Christmas Morning

What's with the faces???

Christmas Eve

I know I'm late on posting but here are some pictures from the Christmas Eve extravaganza at my parent's home. My parents handed out a can of fruit with a spoon to each grandchild for Christmas. The kids were then instructed to wait until "go" then eat the can of fruit as fast as they can and the first 5 to eat all of the fruit in the can would win $25.00 for their Christmas present. Obviously those who dislike fruit were slightly distraught. Lucky for them, when they opened the can, they found either $50.00 (for the girls) or motor cross ticket (for the boys.)

HAPPY 12TH BIRTHDAY AIMEE!!!

Bad Blogger - Bad Mom!

I could kick myself!!! Not only was it the Thanksgiving Holidays but my oldest daughter was home and I didn't take ANY pictures!!!! I'm so sad! I'm not sure what I was thinking.
We had a nice Thanksgiving though.
Wednesday was our Family Portrait day. That was an experience. Trying to get all nine people to smile and look the right direction at once was a mess. But luckily we were able to come up with three pictures out of 63 that we somewhat liked.
Thursday of course was Thanksgiving. We all met at my parent's home. We had WAY too much food. The great thing was, my sister in law and myself were able to take most of the left overs home since my parents and sister were going out of town on Sunday. We ate left overs until Sunday evening. You can imagine how I felt on Monday morning!!!!!!
Friday the kids and I saw "Happy Feet". That's something none of us want to experience again!!! My son actually started to cover his ears 1/3 of the way through the movie and he's the main one that wanted to see it!
Saturday we all went to the Gladiators game. We love us some hockey!!!!!
Sunday at 4:00 A.M. - Ashley, Allie, Addison and myself left for the airport to drop off Ashley. Very sad!!!
That was our weekend! Maybe next year, I'll remember to pick up my camera!

Bailey is getting big

I can't believe how quickly she is growing. Her legs are growing so fast she stumbles all over the place. She's very uncoordinated. Her snout has gotten long but her head has not caught up yet. The kids think she looks like a opossum.


Notice, she has her leash in her mouth. She likes to walk herself. Even if you are holding the end of the leash walking her, she will pick up part of the leash with her mouth and pretend she's either walking you or walking herself. Maybe it's a pride thing. : )

Halloween 2006

Here's what goblins trick or treated at my house. I had a honey bunny, jail bird, and Jason from Friday 13th.





We also had Grandma help us pass out the candy. Grandma scared a few trick or treaters, some even just passed us by for fear of what Grandma may do.

Homecoming

Allie's first homecoming was held this past month. She was excited for months before and extremly excited the very day.
A week prior to the dance, Allie consulted with her cousin and aunt for the wherabouts to find a dress for a bargain and off we went. Hmmmm.. there were bargains but of course none of which were appealing to Allie. She found a Jessica McClintock dress and fell in love with it. Once she tried it on, I of course, did as well. Plenty over my budget but it was Allie to the "t" so we had to buy it.
She had a great time and it will be an experience for her memory book.

SO MUCH FUN!

Monster behind the door

It's been a while...

I have been reading blogs but haven't had a chance to blog myself in a while. But really, there hasn't been too much to blog about. We have been busy doing "this and that" but nothing too blog worthy.

Andrew and Mitch have been playing hockey. Mitch scores every game at least two or three. Andrew is looking more and more comfortable and actually scored two goals this season.

Allie and I are still in Jazz. I missed last week but Scott was able to take Allie. After class I asked her about what new steps were taught. She informed me that the dance we are currently learning is not our recital dance. That concerns me a bit because #1 -there is only so much space in my head for new knowledge and I'm filling it up with something I'm not going to use, and #2 - I need plenty of time, why aren't we learning it now???? Is she going to wait until a month before to teach us a dance???? No, that can't happen! PANIC!! I'm mean, I'm talented but not that talented. : )

Aimee and Addie are in gymnastics, making great grades in school, and are the two mommies to Bailey. Aimee joined me on a business trip just recently. She made it a lot of fun. She thought the room was great and the rental car was a mustang and she thought it was "the bomb". We went swimming and sat in the hot tub and then ordered room service. It was some time for the two of us and I really enjoyed having that alone time with Aimee.

Scott is searching dillegently for a lake house -which he may have found. He's working and being a wonderful husband!! He amazes me every day by how sweet he is and how much effort he puts into running our family. He cooks and straightens up the house, runs the kids here and there and even does the laundry. He's the best! I really appreciate every thing he does for me and the kids.

