Christmas 2004

I am a little sad today. I just came across this picture and just started reminiscing of when I still had my dad in my life. He died April 13, 2005. But the whole year before that I lived in Henryetta and my mom and dad came 900 miles to see me a lot. I saw them 7 times in one year (for a week or two at a time) with them coming to Henryetta or me going to Olathe. I cherish those days. Well, Dad's last Christmas, they came to Henryetta. They stayed like 2 weeks. It was so wonderful. I wish I could have known it was his last Christmas, I wouldn't have left his side! He was such an affectionate person. There was NEVER a time that I had to wonder if he loved me. He was always showing love. And not just showing love, but he said it ALL the time. I miss his hands, he was a cabinet maker, so you would think with all the splinters and everything they have to deal with that he would have rough hands. NO. His hands were as soft as a child's hand. I miss feeling his hands. While they were in Henryetta for his last Christmas, we all piled in their car and drove to Muskogee (about an hour drive) just to see the famous Muskogee Christmas lights they have in a beautiful park. My parents never stopped doing wonderful things for us. Taylor was 4, almost 5 when he died, and Blake was 2, almost 3. Taylor remembers him quite well, but Blake just kind of remembers him, which tears me apart, because he is one person that deserves to be well remembered. I'll never forget that Christmas. I always had Christmas with either Ryan's parents, or my parents, never both. But that year, 2004, I got to share it with both. It was by far the best Christmas ever, for me. There's not ONE day that goes by that I don't think of him. Some days I have a hard time coping with it, like today, but I feel better now that I've gotten it out. But I will always love and miss my Dad.

My momma's coming!

I have been trying to talk my mom into coming out here for a long time. She has wanted to but just didn't have the braveness to drive out here by herself. Well she asked me to look online at plane tickets. I looked at Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotwire, Cheaptickets, and Priceline. All of the prices were like $700.00-$900.00. Well I decided to just TRY and offer Priceline a cheap price. She gave me her credit card number and I put in the offer of $200.00 and it was ACCEPTED! So taxes and all it will only be a little under $250.00! It said her savings was 69%. So she is scheduled to fly here on Tuesday of next week! 6 days away!!!!! She will be here for 1 week. I'm so happy. She has never seen my house. It will be so wonderful having her here. I can't wait!!!

The picture that had me worried for years!

When Blake was a baby (4-5 months old), I had our family pictures taken shortly before Christmas. I ordered a package deal. But there was this one picture that didn't come in the package that I KNEW I had to have. It was of Blake sitting in a present box with a Santa hat on his head. And he had the most ADORABLE smile. So I ordered 1 sheet of wallets (8). I knew that would give the grandparents one some Aunts/Uncles and I would get to keep at least one. I lived in Colorado at the time so I mailed Ollie and Sharon an 8 X 10 of the family picture and a wallet of this pose. Well, Sharon didn't realize that the wallet was in the package and accidentally threw it away. I gave out the other pictures and thought I kept 2 for myself and Blake. Well I asked Sharon if she liked that picture and she told me she never got it, which I told her she must have accidentally thrown it away. She was so upset about that. So I knew that I had 2 so I sent her one of mine, which left me with one. Well...shortly after that we moved back to Oklahoma, and moved again, and again, and again. And somewhere I lost my copy of that picture. I was devastated. I loved it so much! I started asking my mom, sisters, Sharon and sister-in-laws to keep an eye out in their pictures for it, because I wanted to make some copies. Everyone looked but never found that picture. I don't what happened to all the rest of the pics, but no one seemed to remember it and couldn't find it. It was just a little wallet. So I'm getting more and more upset the more time goes by and thought I'd never see it again :( Well, one day, I was at Ollie and Sharon's and decided to try to find it, because Sharon couldn't remember what it looked like and I could. So I looked all through her pics and didn't find it. Then I thought to look through her China Hutch drawers... and I FOUND it!!!!! I immediately scanned it and e-mailed it to myself and saved it on my computer and kept that wallet. Since it is a Christmas picture I didn't post it before, but I just want everyone to know how important this picture really is to me. Sorry I have rambled on, but I just had to tell everyone what I went through to find this picture. I think you guys will understand why right about now ;)

