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.