11.28.2008 The Many Faces of BUBBA

What can i say...i LOVE my Bubba! What's not to love? He is the most adorable, doe eyed, extra lovable boy there is. And he loves me NO MATTER WHAT! He tells me all the time, which makes my heart so FULL. Not a day goes by where he doesn't tell me (quite often multiple times) that he loves me. The feeling is mutual little guy. You will always be my little man, the baby, the huggie bear. His very cute personality was out in full force on parade day. So here's some of what i LOVE....

"BRRRRRRRR MOMMY I'M COLD!"

"I'M HAPPY, LOVE YOU MOMMY!"

"THIS IS MY MAD FACE"..then he cracked up after i took the shot!

p.s. Hi Uncle Lloyd & Auntie Darla, I'm wearing my warm Angel's Beanie!

11.28.2008 Keeping CHRIST in CHRISTmas Parade

Living in a small valley/town has it's benefits. For one, people openly celebrate CHRISTMAS for what it is. Celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. We don't have a huge mass of atheists picketing or people trying to keep Christ out of our schools and our way of life. If they don't believe, they just don't make a fuss. It's laid back that way. We can have a parade celebrating Jesus and it is NORMAL. So that's exactly what they did the day after Thanksgiving. It wasn't a big or grand (or well lit, for that matter) parade, but the message was still there. It was so dark (and cold) i couldn't get any good pics of the parade...but it was family fun for all! DeRell and Bubba braving the cold...at least we had Hot Chocolate!

Danielle saw her friend Shawnee and sat with her to watch the parade.

A rare photo of Mommy and Bubba - the one taking the pics rarely gets pics taken with HER in them, so thanks Daddy for getting this shot.

11.27.2008 Thanksgiving

We have so much to be thankful for this year. Amid the financial struggles, we have our health (yeah! the whole family is doing pretty well), good friends, a roof over our heads and freedom. There are so many more reasons to be thankful! This year we spent Thanksgiving with the Weeks clan (as usual) but at Jack/Susie's house instead. It was fun, and we ate and ate. Shocker. I brought rolls (oooh tough!) and everyone loved them. HA! Here's some photo's of the fun



Chester carved the turkey while Lara, Shenoa and Kiri looked on.



Danielle has been learning (my ear and sight) a few songs on the piano. She was going to try out her skills but her and Colton mostly fought for control of it. Doesn't Erick look thrilled? Diane even taught her 2 new songs today.



We also scanned the ads for day after Thanksgiving bargains, and made our plans. The next day i was up at 4:45 and Erick came with for Black Friday shopping (even though he was feeling a bit sick...probably from overeating) It was fun. I was the only one who actually got up and did it.. out of ALL of my friends!! Sissies! The best part was having all my shopping done in ONE trip and on ONE day. With all the bargains it was awesome.

And finally......the required position for after a yummy thanksgiving meal?! DeRell and DeRell Sr. giving their thanks for a wonderful meal the best way they know how!

11.26.2008 Theater Room WOW!

Who would have thought that a project that started almost a year ago, would somehow be so near completion. It is very exciting to see how far it has come. The goal was to get it done by Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then the end of the year, but finances were/are stretched so tight there just was no money! We have a client that wants to see it so hopefully it will make up for how far we've stretched and reap some rewards. There are still so many in our small town that don't know this is the type of business we do. Here's a photo from when framing began-room inside a room and spray in insulation will help with sound.


After much "discussion" (LOL) and research i lost the battle on color scheme. I really wanted a dark cappachino color but for minimal light reflection it is always best to go with black and greys. We settled on grey and black. The chairs are electric black leather, and i got a light grey burbur (sp?) carpet so at least it didn't end up looking like a cave! The black on the ceiling, tray, and behind the screen area will keep light to a minimum.



Erick has been auch a trooper helping out, he is quite good at electrical and cabling though he wouldn't admit it! Of course, there are motives behind his "helpful spirit"...XBox parties, Playstation3 gaming, Huge screen Movies...yep he's a saint. Here he is pulling down his shirt so there is no photo evidence of crack. The carpet isn't installed yet in this photo - it gets installed Dec. 8th.

