24 Hours of Lemons

This past weekend Philip participated in his first race as part of his Lemons team. You may remember my earlier post about the construction of their race car. He was pretty excited to drive the car and help the team this weekend. Even though it was a very cold weekend with the night time lows in the 20s and 30s the team camped out at the track. Thankfully Philip has a nice cold weather sleeping bag! They also brought some heaters to try to keep themselves from becoming popsicles.

they slept in the "tent" you see with the red top in their "pit"

The team members take turns driving for 1 hour stents. As Philip would say, "this is real racing" with authentic safety gear, cars equipped with roll cages and driving at high speeds. Drivers are required to wear a race approved fireproof jumps suit, helmet and neck collar. If you have any interest in learning more about the rules and the race you can visit 24hoursoflemons.com.The team seems like a nice bunch of guys, and Philip has a lot of fun with them. Not only do they share a common interest in cars, but they all work together at Bell, and seem to all like to eat as well. Philip took his smoker to the race and made a gourmet smoked turkey for one meal and another team member made some homemade chicken tikka masala with naan for another.

ahhh...male humor...yeesh!

The turkey on a make shift table about to go into the smoker

Joel, Levi and I drove out to the track yesterday morning to watch some of the race. Levi had a blast cheering on his Daddy while he drove the car. All the goofy antics of the judges were entertaining as well. If you make a mistake on the track or break a rule they can attach a black flag to your car, make the driver do something weird etc. It was also fun to look at all the silly cars, and Levi particularly liked the VW Beetle, as well as his Daddy's car of course :). Philip's team ended up in 10th place out of 38 cars. A much better finish than their first race, and with all they learned this time they are hoping to do even better at the next race. Maybe one day Levi and Joel will be able to join in on the fun.

Philip got penalized twice, once they made him hold this sign

this driver was penalized by being shrink wrapped to his car

Levi LOVES his own pint sized team shirt

hugs for Daddy after finishing his turn driving

Knochel Christmas!

This year was our year to spend Christmas with my side of the family, and we had a wonderful time! Aunt Molly was home from NYC and Uncle Seth was home from Lubbock, so we were all together, which is rare these days. After sharing Christmas morning with our family of 4 we left the boys in their jammies and headed over to Pop and Moe's house. Once we were there and finished saying hi to and hugging everyone and unloading all of our stuff we broke into the gifts. It was chaos, but fun. The kids loved all their presents and went right to playing.

After all the fun with the gifts we picked up all the wrapping and finished up prepping for the Christmas meal. My mom and sister Molly made the majority of the meal and my sister Kate and I each contributed a couple things as well. The meal was delicious, and well all ate way too much :). Due to the large yummy meal, we spent the next several hours hanging out in the living room by the fire. We did take a short trip out side to play in the snow. It was so exciting to see the rain turn to snow and the yard become covered in a blanket of white. The kids had a lot of fun watching it fall and then bundling up and running around and playing with each other. After a dinner of leftovers, the kids had baths and then Pop read them the scriptures about Christs birth from a children's bible.  We then put the kiddos to bed and all the grown ups played games and visited. We decided to spend the night at my parents house, and I'm so glad we did because it allowed us to spend some good quality time with the cousins and once the kids were sleeping, for us siblings and sibling-in-laws :)

get him Nora!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas filled with time with loved ones, time spent rejoice over the gift of Christ's birth, and time spent relaxing and enjoying the many blessings of our lives here. May God Bless you in 2013!

Christmas Morning!

We had a sweet morning on Christmas with just our little family at home. The boys slept in because it was so dark with the thunderstorms rolling through, which as a nice treat! Levi woke up first and came straight to our room and climbed into bed. He didn't even notice all his toys out in the living room when he walked through it in the dark...he did say he saw a bike though. After about 10 minutes of him repeatedly saying "it's Christmas! I think Daddy's awake, let go get Joel," we all got up, woke up Joel and enjoyed opening all our gifts. The boys seemed to really enjoy their gifts (they each got three gifts, just like Christ was given three gifts from the Wise Men). Philip spoiled me with a new lens for our DSLR, so now I really need to work on learning how to use it to it's full potential! As usual Philip got more toys for all his hobbies, fancy cold weather cycling gloves, a gun vice and binoculars...he was pleased :). After we finished with our gifts we ate a breakfast of peppermint chocolate chips scones and hoped in the car to head to Pop and Moe's house.