Merry Christmas From the Stanphill Family

In an effort to simplify the season, we are sending out our Christmas greeting without the paper and stamps. We hope this finds you well and we are thanking God for His provision for us this year. Please scroll through the blog to get an idea of our year and all it held for us.









Benjamin: 5 years old, Kindergartener, quirky and has taken on school as his job. Loves to play with his cousins but can also be found lurking quietly in corners playing independently. Ben played soccer for the first time this year and has made some great new friends.




Emma Kait: 8 years old, 2nd grade, loves school and her teacher Mrs. Wenstrom. Emma started piano lessons this year with Rebecca's childhood piano teacher and continues to explore her artistic talents.









Joseph: 10 years old, 4th grade, lover of animals and very hard worker. Joseph helped re-roof the little house on our property this year and then re-roofed the kid's playhouse by himself.



Jon and Rebecca: Jon continues in his work for Granite Bay Excavating and has also recently returned to his roots in web/media development starting Structured Media Design. Rebecca voyaged into a new season of life with all the kids being in school this year and took a part time job teaching PE at the kid's school for 1-3rd grades. She has enjoyed some mornings of a quiet house, with a cup of coffee and a crackling fire.

We wish you peace and joy this Christmas.

As Promised

As promised, here is the link to our new business. Please feel free to check it out and if you know of anyone needing web design/media services, we would love the referral!

http://www.structuredmediadesign.com/

New Adventures Ahead

Hi Everyone! I wanted to be the first to let you know that Jon and I are in the process of starting another adventure....well actually revisiting one from his past. In these hard times for construction companies, we have decided that we could use some income from a source NOT linked to the housing market and construction industry so he's going back to his roots in web developing and starting an additional company. We want to introduce you to the name and promise a link to the website soon. If you know anyone who needs his services, by all means, he would love the contacts! He is still continuing in his excavating business with his dad and we thank God every day for His provision for our family. Also, if you call my cell phone and wonder why I answer the voice mail, "Hi, this is Rebecca at Structured Media Design..." you'll know why.

The Rest of the Photos

Totally skipped out on October!

Well, what can I say, but we have been so busy this fall that October came and went and I didn't get a chance to post. It was filled with fun activities like pumpkin patching, candy toting, dress upping, pumpkin carving and finally, costume winning. We are onto November which has been filled with Joseph turning the big 1-0, Emma participating in her first parade as a Brownie Girl Scout and now we are looking forward to the week vacation for Thanksgiving. I plan to celebrate our week off by staying in our jammies as much as possible, sleeping in, baking yummies and hanging out with family. I will try now to post some pictures of the latest activities.

More Soccer Pictures

Here are the rest of the soccer pictures.....

Soccer for All

Soccer season is in full swing. Jon is coaching Joseph's team again this year, Emma is playing on a team sponsored by our company, Granite Bay Excavating, and Ben is playing for the first time. We have practices 6 times per week (3 kids X's 2 practices per week), but we have them all on Tues. and Thurs. so it's crazy those two days, but calms down a bit.

Here are some fun photos of this past Saturday's games. I especially like the one at Emma's game showing the grandparents there. How many kids have the opportunity to have BOTH sets of grandparents at most of their soccer games. What a blessing!!

School Starts

I can't believe I have reached the point in my mothering life when I drop all three of my kids off at school at the same time and same school. Ben started Kindergarten this year, Emma is in 2nd grade and Joseph is in 4th. They were all excited and a little tired that first morning, but we seem to have gotten into the groove over the last week.

Emma Turns 8!

Emma's birthday fell on the first day of school this year. She had a great time celebrating with her 2nd grade class at school and then had a fun crafting party at home after school the next day. She is so looking forward to her year at school and has a great group of little girl friends that she sees everyday and plays soccer with.

13th Anniversary !!

We'll we've done it. We've official had 13 years of marriage and oh what a ride it's been. With college, kids, homes, work, illness, fun, and pain, we're definitely in it for the long haul. To celebrate our years of craziness, we decided to go white-water rafting down the South fork of the American river. We started up in Coloma at a rafting facility called "OARS." It was a fantastic 3 hour trip down the river, ending at Salmon Falls, the southern inlet to Folsom Lake. I'd highly recommend it.


We packed a lunch from locally grown goodies at the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning and headed up to Coloma. It was warm, but not too hot, with a really great breeze. We snapped this picture as we were waiting for the rest of the rafters to arrive.


The river was packed with boats from three or four different companies. Every once in a while we'd get jammed up like logs, waiting for our turn to crash down some creatively named chute like "Satan's Cesspool." Rebecca was awesome on every one, never screaming and staying in the boat, while being pounded by cold white-water. She's the best wife ever!

Happy 4th of July

Here are some spectacular shots Jon took on the 4th. We are standing on the balcony of our bedroom. We benefited from many beach go-ers who illegally brought fireworks onto the beach and had kind of a contest with who could set off the biggest display. The fireworks sparkling off the water was something we'll never forget.

Beach

Summer Stuff

Since I haven't updated in awhile, we've had quite a few summer activities going on. We have enjoyed swimming lessons, Emma's dance show, sleeping on the deck in a tent (the kids that is....) and we just got back from our beach vacation in Santa Cruz which fell on the 4th of July. We had a great view of the fireworks on the beach from our balcony. It was a relaxing and beautiful week of rest.

Update on our "other" home

We have owned a piece of property for almost 3 years now that we are splitting with Jon's family and hope to one day build on. We thought that plan would happen sooner than later, but with the current housing market, it looks like it will probably be LATER! We are trying to stay patient with the plans and we have continued to make improvements on the property as well as the little "shop" that we lived in for 8 months while we tried to sell our house. The property is only about 10 minutes from our house and my horses still live there, so we visit it quite a few days per week. We also have much of our stuff stored there, so when I am looking for something like a book or a specific photo, I get to search two places! Someday my live won't feel like I reside in dual residences, but until then, it makes for lots of yard/field work! The photos you see are
Jon working on the box scraper smoothing the future house pad, the future house site and driveway, the septic leach lines, and the well being drilled.