Today, after church we went on a walk around our neighborhood. We stopped to talk to a neighbor. While we were talking Brooke ran down the street with her friend. We didn't see it happen, but somehow Brooke's face collided with a bush.
Here you can see the result:
Fortunately, we asked another neighbor, who is a nurse, to take a look at Brooke's injury. The cut under her eye wasn't deep enough to need stitches. We cleaned out the cut and then put some antibiotic ointment on it.
She held up pretty bravely until Grandma and Grandpa Bowden came to visit. Then she locked herself in the bathroom because she was embarrassed. We were able to talk her out and by the time we took this picture she was in a good mood.
Brooke-ism:
"I didn't trip on anything, I just tripped." - Whenever she trips and falls, we usually ask her what she tripped over. Apparently this time, she just tripped!
]]>We can't believe another year has come and gone. We didn't even have the chance to go abroad this year! Fortunately we had a few fun trips visiting family in California, New Jersey, Utah and North Carolina.
Scott is glad things are still going well with his job at Intel. When not at work, he enjoys playing with the kids and reading. This summer he spent a week with the Boy Scouts on a 50 mile hike along the McKenzie River, a few hours south of Portland.
Tiffany fills her days with laundry, carpooling, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning, not to mention taking care of our three children. She fills her evenings with book club, scrapbooking, a neighborhood friendship group and the occasional girls' night out. She enjoys teaching Tyler's Primary class at church.
Tyler (7½) is in the second grade. He loves math and is starting to get more interested in reading, especially the Magic Tree House series. After his homework is done, he has fun building things out of Legos. Fortunately, his two front teeth should be mostly in by Christmas.
Brooke (5) is enjoying her second year of preschool and is looking forward to joining Tyler at school next year. She still loves princesses and all things pink. She enjoys playing with her dolls, especially the one Tiffany had as a little girl. Brooke has had a busy year starting ballet, continuing gymnastics and playing on her first soccer team.
Caleb (18 months) has had a busy year too. He started eating real food, learned how to walk (finally at 14 months!) and started communicating with baby signs. He is all boy; he loves cars, balls and making messes. It is very cute when he folds his arms for prayer. He melts our hearts when he gives his siblings hugs when they are sad.
At this Christmastime we are especially thankful for the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for our family and friends. We wish each of you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2009!
Love,
Scott, Tiffany, Tyler, Brooke and Caleb Bowden
This is a video of Caleb playing with the Velcro from the camera case. He also takes some time to wave to the helicopters.
Scott gave him a push and then he just started riding. We were really surprised we didn't have to work with him at all.
Here is a video of Tyler after just a few minutes of riding:
Brooke-isms:
"Mom, can I cross the street? It's blank." - We think she meant it was clear.
"These blinds are dusty. You need to undust them."
He will be crawling before we know it.
]]>Once at the lodge, we ate pizza, played games and stayed up too late talking.
In the morning we ate breakfast, played some games and relaxed.
Mid-morning we went snow tubing on the hill outside the lodge.
Here are the mid-air shots:
And here are the crashes:
After we checked out of the lodge, we went to the White River Sno-park, just down the road, and cooked lunch in the parking lot.
After lunch we played in the snow. Some of the more adventurous used their snowboards.
Rob - jumpingGarrett - jumpingJustin - landed
Here is a video of Rob jumping and crashing.
To celebrate we all went to the Old Spaghetti Factory, including the kids. We had fun and Tiffany and I will celebrate properly once Grandma and Grandpa can come babysit.
After dinner, we went to Jeff's house to look at the lunar eclipse through Dad's telescope. We all had fun looking at the moon as it slowly darkened and turned red.
Once the moon was eclipsed, we were able to get a good look at Saturn through the telescope. Unfortunately this picture doesn't do it justice. We were able to clearly see the rings around the planet. The photo is a little blurred because we didn't have a camera mount.
]]>We had already invited our friends, the Beutlers, for dinner. Russ served in the same mission I did, under President Frogley. Russ and his family just returned from three years in Switzerland with Intel. Our children all had fun playing together.
After dinner the Frogleys came over. We spent about an hour chatting and catching up with them. It was a wonderful evening.
]]>It has been another wonderful year, but it seems to have gone by even more quickly than the last. In April, we were able to visit Tiffany's hometown of San Diego for the wedding of Tiffany's brother Chris. We took advantage of our time in Southern California and went to Legoland and Disneyland. The kids had a blast and so did we.
On June 19th, we welcomed Caleb Robert Bowden into our family. The delivery and recovery went very well and Caleb arrived healthy. This enabled us to apply for his passport a few days after he was born. We are thankful for all the help we received from wonderful family and friends after his birth.
In July and August, Scott took his sabbatical from Intel. We used the opportunity to travel to Paris, France with our three children. Thus we officially became the craziest tourists in France. We spent six wonderful weeks in an apartment a block away from the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. We enjoyed eating wonderful food, seeing the sights, visiting museums and having lots of fun. We are now homesick for France (and still for Israel too).
