My new hairstyle

Ok, first it's a bad picture....something was wrong with my lens on my camera, so it looks a little blurry. Second, I had impetigo....AGAIN!! That's the hideous "wound" under my bottom lip....I'm not sure what's causing me to get it...this was the third time I've had it! Thirdly, I was wearing my work shirt when I took the picture. It's not the most photogenic style of shirt to wear, but it's what I had on, so there it is....LOL. And last, but not least, I hadn't really "styled" my hair....it was a little less than perfect...but oh well.....



Here it is:

Now this is A LOT of snow!!!

These are pictures of the snow storm that we got on 12/8/09 through 12/9/09....

sorry, it's kind of old news....I'm a HUGE procrastinator. It takes me awhile to get pictures from my camera to my computer...LOL.

This one was taken at about 1:00 in the afternoon....we had already gotten about 4 inches of snow by now. (Kylee swiped her arm up the banister right before I took this picture)

This was a path I cleared for our dog, Nugget, so he could walk out to the yard to go potty...it only took about 10 minutes for the patio to be covered in snow again!

This is our deck railing later in the afternoon....probably about 4:00 p.m.

Remeber that path I cleared for Nugget? Where'd it go? This was taken only about two hours later!!

This one's kinda hard to see because it was snowing so much...the flash from my camera was reflected off of the snow! Notice the patio chair.....the snow is only up to the legs of the chair (about 1/2 way up to the seat)....

This one was taken the next morning....this HUGE icicle was right outside of our bedroom patio door...I'd say it was about 3 to 3 1/2 feet long (maybe longer...I'm not very good at guesstimating..LOL)!!

Our patio table up on the deck.....keep in mind, this table is not a solid surface...there are "holes" in it, so it took quite a bit of snow to accumulate and become nearly 14" deep!!

Remember this chair? Now look how far the snow is!!!

The kids ended up having two days off from school due to this snowstorm!

We still have a lot of this snow left and now they're saying we could be getting more!!!

I love snow, but geesh, enough's enough! LOL

Our New Patio

We had been wanting to enlarge our patio for years, and this was the year it was going to happen! I was so excited! Here's a picture of how it looked before (this was taken early in the morning, so the shadows are really deep since the sun was just coming up).

(Oh, I remembered to load the pictures from end to beginning, so they're in order...LOL)

It was a sufficient patio, but just wasn't big enough for everything we wanted to do with it. We had received a patio fireplace for Christmas two years ago from my stepdaughter and her family and we haven't been able to use it because we just didn't have enough room on the patio for it....of course, in the picture it looks big with nothing on it, but we had had a table and four chairs, a glider, a deck box and a portable basketball hoop out there before moving it all off! And the kids like to ride their three-wheelers and bikes on the patio too, so it was kinda crowded!

They had to make several cuts through the concrete in order to pull it out. They had considered just jackhammering it out, but with our patio doors being so close, they didn't want to risk a chunk of cement flying up and breaking a window! So they took it out in large pieces.

All the old cement is gone!



This thing was awesome! I had never seen one "in action" so I was totally enthralled with it...LOL....this huge machine sucks the cement from the cement truck, through that long hose and to wherever they need it to go....
(I took this picture through our bathroom window, so you can kinda see the screen in the picture...LOL)

.....they were parked on our driveway and then raised that "hose" over our swimming pool and deck, back to the backyard and over to the site of the new patio! It was an awesome sight!

Then, as one guy kinda guides the "hose" while the cement pours out of it, several other guys are shoving and pushing and smoothing and leveling the cement....it looked like sheer chaos, but they certainly knew what they were doing!

You can see from this picture that the cement under our deck is regular color cement (gray) and our new cement is kind of a tan/brown color....this is because it is going to be Stamped Concrete....just wait till you see the finished product!

This is the process of stamping the concrete....they use some kind of powder and these big rubber sheets that have a pattern on one side....as they lay it down they "stamp" the cement with the pattern and the powder is the color that "stains" the cement.

When they finished stamping the concrete, it was covered with powder, so we couldn't really tell what it was going to look like....they told us not to judge whether we liked it or not until after they came to spray it off.....and boy did that make a difference! They sprayed it off with water and the shine to it was so beautiful....and one of the guys said "it'll look even better than this after we put the sealer on"....so I was anxious to see it!

Drumroll please...............

TA DA!!! This is the finished patio after one of the two coats of sealer.....it looks like one big piece of flagstone...the dark spots that you see in the picture are leaves that blew onto it....they didn't get stuck in the sealer though, thank goodness...LOL

This whole process took only two days....of course, we were suppose to stay off of it for a few days to allow the sealer to cure, but as soon as we could, we were outside checking it out! I'm so anxious for spring and summer to get here now!!!

October '09

I'm going back in time a little bit to get everyone caught up....

I always forget to load my pictures from bottom to top, so you'll be viewing things backwards in time...LOL

Here are Kylee and Josh all dressed up for Halloween...Kylee is SuperGirl and Josh is Superman....kinda obvious for most, but some people as we were trick-or-treating, didn't know who Kylee was suppose to be....LOL...it was actually a fairly pleasant evening....we did take jackets for later because I knew they'd get cold.

