Sunday, January 20, 2008

Don't you wish you were 11 again?

Even though Jacqui's birthday was in December, we still wanted to celebrate with her friends here in North Carolina so we had a birthday party for her! We had 6 preteen girls running around here - as you can imagine, Ski wanted to be as far away as possible and went across the street to watch the UFC fight where the estrogen levels were 95% lower.

Here she is opening her gifts.


The highlight of her birthday was all the webkinz that she got this year. She has 4 of them now.


To keep them busy we did a couple little projects. She wanted to make picture frames so everyone would have something to take home and remember her birthday by.

Here is the finished product.


This is the picture we put in all of the frames!


Instead of a cake, we decided to make cupcakes and let all the girls decorate them.


This was a great idea and they all worked so hard to show their creativity!


Because the stores bring out all of the Valentines stuff the day after Christmas, our only options as far as decorations was red and white.

Then it was time for them to stuff their face!

After they were done with their projects, they decided they were all too cool to hang out with me and went to dance in Jacqui's room. I'll have you know I can do soldier boy just as good if not better...but that's okay! I stayed behind my camera and tried not to "embarrass" her.

Chores, haircuts and silly little girls!

Now that Cadence is walking and talking and developing her own personality, it seems it is pertinent for me to carry my camera around the house just waiting to capture moments like these:

Scene from my day #1-

She has her own chore - which she is very proud of by the way! She gets to feed the dog. On this day she was refilling the bucket that we keep the food in so that she doesn't have to lug this huge bag around. We're not Slave drivers people!!!


She's a hard worker ya'll and digs right in! With each scoop, she got approximately 15 pieces of dog food from the bag to the bucket. But the girl did not want any help! She's independent now!


Scene from my day #2-

How could you not smile when you walk into a room and see this? Not to mention, how do you like her purple sock matched with her white sock. We're all about fashion in this house!


I should have guessed what she was up to under there - her partner in crime is never far behind!!!


Scene from my day #3-

She loves Blueberry pancakes. (and really, is there any other place better to eat them then under the desk?)


Now that you mention it, there is a better place to eat them, as long as your seat stays still...

But, if you look closely, this isn't just any old blueberry pancake that she is eating. This my friends, is a FROZEN Blueberry Pancake!

She is too impatient in the morning for even a 30 second stop in the microwave. Look at the ice still glistening from it even after a couple of bites. However, this is her preferred method of eating them so who am I too judge, I'd eat an entire bowl of chocolate cake batter for breakfast if I could!

Scene from my day #4-

Our baby got her first haircut. Nothing drastic mind you. I was just sick of putting her hair in pony tails and one side was really short while the other one hung halfway to her shoulders. She looked silly.
She did great though - her eyes glued to Strawberry Shortcake while the stylist "cut, cut, cut" her hair as she likes to tell everyone!

We probably could have shaved her entire head as long as she could suck her thumb and watch TV!

As it turned out, sucking her thumb wasn't such a good idea because the next thing we knew, her mouth was full of hair!

Saturday, January 19, 2008

I just keep shaking my head!

A few weeks ago our fridge went out on us. At first we thought it just needed to sit unplugged overnight - you know, good reliable refrigerators need a break sometimes. And to our pleasant surprise, it started right up when we plugged it back in. But it wasn't very long before we heard a weird pop and the strong scent of smoke. It was very convenient really. Especially since the day before I had just went grocery shopping and completely stocked up on everything.

And by everything, I mean every meat you could possibly imagine.

Which meant that over the next couple days I also had to cook every meat you could possibly imagine because you can't just throw it back into the freezer after it thaws! Good times I tell you!

So here it sits, the shell of our old refrigerator. Even after it almost burnt our house down, Ski still didn't want to give up on it. I'm thinking it was really the $550 for a new one he didn't want to give up!


And here is our new one! What I like best about it is that I can open it up and all my food is cold. You can't beat that kind of quality in an appliance!


As Ski and I were filling our fridge with the contents of four coolers my hands started to get really cold. I said to Ski that even though this bucket filled with ice was freezing, I bet it was nothing compared to the water that the people on the Titanic jumped into. My mind just amazes me at some of the observations I come up with! I'm sure your all very impressed as well.


That's all it took before Ski thought of a new game cause you see, we're a team like that! Our minds feed off each other. So - this game - "Lets see who can stand in the water the longest." Yes, my friends - my husband is that creative!

