Thanksgiving Trip Part I - Amarillo

Okay, I am going to try to start going through my pictures from our Thanksgiving trip and sharing some of them here. I probably won't get very far tonight, but at least it's a start!

First, I have to include this picture of Hannah the way she came home from school the Friday that we left. Let me introduce you to "Orange Blossom":

The first grade classes had their big Thanksgiving activities and parties on Friday. They had tye-dyed Indian shirts and did lots of fun Indian crafts.

We didn't get away on Friday until later than we had hoped (it was after 8:00pm), so we arrived at Julie's house in Arlington very late and then got up very early the next morning to get back on the road. In fact, we didn't even see Julie this time!

The next morning we were off to Amarillo to see a little of the area (as well as a town south of there called Canyon).

The first home we went to had a big pasture with some llamas in it (including a baby one)! The kids were so excited to see llamas.

This house also had a lot of various tractors and guess who would have loved to drive every single one?

Hayley wanted to check out this old Ford parked in the big shop:

And here's Hannah with a funny pose on the trailer stored in the shop:

Courtney also had to pose for me on an old metal trailer outside.

That night we stayed at a hotel right in Canyon. The weather was beautiful while we were there!

To be continued...

Gremlins

I've decided we must have had some gremlins visit our house while we were gone because we keep discovering more and more things that have stopped working or are on the verge of not working.

First, the fridge. (You know about that already.)
Brian's computer stopped working (he has a big cooling system that quit and he is still diligently working to fix).
We've noticed that our TV receiver volume is way off and could indicate that something's not right.
I tried to print something in color this evening to discover that the printer won't turned on even though it is plugged in.
Our dishwasher isn't draining right (although this problem started before our trip).
McKay's sewing machine wouldn't work and we had to send it back for a replacement (also before the trip).
The CD-ROM drive on my computer has been acting up a little.
And to top it all off, a lightbulb over the kitchen table burned out during dinner tonight (supposedly one of those that lasts 5 years or something).

What's next? I'm afraid to even venture a guess...

I feel like I'm in the middle of chaos right now -- the house is such a disaster and so many things to be done. Still recovering from our trip! I have gotten absolutely no cleaning done this week and probably won't. Oh well. I'm so anxious to post pictures and a report of our trip but for now it will have to wait a little bit longer.

Camping in the Kitchen

Well, we are currently without a refrigerator which makes coming home from a long trip lots of fun. So I'm just pretending that we're on a camping trip and I have to live out of coolers. :-)

Fortunately, we do have a small freezer in our back closet so I can store some things there as well as freeze ice to keep the cooler cold. So it hasn't been a terribly awful ordeal.

Brian pulled our fridge out into the kitchen to work on it last night.

At first he thought the compressor had gone bad. He decided to run to Lowe's last night and buy a smaller low-end fridge until we decide what to do. It is the same kind of fridge they use in our apartments, so we will just take it there (somehow!) when we no longer need it. We can't turn it on just yet, however, because it was on its side for a while (and it has to sit upright for so long before you can plug it in).

But after talking with our brother-in-law last night, Brian checked some more and thinks it might only be a smaller part that needs replacing. So we're checking into that as well!

Be thankful for the "little" things in your life like working refrigerators!

Home

Quick items this morning:

* Arrived home last night about 9:15pm from our Thanksgiving trip to Utah. It was a LONG day and night in the car (we stopped for a couple of hours in Amarillo).

* Had a great time in Utah with my family although the kids wished there was snow to play in.

* Brian and McKay enjoyed the BYU-Utah football game Saturday (Go BYU!)

* The kids talked Mom into spending a ton for BYU shirts (and a sweatshirt) at the BYU bookstore. (No way does she ever usually spend this much money for kid's clothes!)

* Came home to discover that our fridge decided to stop working while we were gone so everything in the freezer had thawed and made a big mess.

* Today is laundry, laundry and more laundry.

* Also today is trying to figure out how to go grocery shopping and "stock up" without a fridge.

* Kids went back to school this morning and McKay left his backpack by the front door (he called from the front office pretty upset when he realized he didn't have it).

Time to get to work!

'Twas One Crazy Night...

Last night we went to the presentation of the 3rd Grade program, 'Twas One Crazy Night Before Christmas."

(You might notice as we did that someone put the apostrophe in 'Twas in the wrong place. Oops.)

