Last post of this year

Wow, this year has went by SO fast! We started the year out in Clifton, Colorado. Ryan was working on the oil rigs and we lived in a LITTLE townhouse. We took a family trip to Denver in February and went to Casa Bonita and the Denver Zoo. Then Ryan quit the oil rigs and we moved to Oklahoma. We moved into the nicest house we've ever lived in, we love it! My niece, Stephanie got married in June (in Colorado). In August, Ryan and I had a brief separation. We got back together in September and things have been great since then. That's basically all that happened to us this year. My hopes for 2008 are: To get out of debt, and stay out of debt; To lose weight; To continue to get stronger in the faith; And to just do more as a family.
We had a wonderful Christmas. We spent it at Ollie and Sharon's house. The only sibling that wasn't there was Chantel. We really missed them :( Taylor got a new bike, an MP3 player (her FAVORITE gift), a sock monkey, new bedding (I'll post pics soon), new clothes, a pair of Heelys (she LOVES these, and is getting good at using them), and other small items. Blake got a new bike, a helmet, new bedding (Star Wars, I'll also post pics of his soon), a Star Wars poster, a talking Parrot, Pajamas, and other small items. I got Ryan a telescope,and he loves it. I had found an amazing deal on it! And I got a new pair of Clarks shoes, clothing and my favorite show's 1st season on DVD. We had a great time.
Then the day after Christmas I went to Oklahoma City to get my niece, Savanna. I take any chance to get to hang out with family. She came up and spent a couple days with us and then I took her back to OKC. I enjoyed having her. The kids basically had a 2nd Christmas when we brought her up here. My sister, Sue, had sent a bunch of presents and Steph and Vanna had also gotten them presents. Savanna works at JCPenneys and got a lot of clothing or them ;) Oh, and my other sister,Peg, had gotten them this set of Fairy Tales on DVD, plus Wal Mart gift cards. So they absolutely had a great Christmas!!!

They were all so cute!!! I loved Samuel's face in this picture ;)

Stormie and Taylor wearing their BEST FRIENDS necklaces

Merry Christmas

I will be leaving to go to Ollie and Sharon's for Christmas, so I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Christian Glitter by www.christianglitter.com

Ice storm pictures

Here is a slideshow of our ice storm. Now that all the ice is melted, there are branches EVERYWHERE you look. It is going to take a long time to clean up after this.

I'm HOME!!!

Exactly one week ago tonight, we lost power. Us and 600,000 other Oklahomans. We went down to my in-laws' ,an hour away, for the week. But we finally received power last night,so we came home, almost 6 days with no electric. It is weird because this side of the road has power, but everyone across the street is still without power. I'm glad we were the fortunate ones to get electric back. I still can't upload pictures of our ice storm (that made trees fall on electric lines, making us all lose power) because the battery on my digital camera is dead. I'll get new batteries tomorrow and try to upload some pics tomorrow sometime. Sorry I haven't been leaving comments to anyone else, but my in-laws has the SLOWEST internet speed possible. But it feels great to be home again!

Oklahoma Ice Storm

If any of you have been watching the news, you probably already know that a lot of Oklahoma is without electric. Over this past weekend we started having ice storms. Basically, just rain that freezes. On Saturday night I think was the first storm. We weren't sure if we would get to go to church Sunday morning, but it didn't affect the roads and we were able to go to church. Then Sunday evening was our Church Christmas party, and everyone was able to make it to that. The kids were in the children's play and they basically just sang a few Christmas songs. It was very cute and just a really enjoyable evening. Then Sunday night it rained hard. We woke up at about 5:00 am without power. We later found out that the power went off at about 2:30 am. Ryan did go ahead and go to work at about 6:30 am, because where he works had generators. I'm thankful for that, because we really can't afford to miss work. But we got up and just couldn't believe all the trees that were breaking outside. Basically you could hear one RIGHT after another. Ollie and Sharon invited us to go to breakfast with Chris and Melissa. So my mom, me and the kids got dressed very warm and I went out and started scraping my van windows. I ended up breaking my blade doing so. We went to breakfast and saw SO many branches broken everywhere. Ice covered everything in sight. My mom suggested getting gas before the store possibly lost power. So I did, and was very glad I did, because that evening, there were cars backed up to try to get gas, and there was no line when we got gas. We ate breakfast with everyone and then came home. I have a phone that works on the phone line power and not electric, so we called a few people in Colorado to let them know what was going on. After Ollie and Sharon had time to get home,I called them and found out that Henryetta had not lost power, but did find out that ALL of Oklahoma City to Tulsa (100+ mile stretch) was without power. 600,000 Oklahomans were without power and was expected to be without power for 7-10 days. President Bush declared an emergency in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. So I started packing to flee to my in-laws. We waited until Ryan got home from work and we left our home, not knowing when we could return. The roads were PACKED leaving Sapulpa, and like I said, there was probably a 30 minute wait to get gas, so i was thankful for our full tank. We made it to Ollie & Sharon's house. Chris and Melissa are without power also, so they are down here with us. Lee and Cherrie are without electric and water, but they are staying with a couple who managed to keep their electric. There is so much clean up that will have to be done before they can restore power. The kids don't have school this week, but they will have to make up for it at the end of the school year. Also, I wasn't sure if my mom was going to get to fly home yesterday, but she did go ahead and fly home yesterday. On Monday, they had cancelled all flights. But she is home safe now. But I really don't know when I get to go home. I'm so glad that I had family to go to, and not just a shelter of strangers, like MANY people had to do. This is crazy! I'm going to go and check on my house today and get a few more clothes to bring down here. We really are a society that is not ready for these kinds of problems. I know I wasn't. I will post pictures as soon as I can, but I'm not able to today, I don't have the right software here.

Out with the old, in with the new.

When I was about 2 months pregnant with Blake (about October, 2001) I bought a pretty pastel floral bed-in-a-bag. I have loved it for a long time, but it has been slowly falling apart, so this year, I've been telling Ryan that I wanted a new bed-in-a-bag. He has had to put up with the pastel flowers for years, so I told him we could do something more "neutral" LOL. So that was my wish list for this Christmas, a new bedding set. We are really low on money and I knew that would be probably the only thing I got, which was okay with me. Well, we went to Ryan's work Christmas party (hosted by Lee & Cherrie B. and John & Molly S.) on Friday night. They had several gifts that they were going to draw names to see who got to pick from them. Well, my name was picked and I unwrapped a present and it was exactly what I wanted, a new bed-in-a-bag!!! And the colors were almost exactly what I was going to look for. I was so excited!!! Oh, and also we played "Dirty Santa" and I got to steal a DEEEEELICIOUS bag of Holiday Roast STARBUCKS coffee! It is so good!!! Sorry Cherrie (that's who I stole from ;) Needless to say, I went home very happy! I had such a nice time, they all did a fantastic job putting it together!

Old bedding

New bedding

Oh, and off the subject, if anyone wants to see something funny, go to this web address:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1239674565

Just to let everyone know...

Hi everyone, I wanted to just write a quick note telling everyone that my mom is here, so I don't stay online very long, and haven't been on here much this week. She leaves Tuesday and I'll be back to my normal blogging self ;) So sorry I haven't left any comments in a few days, just bare with me a few more days, and don't forget about me ;) I am enjoying my mom very much though!!!