November Updates

Wow, has it been a long time since i BLOGGED! Not that i wanted it that way, but as many of you know i have not had a camera. It seems so boring without photos and videos! I just could n't get into it! Well by this weekend that will all change. SO what's new around here?
-Got my hair colored again (dark brunette i am!) Thanks Mom!
-Progress is being made in our new Theater Room at the store
-Started selling "stuff" on ebay to help make ends meet (not alot of "ends meeting" lately) So far we've just sold some business excess inventory, but watch out closets here i come!
-Danielle is learning to play the piano, had 4 songs down within 72 hours
-This past weekend was just Bubba & Mommy time (Danielle gone w/ her teacher all weekend and Erick was at a speech meet in Kalispell) what a wonderful change of pace!
..........and drum roll please..................
I HAVE A NEW CAMERA!!! How, you might ask? Well, after learning to go without ( a new concept for me i must admit) i actually got it as an early Christmas gift from my sister Darla. Apparently she didn't get the memo about adults not exchanging gifts...or just plain ol felt sorry for me. Hard to be a mommy without a camera! Anyway, i think it really must have been that she was sick of cell phone pics that are awful! Whatever the reason, i am SO thankful. I have it charged, the new SD card (4 gig yeah!) in and am learning all about it! It's 10 megapixel..YIPPEE.



So what do you think?! Isn't it beautiful? The box will have to do bcuz it's not like i can take a picture of my camera WITH my camera!

So, nows your turn trusty blog readers....what do YOU want to see a picture of? The Theater room? The finished bathroom? Kids? Cat? Lemme know, it's been so long since i took real pictures I'm excited to take them of just about anything! Post your comment below

11.03.2008 Spider Kids

Monday Night we headed over to "aunt" Wendy's to celebrate her daughter Lindsey's birthday. It was fun and the kids had a great time as usual. It is always a good time when Corey, a.k.a. "Manny" is there (Lindz boyfriend) because he is just a heap of fun. The kids can't help but dogpile on him and pester him. I suppose it's because he is like Goliath to them, he is crazy TALL. (as eveidenced in the photos below) Because of his height advantage, the kids were able to practice being "spiderman" and crawling on Wendy's ceiling. It was HILARIOUS!

 

 

Happy Birthday to Lindsey and Britney Sweeney-you are 20 now...yeah. It was sad with the twins being away at different collages this year...it's the 1st birthday they've been apart. We made the best of it, and the kids sang Happy Birthday to Britney and we sent her the cell phone video of it!

10.31.2008 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Well Happy Halloween everyone. I am happy to report it was not 10 degrees or negative 10 this year. It was a nice balmy 38 so we are thankful. Just incase... Bubba did get a WARM costume this year. He was a Red Dragon (Moo-SHoo actually I think from the Kung Foo Panda movie) Anyway, we trick-or-treated all the downtown businesses then went to Wendy's and 1 subdivision we like to hit again this year. We like it because Mr. Littrell (the Principal at Danielle's school) lives there, and last night we found out one of the teachers from Bubba's preschool lives on that street too. She recognized Bubba's "Trick or Treat" even though her husband was at the door passing out the candy. It was really fun. I got a great pic of Bubba Trick or Treating at the Littrell's - below he is talking with Mrs. Littrell (Rachel)

Danielle decided not to trick or treat (that's 2 years in a row!...it was just too cold for her and she had a bad attitude about not having EXACTLY the costume she wanted) but mommy & Bubba had a great time and got plenty of candy for them both to share. At the "1 candy a day" rule we will have candy till next Easter as usual. Daddy & Danielle passed out the candy at our house, and then she & daddy hit like 4 houses on our street. We filled our trusty cookie jar to the brim with both of the candy haul's. (Not to mention they got quite a bit the night before at the Awana Harvest Party)

Not to be outdone, Erick and his friend Steven were planning to head out to "scare some friends" as well. Erick is not so much into dressing up - he's too old for that apparently. Steven spent quite a long time actually sewing stuff onto his clothes and i helped out with the "makeup" (washable finger paints hahaha) so he could be the perfect zombie. He looked pretty cool. They had fun too.

10.26.2008 Puzzle Mania!

 

This is what is up lately in our house. PUZZLES! The kids LOVE putting them together. We got a few more recently, since winter is coming and we will be indoors a lot more! Bubba is working on up to 60 peice puzzles already - he's only 4 - he just loves doing puzzles all by himself. We got a 750 piece one to do together but it was just too much. We got a 300 piece Pig puzzle that we plan to do together (as a family) in the next few weeks. That should be a bit easier for us and the kids love to have the pleasure of accomplishment when it's done. This is what they did one night with a bunch of the smaller piece puzzles 24-60 pieces. Then we put the boxes on top to get ready to clean them up! FUN!