Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.

Christmas Day in GR - (I'll post more later)



Christmas came earily. We were up until 2:00 am doing who knows what, then Shannon's kids woke up bright and early at 6:30. Yee Ha!!!

Thanksgiving in Payson, Arizona

Thanksgiving Day at Morgan at Joe's place. She made a great dinner.

The day after Thanksgiving we decided to go to Mesa, do a little shopping and see the lights at the Mesa, Az Temple. It was nice. There's something interesting about seeing Christmas lights in palm trees.

On our way back from Mesa we decided to stop at McDonalds. We all ended up in the top of the play place.

The night before we left Joe gave us a tour of his office, Kels and the boys did a little fishing, and we did a walk around the towns big park. Interesting town-no grass and very few street lights.





On our way back we stayed the night in Moab, Ut. I'm not quite sure why, but for some reason I don't think I've ever been to Moab before. I think the rest of the family has been hundreds of times, but for some reason I've never gone.

Christmas Time-Putting Up the Tree

Putting up the Christmas tree. Can I just say that I love my little tree. It's one of the best investments I've ever made.

Kelsey's birthday 2008

Well Kelsey is now 7yrs old. She is pumped. Her birthday party turned out great. Opened presents, made bead bracelets, had some pizza, ate cake and ice cream, and it was over. Now that is my kind of party.

Kelsey cracked me up the other day. We were trying to decide what to do for her party and she brought up the goodie bag thing. I hate them but have never told Kelsey my feelings on the subject. So in response to her idea I asked, "Kels, do we really want goodie bags?" to which she responded, "No, they're just full of cheap junk toys." Now that's my girl!!! So, I have now managed to eleminate the games and the junk toys. It makes life and party planning much more simple. Besides, the girls had a blast making bracelets.

Below, a few pictures of the party. Oh, do any of you guys know if it's ok to post pictures of other people's kids? I thought about that as I was posting the pictures of her class and the party. I'm sure if it's illegal I'll be the first to get busted for it. Let me know before something stupid happens.

Can't have a party without a Hannah Montana cake.

Kelsey and her best budd again.

So tonight as I am cleaning Kelsey's room, I turned around to see her playing Karaokee in this get-up. It cracked me up.

Halloween 2008

Started out the day at Kelsey's school. I took most of the day off and helped out with her class halloween party. I was put in charge of the fishing game. It's not as easy as you may think. They had three kids fishing at once, so as I am putting a prize on one hook another one is flying over the top hitting me in the face. It was interesting. The kids had a blast.


Kelsey's class.


Kels and her best budd.



The kid's desks were covered in black paper. They were given white chalk to draw halloween pictures on the paper. Cute idea.


Later that day Mom, Shannon, Kynnadi, and Brooklyn came to town to hang out for Halloween and to spend Kelsey's birthday with us.

Here's the three amigos before leaving for the night.




Mom looks cute here.


Me and my baby girl.


Got a couple pictures of the girls going door to door.



As usual, we started out the night at the University, headed to the church for trunk or treat, and this year, because of the exceptional weather, we were able to spend a lot of time hitting the houses. It was so nice we didn't even wear jackets. I don't know if Laramie will ever see another Halloween quite as nice as this one. The kids had a lot of fun.

October 26th, 2008

Hey guys,

Well things have been going pretty good lately. Kelsey and I went to her Halloween party at her day care the other night. She had a lot of fun. They had a cake walk. Kelsey was bound and determined to win one so she played the game for about 20 min. The funny part happened after she won the cake. I reminded her that the next day was my birthday and that we would already have a cake. She was a bit annoyed but she settled for the surprise goodie bag instead.

As for my birthday, it went quite well. Kelsey got up bright and early and made me cupcakes. Mom had called the night before and asked her to carry on the family tradition and hide my presents. Kelsey not only hid my gifts but she made the clues. It cracked me up. She hid the gifts then made the clues. She started getting a bit frustrated because she couldn't remember where she had hid the gifts. It was pretty cute. Later that day some friends of mine took us to lunch and then the day carried on as normal.

Tonight we had dinner with Whitnee and Mark. Hey you guys over in Nebraska, you're missing out!

For those of you who hadn't heard, Morgan felt bad for Kelsey and decided to mail her a bug. This isn't a normal bug, it's monsterous. Kelsey began to open the package, I saw the gigantic furry head and made her close the bag and put it away. I still haven't seen the bug, but Kelsey tells me it is awesome. I get to see in in a couple weeks at parent teacher conferences. If I remember, I'll take a picture of it. I'm sure you'll all enjoy it.

Also this week, Kelsey and I have been fighting over her room. I have decided that I am no longer going to help her clean it. Daily I tell her she needs to go in and start cleaning it. When I go in to check on her progress, without fail, I find this:

Kelsey laying in her bed reading a book as though she could care less about her messy room. It makes me nuts. Oh, if you click on the picture, you get a good close up of it. It's lovely.

Oh, how can I forget. The highlight of my week was finding a picture of Hillary and Bill Clinton on a birthday card. It's so stupid I'll have to put it on my refrigerator. I had to buy it because it was just too stupid. I'll try and scan it into my computer and see if I can post it. It absolutely made my day.

Here's a picture I took of Kelsey a while back ago. Thought it was pretty cute. Also if you look below, I posted a picture of Kelsey's pumpkin that we carved. Love it!

Oct. 5th, 2008

Kelsey and I carved a pumpkin at a YW act on Wed. She did a really cute job, I love it!

