One of Tilly’s big wishes this holiday season has been for the rest of her family to get with the program and become more serious about bike riding together. Until now, it’s been a dad-and-Tilly activity. There were a couple of hurdles to overcome: A lack of good bicycles for one. So for Christmas, David and Tilly hatched an evil plot that involved fancy new bikes for Shelley and Emma.

Another hurdle was actually out of our control: Getting Emma up on the bike. But with her sister wishing so hard, she spent a bit of time Christmas afternoon and managed to conquer the bike. A bit more practice and we’ll all be out on the Greenway together. Ya-hooooo.

The families in our neighborhood share a basketball hoop in one neighbor’s driveway. For Christmas, Santa brought a new, sturdier adjustable hoop to all the kids. We expect it will get a lot of use from our 10 kids and their friends. That’s Emma taking a shot Christmas midday.

Tilly's before and after, Dec. 15, 2008.

Tilly decided to cut her hair. Here are pictures before and after her visit to Suzy, our hair cutter. Tilly is planning to donate her 10-inch ponytail to Locks of Love, a program that makes hairpieces for children who have lost their hair because of illness or hair-loss condition called alopecia areata.

Grammy Rebecca, Aunt Melinda and Emma prepare sugar snap peas for Thanksgiving dinner.

We spent Thanksgiving 2008 at Kill Devil Hills, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. We had the entire Rigger clan -  a total of 15 people - for Turkey Day dinner. They included in-laws Ralph and Rebecca, brother-in-law Don and his family from Atlanta, Jenn, and our hosts Melinda and Dick with their son Stephen.

We deep fried two turkeys and plenty of other food and drink. The girls enjoyed the poolside hot tub, despite temperatures in the 40s and 50s. Some of the guys went out in the boat fishing and were surf casting from the beach, but nobody got a fish - except the pelicans that seemed to be having a feast.

What about you guys?

Tilly and Emma, Halloween 2008.

Emma and Tilly dressed up in old-style costumes for Halloween 2008.

Emma drew her inspiration from “Good Masters, Sweet Ladies,” a book of monologues set in 1255. Her character was Lowdy the varlet’s child. Her dad takes care of the Lord’s dog, so she has a huge problem with fleas. Emma had tiny wires with beads attached shooting out from her head and body to simulate the fleas.

Tilly was Sara Crewe from “A Little Princess.” It’s a book about a little girl whose dad is rich, and entrusts his money to his friend. He worries the money is lost, and dies. She becomes poor because the money is lost. The man who thought he lost the money moves in next door, and looks for her. At the end, he finds her next door.

Tilly dribbles past an opponent on Oct. 18.

Tilly has been enjoying her first season of soccer, playing on the Penguins, a team for 6-7 year olds at the local YMCA. She attended soccer camp at Davidson College this summer and likes to kick the ball around with dad.

She has an instinct for taking the ball to the goal. At season’s end, she had scored 9 of the Penguins’ 16 goals.

It’s time for a change at Boraks.net. We’ve switched to a new server and replaced our current custom designed site with a WordPress blog. That means all of us will be able to post items and photos easily, and it can easily be shared with others.

The domain name will remain the same, and I’ll remain admin. However, the David-centric content will go away. (I now have DavidBoraks.com to post on.) Instead, we’ll all be able to contribute. I’ll shift the old pages to the back of the site somewhere.

Your Brother David