Swimming lessons

Jacob recently started swimming lessons. He loves it. He has no fear of the water. His teacher, Missy is great. He is learning, among other things, to kick without bending his knees, and how to blow bubbles out of his nose.

A Day at the Park

Stan absolutely loves swinging on the swings with Mom. He cracks up the whole time we are swinging. It is so fun to hear him laughing.

Happy Birthday, John Deere

February 7 was John Deere's birthday. If he were still alive he would have been 203 years old. Most of you know Jacob is a HUGE John Deere fan, so to celebrate his birthday we made cookies shaped like tractors, dump trucks and bull dozers. Jacob decorated them with yellow and green icing.

Christmas time!

I know we are SO far behind on keeping up on this blog, but I wanted to show off this beautiful picture of Lizzy, Tim and Amanda's newest addition. Can you believe she is almost a year in this picture?

Picking pumpkins in the pumpkin patch...

We went to Fall City Farms in October to the pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful day.













Look at this automatic donut maker! It's like a miniature Krispy Kreme restaurant! The whole thing is only three feet long or so.
















Just like in Robert McClosky's Homer Price! (Interestingly, McClosky was an inventor of all sorts of contraptions...)


Jacob enjoys a doughnut while we get ready for a hayride:


















There was a hawaiian band at the pumpkin patch:


















Jacob's favorite part was a sandbox with toys:

Thanksgiving with Carl and Rachel

Since we couldn't get home for Thanksgiving, we had my cousin Rachel Meyer and her husband Carl over to have Thanksgiving dinner with us.

It was a great time. Unfortunately, we spent more time visiting than snapping pictures, so these are the only photos I got.

Look at the size of the turkey! A twenty-pounder, I think. And also note the wrapped dills.

This is making me hungry...!

Google me.

Hey, did you know that if you're using the customized Google homepage, you can add this blog to it:




Just go to the "Add stuff" link, then search the homepage content directory for "Brian and Becky Rages".


Of course, setting this page up for email updates might be the best way to keep up with the sporadic updates to this blog.


(Check out the Google 15, too - this is a neat feature because it's super-easy to keep it up-to-date...)