A Movie I Made for Our Kids This Christmas

(music by Smashmouth and Rosie O'Donnell)Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Etna Scherbels.

The Year in Review

Scott asked us for some family photos to share with Grandma and Grandpa Zollweg. There were way too many to email, so I decided to share them with everyone on our blog and let Scott pick the ones he liked. Here we go... Etna Scherbels year in review.

January
Quincey was still a baby, Amalie and Zoey learned about lipstick, and Karl turned 29.



February

Zoey turned 3 and spent some time just chillin with her baby brother. Holli turned 30




March

Amalie turned 4, Josef was very hungry, and we had some fun with balloons at Amalie's party.

April

We had a great trip to New york to visit Grandma and Grandpa Zollweg and Quincey grew up a little.

May

Quincey, Zoey and Amalie got haircuts, Josef turned 6 and was in the Missoula Children's Theater production of Little Red Riding Hood. He was a racoon.

June

We played dress up, Josef and Quincey got haircuts, and Amalie and Zoey discovered you can never have too many hair things.





July and August

I don't have any pictures from July and August so we must have been having too much fun to take pictures.

September

Quincey turned 1 and we finally had some family pictures taken (Thanks Katie - we love you. Pictures courtesy of Katie Roberts http://www.lampshadestudio.com/)









October

Halloween - need I say more? Josef was a ghost, Amalie was a ballerina, Zoey was a ladybug ghost, and Quincey was Buzz Lightyear

November

Zoey discovered 2 ponytail hats. We discovered hearts in the snow and frozen spiderwebs. And Quincey discovered flour.

December

Zoey and Amalie had a ballet recital and we're all looking forward to Christmas.

Hope that will give Scott the photos he needs and
the rest of you a laugh. Merry Christmas to all

Scherbel Family Photos

After almost four years, we finally got new family pictures and they are really cute. If you want to check them out, go to www.lampshadestudio, click on Gallery and find scherbels in the gallery. Katie takes great pictures and I highly reccomend her work to anyone looking to do family pictures. You can order high quality prints of the pictures directly from her or if you want a lower quality one, we have CDs we can print from. Thanks Katie!
It was really fun to see all the cute ones of the kids, but let me tell you, looking at pictures of me gives me added motivation for the weight loss challenge. How is everyone doing on that? I am about 1lb down from my end of August weight. I keep flucuating like crazy. Karl goes to the gym everyday and he has lost quite a bit of weight and is looking great. I hope everyone else is doing great.

A Tale of Two Kitties

They were the best felines, they were the worst felines, they were cats of wisdom, they were cats of foolishness.

Two kitten/cats (about 5 months old) followed us home when we went to get Josef from the bus on Friday. I thought they would go home and sure enough on Saturday morning they were gone. But when I opened the blinds Sunday morning, there they were. Karl fed them tuna and milk and the attachment was complete. They were scrawny little things and they ate like they hadn't eaten in awhile. We decided to keep them since no one came looking for them and Karl made an appointment to get them fixed (they are a boy and a girl). Last night we found out they belong to a lady who lives up the street from us. We never actually talked to the lady, but she told a friend of ours that we could keep them, she didn't have time to take care of them. Only problem is she was definitely drunk when she said it. Karl went to her house this morning to make sure that we could keep them, but she wasn't home. Karl, who is more of a softie than he will admit, decided that we are keeping them and took them to et fixed this morning. So I guess we're keeping them. Are we good samaritans or are we cat theives? You'll have to decide for yourselves. The kids named them Ben-10 and Ballet, but their Jellicle names are Mungo Jerry and Rumpleteaser.

Great Weight Loss Race update: I have been down five pounds in august, unfortunately, when I weighed myself yesterday I was only one pound lighter than I was when we started. So I didn't reach my goal, but I will keep losing 3 pounds as my goal for this month.

And The Winner Is...

We have a winner of the Great Weight Loss Race for the month of July. "But we weren't doing it for the month of July," you say. For this particular contestant we will make an exception. And the winner is.....Alan Scherbel. Alan told us he lost 30 pounds in July. In an exclusive interview, Karl asked him, "What's your secret?" In his now famous scratchy voice, he answered, "car wreck." Folks, I think there must be an easier way to lose 30 pounds. Sarah told us that Alan told her he looks like a 6'1" Hannah. All joking aside, we're glad Alan is keeping his spirits up and able to laugh with us a little bit. Our prayers and thoughts are with him and we hope he comes home soon.

Spider Trouble

the front one

The Big One

the small one

The other day we were sitting out on the lawn and I happened to look at the bottom of the deck just in time to see an enormous spider crawling up underneath. Karl looked everywhere for it, but didn't see it. He thought I was exagerrating. A couple of days later I walked out to turn on the sprinkler and there were two spiders building webs around the electrical meter. The "small one" was about the size of a quarter, The big one was about the size of a golf ball. He hid, so the picture doesn't do him justice. Needless to say, I made Karl kill them. Then Amalie pointed a spider out to me on the front of the house. Karl got a great video of it wrapping it's last meal. As you can tell, we didn't know Karl was taping. Where are these huge spiders coming from?

The other day we had a huge wind storm and a fire somewhere in the valley. Here's a picture of our garden after the wind came through (remember how tall our peas used to be?) and a picture of the red sun (of course it doesn't do it justice, but I wanted to share it with you.

Great weight loss race update: Welcome David to the contest. I'm doing ok. I'm really having a problem with those treats and I've only worked out once (I counted playing ghosts in the graveyard with the kids working out - I was running). I gained two pounds and lost 2.7 pounds, so technically I'm down .7 pounds, for today anyway. I hope the rest of you are doing better than I am.

The Great Weight Loss Race Update

OK it's time to officially start the Great Weight Loss Race. Ruth, Holly and I are in. Karl is waiting to see if he wants to join us. Amanda is cheering us on. Since nobody told me exactly what kind of prize they would like I think for this month we will try setting a goal and if you reach it, you get to buy yourself a prize. I'm going to steal Holly's idea and pay myself one dollar every time I work out and for every pound I lose. First, I want to say that I think you are all beautiful just as you are and the reason I started this is simply to be more healthy. I don't want any of us to get discouraged. Set a goal that is not too high, but not too easy either. My goal is to lose 3 pounds this month and keep it off. I'm going to work on exercising and portion control. If I have to deprieve myself of my favorite things, I know I won't do it, but if I can still have a little of my treats I think I can do that. Also, I found a great web site www.50millionpounds.com. The goal is for people in America to lose 50 million pounds. It's free to register and you get meal plans and a weight and activity tracker if you want to use them. I created a team called The Great Weight Loss Race (if anybody can think of a better name, we'll change it). If you decide to join the challenge, please join my team. Let me know how you're doing. Anyone can still join if they want.