Gingerbread House Decorating Party

Last night we hosted our first Gingerbread House Decorating Party. We invited some family and friends, bought LOTS of candy and spent hours decorating. Rudy spent most of the night crawling under the table and going through Luciana's diaper bag playing with the granola bar he kept finding. Mariana decorated her house and then spent the rest of the night eating then sneaking candy. Not sure how easily she fell asleep :) Colleen and Jesse wanted to build their house from graham crackers and marshmallow creme which seemed like a good idea but the marshmallow creme wouldn't harden and hold the graham crackers in place so it did not stand long. We were able to get a quick pick before the wall fell off. We all had a lot of fun and will definitely do it again next year.

Finished

My awesome snowman!

Mariana

Bailey and Chelby working hard.

Me and Aunt Colleen

Jeremy stealing ideas ;)

Jesse and Colleen starting from scratch.

Two hours of hard work.

"Snow Drift"

Mariana liked eating hers best!

Riley's 16th

You would think it would be pretty hard to "mess-up" a 16th birthday. Unfortunately, Riley's birthday take 1 did not go so well. We were told by the DPS that Riley had to have a Verification of Enrollment form to get his DL the Monday of Thanksgiving break. The schools were closed so we had no way to get the form. On Monday the 29th Jeremy took Riley to school and begged the receptionist to fill out the form. Her reply "it's not possible"! Seriously all we needed was her signature, but I guess if they start that everybody would come last minute. We finally got the form at 2:30 so I take Riley out of school and we head straight to the DPS. By the time we get there it was too late and we had to schedule a drive time for Tuesday. We hand over all of our "needed" paper work and as the DPS guy starts looking through it he hands back the VOE form because "we don't need it". I kind of freaked out and I quote "what did you say?" in a not so nice voice. We waited all day to get a form we didn't need which took so long that he missed getting his DL on his birthday. Little did we know that was only just the beginning with our birthday issues. Jeremy and I started looking for a car about a month early thinking that would be more than enough time. We looked at A LOT of cars all with no luck including one that smelled like cat pee. That was a treat! I almost threw-up before we could get it back to the dealer. As his birthday drew closer we were starting to lose hope on actually finding one, but the Friday before we found a Scion TC at the Ford dealership in Grapevine. It had just been traded in so it was dirty and in need of some detailing, a tune-up and paint touch-up. We both liked the car and knew he would love it so we bought it that night. We were promised that it would be ready Monday morning...and so the story begins. Of course it wasn't ready even though we were calling and driving up there almost hourly. It wasn't until Monday early evening that we finally got through to someone willing to really help. At this point we had a kid with no car and no driver's license on his birthday...awesome! Luckily I had figured out Riley thought we were getting him an iPhone so we told him that his gift would be delivered a day late. Birthday take 2...we let Riley stay home on Tuesday because we had to go take his driving test and as soon as we heard the car was ready we picked Bailey up so she would be there to see him open his gift. Jeremy told Riley that he picked the gift up from UPS so we wrapped the key in my old iPhone box letting him assume he was right until he actually opened it up. He was speechless!! It was so much fun for us to give him his first car!!! So we all drove to DPS so that he could take his car once he passed his test. It was all fun for me until he drove away. As we're walking out for him to drive away I asked if I could ride. Of course he said no, but Bailey could. I give a little speech on how other than his dad he now has the two things I love more than anything in this world in a car and drive safe and...."I know mom". As they drive off I cry and cry again every time he drives off for about a week. In Jeremy's words "a little piece of Jill's heart drives off every time he drives away".

NSM 3rd Annual Turkey Bowl Tournament

Ryan, Alec, Galen, Auryan, Riley and Nick

Riley and his friends have played in the Turkey Bowl every year and every year they win :) Recently I decided to start taking pictures of Riley and his friends because I'm sure than none of these boys every take any and later they'll be glad someone did. Anyway, I asked Riley to stand off to the side with his friends but the rest of the team wouldn't walk away. As soon as they realized I was taking a picture they all huddled up. So I took a picture of everybody, which for any other person would have been sufficient. But I had my mind set on getting one of just "The Wolf Pack." Well it didn't come easy but finally I was able to get one of just the six.

Bailey still has friends who go to Northwood so she was invited toplay too. Her team doesn't have a lot of athletes but they were able to win a few and even made it to the junior high play offs. I have to brag because Bailey has an amazing arm!! Seriously, she's been able to throw a spiral since she was like 3 and I'm positive she can throw farther than I can. We have a video so I'll post that too.

