Some Summer memories

Last week at this time, mother nature dumped about a foot of snow on North Texas. It was unreal! Aside from going to the mountain as a child, I have never seen that much snow! I should have taken some pictures. But alas, the memory card was full and the camera cord was nowhere to be found.

So I located the cord and downloaded the pictures that were taking up all the space. They really make me miss summer! Come back summer, come back!



Nothing beats small town 4th of July celebrations! Layton, Cameron, and Collin

I love Cam's face in this one!

Cam and Caitlyn hiding out in Grandpa's motorhome. Probably, hiding from Reed the sunflower seed spitter.

Uncle Layton and his 4 little summertime shadows.

Caleigh's birthday feast at Nanny's house.

Brandon, Cameron, Caitlyn, Collin, and Layton at Cameron's Survivorman birthday party.

Cameron's cake- he had to find it using his best survival skills.

Caitlyn acting like she can tolerate Caleigh. Just a couple of days after she tried to drown her in the Safford pool.

Brandon and Cameron getting ready for the 4th of July parade.

Cameron, Caleigh, and Nanny with Caleigh's birthday horsie.


Somewhere in West Texas. I think it's about where 10 turns into 20.

I just liked this one...

This little piggy...

***Not an actual picture of our piggies, but close!

These little piggies we adopted are funny.

The brown one is quite a bit bigger than the black one.
But the little black one has an ornery streak.
We introduced them today, and after spending the better part of the morning sniffing each other, eating hay together, and pooping on the floor together, I decided to move them to their cage.
Two pigs in one cage is a lot noisier than two pigs in two cages.
But it's also a lot more fun.
They mostly eat.
Then they wrestle.
And they squeak at each other a bit.
It's like having two boys who are 18 months apart.
The fighting.
The "seeing who's toughest".
The wrestling.
The companionship.
The love.
Awww...I think we'll keep them around.

Another month already?

It's been another month since my last blog post. Wow! I'm so awesome at this. Hmmm....what have we done this month? Last month was Collin's 8th birthday. It feels really weird to have an 8 year old. I think I wrote about his birthday in my last post.

The kids and I spent a week in Arizona for my younger sister's wedding. It was great to see everyone who was able to make it down. Arizona was hit with three major snow storms while we were out, so most of our family was snowed in. It was neat to look at the mountain after the snow storm. The snow line was right above the mesas at the base of Mt. Graham. Talk about breathtaking! I really wish I would have taken a picture! Erin was a beautiful bride, and I am so excited to watch her go through married life. Her husband is a really nice guy, and he is absolutely crazy about her.



Yesterday we celebrated Caitlyn's birthday. She is 5! It just amazes me how fast the time has gone. She is definitely a princess, a little hard headed and ornery, but sweet at the same time. We went to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate with Grandpa Bryant, Aunt Erin, Uncle Craig, and Uncle Bart. I think Uncle Bart wants to get a cd (sorry, itune... cds are so 1990s!) with all the Chuck E Cheese music on it- he loved hearing Chuck E Cheese sing, especially after we had been there for two hours and the songs were on about their 7th rotation! Good thing he's a good sport because we stayed about another hour-and-a-half.

We also adopted two guinea pigs. One is a small black and white one, and the other is brown and white. They are adorable. The kids love them, especially Cameron. When I brought them home, the kids yelled, "Yeah! Our first pets that live in air!" Poor kids have only had fish their whole lives.

John is still liking his new job. He's been training for about 5 months now, and conducting examinations since the beginning of December. He says the best thing about the job is learning tax law and how to apply it to so many different situations. The worst thing is the constant paperwork.

Now I just need to find a job. I think I am going to work part time at the hospital, probably nights in admitting, then go to work with the school district when Caleigh goes to school. I'm about 90% sure she is our last child, so I want to stay home and cherish her babyhood, since I didn't do that with the other kids.

I guess that's our month in a nutshell!

Week in Review

I've been in a cooking mood this week! It was cold, cold, cold all week, so I think that had something to do with it. On Thursday, the hubs got to work from home because there were lots of wrecks on the interstate, so he wouldn't have made it to the office until after 9. His boss told him to go home, finish working his cases, and call him if he had any questions. That was nice. He holed up in our bedroom with his laptop, and I found myself harassing him with regularity. I'm sure he enjoyed that aspect of his day ;)

We have a birthday boy in the house today! I can't believe my Collin Bug is 8! I think we will go bowling to celebrate.

I made Caleigh a tutu this week. I used this tutorial that my cousin used to make her girls their Christmas tutus. It's super easy, but takes a while. I am making a couple for Caitlyn for her birthday next month as well. She loves dress up.