Holiday decorating

Ryan and I thought we had SOOO much Christmas decorations. I mean, we have like 3 storage totes of lights, garlands, stuffed animals, etc... We decided to clear out our bookshelves and decorate for Christmas in the room with the bookshelves. Well, we cleared everything off and started putting decorations on the shelves but it didn't cover NEAR as much of the shelves as we thought it would. So you will have to forgive the empty spaces for now. I'm sure we will buy a few more decorations here and there. I just didn't want to wait to show our decorations. Also, as you all know,we moved to Sapulpa in March and we have some ADORABLE stockings, but I searched high and low for those in our garage, but never found them. Blake's is a Denver Broncos, Ryan's is a Santa Clause, and mine & Taylor's is a snowman. So I am bummed about that. I don't know if maybe we left them at Ollie and Sharon's house last year or what, but the ones in the picture will also have to do for now.We also didn't have a tree. When we moved to Grand Junction in October of last year, we had been borrowing my Mom's tree, so we gave it back to her. Well, I was reading the after Thanksgiving sale papers with Cherrie and Melissa and found a Christmas tree in the Target ad, so I went with Cherrie and her mom to all the sales. I bought the tree, and it is a pretty nice tree, just a little smaller than I want. But that's okay, it too will also do for now. Ryan likes LOTS of colors and sparkles on the tree, so that is our style we use. We haven't put on icicles yet, but will very soon. Oh and by the way... my kids put on 90 % of the ornaments, so they kind of look uneven in a few places ;)This is Taylor's first Christmas ornament. It is already her 8th Christmas. I can't believe how the years have gone by!And here is Blake's first Christmas ornament. It is his 6th Christmas. Wow!

Happy Thanksgiving

Ryan and I started working on Christmas lights 3 days ago and I worked some more last night. Can you tell we are stoked about the Holidays ;) I plan on putting up a few more color lights around the windows and on a bush. But that won't get done until after Thanksgiving. It is an AWESOME day today, it is really chilly outside, and leaves are falling all over the place! It is supposed to be like this all week. Ryan said he heard it may snow on the weekend. But we will see about that. We are going to head down to Henryetta to be with Ollie and Sharon; Christopher, Melissa and Aiden; Lee, Cherrie, Elisha, Stormie, and Samuel. I WISH Dale, Chantel, and Andy were out here also :( I miss them. I also miss my family very much. I don't think we will have the money to go to Colorado for Christmas. But you never know. But way more than likely, we will be having Christmas in Henryetta also, which I'm not complaining about, I LOVE Ryan's family's traditions. I just wanted to show everyone our lights so far. I will probably have more pics of inside next week sometime.

Talk about amazing!

I haven't had very many things going on in my life, so I haven't blogged in a few days. But I finally have something worth blogging about. Ryan has been working in Oklahoma City for about one month. Sometimes he has to drive our little Toyota pickup all the way to OKC (100 miles away), and sometimes just to Chandler (about halfway) and rides the rest of the way with his boss. Well, he came in from work last night and said that the truck had overheated when he got off at the Sapulpa exit. SO it was hot for 5 minutes or less. I immediately started to worry that we would have to put more money into our vehicles, which we just don't have. But amazingly it didn't start to overheat until he was almost home. Well this morning, he drove our van to work and I went out and looked under the hood. I immediately noticed that the fan belt was completely off of its tracks. The belt was also VERY rotted and breaking apart everywhere. It looked TERRIBLE, see:

