A new pilot for the Pilot

Well, Lane's love for basketball appears to be on a break right now, and in its place--a deep love for CARS, LAWNMOWERS, and CELL PHONES. Whenever he gets a chance to get in the cab of a car, this is what he does. Needless to say, we are going to have to keep a close eye on our keys, ha ha.

Take Me Out to the Hockey Game

Well, we HAVE taken Lane out to the Coyotes hockey game....3 times in the last 4 weeks! The first was with Dad and the Young Men, the 2nd was with Mom and Dad on a Tuesday datenight, and the last was with Dad, Uncle Seth, and cousin Colton. Lane was really well-behaved at all of them. If you live in the West Valley, you kind of have to be a Coyotes fan to be socially accepted.

The first game the 'Yotes lost in OT. I was just glad to get home alive with about 15 young men and 5 leaders. It was cool to hear the singing of "O Canada". The game was against Vancouver.

The 2nd game was memorable because we went to Cabela's first, because Anna hadn't been there yet. So we come for the start of the 2nd period, and we're outside taking pictures in front of the musical fountains (see picture below). There is this guy that is near us that is looking like he wants to talk to us. Finally I went up to him and asked him if he needed something, and he told us that he had 3 tickets on the 4th row, but his friends weren't going to make it. He asked if we would like to use them. So we gave our upper-deck seats to some other people outside the ticket window and had some really sweet seats. You should've seen Lane's face as we approached the seats. He's probably wondering what the heck....these giant guys cruising on the ice wacking a frozen rubber disc all over the place....at the plexiglass, at each other's faces, at the goal. Anyway, it was fun to see his reactions. He stayed on Mom's or Dad's lap the entire time and hardly moved. Also, all the people around thought he was cute and hilarious, and they kept feeding him popcorn and beer....kidding about the beer. We warned them that he is like the Zoo animals. If you feed them, they keep coming back for more.

The 3rd game with Seth and Colton was the best actual game of them all. The newspaper that morning called it their most important game of the year. It was a shootout thriller against a very good team. The Coyotes are in the home stretch of a playoff run, and things are looking good for the playoffs coming very soon.

We've had a little too much fun the past couple of weeks. Thank goodness the Coyotes are a great team, because all the other Phoenix teams REALLY stink this year!


Lane and Mom at the musical fountains outside the arena. They are similar to those at the Mirage in Las Vegas



Lane and Dad...the 2 Hockey junkies



Lane and Mom



Lane looks a little tired at this point. But still in awe.


This was the view from the 4th Row. You are right in on the action. We sat next to the guy that gave us the tickets. He was a nice guy from Boston who has lived in Phoenix since 1977. We talked about hockey and nursing, because his wife is a nurse.

About the only bummer was that we didn't really see any fights. Not as many fights in the NHL as there used to be. Of the 3 games we attended, the 'Yotes won a shootout thriller, a game in regulation, and lost one in OT to the team with the best record in the NHL, Vancouver.

Trip to the Children's Museum of Phoenix

On St. Patrick's Day, Lane got to go with Mom, Aunt Claire, and cousin Cooper to the Children's Museum of Phoenix. Below are pictures from the trip:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Lane made sure to be decked out in green for St. Patrick's Day. Here he's getting ready to eat breakfast before heading out to the Phoenix Children's Museum (more on this later).



Linc woke up and made a St. Patty's breakfast. Similar to what Grandma Eagar did for her kids, Lincoln made green pancakes with green eggs (no ham) and green milk. There were no reports of pinching at the breakfast table.

We are so excited

We are really excited for a couple of reasons:

Lincoln passed his NCLEX-RN boards last Thursday, hooray! The job search is underway! In the meantime, he is teaching English classes to the Spanish-speaking prospects of the L.A. Dodgers. He has done this for a couple of years now and enjoys it.

and



Our Stake is getting ready to have a visit from an Apostle! Elder Neal L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will be at the Surprise Stake Conference this weekend.

We are going to have several meetings with him. Lincoln and Anna will get to hear him at the Saturday night adult meeting and the Sunday Stake Conference. Lincoln will get to have smaller meetings with him as well: Saturday afternoon at Priesthood Leadership and then Sunday morning at a special meeting Elder Anderson is having with the Young Men and Young Women only. This should be a very memorable weekend for us.

