Ferdi is now a U.S. citizen!

Taking the oath to be a good citizen.
Family photo op after the fact. We are so proud of Ferdi and his drive to get this accomplished!
"And now you can vote!" What an honor! To be able to help in the selection of those who lead our country.

Good Reads

Check out www.goodreads.com
It is a great site to log and rate the books you have read and to see what others who are reading what you are have said about it and other books like it.
I love this site!!

CHINCOTEAGUE!

Is there really anything I can write about these pics? We had a great time at the beach in July with Ben's friend Anthony and his mom. We camped and played at the beach and went to the carnival that you all remember from the Misty books. Later this month I should have more of my Chincoteague pics up on Flickr so check 'em out.

updating flickr account

I have selected that all my photos are set to private. It is free and E-A-S-Y to get a flickr account. If you want to see more photos I have taken over the few years I have had digital accessibility you can find me as syndlazo.

Ethan and Elli

They have such fun together!

J and Karen took a weekend getaway to the mountains and left Aaron and Elli with mom. So, Sunday after church, I gave mom and dad a break from one of the kids. Elli came over and "swam" in our little backyard pool together. We'll do it again in August when Karen and J celebrate 10 years of marriage on Mt. Whitney.

Ben and Parker Joe are now officially Boy Scouts. The troop had a pic-nic in May and the boys had earned their right to receive the Scout kerchief.

Ben and Parker Joe share a tent at Scout Camp at T. Brady Saunders mid-June. It was Ben's first sleep away camp. He was a little homesick at the beginning but is really excited to go back again next year!

Parker Joe, Ben and Shawn "pose" for the camera. This is the last night of camp. It was family night and the boys were excited to see family and show off the camp and their skills.

Ben's Arrow of Light Ceremony

My WEBLOS, doesn't he look handsome! This is the last time he will dress as a WEBLOS. The next time you see him he will be a Boy Scout. In fact he is going to scout camp on Sunday.

Ben and Parker Joe before the crossing over.

Ethan and Shawn Gregory salute the flag scout style at their brothers crossing over ceremony.

The Order of the Arrow is a group of Boy Scouts who assist in crossing over Cub Scouts after they have achieved their Arrow of Light.

As his first act as a member of Troop 1396, Ben uses a hatchet to sever ties from Cub Scouts and become a Boy Scout.

Ethan says the Lord's Prayer Jan. 2008

So my mom claims that I knew the Lord's Prayer by the time I was 2. Well Ethan has been practicing all of last year and last night he nailed it :) He didn't have any help either. Ben learned it at about 3 or 4 as well. Unfortunately, I didn't have digital anything when he was a little one.

Christmas Eve

We actually finished early enough this year to enjoy some of out Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. Ethan and Elli especially enjoyed their gifts as we emptied the garage for them to ride around. Ben also enjoyed his gift of a Nikon Coolpix camera. Actually I am enjoying it while Ben helps Ethan with his bike :). All in all we had a wonderful Christmas. Family is always the best part of any holiday. As I type it is New Years Eve and we have reminisced all day about Ethan's birth 4 years ago. It seems like just yesterday he was born and now he is on his way to true boyhood. Having fully potty trained this summer. Having decided that he hates school (as any outdoor loving boy should :)). Having gotten his first gaming system for Christmas (well not really: it is a learning gaming system. It should take him a few weeks to figure out that it isn't like the PS2 that Ben got for Christmas)
ANYWAY, I digress.

Christmas 2007

Well as you can see from the postings this year has been fun!
I thought it would be a good idea to post my Christmas letter this year instead of wasting trees and spending money that we didn't really have on something that I could post for free. I know I am cheap! Anyway this is so much better. You can look back through the year if you want to and see all the fun things we did and a few photos of them too. I enjoy keeping my blog although it is a bit difficult sometimes to make sure I post on a monthly basis.
I am still teaching an LOVING it! I have but one class left to take and I will be fully certified. I hope to take it during the Spring break time. It is only a three week class with UOP online. After that I will take a Grammar course. I have remembered so much (that I knew once upon a time) in the last year and half but I need to brush up on my fluency of it.I know I love to teach the Brit Lit (that most hated when they were in school) and I will teach that for a while. Maybe even 10 or so years. Then I will decide what I want to get my Masters in British Literature, English Language Learners or Reading Specialists. The later would require me to step down to either Middle School or Elementary School and would be OK. We'll figure that out when we get there :)
Ferdi is still working as a Heating and Air Conditioning Tech and will probably go back to school in the next year or so to begin work on his Journeyman's license. That means he can begin contracting work and even more side jobs!
Ben is in 5th grade and looking forward to middle school! He is 10 going on 11 and wants to be 16 so bad he can taste it. Daily he critics my driving and says that he can drive ;) We'll see about that some day in the distant future.
Ethan is my budding Rock Star. He doesn't want to sing songs others wrote and instead "write" his own lyrics right before singing them for us. We have a live "concert" (he uses a blow-up guitar at mom's house, but at our house he has a 4 year old size real guitar) in our very own living room on a regular basis. Sometimes Ben will join in with the pillows for drums.
As for our house we are still living in the same place. We are bursting at the seems and ready to move into a larger home that is hopefully newer. That will come in God's Time.
Well I hope you enjoy the photos that will be posted later and keep in touch with us via e-mail, myspace or now facebook. We'd love to hear from all of you!