McKay had a fairly long speaking part -- and the very first part of the program to boot! He was one of the narrators, and got to sit in the arm chair on the stage while he said his part. It was similar to the beginning of the poem "The Night Before Christmas," but with other stuff written in.

We were too far back in the audience to take any good pictures during the performance, but after it was over, we went up on the stage so I could take some shots of McKay on the set.

This one is of McKay and the girls behind one of the props they brought out during one scene to represent jail cells (for the "imposter Santas").

It was a cute show!

After we got home from the program, we let Courtney open one of her birthday presents early (which also turned out to be a good incentive for the girls to behave themselves during the program). We are bringing most of her presents with us to Utah where we'll have her cake a couple of days after her birthday, but I didn't want to bring this present due to size.

She was so excited to get her own scooter!

(Hannah was excited too because now Courtney won't borrow hers anymore.) Courtney already had a name picked out for her pink scooter - "Flowers" (Hannah's scooter has a name as well - "Fasty").

I also wanted to share these couple of other pictures. This one is Hayley's nap a couple of days ago -- the first time I think she has fallen asleep not completely on her bed!

And these next two are of the girls with their homemade coloring books. I bought new coloring books yesterday for the road trip and when I wouldn't let the girls start coloring in them, Hannah decided that she would make her own coloring books for Courtney and Hayley. She made one about puppies and one about kittens.

I thought she did a great job with the drawings! She told me she had to keep telling herself NOT to color the pictures in as she drew them. :-)

This will be my last post for a little bit at least. We're off on our big trek later this afternoon/evening. I might try to post from Utah, but we'll see! Happy Thanksgiving!

Ninja Girl and Trapeze Girl

Yesterday after school the girls were upstairs for a little bit and then came down in their alternate-ego for the day.

Hannah announced she was "Ninja Girl" and proceeded to "Hi-ya!" and kick at everything. (Turns out she's been reading the Magic Treehouse book "Night of the Ninjas.")

Notice that her both her shirt and pants are on inside-out (so you don't see any of the decoration) and her shirt is also backwards. The black tights to cover her feet are actually Hayley's (the only black ones she could find) so they only barely pass her knees and made her kicks quite interesting to watch!

Courtney had to get in on the action as well and told me she was a "Trapezer"

Silly, silly girls!

It's my turn to teach Hayley's preschool group this week. Yesterday we made turkeys from potatoes and marshmallows on toothpicks. Here's Hayley working on hers:

Can't believe it's only a few more days until we leave on our Thanksgiving trek!

The Birthday Boy

Happy 9th Birthday to McKay!

Yesterday was his birthday and he was SO excited. He woke up at 5:00am and had to wait clear until after dinner to open his presents.

His big request this year was for a sewing machine! (I had been thinking it would be for Christmas, but we made it a birthday present instead.) Not your typical request from a 9-year-old boy, but in a lot of ways McKay is not your typical boy.

He also got a sewing book (with some kid-friendly projects), a sewing basket and a starter sewing kit. He was up early this morning figuring out the machine in his room (it is a 1/2 size machine) and practicing sewing on paper.

His other presents included some computer games and software, a shirt and some bigger "zipper" ties (he has outgrown his old clip-on ties), and a couple of board games (Blokus and "Pass the Pigs").

For his cake this year, he requested a BYU cake. (Mom likes the not-too-complicated requests!)

When it was time to blow out the candles, we all sang to him and after the song ended, Hannah & Courtney immediately leaned over and blew! They blew out about half the candles. I'm not sure if it was just "instinct" to blow or they are just in the habit of helping the littler kids. McKay was quite offended, however, so we re-lit the candles for himto have his own shot (I think he got all but two on the first blow).

Cake and ice cream means messy faces!

And even though it was bedtime, they had to get out a couple of presents, including the sewing machine and the Blokus game.

Hope you had a great day, McKay!

All Dressed Up

Yesterday was our ward's Primary Sacrament Meeting Program. I had just gotten some new holiday dresses for Hannah and Courtney and they were so excited to wear them. (They have little jackets that go over the dress that they both thought were so neat.) Hayley's dress from last Christmas still fits her.

(The other little girl in the picture is Eden, who was staying with us for the weekend. She had a rough day yesterday and wasn't feeling well and ended up sitting on our lap throughout the entire Church meetings.)