We are so excited for both of these events.

Lane's Speech Sessions

Lane's speech is coming along...slowly, but fairly steady. He has speech therapy sessions once a week with his therapist, Becky. She comes here to our house and does the sessions, which is nice. It may look like they are "play sessions", but with boys often it's the play with interactive toys that gets them going. Often girls learn to talk sooner, while with boys all they want to do is run, jump, push and pull toys around, and climb. They'd much rather do that than stay still and present a speech. In these pictures, Lane is playing with an interactive playground. It has a slide that he would put the little figures on, then push a lever and watch them slide down. He loved it. There was also a little horse that he could have the figures ride. If you haven't heard him say "horsey" yet, it's something to see. We'll try to get it on video and post it.




Becky is very good at getting him to repeat things and to encourage him to speak before giving him something or moving on to the next task. He enjoys being with her.



He can repeat almost any word that is given to him. Current favorites include: "horsey", "basketball", "away", "Woody" and "Buzz" (from Toy Story), and, of course, "Mama", "Dada", and recently-- "Lane". His other very favorite word to say is "BEAST!!!". This is because he loves Beauty and the Beast so much. He watches it several times per week.



Occasionally, he surprises us. The other day on the way out to the mailbox, I held his hand and started walking. Then suddenly, he pulled his hand away and said, "Let me go!". At this point, I was the one who was speechless.

Christmas 2010

Our Christmas Card this year


Christmas morning at 7am...we've slacked compared to the old days


Well, this post is EXTREMELY late, but we figured we better get it on here before another month passes.

We had a great Christmas this year. The highlights definitely included having EVERYONE on both sides of our family home for Christmas. It was so great to be with all of the family. Having Lincoln's brothers in from out of state, and Anna's sister here from Macedonia made the holidays extra sweet.



The other highlight, of course, was that this year we could see Lane understand Christmas a little bit more than last year. It was fun to watch him unwrap some presents--or unwrap part of the present. He opened up a new toy train at Grandpa and Grandma Traeger's house and said "choo choo!" for quite a while (pictured above).



As always, we really enjoyed the infamous Traeger Christmas Eve Ramschnitzel dinner (above) and the much-anticipated Eagar Christmas breakfast (below). We still miss Grandpa and Grandma Eagar as well as Aunt Judy at that breakfast.



Other highlights included an extra special Polar Express-themed Hamblin Christmas party, Lincoln and Anna singing a duet together at the party, and finally getting all of the Eagar boys together to play basketball like the old days. Another fun thing we did was have a little Christmas musical program and Nativity Scene on Christmas Eve.

We also enjoyed making candy trains, going shopping with Erin, and the New Year's Day party with the Eagar cousins.

While we were still in Surprise, we enjoyed making fudge mint brownies and taking them around to our neighbors and those we home & visit teach. Our friends across the street also came over with some surprise gifts for us. Lincoln enjoyed baptizing one of his Young Men and attending the baptism of a nice couple that is new to our ward. Also memorable was heading up a service project with the Priests Quorum where we trimmed a big palo verde of a single sister in our ward, which was badly needed and a great help to that family.

We took it all in, and enjoyed every minute of it. Below are some pictures from Christmas 2010:


Lane slept through most of the opening of gifts at the Traegers, but he awoke near the end and started opening gifts


Lane shooting a soccer ball at his new Toy Story 3 hoop for the bathtub. He's wearing Christmas jammies made by his talented Mom.




Our house at Christmas time


Grandpa and Ryan opening Christmas gifts in front of the TV Fire. We were all so warm this year, that we talked Grandpa into holding off on the real fire for a while.


Lindsey and Hannah checking out the new airplane from Santa. Hannah looking as cute as ever in her new Christmas jammies made by Aunt Anna.


Anna is holding in her hands an item that combines two of Lane's greatest loves: Basketball and Toy Story. In a showing of his undying love for basketball, Lane received 3 different basketball hoops this Christmas: this one (pictured) for the bathtub, a kid-sized one for his room, and another smaller one that can hang anywhere. This in addition to the one he got from the neighbors that he has in the backyard. Overkill? Yeah, probably.

We hope you all had a great Christmas!