I also made chocolate pie using this recipe from the Homesick Texan. Pure heaven. I even made the meringue topping. For some reason, meringue has always intimidated me. But it's EASY! If you get a chance, check out the Homesick Texan's other recipes. The chicken fried steak sounds divine! I am going to attempt it sometime this week.

The kids are settling back in to school. I still haven't figured out where Christmas break went. Oh well, we are taking a week off to attend my sister's wedding soon, so we will get some good family time in then as well :)

I guess that sums it all up!

Back to school.

I just sent the kids back to school after their Christmas break. Somehow we acquired a sock monster over the weekend, so it was nearly impossible to find the kids matching socks this morning. When I looked in the dirty clothes hamper, there weren't *that* many dirty socks, so I have no clue where the darned socks are. Apparently, the sock monster is also a uniform pants monster because he gobbled up all of Collin's uniform pants, leaving only a lone sad pair with ripped knees. Poor Collin. He's so picked upon.

One of my goals for this year is to cook more, so this morning I made the kids pancakes for breakfast. Their school feeds them breakfast, so they usually either eat that or I toss some cold cereal at them right as the bus is rounding the corner to our house. We'll see how long this whole cooking thing lasts. The kids seemed rather impressed when I woke them up and they had nice big plates of pancakes waiting for them.

Today I am going to attempt to make tutus for the girls. We have pink and yellow tulle, so hopefully my little project will be a success. If it is, I'll post pictures and the girls will be subjected to photoshoot after photoshoot with my trusty point and shoot non-focusable camera, and you'll never hear the end of my craftiness. If it bombs, I'll never speak of it again.

The clock tower just chimed 8 times, so I had better get busy!

Out With the Old...in with the new...

I can't believe it is 2010! Last night we got together with friends for a while, then let the kids stay up to greet the new year. Cam and Caitlyn fell asleep about 5 minutes before midnight, but Collin made it!

I wasn't a very good blogger this year, but these are some of our ups and downs of 2009:

January- Collin turned 7. Wow! I can't believe I have a 7 year old! John was a new grad, job hunted, had a transfer fall through, and it seemed like every company he contacted had entry level positions frozen.

February- More of the same. Caitlyn turned 4! What the heck?!? How did that happen??? Started looking into moving to Alaska for me to teach school. John accepted a promotion at work.

March- John turned 33! What an old fart! hehehe! Spring Break! The kids and I traveled to Arizona with my father-in-law to visit family. It was a great trip! I think I was in Arizona for our anniversary. Wow! 8 years!

April- I don't really remember anything special about April. I think I was in a vicodin/Lortab-induced stupor for most of this month. Darn sciatica! ugh!

May- The last full month of school. Caitlyn, Caleigh and I went to the zoo with Collin. It was fun. We made a quick trip to Arizona for my grandmother's funeral. She was ready to go, so it was nice to have an "excuse" to get together with la familia.

June- School was out! We left for Arizona toward the middle of the month. I got serious about finding a teaching position in Alaska, and John put in for another transfer. He also applied and interviewed for an internship program with the federal government. The kids and I spent time with my family- going to games, playing in the sprinkler, taking rides up the mountain, and just enjoying everyone.

July- Caleigh turned 1! Cameron turned 6! Holy Swiss cheese, they're growing up so fast! We had a survivor man birthday party for Cameron on the mountain. It was great! He loved it! We got to meet up with my cousin in Mesa. It was great to catch up with her after all these years. She is great! John's transfer fell through and my job search fell through as well. We were pretty discouraged, but we figured that no matter what, the sun keeps on shining and life goes on. We started looking into masters programs for John, so he could start getting enough hours to sit for his CPA.

August- We started getting ready for school to start again. In the middle of the month, a recruiter contacted John about the internship program he had applied for with the federal government. It is a two year appointment that could convert to a career appointment, so he decided to go for it. Lots of paperwork later, he was accepted into the program.

September- John started working for the IRS. The kids started school. Life settled into a nice little routine. The kids all love their teachers. They have awesome teachers this year!

October- John continues 1040 classroom training. We had a fun Halloween. Collin was a ninja, Cameron was a cave man, Caitlyn was a tinkerbell, and Caleigh was a chicken. We made a quick trip to Mississippi to visit John's sister and her family. I can't believe how grown up her boys are!

November- Thanksgiving was fun! We hosted John's family here at our house. Erin, Craig, Jesse, and John's dad all joined us for a feast! John finished Phase 1 of his classroom training, and started the first part of on-the-job training.

December- I turned 29 for the first of many times. John conducted his first examination. We celebrated Christmas. The kids got bikes for Christmas this year and Caleigh and Caitlyn got a doll house. It snowed on Christmas Eve, and it was so cold that night that we woke up to a semi-white Christmas.

What a year! This year was a mixture of ups and downs, with lots of visits to the park and vanilla coke from sonic thrown in for good measure.

Good bye 2009! Hello 2010!