Max works on his jeep, counting down the days until he turns 15 and is doing great in school as well. It's only a matter of time before a girl steals his heart. He's such a cutie and very thoughtful.

Ashley will be home November 21st thru 26th. Can't wait to see her! She's got a boy she is very interested in but he leaves for his mission soon. I think she is kind of happy about that because she says he takes up a lot of her time and time away from her friends. She says he is super smart, infact she said she wasn't sure how the two of them are able to carry on a conversation. (I thought that was funny)

Bailey is getting big and becoming more and more of a family member. She loves the lake and always goes with us when we go. Since it's getting too cold to swim, we have been beaching the boat, building a big fire and making smores. Bailey loves the "smores" part. She gets in there with the kids and patiently waits for someone to hand her over one. We are careful not to make her sick and have been lucky so far.

We are getting ready for Halloween at our house. Last week, Andrew insisted we decorate. He placed Marcus the Carcus out in the yard and did a very good job. He's not the easiest thing to put together. Andrew has decorated his own room. He has created bats and ghost hanging from the ceiling. He built a scarey man with a mask and has it laying in his bean bag chair. He really gets into it.

We have goblins and pumpkins all around the house but we have someone new this year. I found a really scarey looking (I really don't know what you would call it) let's just say... monster. He's about my height and I decided it would be funny to hang him on the wall behind the downstairs bathroom door, so that when someone goes into the bathroom and shuts the door - it will scare them. Well so far, I really haven't heard anyone but myself scream. I actually have forgotten "TWICE" that it was there and about had a heart attack both times. I don't typically use that bathroom so that's how I'm justifying the fact that I forgot that it was there.

As I was driving to work this morning I was laughing at myself about forgetting and then remembered my house keeper comes today. I'm sure Bailey had to hear a few choice spanish words when she went in to clean the downstairs bathroom.

More of Bailey.......

Aimee had Bailey in her room last night while she was working on a project. Bailey found the pile of stuffed animals in the corner and crawled up with them and fell asleep. We all thought it was so cute, I wanted to take a picture of it. She was out like a light too because the camera was flashing right in front of her face and we were all standing around talking about how cute she is. She didn't move.
The other night Scott and I took her for about a 3 mile walk around the park. She's very socialable. She wanted to investigate everything and talk to everyone. It made our walk a little longer than anticipated but it was fun and we wore her out. When she got home she plopped down on the floor and didn't move. The kids tried to take her out to go to the bathroom one last time, but she put on the breaks when the door opened. They had to pick her up to get her outside.

Office

This is my office or a part of it anyway. I should say, this is my desk. The reason I took a picture of it this morning was because it's crazy messy. But, the pictures do not show the extent of the mess. It actually looks pretty good in the pictures. Believe me, it's not! As a matter of fact I've had comments this week. " wow, it looks like you finally work here." I think that was just a nice way to say, "wow, you're a mess." What I wanted to do was take a picture of my office and then take a picture of my bosses office. Even though I think mine is bad-- you should see his. He's got papers all over the floor like he's just thrown them off his desk. But I know it's his on little organized mess.
Maybe some day I'll get organized and have a nice clean office. Although I have to say, being this busy sure makes the day go by fast. ...................................................hmmmmmm.......not sure that's a good thing anymore. I'm aging fast enough!

The new addition to our family.

Her name is Bailey and she's a golden retriever. She's 10 weeks old and so far is a great addition to our family. Even being a puppy, she's smart and only hyper first thing in the morning. That's only because she's excited to see everyone and wants to play. The kids wore her out the first two days so much so that Scott said she did nothing but sleep the next day. He would try to get her to play with him but all she wanted to do was sleep. You could pick her up and she would stay asleep.

The first night we put her in her crate, she cried for about 5 minutes and then stopped and stayed quiet for most of the remainder of the evening. The second night, she cried ALL NIGHT LONG. She worked herself into a frenzy! So the third night we moved her crate upstairs into Allie's room. She was quiet as a mouse. So we discovered that as long as she's in the room with someone else, she doesn't care if she has to be in her crate. As a matter of fact, we've also learned that we can turn the tv on and she'll sit and watch it and no one else has to be in the room with her. This has made our "puppy evenings" much bearable.

This outfit is my husband's doing. He has already bought her a Halloween outfit. I hope she's around to trick or treat with the kids. .........Kidding...........she's amazingly a good dog. I've heard it's the retrievers nature, so I'm sure she's going to be a life long family member.

If anyone is interested, she still has two sisters that look just like her in need of a home.

UGH!!!!!!!!!!! BIG BROTHER!

That's all I have to say!