So I knew it was not going anywhere for a while. I called sister Amber T., who lives 2 blocks from the kids' school and I asked her if I could borrow her car to go get a new belt. She said absolutely. I then called brother Bill P. and asked him how to put in a new belt. He said that he would have to look at it because every vehicle is different. I told him I really did not want to bother him with coming over, but he is such a nice person, he wanted to help me. So I walked my kids to school (about 5 blocks) and then walked to Amber's house and got her car. I drove to the parts store and got new belt, drove back and pulled in at the same time as brother Bill and sister Marcelle. We opened the hood and he said it was going to be easy. We only worked on it for about 10 minutes and had it in! I was just so thankful that I have such wonderful brethren who truly care about us. We got the job done for just a little over $13.00 and 10 minutes. If that's not awesome, I don't know what is! The truck is good to go now! It is amazing that Ryan hasn't had problems driving as much as he has, and it is amazing that the truck only started overheating when Ryan was ALMOST home, and it is amazing that, with a little help from my wonderful brethren, it is fixed! It's turned out to be a great day!

Pages done recently

Marisela's request ;)

Back to doing what I love

When I was expecting Taylor, I got into scrapbooking. It is my favorite hobby! The last time I scrapbooked was about a year and a half ago when I lived in Olathe, Colorado. But we moved to Grand Junction, Colorado in October of last year and put my scrapbooking stuff in storage because we lived in a LITTLE 800 square foot townhouse, (I'm so glad to be out of there!) Then in March of this year, we moved to Sapulpa, Oklahoma. I started working about a month after we lived here, and I worked up until the beginning of September. And that brings us up to date. Me and Shonna R (also moved here from GJ) have been talking about getting together and scrapbook. Finally we talked about having a scrapbook get together weekly at the church and whoever scrapbooks, or wants to learn to scrapbook, is welcome to come. Last week, we had our first day, and had a pretty decent turnout, there was (including me) 7 ladies there. We had so many laughs, and lots of good visiting. It was just a really fun day. Then Ryan had company this past weekend, so guess what I did? Scrap booked! It was great. I worked on memorial pages of my Dad for my kids, and got a lot of pages done. It just feels so good to get back to doing what I love. Scrapbooking is my craft!

Follow up to our van: I talked to the company that I had got that estimate from, and asked them if we could do away with ALL the things that needed fixed and just take care of the brakes and the hardware, and they said yes. So we got it fixed. There are still other things needing fixed, but we will take care of that little by little down the road.

Car problems stink!

I think that we were chosen out of many people to have to go through car trials. I know everyone else has car problems from time to time, but we seem to have them regularly. Our last car, which was a Pontiac Grand Am, gave us CONSTANT problems. I'm pretty sure it was a lemon. We probably sunk around $7,000.00 dollars in repair in that piece of junk. And you know we always had a loan on it and the payoff was way more than the book value of that thing, so we were STUCK with it. We would fix one thing and immediately another thing would go wrong with it. And a lot of the things were very pricey! Transmission, clutch, you name it, we fixed it. Well, we finally got rid of it and bought Ollie and Sharon's van (Dodge Grand Caravan), which had a warranty left on it. SO we didn't have to deal with anything for a while, probably a year. Then the warranty expired and things started to slowly go wrong. We had to put new brakes on the van last April (2006). And then in September,2006, Ryan was backing up and hit a corner post which made a huge dent in the front drivers side, knocking out the turning signal and making a loud noise every time you open the drivers door. I know that's not the van's fault, but it is still something that needs fixed. Then in June (2007), I was driving out to Colorado for Stephanie's wedding and the stupid air conditioner went out on me. It will cost around $700.00 to get fixed. So we had NO A/C this summer, it was MISERABLE. The passenger sliding door is starting to be hard to open. And just recently our van's brakes started to squeak and even when we weren't using the brakes, the wheels squeaked. SO I had it checked out today, and there's a bunch of things needing fixed that will cost $478.00. I'm very frustrated! Why does car repairs have to cost so much??? If we fix everything that needs fixed on our van, it would probably cost us $2,500.00. Just say a little prayer for us, this is just a trial, I know, but I'm incredibly stressed over this STUPID van.

