11 years!

Today is Ryan and I's 11th anniversary. Not of marriage, but of being together. I met and started dating Ryan at the hayride in Oklahoma City 11 years ago. We dated long distance (he lived in Oklahoma, I lived in Colorado) for 2 years before we joined lives. I can't believe how fast time has flown by! I'm so happy to be his wife, and love him SO much!

Meet Indiana Jones!

Blake is "into" Indiana Jones right now, and he came in and told me that he was Indiana Jones. He even has the whip, LOL.

Cleaning flower beds

We moved to this house 1 year ago this month. You know how the first few months, you are basically just settling in, well that's what I was doing 1 year ago. Then we had a hard year with money, so I went to work part and full time as a server. It left me so tired that I couldn't do a lot of extra things around my house that I wanted to. I have a area in my front yard that filled up with weeds last year. I pulled weeds a couple different times, but as much as it rained, it was overrun with weeds. Well this year, I'm not working outside of the home and I can get some things done that needed done. Ryan was working out of town this week so I thought I would do a few extra things this week. One thing was to get ready for a yard sale (which I plan to have the first weekend in April). I have been working in my garage like crazy, and I will post pictures of that accomplishment, but it's not QUITE finished yet. So when it is, I will post pictures ;) And my second goal was to clean up the flower bed in my front yard. I pulled all the dead weeds, and basically just cleaned the area. I put a weed barrier down and put cedar mulch on top of it. I plan on planting a few, or maybe a LOT of flowers very soon, but the first step was to get the area rid of weeds and prevent weeds from coming up. So I am really happy with what I have accomplished. I have just a little bit left to do, and I ran out of cedar mulch, so I need to go buy more, but I have maybe another hour worth of work left. I'm VERY happy!

The black (plastic) is the weed barriers that I was talking about. To the right, you'll see about how many weeds I had to pull throughout the bed. This is the last section that I have left to do!

The finished look, well at least until I have flowers in it!

My Buddy

I really wanted to write about something today, but couldn't think of anything really going on. My cockatiel is making so much noise that it drew my attention to him. So that's what I decided to write about today. Buddy is our 2 year old cockatiel. We bought him in Colorado when he was about 3 months old. When we first got him, I was scared to even touch him, I thought he would peck at me. Finally I put some seeds in my hand and he ate out of my hands for a few days, then I decided that he was warming up to me and I put my finger out for him to climb on. And he did. It took a while to get used to holding a bird and having him on my shoulder. We eventually built a bond with him. Then after 6 months we decided to get him a girl cockatiel. Her name was Cheyenne. After we got her, he didn't act the same towards us. We just lost that bond that we once had. We never did get a bond with Cheyenne. We would try to get her to get on our finger and all she would do is bite, and she bit kind of hard. And she didn't like us picking up Buddy, she would throw a fit when we were holding him. When we moved out here, we decided to get rid of her, because we were sick of her. I sold her last summer. It was the best thing I could have done! Buddy went back to being the same sweet bird again. We have had him close to 2 years, and he has learned to do so much. He copies the way you whistle. He whistles (like a guy whistles at a pretty girl) WHIT WHOO. And one of the funniest things he does is he BARKS! When the birds would get on our nerves, we would put them outside in our backyard. Our next door neighbor has a schnauzer dog that barks CONSTANTLY and Buddy picked up on his barking. It is pretty funny! Oh and my favorite thing that Buddy does is he kisses. It is so cute. He has been a fun bird to have. At times I wish we didn't have him (like in the morning when he wakes up and starts whistling) but for the most part, I love having him!

Buddy (white) and Cheyenne (gray)

Buddy and Cheyenne taking a nap

I hate this picture of me, but it is so cute of Buddy giving me a kiss :)

Easter Fun!

We had a great Easter! We went down to Ollie and Sharon's. Lee & Cherrie and Kevin & Michelle brought their families down as well. We all went to church, came home, had a great lunch, and then we hid a VERY large trash bag full of eggs all over Ollie and Sharon's yard. The kids had a great time while they stayed with them for a few days but Blake was READY to come home. I was ready for them to come home also. Ryan is going to be working out of town all week, so I'm already missing him! But I do hope that everyone had as nice of an Easter as we did :)

Lee was doing his annual "tricking the kids." He ties fishing line through some eggs and when a kid goes for them, he moves it. It is hilarious! Blake fell for it last year, but this year was Samuel's turn ;)

Whew!