Scott is busy as usual with his job at Intel. When not at work, he enjoys playing with the kids, reading and working with the 14 and 15 year old Scouts. This year he got his ham radio license and call sign, KE7KWW, and is enjoying practicing his emergency preparedness skills.
Tiffany is adjusting to the busy life as a mother of three. She still tries to find time to scrapbook although it is even harder now that she has more to scrapbook and less time to do it. She also stays busy serving in the Relief Society.
Tyler (6½) loves first grade. He is learning to read and is excelling in math. However, his favorite subjects are still morning recess and lunch recess. After waiting for over a year, he is excited to have his first loose tooth. In his free time, he enjoys playing with his friends and riding his bicycle.
Brooke (4) is definitely a little girl. She loves princesses, Hello Kitty, wearing pink and walking around in dress up shoes. She is very sweet, especially when she randomly yells out, "I love you!" Her favorite activities are preschool and coloring.
Caleb (6 months) is a very happy baby. He is always smiling despite all that he has to put up with from his siblings. We are thrilled that he is sleeping through the night more regularly. He excels with his fine motor skills, but hasn't made any attempts at crawling. He is very social and is interested in everyone and everything around him.
We are especially excited to celebrate this Christmas season with our new baby. We are thankful for the many blessings our Heavenly Father has given us this year. May you feel the joy and love of this Christmas season throughout the coming year.
Love,
Scott, Tiffany, Tyler, Brooke and Caleb Bowden
On Monday, Tiffany thought she would let the kids play with Playdoh. It had been a while since they had played with it and Tyler didn't have any homework. Unfortunately, she remembered why they hadn't played with it for a long time. It should be called Play D'oh!
It started out innocently enough.
However, by the end, Playdoh was mashed into their clothes, caked onto the table and little pieces were all over the floor. Brooke and Tyler then stepped on the Playdoh and tracked it around the kitchen. Fortunately, they did not walk on the carpet.
This picture doesn't really do it justice. Brooke was hiding under the table. It took a long time to scrape the Playdoh off the table, clean the floor and scrape as much as we could off their clothes. We are crossing our fingers that what is left on their clothes washes off.
On an unrelated note, Caleb is a great baby. He has started to sleep through the night. He is a pretty happy baby and smiles a lot. We bought an Excer-saucer from our neighbor and he loves it. He especially has fun when the other kids are playing near him. He squeals and laughs. We think that when they are playing nearby he thinks he is playing with them.
His favorite part of the Excer-saucer is a plastic elephant with nice ears to chew on. It has been hard to get a good video of him playing because he always stops what he is doing and smiles when we pull the camera out.
On Saturday, we went to get a family portrait. We needed one that includes Caleb. Everyone did really well.
Tyler-isms:
"I don't want to be neat and tidy on my day off" - He had to wear his church clothes on Saturday for the family portrait.
Tyler and Brooke were pretending to be in their Sunday Primary class and played "spotlight". Spotlight is when one of the children, usually around their birthday, is described and the other kids have to guess who it is. Brooke and Tyler picked Caleb. In describing him Tyler said, "His hair - we don't know what color it is, his favorite food is milk and he is very talented when it comes to drooling."
Brooke and Tyler loved our apartment building's little elevator. To prevent contention, we made them take turns pressing the buttons. We could just barely fit in the elevator together. However, if we had the stroller or groceries, we had to make multiple trips.
On Sunday, we attended the Paris ward for the last time on our trip. We were very surprised to run into Elder Miles, who had served as a missionary in our home ward in Oregon. He was just as surprised to see us there. He was there with the BYU basketball team since they were playing five exhibition games in Paris. Brooke and Tyler were thrilled to see Elder Miles. He is 6 foot 11 inches, so he was a very memorable missionary for the kids.
At church, we made friends with Michael and Elise, a brother and sister from Canada who were on a trip through Europe. We invited them over for dinner and the kids had a blast playing with them.
After our new friends left, Tiffany and Caleb took a nap. Brooke and Tyler were bored, so Scott took them on a walk. We went to Notre-Dame because Tyler wanted to look at the model of the construction of Notre-Dame again.
While in Notre-Dame, Scott managed to get this picture of one of the rose windows.
Scott and the kids happened to be in Notre-Dame during a Sunday evening concert. The video below is a little clip from it.
As usual, Caleb has been pretty happy. He loves smiling at people. Everyone is amazed at how good he is.
]]>We were amazed that the lines to go to the top were so long. Fortunately, we had no intention of going to the top. Instead we wandered around the grounds and even let the kids play on the nearby playground equipment until it got really dark.
The kids did pretty well for it being so late. There was very little complaining. They were very excited to see the Eiffel Tower light up.
At about 10 pm, the lights on the Eiffel Tower start sparkling. It only lasts about 15 minutes. You can see part of it in the video below.