I think Ski made it well into a minute and as you can tell by the look on his face, he made sure everyone heard about how awesome he was. His arms shot into the air like he just won a boxing match and screamed "YES! Beat that losers!" It was very humbling to see him win with such grace!
Matt stayed in the tub for about 30 seconds. A very respectable time I must say!

Then they upped the stakes a little to make it more interesting.

"Who can put their head under water the longest!"

Nothing my family does at this point will surprise me!



Even Caders got in on the action. She stood there for a good 10 seconds! Her father was very proud and cheered her on!

Especially since his two year old daughter stayed in the water longer then her 11 year old sister. Jacqui pretty much stepped in and stepped right back out!

So there you have it - a normal Sunday night at our house!

Friday, January 18, 2008

Happy New Years!

It was a quiet New Years on our street! We just hung out across the Street at our neighbors, playing games. Ski's favorite of course is the new video "Rock Band" game. He was in heaven!


Matt really got into it!!!

Caders rocked out as well!!! She is hilarious!

Then she found her creative side and started painting.

At midnight we lit sparklers - this is probably pretty safe the way he has it hanging out of his mouth like that!

At the stroke of midnight, Ski made sure he gave Jacqui a kiss - whether she liked it or not!

She wasn't too sure about this one!!! Usually the things we give her doesn't spark like that!

I'm not too sure where Matt was when I was taking pictures cause I don't have hardly any of him at all! I always get the "not another picture" look from him though!

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Happy 11th Birthday Jacqu!

So I guess I never realized that with each birthday my kids have, it gets harder and harder to believe that they are a year older. I mean - I have an 11 year old for crying out loud!!

Eleven!

Next year she'll be in middle school!

I swear only 4 minutes ago I was laying in the delivery room giving birth to this tiny miracle while Navy Corpsman in Santa hats watched from a distance waiting to take her and clean her up. I remember thinking about how I wanted to suffocate that Corpsman with his little Santa hat if he told me "the pain was nothing compared to the next 18 years" one more time! Now, it's 11 years later and she's giving me driving directions to places I've been to a thousand times but still seem to get turned around! She's making fun of me for things that I say and do. She lets me know every chance she gets that I just reminded her of "Grandma!" (Shame, by the way! Shame!)

There are times when I think she is my carbon copy: that sassy mouth, the roll of her eyes! Yet there are other times when I think there are two people who couldn't be more different on this planet: her photographic memory that has our neighbors license plate number memorized while I couldn't tell you what my own license plate number is!

This year was the first year she has had an issue with her birthday also being on Christmas. She never really came out and told me what exactly she was upset about. All I could get was "It sucks" but by the end of the night she cheered up and said she had a great birthday!



Wow - eleven. I still can't believe it! I love you Jacqu!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Christmas - in a nut shell!

Well, here it is - the update! I've gotten so many emails asking "Hey - are you going to post on your blog soon??? Hello - where are you???"

I'm here - still in North Carolina. Still not doing much of anything...which includes blogs lately!

Anyway - Christmas! It was great! We went to Ohio to spend the holidays with Ski's family. We officially do not need anything else at this point - especially toys! I've also had my fill of cat allergies for the next little while!

Before we went, we got to enjoy our tree for all of about 8 minutes. But atleast the kids had fun decorating it!



We also opened most of our gifts before we went up to Ohio so that we didn't have to travel with so much stuff. It turned out, that was a really good idea! However, after Ski got a taste of what Matt's guitar hero was all about, it's all he could think about getting back to once vacation was over!
Grandma (Or GG as Cadence started calling her) had a blast hanging out with the kids. They made cookies and went to the zoo and the movies! Ski and I took advantage of time with no kids and went shopping. Not only did I get Ski into a store - but it was also the day after Christmas when the mall was completely insane. Wish I could bottle that kind of persuasion up for use at a later time!!!
It was so much fun to see my sister in law Noel with her cute pregnant belly! We are all so excited to meet little celest when she makes her grand entrance into the world!

The mom and dad to be!!! He looks real "hard" now but wait till you see him wrapped around his little girls finger! It'll be another Ski and Cadence all over again!

God bless their redneck hearts - cleaning their guns after going shooting!

Christmas morning!

She had a rough time this year with her birthday being on Christmas day!The GG's

Matt was the only one that dressed up. Here he is in front of the "fire"

Pork and Kathy drove down from Rogers City to spend the holidays with all of us!

Me and Kathy!


Those two are always messing with each other!


The highlight of Matt's trip was shooting the pellet gun - and of course it just melts my heart to see him teaching her how to shoot! I'm just glad she wasn't pointing it in his direction.

Hope everyone had a great holiday!