I'm Feelin' Sassy

I have been growing my hair out for 2 1/2 years and I just chopped it all off. It feels great to have a new do.


Not a great picture...but I hate taking pictures of myself and don't want to ask a coworker to take one of me at work.
Can you tell I LOVE this shirt? I wear it way too much.

Mom I'm home and we have a ....

Saturday afternoon I was in the back feeding Sophie when I heard Todd and Tayson home from a "quick errand" to the pet store to buy a starfish for Todd's aquarium. I know better than to let Todd go to the fish store since I can't think of a time he has managed to leave the fish store with the "one item he needs to pick up". I thought we were safe this time since he had already visited his favorite fish store earlier in the day and he doesn't like the store he had to go to in order to pick up this particular starfish (which is food for 2 of his shrimp...sick!).

So Tayson walks in and yells "Mom I'm home and we have a lizard". What? He's joking! Nope. He had a lizard and all the goods to go along with it. I was so mad when I saw them I actually said "what the crap?" right in front of the kids. Of course at this point I can't make them take it back or I would break Tayson's heart. UGH!!!

I have the feeling the lizard won't last more than a week or so before he escapes from one of the boys and Shadow eats it. Luke isn't scared at all and loves to hold him but Claire is petrified of the lizard.


The boys made their pet a new home out of Lego's.



He's a very fast lizard so it was hard to get a picture of Tayson holding him. Good thing Todd is fast and can catch it when it gets away.

Flashback Friday - Kittens

My mom got a kitten last year and she just had her first little of her own. Three adorable little kittens. All the grand kids love playing with them. Here are some pictures of the kids with two of them.


Luke and Tayson holding the kittens (Sherry yours is the sweet gray one)


Claire isn't sure if she likes them or not so grandpa was helping her.

Now for the flashback...

We always had at least 1 cat growing up. We had SO many pets. A dog, a cat (or two), a guinea pig, rabbits, gerbils, hamsters, goldfish, frogs, a snapper turtle...and I'm sure I've missed a few. We didn't have all of these pets at the same time. But we had a dog, a cat and at least one other pet all the time. (I could write story after story about our pets growing up and I should so I have them all documented because they are hilarious.)

This is a picture of Patches and one of her litters. Oh how I loved our calico Patches. She was the best cat. She was queen of the house and we would carry her around on a pillow. She was an amazing hunter and every time she had kittens in order to teach them she would bring injured but still alive animals in the house (mice, a baby bird, a baby bunny, moles, etc). She would let her kittens play with them then she would kill them - totally disturbing!!! I remeber crying for hours when I found patches on the side of the road dead. I loved that cat and didn't really like any other cats we had after her.


George, Steve, Danny and Sherry on the front row.
Me on the back row.

Notice the sweet perm? It was my first perm ever and I HATED it. Sherry always called me a poodle and I would cry! My mom threatened me with a perm if I didn't start fixing my hair - and as you can see she won that battle.

Like Father .... Like Son

I decided to put my new blogging camera to good use this past week. Every time I picked up a pair of Todd or Tayson's socks I took a picture.

For some reason they both have a habit of taking off their socks wherever they are and leave them for the house sock fairy (see #18)to take care of. I thought about leaving the socks laying around the house and not washing them until they ran out...but I couldn't handle leaving them for more than a few hours before they drove me crazy and I just picked them up. When Todd realized what I was doing he actually tried to remember to pick up his socks so I would have less evidence.

Here are a few pictures from the past week (the bottom row are all Tayson's socks)

How do you spell....

This morning while I was finishing getting ready for work Luke was in playing nickjr.com on the computer (Claire and Chelsea were both in there too). The game Luke was playing had him type in his name so I heard him spell L-U-K-E while he typed and then I heard the following conversation:

Chelsea: what does that spell?
Luke: bubba
Chelsea: No bubba starts with a buh sound what does L-U-K-E spell?
Luke: It's MY name. It says bubba

Apparently giving him a nickname and calling him it all the time wasn't such a great idea. He can spell and write his name but he thinks it says bubba. He is really going to struggle with reading and phonetics!!! Oh well, it's too late now and really bubba just fits the kid. None of our other kids have nicknames but that one just worked for him. I'm not sure if Claire knows his name is Luke.

A side note: I am hating yummy smelling candles right now! They make me so hungry and I am not supposed to have treats....especially right before bed. UGH!

Pick up lines

While at Chili's for my birthday desert Todd and I were paying more attention to other's conversations than talking (it's a sign of a long, healthy marriage right?). Let me first describe the "players" Boy #1 is in the orange shirt, Boy#2 is the balding one in all black w/shorts and Boy #3 is in jeans and striped polo. The ladies are in red and green behind Todd and weren't co-operating with my stealth photo taking.


I got to use my brand new blogging camera to take a quick photo as the action happened (notice Todd pretending to be the focus of my shot...of course that was just a ploy to not look so obvious)



So we here the following conversation...

Boy #1 to both Ladies: Hey. Can my friend ask you a question?
Ladies: Ummmmm sure
Boy #2: Do you like Boys to Men?
Ladies: some mumbling we couldn't hear
Boy #2: They are only the BEST band of the 20th century.
Ladies: OK
Boy #2: My friend (points to boy #3) is doing their show if you want to come just give him your number and he'll send you an e-vite.
Ladies: So we get an invite or we get to go?
Boy #2: It will put you on the "list" and you are in for sure.
Ladies: No response (that we could hear)
conversation is over.

I was laughing so hard at this conversation and even more at the fact that I pulled out my blogging camera for a quick shot of the scene. I've only done this once before. The rest of the night I kept trying to think back to the single days to the best pick up line ever used on me and for the life of me couldn't remember any. How sad is that!?! I know I had some good ones back in the days.

Any of you have any good ones?

A Perfect Birthday

Yesterday I turned 36 years old! Man that sounds so old and I do NOT feel that old, it must be Todd and the kids that keep me feeling young.

For my birthday I wanted to go on a bike ride and I really wanted Todd to come and who could turn down a birthday request like that. So we loaded our bikes up and headed over to Traci's to ride up Southfork. And this is what we saw...



And here we are....


Hans, Traci and Josie (who obviously did not go on the ride), Kami, Me, Todd, and Leigh Anne

It was a little overcast (we started around 10:30 am) and by the time we got in the canyon and started up the mountain the rain came. It rained on us the entire 4 1/2 miles up (lightning and thunder included) then stopped sometime on our way down. The road was wet and there were lots of leaves on the ground, so it was a little scary and I didn't go fast coming down. Luckily, there were no casualties. Todd rocked the house for his first ride up Southfork! Even with the rain and wind the ride was awesome and we earned the right to a yummy b-day dinner at Cafe Rio.

Then after dinner Todd and I went to Chili's for desert (I really didn't want a whole b-day cake around the house) and we had molten lava cake...yummy!!!



Then we went to see "The Dark Knight". I realize I am way behind the times, but a newborn will do that to you.

It was such a great b-day! I decided I must really like road biking because I got 2 bike jersey's, bike shorts, a bike jacket, a bike pump and a bike ride for my b-day.

AND....I got a sweet new camera just for blogging!!! That's right a small camera that I can take with me everywhere and don't need a college degree to operate (maybe now my pictures will be in focus). Here is the camera Todd bought me in Crimson red.