Jacobs Family Top 10 for 2007

And just like that, another Christmas has come and gone. It was a good one, though, thanks to an abundance of family, friends, food, and snow. (It's been a while since it actually snowed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, at least for our family. In Washington we were lucky if we saw snow once or twice all winter.) We wrote all about it on Wednesday. By Thursday all the family had gone home and we breathed a sigh -- not so much of relief, but of sadness to see it end.

On Friday evening we drove down to Lehi for a get-together with a bunch of my old roommates and friends from college. It was fun to hang out and reminisce about the good times at BYU and see how well they're all doing now. A lot of them live down in Utah Valley but there were several families who were in town from out of state and we hadn't seen many of them since graduating. We didn't bring our camera but hopefully they'll email us some of the pictures that were taken.

Yesterday was pretty boring; we stayed home and cleaned the place up. But it's always nice to get the house back into order. One thing that has helped is that Christy's dad, brothers and I put together three sets of shelves for our food storage room downstairs, so we were able to get a lot of food out of our upstairs pantry.

And now, with 2007 just hours away from becoming history -- it's time to bring you.... (drumroll) the Top 10 Jacobs Family Moments for 2007! (Hey, where's everybody going? This is way more exciting than our pantry clean-out!)

10. Riley's non-emergencies. Our 2-year-old took us to the emergency room twice this year, both times at night after the Insta-care Clinic had closed (of course). The first time he dislocated his elbow, which the doctor fixed in two second flat after we waited around for an hour. The next time he attempted to O.D. on flouride toothpaste. It turned out he hadn't had near enough to cause permanent harm, but he complained of a tummy-ache and he got all the way to the parking lot before mom and dad, after calling Poison Control, determined he was fine (especially since he was singing in the parking lot by that time).

9. The family fights off vicious attack by man-eating rattlesnake at Kodachrome Basin State Park in southern Utah. Okay okay, so it was a baby rattlesnake that slithered under our picnic table but it still caused quite a stir!

8. Christy bakes an amazing red chile chocolate cake for her birthday. If you think a cake shouldn't be in the top 10, much less at number eight, then you obviously didn't have a bite of this cake!

7. Bruce fulfills a long-time ambition by making a movie. Yeah, it was our campaign video and it was just 7 minutes long, but it was fun to write, produce and help direct it. You can learn about being a 2-Minute CFC Hero by watching the movie at www.intermountaincfc.org (Dan, Christy and I have some cameos)

6. Mom and Dad Jacobs leave for the mission in Spain. So this wasn't really our moment, per se, but attending their farewell was one of the spiritual highs of the year, and getting to read about their experiences and see the amazing pictures they send back has been great. Thanks for the great example, Mom and Dad.

5. Riley gets potty-trained. Need we say more?

4. Sammy starts pre-school. This one was a great moment for him of course, but also great for Mom, who gets a 2.5 hour sanity check three times a week.

3. Family comes for Christmas. We got to spend Christmas and several days before and after with Christy's whole family. Having lived in Washington for six years, we seldom got to spend Christmas with family. Now we've had that blessing for two years in a row, with my family last year and Christy's this year. And we all got to hang out with Dan & Deanne and Leah & Joel for Christmas Eve this year. (See previous post).

2. Christy's Choir Christmas Program. Several months of preparation and hard work went into this one. Part of that work was convincing the bishop to allow the choir to run the program at all! During the performance the choir sang better than it ever had, and the music and message were terrific. I was really proud of Christy and really touched by the whole program. Some of you got to be there; for those who didn't, we wish you could have.

1. The arrival of Ezekiel (Zeke) Leo Jacobs on December 5th. Well, you knew this would be #1 by far. For all the details, see our letter from the day after. We'll get pictures up on this site soon.


We wish you all a happy 2008!