Easter Graphic Comments

Yay, I am totally finished with Taylor's room. I realize that I have been working on her room for a couple days, but... I didn't work CONSTANTLY in there. I did a lot of other things and Ryan and I left our house a few times, so it really didn't take me 2 full days to do it ;) But I did get it all accomplished. I'm very happy with the results. I have 3 trash bags full of yard sale stuff, and that's just from the kids' rooms. Taylor has a very girly girl room. The people that lived here before us had it decorated just the way it is, and I love it! I wouldn't want to change anything. It is a very cute girl room. But I wanted to update everyone on the progress :)

All of her toys are confined to this area, plus all our books.

Here is Taylor's school collage, I am excited to see how the kids change over the years :)

Craigslist rocks!

When we moved to this house, we had a love seat that used to belong to Ryan's grandpa, and that's all the seating we had for a long time. Then Lee and Cherrie gave us a recliner, which was great. So we had enough seating, for our little family, but when we had any company over, I had to pull in our office chair and sometimes dining room chairs. It was obvious that we needed another couch. Well a couple weeks ago, Cherrie told me about Craigslist. I have been looking on Craigslist for a couple weeks and yesterday I came across a couch (leather) that definitely fit into our price range, which isn't much ;) So I'm VERY happy about my find! It is a very comfortable couch and in really good shape. Anyways, we only paid $25.00 for it. I'm so happy! Here is what it looks like:

Blake's room

Cherrie requested that I showed some of my progress for while my kids are gone. I actually am in the middle of doing Taylor's room. I did Blake's room yesterday. I didn't just clean it, I went through all the small clothes, and toys that aren't being used, and tried to actually organize everything. So I'm really happy to have his done with, but Taylor has a lot more stuff that I have to go through. I'm going to have a yard sale probably in the beginning of April. But here is some pictures of Blake's Star Wars room. He loves Star Wars very much, so do me and Ryan! Blake calls his carpet "Chewiebacca carpet". For those who don't know, Chewbacca is the big hairy guy from Star Wars. I will post more pictures of other things I get done later, but that is what I have done so far :)

This is the collage I told everyone I was working on when I first got this blog.

No kids

It is going to be a different, but nice few days for me. Our kids are staying with Ollie and Sharon down at the lake. I hope to get a lot of things accomplished while they are gone. I need to go through their rooms and get rid of some junk and clothes. I need to do some organizing around the house. I need to do some spring cleaning, mow my yard, do other yard work, etc... I love my kids SO much, but it is so nice to have a little break to do extra things. Plus, Ryan and I really don't get much time without them, so it will be nice to just spend some time with only him. We will probably go to their house on Saturday, and spend the night. We have Easter plans there at Ollie and Sharon's house on Sunday. But for now, I'm just wanting to focus on getting some things done. But I hope the kids are having a great time!

Rollerskating

Well, I have fulfilled 2/3 goals to give my kids a fun filled spring break. Taylor had received a free rollerskating coupon from a place that is about 10 miles away. And tonight was "Cheap Skates" night. It was only $3.00 a person, which only ended up costing me $6.00 to go. Ryan was tired so it was just me and the kids again. I figured I would have to hold both of their hands the whole time. But about 2 seconds after we all got on the floor, Taylor said, " I want to do it by myself." And I let her go, and watched he skate away, like she had done it a hundred times before. I was amazed. Now, she does have a pair of Heelys but they are a little different than skates. She was awesome! Blake on the other hand... Not so much! He was a LOT of work. He looked as if he was walking on a floor piled with grease (or something slippery). I couldn't let go of him for a second. He definitely wasn't nearly as good as Taylor. It literally WORE me OUT to try to keep him up. We only actually made it around the circle about 4 times. Taylor went around probably 50+ times the whole night. Taylor never ceases to amaze me at what she can do. She is definitely my athlete, and has GREAT balance. Blake is VERY handsome, but he is very klutzy, and has no balance. I hope that will change someday. But I think they both had a good time, especially Taylor. I probably won't take Blake back for a couple years though ;)

Children's Museum

My children are out on spring break and because we aren't going anywhere extravagant (like Colorado ;) I decided that I wanted to do a few fun things around Oklahoma. Yesterday, I took my kids to a Children's Museum in Seminole. Taylor had went there in Pre-K on a field trip and that's how I had heard about this place. It is a neat place though, they have a lot of things for kids to do and learn about. They have a couple mazes, a green screen (where you can be in a movie), a real airplane cockpit (to pretend you're flying), an art room where you can paint, draw or whatever, a pretend grocery store, a mirror room, just a bunch of things like that. There's so many things, I can't even start to name them all and also can't start to explain how they all work. But the kids had a great time. Blake has always wanted to go there (because Taylor did ;) and he really liked it. I plan to take the kids rollerskating and go to the Zoo in the next couple days. Then, they are going to go camping with Grandma and Grandpa at Lake Eufaula. So even though we aren't going anywhere, the kids are still having a great time. Here is a few pics of the museum:

The green screen

What the green screen ends up looking like

Inside maze

This outside maze was HUGE! It was hard to find your way through, unless you cheated, like Blake did ;)

"I'm the king of the world!" HEHE, I had to take this picture because it reminded me of Titanic. I don't think he's seen this part in the movie, but he did the exact scene ;)

Large bubbles

The skeleton moves the exact same time the the child moves

Hundreds of Blake's

Wow, guess what I did?

