Dinners with Friends

Me, Amy J., Amy B. and Shelly
Amy, Me and Holli


Oh, Holli and Amy!! I miss you guys so much. I don't often have many positive things to say about our stay in England but I did make some great friends! Actually several great friends. Amy and Holli were both back for home leave and for the holidays and they were kind enough to make time for me. CAT wives are all kind of thrown together when they move to England-kind of like a sorority. You kind of have to figure out who you hit it off with and who you don't. There are only around 30 or so women. I was lucky enough to make several friendships. The beautiful thing is that 99% of us will move back to the same area. Amy and Tina are actually moving back within the next couple of months and I look forward to us getting together. Holli says she LOVES England and is in no hurry to get back-but WHATEVER!!!! Okay, I am happy she is happy. I hadn't seen Amy and Holli in 7 months but I felt as if no time had passed-fun times. Kyle and I also went out to eat with Kent and Becki on Fri. night and had a great time-we met them in England too. I also ate out with some friends from high school within the last week-Amy, Shelly and Amy B. Amy B. lives a ways away and I hadn't seen her in three years or so and it was fun to catch up. Oh, yeah-I also ate out with Kristen and Jenny this week-I see and talk to them lots but it is always fun to get together. Yeah, after all this eating out I guess my diet should start.

Christmas 2008

This holiday season has gone by incredibly quickly! I even already took our tree and decorations down. After Christmas I just like to get everything put away, the house cleaned and new toys in place. We always look so forward to Christmas time because Kyle always has 2 weeks off work. We love this!!! His hours are so long throughout the year that having him home consistently for 2 weeks is a huge treat. The kids had a great Christmas. They were very happy with their gifts and are happy to be off school for awhile and I am thrilled to have them home. Faith's favorite Christmas gift was her cell phone, Sawyer's was his fish tank and Eden's was her Nintendo DS. Kyle's parents got us Rock Band 2 and we are having a ton of fun with it. The kids all love playing the drums and Faith and Sawyer like to sing. They love "Eye of the Tiger". We had both sets of parents over on Christmas Day. The grandmas do most of the food preparation and we always fondue. I am guessing Beckett's is his push/ride-on toy-he loves pushing it around. Beckett is also taking 3 or so steps at a time and saying "uh-oh" and is trying to say "kitty" and "stinky"-it is so cute.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Some Random Thoughts and Photos

I have a busy week this week. In fact, I am skipping the gym this whole week so I can get some things accomplished like cleaning the house, wrapping gifts, etc.. On Friday night I am having some friends over for a little gift exchange (this spurred my cleaning frenzy). Faith and Sawyer both have class parties tomorrow and I need to get teacher gifts ready plus bus driver gifts, primary (church) teacher gifts. I also want to get a few of our neighbors a little something since they were so helpful to us when we moved in. Kyle will have almost 2 weeks of work off which we look forward to every year. He works such long hours the rest of the year that we get so excited to have him home with us!!! My parents came over Monday and added a tile back splash in my kitchen. I LOVE IT!! It looks great. My dad worked so hard on cutting all the tile and putting it up. My mom and Kyle did most of the grouting. What did I do??? Not much-not my thing-I wiped it down some the next day. THANKS DAD!! Mom also watched the kids while I had my hair done (my roots were looking pretty bad). My mom also helped with picking out the tile and strongly encouraging me to add the trim piece in the middle-THANKS MOM! So I have posted some before and after pics. of the kitchen-the "afters" come before the "befores"-sorry. I also have some of Eden from her pre-school Christmas program. She is attending a Methodist pre-school this year so they did actually sing about Jesus. Also, in case you wonder how I get anything done during the day with a now 11 month old-it is because I put him in this backpack-which he LOVES. I think he would sit in there all day! I vacuum, make dinner, wrap gifts-you name it-with him in there. I thought I better blog about the backpack because I will forget someday. I also added some of Bex-he turned 11 mo. on Monday. I will be crying when he turns "one". Within the next couple of weeks I will be seeing some of my friends who are back visiting from England as well as some old high school friends-can't wait!!

Am I Crazy!

