Sammy's 5th Birthday!

Sam turned 5 this past Thursday and today was the big Star Wars party. The kids had a blast. Jake had fun too as the short video shows. Click here for his step by step cake project:) For pictures from the party, click here.

Back from N. Arizona!

We are back from our trip to Phoenix, Sedona, and Flagstaff, Arizona. If you'd like to see pictures from our trip, click on the title to this post. -Jake

It's great to be back and see the kids, but I'm not sure I was ready to leave Arizona. I was amazed by the beauty of the northern part of that state. We kept active the whole trip. I guess we aren't people who sit by the pool while on vacation. One day we climbed a mountain north of Sedona called Wilson Mountain. It ended up being a tough hike, though it started out quite easy. There were some parts going up that had me in a panic. (I don't like heights). One slip of the foot and you'd be hurtled down the mountain. I took it slow and hugged the side of the mountain in those areas. We got to the top a few hours after starting and it was definitely worth the trip. The views were spectacular. We didn't see one bit of wildlife, amazingly. A few years ago, someone left a campfire burning on the mountain and it caused a huge forest fire. There were thousands of scorched trees, but it was still very pretty. The next day we went to another lookout point north of Sedona and noticed it was the opposite trail head of Wilson Mountain (there are two trailheads, we took the the northern one.) There was a monument dedicated to the man Wilson, for whom the mountain was named after. Turns out he was killed by a grizzly on that very mountain. I'm glad I didn't see that sign before climbing the day before, or I might have been a little more fearful. I don't think there are grizzlies there anymore though. We had many other adventures, but that's just a little sampling of one of our days. -Ali

Luke Tackles Dad

This is a video taken yesterday of Luke tackling Dad. I'm experimenting here with changing bit rates on videos so they are easy to load on the web. I'm not sure if it lets you resize the video or not. If it does, this one won't look good large.

Victory Egg Hunt 08!

Happy Easter!

The pictures are from the 20th (I think) annual Victory Easter Egg Hunt! This is the first year that they have had snow, other than a patch or two. Over the past few days we have around 6 inches.

Givand Podcast 3

This podcast is a family conversation about the festivities on the Saturday before Easter. Luke was front and center during the conversation and can often be heard, especially when the topic is candy.

Givand Podcast 3.mp3

Givand Podcast 2

This podcast features Sammy telling a story that, based on what I overheard, may not be suitable for easily frightened children:)

Givand Podcast 2.mp3

Givand Podcast 1

This is the first episode and, at 10 minutes plus, probably longer than usual. It features Lydia reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Givand Podcast 1.mp3

The beginning

Hello from snowy Minneapolis, Minnesota. As I'm not a fan of journaling, this blog will be mainly for the Givand Family podcast series. We'll see if it stays this way.

As with most things, we are off to a fast start. Just in the last hour, we've recorded the first 3 episodes of the podcast!

Wow. I think I finally figured out how to post the podcasts. I also talked to Ali and while I may not be doing much more with this blog than podcasting, she is a writer. We'll see what this evolves into...