Kylah’s 1st Piano Recital from Matt Metten on Vimeo.

Here’s Emma’s Performance:

Bruin Woods 2009

Bruin Woods, that is.  We just got back from an amazing week up at the UCLA Conference Center at Lake Arrowhead.  Every year they have a 10-week family camp known as Bruin Woods and each week is it’s own set group.  It’s available to all Alumni of UCLA and you get in via a lottery system.  Last year we got in as did my folks for our first year of Week 4.  Once you get a certain week you get it for as long as you keep paying to come each year.  This year Jenn & Benoni also got the same week so we had the entire Metten/Pantoja family together.  It was a great time together!

There is a ton to do each week.  The kids are all in specific classes for their age group and they have classes from 9:30a-12:00 and then 1:30-5:30p each day.  This year Micah was a Bruin, Kylah and Lucas were Cubs, Emma was a Teddy Bear and Alexa was a Pooh.  They do things like boat rides, arts & crafts, swimming, hiking, zip line, dress up, games of all sorts – so many creative things each day.  The thing that makes the week, in my opinion, are the amazing counselors.  They have about 50 counselors from UCLA and they are the most energetic, loving, friendly, out-going, talented people you have ever met.  The kids fall in love with them every year!  They absolutely take the camp to a whole other level.

For the parents there are a ton of things to do.  This year they actually had a mini-sprint triathlon (150 meter swim, 3 mile bike ride and 1 mile run) which I might attempt to participate in next year.  What’s great about Bruin Woods however is that you can do everything or nothing and it’s all good.  Overall, it was a great time with the entire family!  I think we’re all in a bit of a depression right now coming down off the mountain, but I guess we’ll just have to look forward to next year.

Check out some of the pics from our trip!

A little video from the trip:

We want to thank you all for your prayers and support and love over
this last year for Alexa and our family…God is so faithful and has
shown us such love and grace and continues to through this entire
experience.  We are so inspired by the strength and courage of our
little Alexa to push through all the obstacles she has had in her short
little life…we’ll try and get some new video of her up soon.We love you all,

Matt & Brooke

The Christmas/New Year’s break was wonderful.  I was able to take about 2 whole weeks off work which was very nice.  It was so great to get that time with the girls.  It was also cool to be able to hook up my garage and even host a poker night in the newly found space.  The other thing I did was finished about 80 home videos!  I have been working for a few years to import all our video footage to my computer and now I’m able to go throught and actually edit down some of the stuff and produce little event videos.  Some day I’ll get them all online as well which will be fun, at least for me!

We also got our first dog!  Lacey, a little white poodle, 2rs old, cute thing.  The girls love her and we’re working right now, thanks to the Dog Whisperer, on training her better and geting her to live "within the pack". 

One bit of sad news was we heard on Friday, Jan 2nd, that Brooke’s grandpa – Robert Parnett – had passed away.  He was 81 and had definitely struggled with his health.  The little time I had with him I will say he was a remarkable man, so joyful, so faithful.  Brooke took off on Sunday of that week for Lake Placid, Florida, and was there through Wednesday.  Definitely made me very grateful for what she is able to handle on a day to day basis watching our cute little girls and now a new dog!  Needless to say we were all very grateful when she returned.

That’s about it.  Things are sort of back to "normal" now, just trying to get some money flowing through the ol’ company so we can get some money flowing through our checking account, but so far things are looking good for the new year and I feel very hopeful about the future.  One cool thing is I’ve lost about 15 lbs since December 1st of last year and on my way to having a much more healthy 2009.  I’ve been working really hard to build up my immune system and metabolism so as to not have any recurrence of the kidney stones or melanoma as I had last year, but also so we don’t get any new surprises!  

Happy New Year to you all, both of you who read this…

Just wanted to let you all know we had a wonderful summer…we managed to vacation with both sides of the family which were a blast!!  Emma turned 3 at the beginning of the summer, Kylah is continuing to love ice skating, and now they both are in gymnastics which they both totally LOVE!!  Alexa has figured out how to crawl, she does the spider crawl, and is getting faster everyday…she now pulls herself up and stands, and takes small steps, all in her harness….we are all expecting her to start walking in it any day now…Emma is in her 2nd year of Preschool and doing great, and we ventured into Homeschooling Kylah this year for Kindergarten…we all LOVE it!  There is a huge Homeschooling Community in our little city of Poway like 240 families, which helps so much since we are such a social family…she gets to do PE once a  week with other kids her age, and enjoys a Co-op K-1 class once a week too…we get to do field trips, and playdates as well…We are staying very busy, but having fun!!  Also, we have been able to visit many wonderful church services and have had many amazing worship times outside all over beautiful San Diego…they have all be very inspiring to our faith…Thanks to facebook we have now reconnected with sooooo many friends from our childhood, High School, and College… our world keeps getting smaller and smaller with all these new ways of connecting to people.  It’s a cool way to stay up with people…Anyway, we hope you all had a wonderful summer and are ready to enjoy a wonderful holiday season.  We love you all very much!  You can see all the pics from the summer here!

It all started a few months ago when we had the cable guy come out and install a new line for us.  We have a crawl space under the house so he went down to feed the line and made the not-so-thrilling comment of "You have a bit of a sewage leak under your house."  A few weeks later we started getting some estimates and all that and here we are finally getting around to fixing the problem.  Turns out it’s been going on for a while so the ground under the house is completely saturated with "black water" – not to be confused with raw sewage – which we have to treat first.  Once the standing black water is gone the plumber can do his thing.

We started with an insane week last week of getting estimates from numerous folks which is never fun.  Now we’re just in the moment of getting everything fixed.  Brooke and the girls have been at my folk’s house in LA since Wednesday, I’ve been staying with the Barrys and after a few delays I think we’re finally going to have everything locked up and fixed today!  I’m going to take the train up to LA to join the fam and we’ll come back either later Sunday or first thing Monday.  The ground is still being dried out.  Insane.

Please flush your toilets with gratitude. 

Also, thanks for your prayers, those who knew, about Matt’s Melanoma on
his arm…we got the final biopsy back and he is in the clear, so no
more skin cancer for him, at least for now. He now has to be extremely
careful in the sun, and really avoid it as much as possible, so not to
get another one. He now sees his Dermatologist every 3 months for a
check…needless to say we have all taken a new found interest on the
dangers of the rays of the sun, and so now all of us in our family have
a new perspective on being extremely careful! Thanks to sunscreen and
the must have ingredients, sunhats, and UV clothing!! God has been so
gracious to our family, and its amazing how his grace shines through
every single challenge that comes our way, and as we embrace and accept
each one, we see God and his blessings more and more.

We love you all and ask for your continued prayers for our family.

Thanks,

Brooke

Why the introduction?  Well about 10 days ago we heard someone choking in the living room and naturally assumed it was Alexa but when we looked at her she was fine…it was little Emma choking on a dime and a penny at the same time.  To solve the problem she decided to swallow them.  So for the past going on 2 weeks we’ve been sifting through poo to look for those shiny rewards with no luck.

Latest word is that we have to wait 4 weeks total before maybe having to put her under and going fishing for them which we don’t want to do, but hopefully it won’t come to that…

Fun.