Great weekend

There's not a lot to talk about in our life, but we had a busy weekend, but very enjoyable. Friday night, Taylor, Blake and I went to see the Bee Movie with Cherrie, her mom, her kids and her niece & nephew. It was really a cute movie :) Then Saturday, we went to Aiden's 4th birthday party at Chris and Melissa's house. Melissa had done a GREAT job decorating for the party and the kids had a great time over there. And today we all went to Bob and Donna's 40th Anniversary party. It was really put together VERY nicely! It looked just like a wedding reception. It was very enjoyable, and what a nice couple they are! So we really enjoyed that.

I also just realized that I hadn't posted any pics of Taylor's fifth disease yet. She really didn't get it as bad as Blake did. I know it could get worse, but it just didn't do the same to Taylor as it did to Blake. I took a couple pictures tonight but the pictures proves that it was nothing compared to Blake's. I think hers is about over too, so it didn't last near as long. She barely had it on her face, and she only had it on her arms and legs. So enough of me rambling on, I just hadn't wrote anything on her and wanted to update everyone on her rash. Her leg

Satan's meeting. This will really make you stop and think.

I received this as an e-mail and I just wanted to share it, it really does make you stop and think. I can see a lot of this in my life, which makes me want to change it!

SATAN'S MEETING (Read even if you're busy)

Satan called a worldwide convention of demons. In his opening address he said, "We can't keep Christians from going to church." "We can't keep them from reading their Bibles and Knowing the truth." "We can't even keep them from forming an intimate Relationship with their Saviour." "Once they gain that connection with Jesus, our power Over them is broken." "So let them go to their churches; let them have their Covered dish dinners,BUT steal their time, so they Don't have time to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ.."

"This is what I want you to do," said the devil: "Distract them from gaining hold of their Saviour and Maintaining that vital connection throughout their Day!" "How shall we do this?" his demons shouted. "Keep them busy in the non-essentials of life and Invent innumerable schemes to occupy their minds," he answered. "Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, and borrow, Borrow, borrow."

"Persuade the wives to go to work for long hours and The husbands to work 6-7 days each week, 10-12 hours a Day, so they can afford their empty lifestyles." "Keep them from spending time with their children" "As their families fragment, soon, their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work!"

"Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still, small voice." "Entice them to play the radio or ipod. Whenever they drive." To keep the TV, VCR, Cd's and Their PCs going constantly in their home and see to it That every store and restaurant in the world plays Non-biblical music constantly." "This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ."

"Fill the coffee tables with magazines and Newspapers." "Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day." "Invade their driving moments with billboards." "Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, mail order Catalogs, sweepstakes, and every kind of newsletter And promotional offering free products, services and false hopes.."

"Keep skinny, beautiful models on the magazines and TV So their husbands will believe that outward beauty is what's important, and they'll become dissatisfied with Their wives. " "Keep the wives too tired to love their husbands at night." "If they don't give their husbands the love they need, They will begin to look elsewhere." "That will fragment their families quickly!"

"Give them Santa Claus to distract them from teaching Their children the real meaning of Christmas." "Give them an Easter bunny so they won't talk about His resurrection and power over sin and death."

"Even in their recreation, let them be excessive." "Have them return from their recreation exhausted." "Keep them too busy to go out in nature and reflect on God's creation.

Send them to amusement parks, sporting Events, plays, concerts, and movies instead." "Keep them busy, busy, busy!" "And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve Them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences." "Crowd their lives with so many good causes they have No time to seek power from Jesus." "Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family for the good of The cause."

"It will work!" "It will work!" It was quite a plan! The demons went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get busier and more rushed, Going here and there. Having little time for their God or their families. Having no time to tell others about the power of Jesus To change lives. I guess the question is, has the devil been successful In his schemes?

You be the judge!!!!! Please pass this on, if you aren't too BUSY.