or painting required.

Here are the results of their work.

The 'T' team

The 'C' Team

Finished - now need to work on happy faces

Cody and Tyler artwork

Cody and Tyler have produced some more 'art'.  The school sends home artwork once and a while and here are their latest creations

Cody Art Work

Tyler Art Work

Gingerbread house remains

The boys went to their friends house last week to make Gingerbread houses.  This week they just about finished off all the candy.

Gingerbread house remains

Advent Calendars

The boys got their advent calendars from Grandma and Grandad this morning, so they set about opening them while still half asleep.

Ready to open day 1

Half ready to open day 2

Steps, steps and more steps

Thought I would log a good total for steps to set a benchmark for the rest of the family to target.

Good total to aim for?

It's a bowl off

Tyler and Cody returned for the second time in a week to fat cats for their second duel. This time it was bowling.  They both bowled pretty well, although lumpy balls didn't help and it was neck and neck all the way until the final frame where Cody managed to win by 1 pin scoring 66 to Tyler's 65.

Ready to Bowl

Ready to eat

Neck and Neck before the final frame

Mini Golf glow in the dark matchup

Cody and Tyler went to fat cats to play a round of mini golf.  Cody surprisingly was a little scared by the glowing skulls and it may have affected his game as he didn't score as well as normal. Having said all that they had fun and Tyler just beat him on the final hole.

Ready to gold, Cody in trademark green shoes!

Cody looking a little apprehensive

Tyler ready for skulduggery

Cody's ramp project

It is my personal view(annoyance) that kids' school projects are just badly disguised homework for the parents. And this time it's Cody's Ramp Project which was basically a project where we look for ramps around the home and neighborhood and write about it! Why he would choose that over building a domino rally is beyond me!

We had to come up with interesting ways of measuring the ramp..

We used the speed of the truck as one

Like all good projects, it ends in tears.. 

A very unwilling participant