Isaac with his Bono sunglasses on. Believe it or not, he was smiling when I started to take this picture. I think the expression I capture is a cross between a smile and blinking at the flash.
Isaac offering to let me try on his sunglasses.
Bono, I am not.
Here is the typical scene driving through Iowa and Nebraska. Seven hours of long straight roads with brown cornfields on both sides of the road. Exciting, let me tell you.
While we were trying to take a picture of the boring scenery we actually got some beautiful pictures of the sun and clouds. Go figure..
Amazing, gas for $1.54, when less than two months ago we were paying close to $4.15. I never thought I would see gas below two dollars.
We were showing Isaac the animals on my Aunt and Uncle's farm. Here are some cows.
Cats, and they are not spayed or neutered. I counted 28 cats around the food bowl.
Isaac happy to see everyone.
Isaac playing with the big kids.
Isaac and mom taking a nap after playing hard for a couple of hours.
Awake and ready to go for the remainder of the day.
Santa stopped by so Isaac had a chance to tell him what he wanted for Christmas.
The whole Slaughter family sitting on Santa's lap.
Lee and Samantha taking there turn with Santa. Samantha almost didn't get the in picture with Santa as she is now a teenager and too cool to hang out with Santa.
Aaron, Jen, and Dillon. Dillon was afraid of Santa and this is the closest they could bring him to Santa without him screaming. Maybe next year-
The Flaugh family
The Slaughter family, this time with only the kids on Santa's lap.
Our turn, Isaac was very curious about Santa and not the least bit afraid. That is no guarantee for next year.
All the kids pose with Santa. We must have taken about 30 pictures to get just one picture where they are all looking at the camera, or at least in the general direction.
Peg and Keith
My dad with his brother Wayne and sister Bev
Don and Jeannie
Isaac imitating Stanley and carrying around his Santa hat in his mouth.
Blowing a kiss to his second cousin, Hailey
My mom with her brother Marv, sister Peggy, and sister Suzanne.
This is Isaac getting instructions from his new friend Jory on how to climb up the tube.
Here is Jory going down the slide. Look at her hair. Going down the slide built up an amazing amount of static electricity. I think I found the solution to the energy crisis in American.
Isaac enjoying the slide with mommy.
When you cut open the bean there is a mushy black compound. If you have ever bought real vanilla bean ice cream you see dark specks in the white ice cream. That is the inside of a vanilla bean. It smelled delicious!
We added the vanilla beans to two shots of vodka. The vodka helps extract the vanilla flavor so it blends better with the beer.
Here is close up of the vanilla beans in the vodka. We planned to add this to the beer the following day, but this container had a slight mishap and was knocked to the ground. We are currently waiting for more vanilla beans to arrive to re-extract some more vanilla flavor.
Isaac got a hold of Grandpa's straw hat and was trying it on for size.
I look funny!
Dad, do you like my new hat?
Here is most of the guys at the pregame ritual of drinking beer at the Wharf bar. The bar has come to expect us and even stocks our favorite kind of beer so they don't run out. The beer helps limber us up and also numb some of the nerves so the hits don't quite hurt as much.
Mike brought some Minn. friends to join in the game. We normally try to bring some extra players as it has become harder to get everyone back at the same time.
Here is the losing orange team.
Here is the victorious black team. We won 8 touchdowns to 7. This year was a defensive struggle for most of the game.
Here is all the players together.
This years MVP goes to ......Aaron Zimmerman-Defensive Coordinator for the black team. Way to go Zim! He gets the MVP trophy for the year, which is a turkey foot.
We were getting ready for work one morning when I decided to see was Isaac was up to since he had been quite for way too long. I came in the living room to this. He had a big smile on his face as if to say, "Look what I can do dad!"
Man, how can you say "No" to a face like that. He was climbing up the steps but all I could do is smile when he looked up at me.
Another attempt with the Santa outfit. It went a little bit better.
He has a devilish look in his eye. 
Isaac was taking a bath one night we he knock our soap into the tub. After many attempts to pick it up, he succeeded. Like everything else, he immediately put it in his mouth. I expected him to spit it out and make a face. Instead, he bite down on the soap and seemed like he was going to start to eat it. So I took it out of his mouth. I swear we feed him more than we do ourselves but apparently the soap looked and tasted good. So much for washing his mouth out with soap when he uses a naughty word.
Isaac putting on a hairnet that mommy got when she was working in a hospital on an install for her software application.
Man, I look styling in this. The ladies at daycare are going to dig it!
To get Isaac to sit still we had to give him something he was interested in but the downside to that is then he doesn't look at the camera.
Pretty good picture if I wasn't in it and you could see Isaac better. Oh well, the scene looks good. Bye the way, the house might look clean but all we did is push all the toys behind the camera. So one half of the room is spotless, and other half is a disaster area that you couldn't walk through.
Isaac giving Mommy a furbert (when you stick you mouth on someones stomach and blow)
I don't want to take anymore pictures.
We really liked this picture but decided not to use it because you can't see his face. Something very innocent about the picture.
Isaac and his broom. For whatever reason Isaac loves to sweep. We had to buy him his own broom so that we could use our to clean. Every time we took it out he would yell until he got to sweep. He even finds the brooms at restaurants and starts sweeping with them. But he draws the line at vacuum cleaners, those he is afraid of and won't go near them except to knock them over. 