Well, this is what my life has come to...waiting in line for 2 HOURS for an autograph for my girls. Dylan and Cole Sprouse (aka Zack and Cody from Suite Life) made an appearance at an ice hockey game here in town so we bought tickets to enjoy the game but mostly to get these guys autographs. You would think it was Brad Pitt signing autographs. We let Faith and Sawyer each bring a friend but only the girls were interested in the autograph. The thing is after waiting in line about 1/2 hour they were tired so Kyle came out and got them and took them into watch the game and I stood in line holding 23 lb Beckett for the next hour and a half. Beckett did not want to sit with Kyle and was crying. I did make friends with the people in front and behind me so that made time go more quickly. I was also starving and was wanting some greasy game food. I talked "their people" into letting me snap a photo but my camera takes too long (it is a piece of crap) and they were shoving me along and I didn't get one. Another of Faith's friends from school was there and her mom managed to get one so she is supposed to email it to me. After they were done signing autographs, they watched the game from a box seat behind us so we were able to gawk at them from there-once again we tried to get a picture but my camera stinks. Here are some photos of us in line and a poor attempt of pictures of them. All of my kids love their program so it was fun to see them in person and it was worth waiting in line. The local ice hockey team won as well. In the 3rd picture down-they are the 3rd and 5th persons from the left.

Beckett's First Haircut

Yeah, I know I said I was NEVER going to cut his hair-well, I changed my mind. Actually, Eden decided to cut her own hair on Sunday-a nice big chin-length chunk off the front. She is the FIRST of my children to do this and I figured since she is now five that the scissors were safe. So, I took her in to get it all evened out. They had an opening so I decided that Bex was looking pretty shaggy and to get him done too. He was such a good boy. I took them to this place called "Cookie Cutters." It is for kids and they have these cute little chairs for them to sit in and they get to pick out a DVD to watch while they get their hair cut. It turned out cute. Eden's hair actually looks really cute too but I haven't gotten a photo yet. They cut at least 5 inches off so it is just barely below her shoulders and added some layers to make it go with the chunk she cut off. She thinks she is pretty hot with her new "do". She is growing up way to fast for me.

SNOW!!

On Sat. night as we were driving home from my parents house Kyle casually mentioned that we were supposed to get a "dusting" of snow overnight. Well, it was more like 5 or 6 inches! Sawyer woke up early and was running from window to window making sure that there was indeed snow in the back of the house like there was in the front. Just as a reminder- we had been in England the last two winters where they barely get any, if any, snow at all. My kids were so excited! They got dressed pretty quickly and make their way outside to play in it-Kyle too. They made a fort (actually Kyle made it) and two snowmen. Sawyer spent 3 hours in it until he had to come in and get ready for church. We have a berm in our backyard that worked great for the sled.

Thanksgiving

I have a lot of photos I want to put on from the last week. I will start with Thanksgiving. I barely took any photos of Thanksgiving-WHAT WAS I THINKING!! Anyways, we hosted this year which was wonderful! The main reason we put in double ovens was for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Tyler and his family came up from Texas. Their girls are 9 and 6 so they love playing with Faith and Eden. They had a new baby, Teagan in Sept. so we were all so excited to meet her. My parents and mother-in-law were also here. My father-in-law went to Florida to spend time with his parents. I was only responsible for the turkey and the rolls. I bought the rolls at Wal-mart but I did bake the turkey - I even reached inside of it to get the giblets and neck out -YUCK! That is just not my thing. The highlight was the shopping on black Friday!! I have missed that for the last two years in England. My mom, sis-in-law and I were up at 4 am to go and get some great deals. I won't say what we bought because Faith and Kalista both read my blog. We had a wonderful time together and stayed out until 4 pm. We even took Teagan and Bex with us. LOVED IT!!!! Can't wait for next year!!! I did buy myself a purse that I LOVE that was regularly $108 and I got it for $25. The picture of Sawyer is of him during his Thanksgiving program at school. It was just his 2nd grade class and he did a great job. I can't end this post without saying how THANKFUL I am for ALL I have been blessed with. I have so much!!!