Gracie in her classroom after the Kindergarten Thanksgiving program.Grandma Mary wanted the kind to do a little Thanksgiving program before we sat down for dinner. You would think that they were being tortured. I have to say I was the worst program I have ever seen. Gracie and Tanner did a good job the the other kids would not have gotten to eat if it had been dependant on their performances :(The house got pretty wild with all of the kids running around. This is one of the very few calm moments.The kids had a great time playing with my brothers' dogs. It was a fun weekend with my family. We ate and played and went to New Moon (only my third time). Sam went with my brother and sister-in-law to Wal-Mart at 4:30 am for BLACK FRIDAY, and Sam got me a CriCut for a super great price (He Rocks!) There was only one down side to the weekend, but a pretty big down side. My brother, Trent was sick before they even got to my parents' and spent Wednesday and Thursday in bed (didn't even eat Thanksgiving dinner). On Friday he was getting worse and couldn't keep down any pain meds, so his wife took him to the ER. He was admitted to the hospital. I won't go into all of the details, but it was really scary for a while. He is doing better today and will probably go home tomorrow. Thank You to everyone who said prayers on his behalf and sent good thoughts our way.

Now we are home safe and I'm still trying not to think about everything I need to get done before I leave, in like 38 hours, to go to South Africa.
I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with Friends and Family and Food. My three favorite F words.

Something stinks

"Hey mom where should I put this?"
"I don't know. Put it on my desk in the basement."
Seems like a harmless enough conversation, right? But after a few YEARS of having this conversation on almost a daily basis it came time to clean my desk in the basement, and that conversation... not seeming so harmless anymore.
Why now? Was I board? Do I not have enough projects to take care of right now? Was I just feeling super motivated? No. On top of all of the hundreds of things I have to get done before I leave for South Africa, I also get to deal with a water leak in my basement. The desk I'm referring to was built into the basement by the previous owners. The water leak spread through the carpet under the desk and now the desk must be ripped out in order to clean the now moldy, stinking carpet under it. I know what you're thinking, Wah, Wah, you're stressed out about every thing you have to do before you go to South Africa... SOUTH. AFRICA! We all feel so sorry for you. That's fine, mock me, but just for that I'm not posting before and after pictures.

Happy Birthday

McKay got this monkey for Christmas last year. He has lots of stuffed monkeys and he loves them. He wanted me to take a picture of it.

I made the monkey cake


My baby is officialy 3!

I've never had a 3 year old baby. It's sort of wierd.

Today we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch with friends, not really out of the ordinary (we go there at least once a week), but today McKay got a free brownie and a little cow for his birthday. Then we went shopping for his gifts. He picked them out. Then we came home and my friend Heather and her daughter Abby came over to play. They gave McKay a super cool car that playes music and all of the kids danced and played. It was a good day. Now Sam is bringing home dinner and McKay can open the gifts he picked out and we can eat our second monkey cake. We had the first one on Saturday night while Grandma Mary and Grandpay Hal were here. They brought McKay a super fun book and car. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

This is my awesome SIL on the news again, teaching people about saving with coupons, and today is her birthday too.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KACEY!

image from tonsoftickets.com

I went to Wicked with Sam and my mom and Abby today. It was my third time seeing it and I don't think I could ever get tired of it. Since I had just seen it a few weeks ago I took the opportunity every now and then to just watch Abby watching the show. She was loving it. She already knows all of the songs and it was really hard for her to not sing along. She was all dressed up and I think she felt pretty grown up. It was really cute. Afterwards we met my day and the other kids for dinner and Abby kept telling them all about the show. She was so exited. I wish I had pictures but I don't. Here's a video of my favorite song from Wicked just for fun.

Defying Gravity - Idina Menzel & Kristin Chenoweth
Uploaded by Wicked_Promos. - Explore more music videos.

And one more


Popular - Kristin Chenoweth & Idina Menzel
Uploaded by Wicked_Promos. - Explore more music videos.

Flashback to November, 2006

I can't believe my baby is turning 3! Look at how advanced he was, only hours old and could already wink. He was the best baby, and we are so happy to have him in our family. Not all of us were always so happy about it though. Abby was forced to sit by him for this picture and refused to touch him. Being the stubborn child that she is, this grudge lasted for months. That is a very long time for a 4 year old. Eventually, even she came around and now we don't know what we would do without him. He is a joy to be with most of the time. His birthday isn't for 5 more days, but I wanted to get a head start.

Happy Halloween!

Warning: You may get a stomach ache just by looking at the following pictures.
In case you can't tell these are empty wrappers!

We finished Trick- or - Treating a short 36 hours ago. These pictures are representative of a portion of the candy that has been consumed in my home since then. So the question in my mind is, does this make us really bad parents or really cool parents? I bet I know what my kids would say, and I bet I know what there teachers would say.