Brett's Home

It's so wonderful to see him. He has an accent that is undefinable. Not English, not Irish, and definately not a New Yorker either. He arrived about an hour later than expected which left us anxiously waiting and watching at Terminal 1 in JFK. One of Brett's good friends who attends college about 20 minutes away from JFK was also able to come to the airport, which was a great surprise for Brett. We hit traffic leaving NYC and ended up getting home just after 7:00 p.m. (just when his flight would have taken off from JFK for ALB). Family and friends were waiting to greet him and hear all about his experiences.

We're so happy to have him home!!!!

THIS WEDNESDAY!!!!!

We are driving to JFK to pick-up Brett. He was going to fly into Albany, but they changed his itinerary and he ended up having a six-hour layover in JFK and we knew that we could be down there and back in six hours. We asked Brett what he'd rather do and he said: "Yes, please relieve me from a 6 hour lay over in JFK. I would love that! It would just give me an opportunity to see good ole home again, and 6 hours to talk! That is my final answer!"

So we're leaving at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Lauren and Jared are coming too. We are all so excited to see him and have him home.

Three more sleeps!!!

Happy Birthday Brett!

Today is Brett's 21st birthday.
It's our second year celebrating his birthday without him.

Here are pictures from a year ago. My how time flies!

We love you and can't wait to see you on May 5th!!!!

Happy 18th Birthday Jared!

On Friday, March 5th
Jared had his 18th birthday party.
He had a bunch of friends over.
Unfortunately we didn't get any
really clear pictures of the kids at the party.

Sunday, March 7th was Jared's actual birthday.
Normally we would have given him breakfast in bed,
but it was Fast Sunday.

At least he got to open most of his presents.
Glen wasn't there, so Jared got his from Glen later.
The things you see in the picture are all on top
of the luggage that he got for his birthday.
What would an 18th birthday at
the Brooksby house be if you didn't get luggage?

We had Evan, Suzanne and their family over
along with Grandma Brooksby.

Jared wanted a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting,
and Cookie Dough ice cream. So that's what he got.

The cake says it all!

Amazing Throw

Ok, you've read Michelle's post about our bowling outing. I will now treat you to a video Lauren shot of Jared making an amazing shot. Jared had decided he would just have fun during this game. He was doing what the gentleman in the next lane called "Freestyle bowling". He had a few different throws, but this was by far the most amazing.




Yes, it was a strike.

Bowling!

During Winter Recess we told both Jared and Lauren to pick something that we'd do as a family. Lauren choose to go play racquetball at the Schenectady "Y", which we did on Friday. Jared choose to go bowling. So Saturday night we went to Burnt Hills bowling alley.

Jared was a very creative bowler.

Bowling twice in a couple of months is amazing for us.
We usually bowl once a year on New Year's Day and that's it.

On her second game Lauren did really well.

Glen beat all of us on his first game (just like he usually does).

But check out the scores on the last game we bowled.

That's right EVERYONE beat Glen.
He probably had the worst game of all time - for him at least.

Snow Finally!

Tuesday of Winter Recess it snowed so Jared went outside and made a snow pyramid. He used a large round bucket to make the "bricks". He said that each one probably weighed around 50 pounds, and that getting the last one on top was hard.
Lauren went x-country skiing around the yard until she and Jared got into a snowball fight.

A week later it's snowing again and this
is what the snow pyramid looks like now.

And Lauren once again decided to do some x-country skiing!