**JANUARY UPDATE**

It's been a while since I've updated this thing. I'm sure you're all dieing to know what we've been up to the last 2 months. Honestly....when are we NOT up to something? We're always doing something interesting, right? Well, first off... I've decided to quit school to be with the family. Brady has been having a bit of a hard time with his brother's passing and I just want to be there for him and the boys any way they need. The boys have also been getting into trouble at school, so I'd like to be able to volunteer at the school and be able to keep an eye on them. Ashton even got beat up (not bad) by a bully last week. The kid got suspended, but Ashton was a little scared. He shouldn't have to deal with stuff like that in 3rd grade. If I had been going to school myself, I wouldn't have been able to pick him up from school. So, I feel like I'm justified in my decision to take a break from school for a while. Who knows....I may go back later on down the road, but right now, my family is the most important thing to focus on.

January was a tough month trying to go on with life without our fun uncle/brother. We carried on with our normal activities though. We started out January with our traditional New Years Eve party at Uncle Brad's house. This year the white elephant gift exchange got a little outta control. We had a few family members fighting over gifts.


Which left some people a bit unhappy....

Grandpa Butterfield did his best to keep things under control:

Not everyone was unhappy. Here's Melanie happy about who knows what....she's always got this look on her face:

(just kidding, Mel!)

And here's Brady having a "special moment" with his gift. It WAS one of the cooler ones.

Poor Brooke got a ceramic Santa in a bathtub:

And Aunt Amy got a broken mirror off a car:


Uncle Brad is in a band and has all his stuff set up in his basement. The boys love to go down there and wail on the drums. Here are some pictures of that:





It was a good time. We love being with our family.

Before Brady had to go back to work, he wanted to fly his P-40 Mustang. The day we found out about Jordan was when he was planning on flying it for the first time. Jordan was suppose to go with him. Anyway, we put it off a couple weeks, and finally went out to the middle of no where in the freezing cold and witnessed its first (and last) flight. One of the extra parts Brady bought for it malfunctioned, and it crashed. It was very sad. He spent so much time on this plane. The nice thing is, he told the company who made the part what happened, and they are giving him a credit to buy another plane. Hopefully the next one makes more than one flight. Here are some pictures from the fateful day.

Before the crash:



After the crash:


Our last activity in January was the Pinewood Derby. This was Ashton's first derby.

Check out this car:


Now, do you really think something that looks like that would lose?

No way!!!

Brady, of course, helped Ashton a lot. He knows all the little secrets to make it go fast. Ashton did designed the shape of the body. He thought that the flatter it was the faster it would go. So, Brady used his grandfather's tools and cut it out to look like Ashton's drawings. Then, as we were trying to figure out what color to paint it, there was some aluminum tape just sitting on the counter from one of Brady's airplanes. He pulled some off and stuck it on the car. It look totally neat, so we just covered the entire car with it and used a pencil to poke holes on it to look like metal panels. It has a very unique looking body.
And then Ashton and Brady polished the axels and used graphite to make the wheels roll smoothly. When they put the car down on a flat surface, it wouldn't stay in one spot. It WANTED to go forward!

Anyway, here are some pictures from the race. Enjoy!

















The next post will be Tyler's birthday. Even though he's already had his family party, his party with his friends is tomorrow at Chuck E. Cheese's. So, I'll have those pictures up by next week.