Sept 28th, 2008

Talked with Brynn tonight, I told her I would quickly write down what's been going on. Sorry no pictures.

So, aprox four weeks ago I went to Wal-Mart could hardly find a parking place. I thought, "What is going on?" I then remembered "School's back." For those of you who don't know, this means that the Laramie population doubles in size in about one week or less. You have to experience it to fully understand it.

My new stress - don't run over a biker! They're every where and bumper stickers to go with them. Numerous people have these bumper stickers that say, "Share the street, Give a bike 5 feet" Ahhhh!!! They make me crazy. All these years living here I am still surprized that I haven't hit one yet. It scares me. Also, along with the students has come the football population. For some reason I forget about that too. With school comes football. Haven't been to a game this year, and from the looks of it, unless Kelsey beggs me, I don't think we'll go this season.

Went to Denver a couple weekends ago with the youth. That was fun. I asked my buddy Emily to walk to Deseret Book with me while we were waiting to be seated at a restaurant. She's all excited to go. We get to the street, which is a very busy one, and she decides that she will just run across it. Ok, Shannon, Brynn, this isn't an exaggeration, this was a really truely busy street. I'm like, "Oh no I can't leave her" so I dart into traffic and away we go. I still can't believe that neither one of us got hit. Needless to say on the way back I said, "I think we should use the light this time."

Another weekend sometime this month was spent in Cheyenne at one of my intensive weekend classes. I like this class, a bit more managable than the others that I have taken. I think I can handle this one.

Yesterday, Kelsey and I did a lot of nothing. Poor kid. I told her I would take her ice skating. Got to the ice rink and it was closed to the public. So, I tell her we will go roller skating. Got to the roller rink and it's reserved for a birthday party. So, I ended up taking her to Sweet Pickles (the cool toy store in town that you all love), we ended up spending a good two hours there. That really is a cute store.

This week I had my last physical therapy apt. My leg is still kindof messed up but it appears that there is nothing else they can do. I have no problems walking or running on it, but if it gets bumped it doesn't feel that great. I don't have time to deal with it any more - I'm over it.

Kelsey has been collecting bugs for her class. This has been a very hard thing for me. They are all currently in a bag in my freezer. I'm feeling my gag reflex getting stimulated as I'm thinking about it. It really bothers me, more than you can imagine. So Kelsey got this assignment to collect bugs the first week that school began. I figured that if I ignored it it would go away. Kelsey started getting sad because all the kids in her class had tons of bugs and she only had a couple that she had collected during recess. So as we are walking to check the mail one day we heard a lady freaking out about some kind of weird bug stuck to the grill of her car. I instantly knew what Kelsey was thinking. So as we go back past, the lady is gone and Kelsey has the chance to check out the bug. So I think, "Ok, the bug is already dead, all we have to do is get it off the grill, put it in a baggie and be on our way." So as we approach the car I see this gigantic flying thing stuck to the grill. Kelsey was pumped by her discovery. I did't have the heart to tell her no. So we went back to the house, got the equipment needed to take the bug off (baggie, laytex gloves) and headed back to the car. I refused to help her take the thing off. I gave her the gloves and with the help of her little friend they were able to pull all of it but the head off. Kelsey didn't seem to mind that the head was still stuck to the grill, she was just excited to finally have a bug (and a big one at that) to take to school. As she ran home jumping with excitement she told me I was the best mom in the world. I couldn't believe it.

Since that day I have helped her collect two others. One was a strage flying thing that was by our door. I sprayed it with bug spray, killed it, and put it in the freezer with the other. The final bug was collected last weekend. Kelsey and I went and planted trees out by the airport (every year the church helps with a community service day where everyone goes and plants trees. Kelsey and I planted three, it was fun). While we were shoveling dirt, I see this gigantic weird looking beetle. We happened to have a emptly water bottle so I scooped it up and off it went with us. Although I was still a bit bothered, this one didn't seem too bad. I made Kelsey put it in the sleeve of her jacket so that I would't have to look at it. When we got home it went into the freezer. A couple days later Kelsey pulls the water bottle out of the freezer and starts shaking the bug around. I about lost it. I told her to stop before the legs fell off. "They already did" she responds. Back in the freezer it went. We get to send them off to school in two days. I am looking forward to it. I would have to say that although Kelsey does not have a lot of bugs, I guarantee that the ones she does have will be the biggest.

Pictures

So I finally pulled some of my old pictures off my camera. Here are a few that didn't have anywhere special to go. If you scroll all the way down through the entire page you will notice that I actually went through and put pictures with the old posts. Hope your all happy. I'll write more later.

Some pics from earlier this year.

Kelsey lost her two front teeth and two of her bottom teeth. She was pretty excited.

We were bored.

First day of school. Kelsey was pumped.

So I found some great sales and bought you guys your Christmas presents. We found these crazy light up glasses and thought of Dad. Couldn't resist though. We had to open them up and try them out. It was cute.


Here is Kelsey wandering around the house with her pillow on her head. She thought it was pretty funny.

Kelsey has been wanting a club house forever. So, one day we were on campus and happened to walk by some guys getting rid of large boxes. I asked if we could have one. He agreed and the next thing I knew I was dragging a gigantic box across campus. The things you do for your little ones. Needless to say Kelsey, along with the other neighbor kids, all had a blast with it. It may not look big from the picture but this box almost fills my entire patio.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures. Emily, Kelsey and I took this at the Botanical Gardens. We all layed down on the ground and got the best picture ever. I love it!