The kids did great in the program! Hannah had to give a talk -- they asked her to give a talk she had given in Primary earlier in the year (which they had kept a copy of) about keeping the commandments. She wasn't nervous at all to get up and talk in the microphone in front of that big congregation. She did a great job!

McKay's part was to play the bells (xylophone) for the "Listen, Listen" song. He also did a super job! He was worried about messing up his part, but I didn't hear any mistakes.

Courtney got up with her class to say one of the monthly themes. She knew the part and was actually folding her arms! :-) I couldn't see her during most of the songs so I don't know how much she was actually singing.

Now we get to celebrate two birthdays this week (McKay's is today and Courtney's is Sunday when we'll be on our trip). Plus there's a lot to do to get for our big Thanksgiving trek to Utah next week!

Van Family

I ordered these cute stick family vinyl "stickers" for the back of our van and they finally came yesterday! I rubbed them on this morning and showed Courtney & Hayley, pointing out how there is a figure for each person in our family. Courtney's first comment was "How come Hayley is bigger than me?" (I was going more for hair styles when I chose the figures...)

Here's the close-up:

They had cute little dog and cat figures too, but much to our kid's dismay, we didn't need any of those...

Weekend Guest

Meet Eden, our little guest for the weekend. Eden is in our ward and was in Courtney's little preschool group last year. (She is in Kindergarten this year as her birthday was before the deadline while Courtney's wasn't.) Eden's family is moving up to north Texas and her parents are going house-hunting this weekend, so she is staying with us until Sunday evening.

My kids are all so excited to have a friend staying with us! She gets to ride the bus with them to and from school tomorrow and go the Primary program practice with them on Saturday and come to church with us on Sunday. Although McKay did say that he wished he could trade her for her older brother (who is McKay's age and went to stay with another family) because he is feeling very outnumbered by the girls this weekend!

Little Girls and Flowers

We have some little girls in our family who LOVE flowers -- especially picking them -- and even more especially picking the ones they aren't supposed to pick. There is one little girl in particular (who goes by the name of Hayley) who is quite fond of picking flowers (or berries, or leaves, etc.).

I let the girls pick some wildflowers the other day and Courtney wanted to wear one in her hair (it didn't stay very long, but it was pretty!).

We have talked about how some flowers aren't for picking -- just for looking and smelling -- but Hayley will pick just about any flower she sees. The other day, she plucked off a couple from the nice pots at the entrance of the elementary school.

Today I had her with me in the stroller when I went to vote at the school and she tried and tried to reach those potted flowers as we went in. On our way back to the van, we passed a wild berry bush, so she begged me to stop and let her out so she could gather her handfuls:

We even have a pretty bouquet of flowers on our table right now because of these two flower-loving girls.

We read a book recently about tulips and Courtney wanted to know where you could get tulips. I told her I thought they had some at the grocery store at times. The next time she was with me at Wal-Mart, she remembered we were going to get flowers and she and Hayley begged me to go to the flower display. They didn't have any tulips, so they picked out this little bouquet and we brought them home to brighten our table!

Bye-Bye Baseball

McKay had his last baseball game of the fall season last Saturday. He also had his team party afterward where they handed out the trophies.

He went out with a bang! Brian took him to the game -- I stayed home with the girls this time (and then took him to the team party). But I'm told that McKay hit a fantastic HOME RUN! Brian said he hit the ball really hard -- it bounced about second base and rolled quickly into the outfield. There were two runners on base, so all three of them scored. McKay was really excited! Excited enough that he told me that IF there is no football the next season (Spring) he wants to play baseball. (He had been saying he didn't want to do baseball anymore -- he really wants to try flag football.)

Great job, McKay!

Chalk Art

The day before Halloween, we were out delivering some mini-loaves of pumpkin bread when we drove past a guy doing some really elaborate Halloween art on his driveway with sidewalk chalk. The kids were really impressed and so when we got home, McKay wanted to get out our little chalk bucket and he headed outside. Hannah joined him, and I'm not sure if Courtney helped too.


Before long, we had our own Halloween chalk riveway! I didn't take any pictures until a few days later, so some of it had faded by then, and I didn't get all of it, but the entire driveway and little sidewalk to our door was covered! (Keep in mind, they did the spelling all themselves!)