Happy 2008

The Whole Family: Karen and her crew, Chris the single one, mom and dad, Granny and my family

Four Generations: Granny Doris, Grandma Gloria, Mom Syn-D, Sons Ben and Ethan

My wonderful family!

More fall fun

The kids at Maymont in Richmond, November 12, 2007. They have a lot of fun together!Aaron and grandpa at Aaron's dedication october 2007.
The boys at Maymont November 12, 2007
WOW!
I am not really talkative today, huh?

Fall Fling

The kids at Seneca Rocks in West Virginia.
This is always a fun excursion! We enjoy s'mores, chili and J's birthday.
The kids mostly love hanging out together. Ethan met a new friend this year, Tobin.
I guess I will post more when I have time to take pictures and post them here :)
Love to you all!

California Family Reunion 2007

Aunt Harriet and Ferdi talk. Of course you can't see their faces but the sun had it's own ideas for this picture. I didn't think it would have this effect, but it turned out pretty cool, if you ask me :)

This of course is just some of the family at the reunion. My camera did not take such good photos of everyone. They were a little blurry. If you have them and you want to share...let me know and I'll get you my e-mail address. We had so much fun this year in Yosemite and at the Wawona with the family. Sometimes 3 days doesn't feel like it is enough to really get to know people. Hopefully, posting photos helps a little.

Ben with Aunt Harriet. I was so proud of my 10 year old son. He was so easy going and go with the flow it was amazing!! He really made an impression on people. I hope he treasures these moments as much as I do!

I'll Post more later when I have a little more time. Maybe Friday, keep checking.

Summer is well under way!

We have returned from Chincoteague and boy was it fun!!!
We stayed in a house with Tawnie, Karen and mom and all the kids. All total it was 10 people in the house. Luckily, most were under the age of 4 and they were not to much in the way :) We had a blast hanging out at the beach, going to the carnival and just being together. I think that this might be the last moms and kids Chincoteague vacation though because we don't want to do it without the men helping us out so that we can relax too :)
Here are a few pics from the vacation.

The Brothers at the Beach

The family with little ones you can never get the perfect picture there is always bound to be something wrong! The baby I am holding is Karen's new little one Aaron. He is such a sweet baby!

Why else to you go to Chincoteague? To ride the ponies, of course! The three little ones had fun riding and waiting to ride the pony.

Oh yeah! you also go to Chincoteague in July to go to the carnival!

This is The Mushroom. The kids rode it 3 or 4 times, I lost count. It is kinda like cups and saucers at Disney. There are more photos of Chincoteague at www.myspace.com/syndla if you want to see them.

Summertime fun!

A sunset swim

Makin" Tortillas

I decided that we should have homemade flour tortillas one night. Ethan and Ben decided to help. They had fun making and eating the tortillas! One batch made enough for us to eat for a few days! They were very good!

Ethan the rocker

We can't seem to keep this boy away from the guitar! This is an old one that my grandfather gave to me when I was 5. He has so much fun playing with it! He is also quite the air guitarist. He regularly plays air guitar in church! What will this kid be????? stay tuned to find out!

Ferdi got his yellow belt

Since Ethan quit TKD we switched the contract over to Ferdi and he is now "working out" regularly! He just got his yellow belt. He didn't want me to take pictures. He is a little camera shy. I got to hold the board while he broke it. I am so proud of him!!

Now, he is a green belt!

I am so proud of Ben for sticking with this. He has had several occasions of wanting to quit and because I haven't let him...he hasn't. He is actually enjoying it even though his 10 year old mind wants to buck the system and quit.

Back to Easter, 2007

Let's go back a month. To Easter weekend, the weekend that we don our Easter bonnets and beautiful spring clothes and begin to shed the winter. This year for those of us in Northern Virginia, it snowed! Yes, snow on Easter weekend and we aren't north of the Mason-Dixon either! Granted it was just a dusting AND it did melt shortly after about 10 am but for a while it was snowing on Easter weekend 2007. The kids loved it and it sure did make Easter egg hunting at the church that day interesting! Anyway this is just a quick look at our back yard that morning.



So that day at the church we had an egg hunt and Ben, Ethan and Elli all got prize eggs and won a little goodie bag of "stuff". They also got to watch a puppet show put on by our youth group. I think most of it went over Ethan's head but as you can see from the photo of him it certainly got to his heart!


That night a little r & r, for the little ones, was in order. They got horsie rides from the grandparents! What fun it is to have them so close to us! Not only can the kids bond with them they can also use them in a myriad of ways, horsie rides required!





So this is "my Ethan". He is ham in front of the camera. Rarely can I get a straight face out of him with the cameras on. There are the rare occasion when he does a "nice" smile and I have the camera ready like the photo here with his brother. They really are a sweet pair! They get along famously, most of the time!
Then there are the times...
Ah but it is late and Ferdi has turned off the light and Ethan is crying that he needs his mommy!
We'll write more later.
Thanks for reading