As promised:

Thanksgiving

We've finally started establishing some traditions with our families so now every year we celebrate Thanksgiving at my brothers. This year we had 28 people!! Sharon, Colleen's mom, is an amazing cook and prepares most of the food. I always bring sweet potatoes and green bean casserole and Colleen makes her yummy spinach dip. This was Rudy's first Thanksgiving and as you can see he enjoyed his meal thanks to Grandpa Mike. Most of the day we just hung out, ate, and then ate some more. After dinner Jesse started the fire pit so we spent most of the night out there playing Catch Phrase. We were SO LOUD!! Jesse said he walked down the street and could easily hear us. I guess it's good that most of their neighbors are old because nobody complained :) The first couple of pictures were taken for my school. One of my professors favorite holidays is Thanksgiving so for extra credit we had to take a picture with our family, crazy hats, the family, pet, a mashed potato sculpture and me eating cranberry sauce. Don't you like the mashed potato turkey? We did such a good job with it that I got 12 out of 10 possible points! Of course I love the picture...who knows maybe we've started another tradition.

Eric's Company Picnic

Eric is working for a company welding trains and they recently had an open house. His family was invited to come and check out the trains, see his job and have lunch. Of course we wanted a picture so I asked the security guard to take our photo. Colleen an Leiha came too but we didn't get a chance to take the picture before they had to go. Anyway, we were having a hard time getting Rudy to look at the right time so for some reason the security guard thought the balloons would help. After the picture we certainly didn't want to keep the balloons but Eric felt bad and didn't want to just let them go at work. He tried pawning them off before finally releasing them. Even though the day was kind of cold and windy it was sunny...doesn't Eric look nice in my shades.

Halloween

Bumblebee Bailey

Riley a.k.a. John Mayer

For the past three years we've been getting together either at our house or Jesse and Colleen's to carve pumpkins. This year Colleen's family was over too so we had a lot of good carvings. Rudy wasn't a big fan of his pumpkin but loved the Cheerios :)

Chik-fil-A Premier Night

One day while I was at work one of my coworkers mentioned that the new Chik-fil-A in Alliance Town Center was giving away a year's worth of free food to the person who writes the best 100- word essay about Chik-fil-A. I like chicken and I like free stuff so I said, "Sure I'll write an essay." A couple of weeks after submitting my essay I received an invitation to Chik-fil-A Premier Night for free food, prizes and activities. This was beyond exciting. I was also able to bring Jill and the kids along with me. We had chicken sandwiches, chicken nuggets, waffle fries, sodas, brownies and milkshakes. I also won a beach towel for answering a Chik-fil-A trivia question. I didn't end up winning the raffle for the 1 year worth of free food but it was a fun night. You can read my essay below, I did it without any help.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, it was the age of chicken it was the age of beef. EAT MOR CHIKIN."

Jeremy ~ Guest Blogger

2010 Family Pics

Homecoming 2010

For some crazy reason Keller HS scheduled homecoming for a Saturday game. Well this causes the girl's a lot of stress...do we wear the mum on Friday to school or just to the game Saturday? I'm thinking the mum's are super expensive so let's wear them every chance we get :) Anyway, Amanda decided not to wear her mum to school Friday morning because last year homecoming was on a Saturday too and she did wear but apparently felt like most didn't. We drop the mum off on Thursday night because they're so big you have to figure out a way to wear it and the safety pins sure aren't gonna' hold it. Friday morning rolls around and of course every body's got there mum except Amanda. I get a call from Riley around 9 asking if I'll go to Amanda's house to get it for her. Of course I didn't mind. Problem is she doesn't have a key and I'm gonna' have to jump the gate!! That is definitely NOT a good idea so Riley volunteers to go and jump it for me, get inside, get the mum and then get back to school. All the while I'm supposed to be at work by 9:30 so the timing's looking really iffy. So yes I picked my child up from school to take him to break into his girlfriends house to get the mum and finally every body's happy :)

Learning to Mow

For whatever reason Bailey decided she wanted to learn to mow the lawn...crazy girl right! So here she is with Jeremy and doing a great job I might add.

Rain or Shine

These pictures aren't as clear as the rest because on the second day of our trip it rained hard! No worries, this only made the trip better! The winds picked up and the waves grew stronger making for perfect boogie boarding conditions. We had so much fun playing in the rain! Later that day Riley, Bailey and I dug a tunnel through the sand under Jill's lounge chair. Just as Riley was about to pass through the tunnel for the first time it collapsed. :(