Before returning home we bought cotton candy and popcorn. It is interesting that when you buy popcorn in France, they ask you if you want it with salt or sugar. We chose the salt. The kids enjoyed our "midnight" snack. We enjoyed the chance to finally see the "City of Lights" at night.
We got in line before the towers opened. It was cooler than we thought it would be since we were in the shade of the cathedral, so Scott stepped out of line to get a warm chocolate crepe from the stand across the street. He was the first customer of the day so he and Tyler got to watch the man make a few practice crepes before the griddle was ready.
There are 386 steep spiral steps to the top. The kids did surprisingly well. Another advantage of going first thing in the morning was so they would be fresh and full of energy and not yet worn out from a day of sightseeing.
The view from the main platform was great. We had fun identifying major landmarks and counting how many French flags we could see.
We had a beautiful view of Paris. We could see the Seine in front of our apartment, the Eiffel Tower and lots of Notre Dame gargoyles.
We got to see the largest bell in the tower, which is named Emmanuel. It weighs 13 tons and is only rung on special occasions.
Next we climbed to the very top of one of the towers. Here is the view over the top of Notre Dame to the west.
While we were on top, we heard the bells ring. It was beautiful and very impressive.
After we descended we bought some French pastries and a baguette for lunch. The pastries were some of the best we have ever had. Then we went back to our apartment and rested so that we could all stay up late to see the Eiffel Tower at night.
]]>Brooke had decided at the Marmottan Museum that she likes Monet's Japanese bridge series. She found one in the Orsay to pose in front of.
Tiffany liked the juxtaposition of these two paintings of Monet's wife Camilla.
The Musée d'Orsay is located in what used to be a train station. One of the activities in the children's pamphlet was to look for the parts of the building that are still the same as when it was a train station.
It took a long time to get home from the museum because the area around Notre Dame was shut down due to a Catholic holiday. When we arrived home we walked around Notre Dame to see if anything was going on. There had been a procession in the streets around Notre Dame while we were at the museum, so we missed it.
On Thursday morning we went to Sainte-Chapelle. It is less than a block from our apartment. Whenever we passed the entrance we had seen long lines, so we went pretty early in the morning.
Sainte-Chapelle is in the middle of the Palais de Justice complex. The Palais de Justice contains the highest courts in France. Part of the reason the lines are long is due to the security screening necessary to enter the complex.
We happened to enter the church just as a guided tour was starting. It was in French, but Scott listened and was able to explain it to the rest of the family. We learned many things about the history of the church and its famous stained glass. For example, the reason it is a sainte chapelle instead of just a chapelle is because it was built to house holy relics such as pieces of the cross and thorns from the crown of thorns.
There are large stained glass panels that go almost all the way around the building. They tell stories from the Bible. We learned that you "read" the stories by starting in the lower left corner of a set of four windows and read left-to-right and then work your way up. This is the last set of windows and tells the story of how the holy relics were found for the Sainte-Chapelle. It cost Louis IX three times more to purchase the relics than it cost to build the church.
This rose window dates from the 15th century and not the 13th century like the rest of the stained glass windows. One way you can tell is that the colors are different. In the two centuries between them a lot of technology was learned about how to make better colors of glass. The color red is more vibrant and there are more variations in color.
Brooke is pointing to a carving of a castle. The castle and fleur-de-lis symbols were a recurring theme throughout the architecture and decoration of the church in honor of King Louis.
After some lunch, we went to visit the shopping complex in the Louvre and to plan out our visit to the Louvre the next week. Brooke and Tyler especially liked this small pyramid. You may recognize it from the movie The Da Vinci Code.
On our walk home, we stopped on this bridge to watch a boat pass underneath on its way down the Seine.
]]>Caleb has been a really good baby. On Tuesday he was in an exceptionally good mood.
We rode line 1 of the metro all the way to the north-western end to La Défense. La Défense is a huge business district on the outskirts of Paris. It is where all the skyscrapers are located. The most famous landmark is the Arche de la Défense, which is an office building in the form of an arch. The arch is so big that the Notre Dame cathedral could fit underneath it.
Here are Tiffany, Brooke and Tyler at the top of the steps underneath the arch with the main plaza behind them. It was very windy since the arch acts like a wind tunnel.
We paid to visit the top of the arch where there is a museum and a balcony. We rode to the top in these cool glass elevators.
Here are Scott and Caleb on the balcony of the arch. The view is down the Champs-Élysées, and if you look carefully you can see the Arc de Triomphe.
La Défense has a huge shopping mall. First we bought advance purchase tickets for the Orsay to let us bypass the lines. Then Brooke and Tiffany bought nail polish at Sephora. We all had fun in Toys R Us. It was the nicest Toys R Us we have ever been in. Tyler especially liked the huge Eiffel Tower constructed out of Legos. He was happy he was wearing his "Lego" Eiffel Tower T-shirt.
Afterwards, we shopped at a large grocery store called Auchan. We were thrilled to find they sold Scott's favorite kind of Belgian french fry sauce. We also bought chocolate covered Belgian waffles in addition to many other fun treats.
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