Kylee carved her own pumpkin this year....her's is the one closest to Josh...I had to help her a little bit with the mouth, but otherwise she did it all. I carved Josh's with his input on how it should look. :o)

Kylee and Josh celebrated their birthdays on October 18th....I still can't believe they're 8 and 5! Josh will be starting kindergarten next fall and that means both of my kids will be in school all day, 5 days a week! Woo Hoo! LOL Which also means mom gets to go back to working days!

Here's a picture of the cake I made for Josh

And here's the cake I made for Kylee

The following pictures actually happened earlier in the day (remember, the pictures loaded backwards in time...LOL)

Here's Kylee posing in the massive pile of leaves we raked up in the backyard

And Joshua....he was pretending the pile of leaves was a race car! :o)

Playing in the leaves is so much fun!

Did ya miss me?

Well, it's happened again...I just recently realized I haven't blogged in quite awhile....since October 18th to be exact!! Man, it's amazing how fast the time flies! And before we know it, it'll be 2010!

We had an awesome Thanksgiving. Traditionally, we would go to Grandma B's house at noon, eat dinner then hang around all afternoon getting ideas for Christmas gifts for all the kids. Then about 6:00 p.m. we eat supper, clean up and everyone leaves usually by 7:30 to 8:00. This year was a little different though.....Grandma B had knee surgery on the 11th of November, so we offered to have it at our house. Grandma B still cooked the turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, bread dressing and yams, and then brought them over here, then everybody else brought a side dish, dessert, etc. I got so full! I made my famous Cranberry Pasta Salad and two (yes, 2) Mile High Fudge Brownie Pies. This pie is awesome! Even though there were many other choices for dessert, my pies were the most popular....I cut them into 12 slices each and there were only 6 slices left at the end of the day! It's a super easy pie to make too....if you'd like the recipe, just let me know.

I got my Christmas tree up two weeks before Thanksgiving, but I didn't decorate it since we were hosting Thanksgiving dinner. I thought it would take away from the Thanksgiving feeling if I already had Christmas decorations up. So the Sunday after Thanksgiving the kids and I got the whole house and the tree decorated while we listened to Christmas music!

OH, I almost forgot, I got my hair cut and colored the Monday before Thanksgiving.....I'll try to get a picture taken and posted sometime soon.

Gettin' things back to normal

About two weeks ago, I left the house at about 1:30 p.m. for an appointment. I was only gone about 45 minutes. When I got home, my husband called me to ask me something and while I was on the phone with him, I kept hearing what sounded like water running somewhere. Well, this sound is typical because when we run our underground sprinklers, it makes this same noise, so I wasn't too alarmed. However, I thought it was kinda strange that it would be on at this time of day. So, out of curiosity, I went to check and make sure there wasn't something running downstairs (i.e. toilet, faucet, etc.) totally not expecting to find anything....I still thought it was the sprinklers running.

I'm still on the phone with my husband when I walk into the hallway downstairs and I see water coming out of the closed bathroom door and the carpet is soaked!!! I tell my husband "OH MY GOD THERE'S WATER IN THE BASEMENT!!!!" He says "I'll be right home!"

In the meantime, I knew I had to get the main water shut-off turned off, and it's in the bathroom, so I open the door and water just pours out of the room! It was about 6 inches deep in there with the door closed, so of course when I opened the door it came rushing out into the hallway. I notice when I get to the shut-off where the water is coming from.....the sprinkler pump! It was just gushing out the end! I got the water turned off and went back out and shut the door to try to contain the water that was left in the bathroom, but it was still seeping out around and under the door.

Our basement consists of a bathroom, bedroom/office, furnace room, a hallway, storage room and a large family room......all but the family room and half of the storage room was affected by the water. It was a mess! My husband used the shop-vac and got a ton of water out of the carpet (it's a 10 gallon shop-vac and he dumped it about 15 times over the course of 3 days!!!) We had to rent these big fans to blow under the carpet and a commercial size dehumidifier to help get rid of all the moisture before mold started to grow. It has been a HUGE pain in the butt. After about 5 days, the moisture is finally gone and we can start getting things put back. The carpet guys are coming tomorrow to re-install some of the carpet and re-stretch the other carpet that didn't get pulled out. Then we have to re-paint some of the walls that got wet. Then we'll start putting everything back in it's place.

We've got a few days of work ahead of us, but at least it's starting to look like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All in all this "mishap" will have cost us about $1000.00.....not a good thing when we're only 10 weeks away from Christmas!!

I just have to thank God (thank you God!) that it happened when it did. My husband told me a day or two after it happened that usually he turns the water off when we go on vacation, but when we went to Branson back in August, he DIDN'T turn the water off.....just imagine how big of a mess THAT would've been had it happened while we were gone for a WEEK!!! This was MINOR compared to what it could've been!

My Cutie Patootie's 8!

Kylee decided MONTHS ago that she wanted a Luau themed birthday party this year (even though her birthday is in October). So we went with it! I had to start shopping for it clear back in July though, cuz I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find Luau items in October!

