Holiday Greetings!!

Wow, it's been awhile since I've updated the blog. Not much has been happening besides school and the holidays. Sammi was William Shakespeare for a speech assignment at school. Boy it was fun making her dress in her grandma's clothes and wear felt on her face. I made the collar out of paper, I must say I think she looks pretty convincing hehehehe. Can you say teenage blackmail material?!!

Then Sammi and Noah both made the honor roll and perfect attendance at school this trimester. I went to the assembly and took pictures of them getting their awards. It was so great.

I couldn't resist posting this picture of Noah sleeping with his dog. Spike has his paws wrapped around him. It was too funny.

Michael's Craft Class

Kassi still goes to craft class at Michael's every week. My sister Carrie goes too, and the girls love it. Last week, my dad was lucky enough to be the one bringing Carrie to class. The girls made cyclops monters, but before they did, my dad decided to show the girls a cool thing he could do with the googly eyes. They thought it was soo funny, so did I that's why I grabbed my camera real fast. It looks like Kassi will be going to preschool later this month to get help with her speech. I know she will really miss going to craft class though. We will have to make sure that her and Carrie still get together to play though, or she won't know what to do.

Thanksgiving

Ok, so this is how it went down. The beginning of the week, I knew that my aunt Jeanette and her son, TJ were coming and they were bringing TJ's friend. My brother Wyatt was coming, but my brother Jason wasn't sure. We had invited Mike's parents to come, but then we heard they might do their own thing because Mike's sister Lori and her family didn't have anywhere to go. So of course I invited them too, that meant I had enough people to actually make a turkey and a ham. So the DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, my mom calls and mentions that they don't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. I reminded her that I had invited her months ago, and I was told they wouldn't be able to make it. Then she said, "Well it's probably too late to come now, right?" I was ecstactic! "Are you serious? Well come on over then!!" Then my brother Jason called to say he was going to come too. So that is how we ended up with 6 more people at the last minute. It was so much fun. My mom and Glen and the boys, stayed until Mon. morning. On Fri. my mom, Wyatt, and I got up at 2:30 am to hit the Black Friday shopping. Our first stop was Mervyn's where if you were one of the first 250 people in line, you got a $10 gift card. We each got one. Then on to KB toys where there was a news crew walking around the store. I don't know what happened, one minute I was standing next to mom when a lady with a camera walked up and asked me why I got up so early to make these sales. I look around and notice that my mother is NO WHERE to be found. So my dumb reply was "Uh, I have 4 kids and I need the sp..specials, uh d..d..deals." (ok, so I found out I'm not so good in front of the camera, you should have seen my deer in the headlights imitation). So after Mervyn's we hit Target and Michael's. Then we were home by 9am. We still had time to go to the movies with everyone, after our naps of course. On Sat. the boys went paintballing, Glen took the girls to the movies, and mom and I went to Tucson to visit my uncle Ray. He hasn't been doing real great, so we wanted to go visit him and see how he looked. He was doing pretty good and we were very happy to see him walking around and talking just fine. He still isn't out of the woods, but I definately think there could be some hope there. Sun. Mom and Glen decided to avoid the holiday traffic and wait until Mon. to drive home, so we played games and ate leftovers. I was so happy and excited to have the last minute guests. It was great to see my Aunt Jeanette too and then to visit my Uncle Ray, it was just an amazing weekend. We will have to do it again sometime!!

Grandma's House

My kids always have the week of Thanksgiving off from school, and Mike usually takes it off as well. We wanted to do something together as a family, so we went to my grandmother's house in Cordes Lakes. It is about 1 hour north of Phoenix. They have a garden up there that my kids love to go out and find the ripe vegetables and pick them for Grandma. Noah found a big radish out there and just thought it was so great. We even drove out to Linx Lake by Prescott to have picnic later. It was a nice relaxing time. Mike and Noah went that night to camp with Uncle Matt whose campsite was close to my grandma's house. They took Spike with them and had a lot of fun.

Childhood Memories

After returning from Louisiana, I was surprised at the memories that came flooding back. But first I should explain the situation a little more. Shortly after my parents divorced when I was in 1st grade, my dad remarried to Phyllis. She had a son, Paul, who was a little bit older than me. We would visit in Louisiana during the summers to see our dad. My mom remarried to Dennis when I was in 2nd grade. Dennis and I didn't seem to get along, so I asked to live with my dad. I went to live with dad and Phyllis in the 4th grade. We lived in Louisiana, Stephanie hadn't been born yet, I think. I remember that Paul and I had a very hard time sharing my dad. We were both pretty possessive of him and competed for his attention. But it wasn't just his attention we competed for, we made a contest out of everything. I even remember fighting over a patch of clovers in the backyard, because we wanted to see who could find a 4 leaf clover first. But one memory that sticks out most was when I was outside playing with some friends. Me and a couple of other girls were taking turns racing each other down the street. There was this one girl that wasn't always nice to people, and it was my turn to race her. I just knew I was going to win so that I could show her up. Well, she won, and those of you that know me, know that I don't take losing very well. I was so mad that I walked up and slapped her. When her parents came out, I started cussing at them. At some point, I realized that I had gone too far and I knew I was going to be in trouble, so I ran home. Sure enough, the girl's father came knocking on the door to talk to my dad. I hid in the hallway so I could hear what they were saying. I remember my dad telling the man that I don't normally act that way and he apologized for me or something. When my dad closed the door, I was expecting the worst, so when he called me to him, I went very slowly, knowing I couldn't talk my way out of this one. I was shocked, however, when my dad turned to me and said, "Don't swear. Now you need stay out of the front yard so that it looks like I grounded you." Boy, was I surprised, but more than that, I felt a sudden surge of love for my dad. I don't know if it was just because he was merciful or what, but I truly felt like he was on my side. The other part of the story is that, my brother Paul was going up and down the street telling all the kids in the neighborhood what I did to the girl that wasn't very nice to people. I remember him using the words "my sister". He was proud of what I did, and even bragged about me being his sister. I know that these terrible actions of mine shouldn't have made me so happy, but the memory of my dad protecting me, and my brother claiming me, just made it a good day.

Sign My Guest Book

Hi all! I'm kind of bored right now, so I made a guestbook for my blog. Please be sure to sign in. If you have a picture available that's great, if not, just sign in and say hi! I would love to see who checks out my blog. So even if you are just a secret blog stalker, please sign in (yes, I'm talking to you, Kim). Thanks!!

Happy Halloween

The other day my brother, Wyatt was nice enough to bring over his Guitar Hero 3 game so that I could check it out. But his toughest competition was Kassi. He even had to give her ice cream for "winning". We had lots of fun.

On Halloween we went to my dad's house. Course my dad was gone hunting (he got a deer yesterday, by the way) leaving Bonnie home alone with the 4 kids on Halloween. Daniel had some of his friends come over and all the older kids went trick or treating together, while Bonnie & I took the 3 little ones around. Mike stayed behind at Bonnie's house to hand out candy. I was surprised when we got back to the house the find the big kids were already done. They did 43 houses in the time it took Bonnie and I to do one street. But they all had fun!! It was great! I hope you all had a great Halloween too.