Traditions

December 1st, the town lighting. Sometimes I feel like I live in Mayberry. I love the town lighting and the excitment and the feeling of Christmas. There is a wagon ride, displays of nativities, music, and SANTA. When we count down for the lights to come on and you look up and down our beautiful main street it is a feeling of excitment. We have never stood in line to see Santa before, but we did this year for Kamy. I will post a picture and you can decide how it went.




This is my neice Ashley and her cute little boy Koby



Caskie and Riker.



My cute family (they are getting so big)



Mom and Dad with my Dad's sister Anna Lou



And this is how the Santa thing went.

Poor Santa, he was so good and kind to her. The whole time up there I was telling her look how nice Santa is, I love Santa, are you excited to see Santa? I even asked her what are you going to say to Santa and she said "nice to meet you." I thought we were good to go, but no such luck she SCREAMED! On the way home she said "Me not like that guy."

All in all it was a very fun evening. We have a tradition that after the town lighting we go home and eat Italian food. It use to be just Shea and I and the kids but it has grown into much more. We had my parents and Shea's parents and my sisters and their kids, and their kids. It was a ton of fun!!! I love Traditions, sometimes I think that might be the only thing that will keep us going when times get hard. We will be able to look back on the good times and remember the love we have for each other and that they will be that way again! As the holidays get going we just want to wish everyone a happy season. ENJOY! Don't be to busy TO enjoy it. That goes for me too. Merry CHRISTmas!

Thankful

Things I am thankful for:

My Kids that helped me ALL day today. They make life wonderful.

A good husband who tolerates all my moods! Thank you sweetheart!

The ability to work hard.

And then nighttime to rest.

This time of year to be with family.

The feeling of winter.

Christmas music.

Feeling the spirit.

I have so MUCH, and I thank my Heavenly Father for everything that he has blessed me with.

#3 is 14

Oh boy the 21st of November. Today is Jordan's birthday. I can't believe he is 14. This morning he made the comment about going to the stake dance Saturday night. I just wanted to giggle. Have you seen him? He looks like he is 12. But he is so cute and fun. The best personality, great sense of humor, smart, tender hearted, great attitude about his size. He is just a great kid.

He was tiny, for my babies anyway 7lbs 14oz, usually they come in around 9 lbs. I remember everyone looking at his ears and says "Look how tiny his ears are" and that hasn't changed. His body might be tiny but everything else is big.

Jordan I hope you have a GREAT DAY! I love you so much.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

COLLEGE Volleybal tryouts

Okay so yesterday Tiff and Shea took off to the valley for her to tryout for Chandler/Gilbert's volleyball team. Shea called around 8:30 and said he was watching from a window and that Tiff looked very discouraged. They got done around 9:30 and headed home. Well about 10:30 the coach called Tiff and said they would love to have her play for them. Shea said she screamed so loud when she got off the phone that his ears were ringing.

The coach complimented her on a lot of things that made Tiff feel so good. She so bad wanted to see if she could do it. She knows that she might not play that much but the fact that she tried out for a college and made it seemed to be enough (for now).

I wish I knew how to type a scream from me. I am so excited too. This seems very weird! We have a lot to look forward to and a lot to be thankful for.:)

Sunday Dinner

I so love coming home from church and walking in the door and smelling the roast cooking (or whatever else we may be having).

Well this wasn't the case November 9th. It all started when I looked out the window that fateful Sunday morning and see my father-in-laws horses out.(a frequent occurrence.)In that whole ordeal one of the horses happened to hit Derek in the face and bloodied his nose and mouth. Also, Shea had to meet with a couple of bishops to give them info about missionary work for our stake. He is the High Councilman over that. ANYWAY, I tell you that so it might explain our crazy morning and maybe it won't make Shea feel so bad.

I had put ribs on to boil early so they would be done by the time we left for church. Shea came in and asked me what I would like him to do with the ribs. I said "Just turn them off and I will finish them after church." So I put it out of my mind. Well he forgot. So 3 and a half hours later we get home and find our home completely FULL of smoke with the smoke alarms blaring!!!! Tiff was the first one in and she FREAKED OUT. She knew she would walk around the corner and see fire. Talk about smoke inhalation, you couldn't even see into the house. We ran in and opened windows and doors. It was a bit unsettling to go outside and see smoke billowing out of the house. It was and still is horrible.

We had invited the missionaries over for dinner to top it all off. We ended up going to the "Barn" for the rest of the day and night. The next day I got busy getting ALL, EVERY SINGLE STITCH, of clothing from our house and started washing it. My mother-in-law, bless her, took clothes and kept her washer going, the washer and dryer in the barn, and the washer and dryer in our old house, and my Mom's washer and dryer stayed full for 3 days. My Mom and Dad came and helped wash walls, floors, picture frames, windows, cleaning carpets. I don't know what I would have done without all there help and I was lucky that the kids didn't have school on Tuesday.

So here we are a week and a half later and I am still running ozone machines to keep our house from stinking like smoke. A good friend of mine stopped by and told me it smelt like a old motel room (smoking). I do think it is getting better. I think I need to clean again and see if that helps. We did take pictures of the stacks and stacks of clothes. I will try and get them on later.

Moral of this story, no matter how much you love to smell Sunday dinner when you walk in from church, it just isn't worth taking the chance that something like this might happen. Besides, Sunday is a day of rest, who needs to cook?:)

Talk about weird that your kids are growing up. Derek got asked to winter formal! YIKEES! Kelcie Reed asked him. It was so cute she rang the doorbell and ran and Derek opened the door, looked at it, and closed the door. Of course he opened the door again and there was the little tractor and some honey buns. Very cute idea.

It is fun to see how each of your children react to different things that come up in their lives. All the little girls got out of bed to see what was going on, and Derek was asking them (in a loud voice)"Why are you up?" "Mom tell the girls to go to bed." Anyway, he is very much a teenage boy. He his alot of fun! Soon we will be watching him play basketball! That is pretty fun.

He needs a cute way to answer her, any good ideas?

The LADY LOBOS went into the regional tournament "tied" with Blue Ridge. I think they put us as #1 because of power points. We only had to play one game and that ended up being Blue Ridge. It was alittle to close for me though. Why can't they just go in and take care of business and not give me a heart attack? Or should I say a MIGRAINE? When I got home I had a big one. I hate them they scare me. Anyway that is not why I am writing. The girls really did do good they are a fun group of girls that have a good time together playing volleyball.

Tiff also got on the all tournament team! With her is Tiffany Brimhall and Jessica Johnson. We are very proud of her.

I love watching Tiffany play I know I am her mom, but I think she is good. They are headed down to state today. It is in Prescott this year, UGH. She got in the car last night to come home from practice and she got a little emotional and said that is my last practice in the high school gym. She said "I can't believe it is over." I can't either. I never thought I would see this day. But I am very excited for it. I sure hope they play really good this weekend and take state. They will have to play so hard.

Tiff, I love you thank you for being who you are. You are a good friend and daughter to me. GOOD LUCK! YOU WILL DO GREAT!