Kylee posing in front of the Aloha banner that we used as a photo background.

We did a Flip-Flop craft where they took strips of fabric and tied them to the straps of the flip-flops. They each had the option of having charms glued to them also. Of course, they all chose to have them glued on, so I was a busy beaver....LOL

In between crafts (and while they were waiting for me to get done gluing), they danced to

"Aloha Oe", "Kokomo", "Blue Hawaii" and several other "Luau themed" songs.
(notice our dog, Nugget, trying to get in on the action....LOL)

Here they are working on their Foam Frame craft. I took each of the girls' picture and printed them off. At the end of the party, they got to take their framed picture home!


Kylee told me after her guests all left "This was one of my best birthday parties ever! Thank you mommy." She can be such a sweetheart!

She's already planning what she wants to do for next year.......uuuggghhh!!! LOL

Not much going on

I haven't been on here in quite awhile....there just hasn't been much going on. As I've reported before, my life is pretty boring. Plus, I'm addicted to Facebook....and that's a lot of the reason why I haven't been blogging much lately. But I will try to write something every once in awhile....like today :o)

TTYL

A peek at our vacation (pic heavy)

Well, we've been back for 5 days now and it amazes me how easy it was to fall right back into the old routine. Only thing now is that school is staring in 6 days....so we're gearing up for that. That helps mix things up a bit.

Anyways, here's some pictures from our trip.....

Here's a couple views from a scenic overlook, looking down on Branson

Those two small white dots in the water are fly fishermen....that's how high up we were...LOL

This is a view of the sheer drop-off that was just past the chain-link fence that kept a person from falling over....didn't give a very good sense of security.

Kylee driving the DUKW (Ride the Ducks). These "vehicles" were made for the military so they could go from land to water easily....if you've never taken a ride on The Duck, you have to do it....it's fun!

Joshua driving the DUKW

The Titanic Museum....I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside, so I was only able to get the outside :o(

Part of the water park at our hotel.....we had a BLAST there!

Me, helping Kylee to do flips in the water....that's her, upside down in the water...LOL

The Dump Bucket....probably the best part of the water park....waiting patiently for it to fill up....

.......here it goes.....

.....KER-SPLASH!!!!

Daddy and Kylee playing Foosball and Joshua playing Air Hockey in the background in the game room at our hotel.

The long hallway to our hotel room

Our hotel room

The Shanghai Theater where we saw the Acrobats of China Show.....VERY AWESOME SHOW!!! Of course, no pictures could be taken inside, so I only got the outside again.

Daddy helping Kylee learn how to shoot pool

The long trip home.....they both fell asleep....YAY for mommy and daddy!! LOL

Hope you enjoyed the pictures.....it was a fun trip! I'm hoping to get to go back there soon! :o)

Getting ready for vacation!

Only 3 days before we leave for vacation! I'm so excited and anxious!

We had originally planned on going to South Dakota for vacation, but found out that the Sturgis Motor Rally was the same week we were going to be there. We didn't want to have to fight the crowds, plus the hotel rates are ridiculous for that week.....we checked several hotels and they were all around $250 PER NIGHT!!!! The cheapest one I found was $224. Anything cheaper than that was already booked for that week. Sooooo, we reassessed our destination and came up with either Estes Park, Colorado or Branson, Missouri.......Branson won! We figured the kids would have more fun in Branson. Plus I found a hotel with an all-inclusive waterpark for only $95 per night!!! I will take lots of pictures and try to post some when we get back.

Right now I'm having some major issues with my laptop, so I'm going to cut this short.

WOW....it's been awhile!

I just noticed the date of my last blog and thought "holy cow, it's been awhile!" I'm sure I have a ton of things to update ya'll on, but I'm not going to take the time. I'll just have to start fresh after this post. Besides, I'm terrible at getting my pictures loaded onto my computer in order to upload them on here. I still haven't loaded pictures from the beginning of May and here it is almost July!

All the technology out there was suppose to make our lives easier, when in fact it has only made my life more disorganized and chaotic. When I used a 35mm camera I took every roll of film in to be developed as soon as it was full......now, with my digital camera, I have two years worth of pictures that I haven't gotten printed yet!!! OMG, how am I ever going to catch up?! UGH!

Then, the other day, the AC/DC adapter for my laptop crapped out and I was without a computer for 2 1/2 days! By day two I was starting to have withdrawls...LOL

But anyway, I will try to keep up a little better from here on out......but I won't promise. :o)

Kylee's First Softball game

Kylee wanted to try coach-pitch softball this summer, so I got her signed up and her first game was Thursday night. For having never played softball before, she did an AWESOME job!

This was her second At-bat...she got two strikes.....

.....and then BOOM....she hit the ball and ran for first....

The next batter hit the ball and she made it to third base!!
Then the next batter hit the ball and she ran to home base!!!!! WOO HOO! She scored a point for the team!
I didn't get a picture of her run to home plate cuz I was too busy cheering and clapping....LOL

Her team won 4 to 1...it was so much fun watching them....I can't wait for the next game!