I'm shocked! I actually repaired some jeans for Blake and Ryan. Blake had 3 pairs of pants that had holes in the knees (and we don't have a lot of extra money), so I turned them into shorts, and they look great! And Ryan had 2 pairs of pants that had messed up zippers (one pair was Nauticas, like $60.00 pants). He was going to throw them away a while back and I told him I would somehow fix them, and I did :) Yay! He was really excited! Plus I got a lot of scrapbook pages done, and I am getting closer and closer to getting caught up with my kids' scrapbooks. I'm so happy. I feel a great feeling of accomplishment and had to share my joy!

Allergy season

Ugh, I HATE allergies! I had NEVER once had allergies before I was pregnant. Now I get them severely! It stinks! I always feel like I have to sneeze,and when I do, I sneeze a minimum of 5-10 times in a row, and I'm not a quiet sneezer. There is so much power behind my sneezes that I basically have to scream with it,I don't mean to, but I do. And when I'm not sneezing, my nose runs constantly, so I basically have a raw nose by the end of the day. And also my eyes are basically sealed shut because I feel like I need to sneeze. But my eyes stay shut all the time, and they ITCH. Allergies are NOT fun! So yeah, right now, I'm sure you all can guess that I'm suffering with allergies AS WE SPEAK! Please remember me!

I also wanted to show everyone a recent picture of Blake. He has hair again! Yay, hopefully he won't be bald ever again. He is finally looking like his old self again :)

His shirt says, "My Dad is Cooler!" Ryan likes this shirt ;)

Taylor's trial

This past week, I was organizing pictures to get ready to scrapbook again! I came across some pictures of Taylor when she was around 18 months. For those of you that don't know, Taylor had a SEVERE case of eczema when she was little. She started getting it when she was 7 months old. She had it bad up until her 2nd birthday. It was by far one of the worst things to ever have to go through, just seeing you baby scratching herself until she bled. And the cries she let out, they just broke my heart. I tried everything under the sun to try to help her skin. Aveeno products, Arbonne products, Oatmeal baths, nothing helped! I didn't use medicated lotions, but tried everything else. I even put socks on her hands and pinned the top of the socks to her shirt sleeves. I had the elders once, but back then, I didn't believe with my whole heart that she would ever be healed of that affliction. Then, on Christopher and Melissa's wedding day (03/23/02) a brother asked us if he could pray for her. We appreciated it and told him yes. He saw how bad she really was. Then we moved to Colorado the very next day. Then for the next 4 Sundays in a row, someone came up to her and prayed for her in church. It was so touching. So my heart just melted to see people's faith and it helped me to have more faith about it. So I STOPPED using everything and I just felt like she would be healed and I prayed a lot harder and just trusted God. I kid you not, after those 5 weeks of prayers, her eczema went away. Her skin used to feel like sandpaper, and after it went away, it felt baby soft again. She does occasionally break out in small patches of eczema, but overall it has totally went away. I am kind of happy we went through that so that we can tell of how God took that horrible affliction away from our baby. I just was reminded of it this week and felt like sharing it with everyone.

You can see where she had scratched her face until it bled, there are scabs throughout her face. She was close to being healed in this picture, she was healed within one month.

This is one of the hardest things to see you child doing. I only took this so we could remember how horrible it was. You can see how red her legs were (they were bleeding). She would cry so hard, but she couldn't stop scratching.

Today is my 10th re-birthday!

