Jason Siebert killed in car crash, please pray for family

A dear family friend of ours Jason Siebert was killed in a tragic car accident this weekend. For those of you that know the family, please pray for them in this time of grieving. He was an innocent by-stander and as he was driving through an intersection he was hit by a car that was in a high speed chase. This happened in Long Beach where he was living.

Our family has been friends with theirs since 5th grade, and my parents are very good friends with Steve and Debbie. Jason was loved and will be remembered by so many. I was in Oddysey of the Mind, band, and choir with him in grade school, jr. high and high school. Many fun memories of World finals, Santa Cruz band trip, Disney Land fun, and good times at the cabin to name a few. He would always make you laugh and feel special, and was never lacking of something witty to say.

My Dad is driving down to Long Beach with them today to be a support person / driver as they go to collect Jason and his belongings. Please pray for them all. It is so hard to know what to say when someone is in the midst of such pain, we are grieving with them as they grieve.

The family is planning a service here on Saturday at Clovis Hills church and next Tuesday in the L.A. area. The details are still tentative.

*** We are setting up a website at www.JasonSiebert.blogspot.com. Pictures and memories will be posted there as well as service details. If you have a special memory of Jason or condolenses you would like to share with the family the best place to do so would be at that blog.

Thanksgiving in Fresno

Not the best of pictures, but wanted to record the memory. My Dad holding Abigail who was playing with a measuring cup, and my sweet Grandmother VeVe in the background.


Then we headed back to Fresno and had Thanksgiving dinner with the Hinkle and Krikorian side of Heather's family. Aunt Barbie has been graciously hosting the last couple of years, and she is a wonderful cook. A few of the yummies we had: delicious whipped sweet potatoes, the best ever corn casserole, and tasty razzberry pie and pumpkin streudel pies made from scratch. They always have a warm and cozy fire going, and we had a wonderful time visiting.

Thanksgiving in Los Banos

Grandma Dee with the Grandkids.

Grandma Dee and Abigail.

Abigail "helping" Grammie cook in the kitchen.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Los Banos with Doug's side of the family. Grandma Dee and Uncle Rick live there, and it is tradition to go there for Thanksgiving lunch. She makes her famous rigatoni's and special sauce, along with Italian sausage - what a treat. It was great to be with family. We didn't get a big family picture there this year, we will need to be sure to do that at Christmas! There are a lot of exciting things going on: Greg and Yessenia getting married in 09 and thenJulie and Keith having a baby in08/09?? They haven't found out the sex, which I think is so much fun, so we will all be awaiting that phone call. I am so thankful to be a part of the Favelo clan!

Carmel

More Carmel pictures

Fun on the slide at Casa de Fruta


Abigail's first lime


Kissing the owl - her new best friend. :)


Waiting for dinner at Bahama Billy's. Great service and YUMMY food, especially the fish tacos!


Big brown eyes.
On the swing at Casa de Fruta, this was my favorite place to stop when I was young.

A few pictures from Carmel

A lot of digging was done at the beach!

At the beach



Getting her diaper changed in the trunk before heading to the beach.


We were able to go to Carmel for a few days before Thanksgiving. We had a lot of fun and a very relaxing time. I just accidentally erased a bunch of the pictures I uploaded - oops! More to come.

The week before Thanksgiving

Making our thankfulness tree - Noah helping with the glue


Working on smiling at the camera. :-)


Abigail watching us do our craft and playing with one of her favorite toys - a tape measure.


Playing airplane with Daddy.

Prolly' Jullianna

At Vernal Falls, getting Noah out of the carrier. Daniel hiked him almost the whole way up - thanks Daniel!!

Fun in Yosemite - more pictures to come!

This morning just for fun, I asked Noah who his best friend was, and he replied: "Prolly Julianna". I think Julianna won him over with the many books she read him, and their common love for cranberries. I don't know, I still think Daniel should have won the prize for backpacking him all the way up Vernal Falls. Well, all of you cousins rank pretty high in his book - he can't stop talking about when the cousins came.

I have SO many pictures, and so much to blog about, and I have been so busy that it is overwhelming to think about starting, but I thought I could at least share that quickly before I forrgot and to get the ball rolling. I will try to post more pictures later today. :-)

Bath in a shower

I think I have come up with something wonderful.

A bath in a shower.

Here is how it started: Abigail loves to be given a bath. She loves to play with the little bath toys, kick her little legs excitedly and splash her hands all about. The only problem is, with all of that splashing about, it seemed like her goal was to get all of the bath water out of the tub and onto me or the floor. This turned it into something that was more of a chore that a fun experience. Either change into clothes I didn't mind getting sopping wet, and cover the floor with towels, or skip her bath.... babies don't get that dirty anways do they??

I regress - the other factor is I LOVE taking showers. Nice, long, hot showers.

So, the next time I needed to take a shower, and Abigail was awake, I decided to take her little bath tub in there with me, fill in up with warm water and let her splash away while I took my shower. It was a win-win and we both had a wonderful time. You do have to have a rather large shower for this to work out, but ours is perfect for it, I sit on the built in ledge/seat, enjoy my nice long shower, and I get to watch Abigail happily splash in the water and play with her little toys. (The baby also needs to be able to sit up on their own in the little bath for it to work).

Child training tip of the week

I am considering adding a child training tip of the week. This will mostly be something that will help me solidify and reinforce what I am learning in this joyful journey of raising and training my children. I am not writing it because I think I have it all figured out, by any means! I will just be sharing some of the tips that are working for our family. God has blessed us with his Word, some good Godly examples of parents raising wonderful children, and some helpful books that have encouraged us along the way. So please don't take this as I am telling you what to do with your children, I am just sharing things that have worked for us - if they work for you too, then great!

So, let's get started.

Tip for today: When I am training my children, I always speak with the voice that I want them to respond to. For example, if I tell Noah or Abigail "no" in a nice, gentle and quite voice, and I mean it and back up my words every time, they will come to know that when Mama says no, she means no, regardless of the volume or tone of voice. This doesn't mean that I am over the top syrupy sweet, but I always aim to speak with a gentle voice to my children and I expect them to obey the first time. That way they aren't waiting for Mama to raise her voice, or get the serious tone before they obey.

Play dough

Daddy and Noah playing with our home made play dough.