Yes, 10 years ago I chose to live my life for serving the Lord. It just dawned on me a few minutes ago and realized that it was exactly 10 years ago today. My baptism worked out really awesome. My dad, who was NOT in our church was pretty ticked off at me at first when I told him that I had gave my hand, and told me that he wasn't coming to it. But my sweet grandma somehow convinced him to go ahead and go, and she also came with him. She was from the Church of Christ, but never tried to push me to conform to her church. My mom was actually in Vici, Oklahoma for her last living aunt's funeral. So, I was sad that she wasn't there. But... I was dating Ryan at the time and Dale, Chantel and Andy were there. Also, Lee was there, so I thought it was kind of neat that my someday to be family was there. I had always wanted my uncle Ronnie to be the one to baptize me, but he lives in Tucson, AZ, and he happened to come up for a funeral in Grand Junction (Lynn H's funeral). I gave my hand after the funeral and Sunday after church, we all headed to the little creek in Olathe. I still wish I could feel as WONDERFUL as I did that day. There is no greater feeling then becoming a child of the king! I have learned so much in the last 10 years and I know in another 10 years, I will hopefully know much more than I do now. Life is a constant battle to stay living the faith, but it is the only way for me :)
I was looking at my baptism pictures and found a LOT of people that are no longer with us. It is amazing how much can change in 10 years. It really doesn't seem that long ago. I just thought I would post these.

Two of these elders are already gone: Brother Mitch and Brother Mark. And Brother Bob isn't doing good at all. I'm afraid his days are very numbered :(

Talk about a moment that I wish I could have back, my dad embraced me immediately after everything was over. I still think he felt the precious holy spirit that filled my heart that day. My dad is gone and Jason (left side of the picture, my cousin) is also gone. I actually wish I could relive this day over and over again.

Rounding up car parts

Back in September of 2006, Ryan was backing out of our driveway in Olathe, Colorado and turned too quick and hit the corner post of our chain link fence. So we have had an ugly little dent in the left front fender for a long time now. Then, in June, of 2007, our air conditioner stopped working and I found out that it was our radiator condenser that needed replaced.

Back to the wreck. We haven't turned it into insurance, because we thought we would have to pay our deductible up front. I really didn't know how insurance worked. So we finally turned it into our insurance and the adjuster came out and looked at the fender and took pictures and then explained that we didn't actually have to PAY, it's just that they figure up how much it would cost for all of the damage to get fixed and then subtract our deductible (which unfortunately was $1,000.00) and the rest was ours to do whatever with. Well he called the next day and told me that we would be getting back about $450.00, which isn't enough to fix everything. But...we can buy some used parts and slowly save up and have someone to fix the dent. I called a couple salvage yards and found some of the parts we will need to fix the wreck AND I found a used condenser, and Brother Bill P said that he would show us how to replace the condenser, so we will have air conditioning again! YAY! I'm so glad that I have located these cheap parts, that will help a LOT with the cost of fixing these things. I'm going to go to the salvage yard either today or Monday and get those parts. So I'm a little upset that we aren't getting a lot back from insurance, but I am excited to be able to buy the parts right now.

Anyone up for a good laugh?!

I just saw this on a bulletin on MySpace and HAD to post it here, it will have you all rolling!
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An elderly Florida lady did her shopping and, upon returning to her car, found four males in the act of leaving with her vehicle. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at the top of her voice, "I have a gun, and I know how to use it! Get out of the car!"

The four men didn't wait for a second invitation. They got out and ran like mad.

The lady, somewhat shaken, then proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and got into the driver's seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition. She tried and tried, and then it dawned on her why... For the same reason she did not understand why there was a football, a Frisbee and two 12 packs of beer in the front seat!

A few minutes later, she found her own car parked four or five spaces farther down. She loaded her bags into the car and drove to the police station to report her mistake.

The sergeant to whom she told the story couldn't stop laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale men were reporting a car jacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less than five feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large handgun.

No charges were filed.

If you're going to have a Senior Moment, make it a memorable one!!

Distant cousins

I have looked back on Cherrie and Trina's blogs and noticed some "Family pictures" that were very interesting! Then Raine posted an interesting picture a few days ago. So I thought I would join in and post some photos, hehe. We must be some distant cousins to them, well, except for Cherrie's family, we're obviously close ;)

HEHE, on another note: We have had awesome weather for a few days now, but it is back to being cold :( We're supposed to get snow in the afternoon today. It rained all night, and the wind scared me, I'm always a little nervous with strong winds, I always think a tornado will hit. There actually was a tornado yesterday in western Oklahoma. I really shouldn't worry though, God won't allow anything to happen that's not supposed to. Hope you all have a good day :)

Bubba

This is my handsome nephew, Shane AKA Bubba. He is 20 years old today. He is currently in college to be a history teacher. He has only had 3 girlfriends (that I know of). He only dates seriously. Whoever ends up with him will be a lucky girl, he has a heart of GOLD! I became an aunt at the age of 5 (with Shane's sister, Stephanie) and Shane was born when I was 6. I can't believe how fast these years have went! I'm just so happy to be a part of his family, he's a super GREAT guy!