Aubrey's award night!

A couple weeks ago we went to Gilbert City Hall to watch Aubrey, my niece, receive a Citizenship award. One of her teachers nominated her and told Kenny, who is my brother in law and I what a joy she was to have in class. I think she thought I was my sister so I just nodded and listened. I would have to agree with her teacher...Aubrey's always been very full of life and ready to take on the world. She LOVES school! We're so proud of you Aubrey!

Aubrey accepting her award...


"Look what I got".....


Tanner, Aubrey, Maclaine, and Sidney (Aubrey's friend)....


Aubrey and her sweet teacher...


Tapia's....


Maclaine and Aubrey....


Me and Aubrey....

Maclaine's fall concert

We had the privilege of hearing Maclaine and all the other 2ND graders sing some really fun fall songs. The concert was a couple days before Thanksgiving break so they got us all ready to give thanks and enjoy our turkey dinners.

Here's Maclaine in a dress, she actually wanted to wear one....


Beautiful girl...


Maclaine with her good friend Seren from school....

"Me and my shadow"

I guess when you don't have siblings in the house you make do with your dogs. I always had my sister's to play with, sometimes we played nice, sometimes not so much. I love my sister's dearly though and would be so sad if they weren't in my life.

Sometimes I have peace with the fact that God gave us only one child. Sometimes I feel incredibly sad for Maclaine that she won't have a sister or brother around. She tells me that she doesn't want me to have a baby because brothers and sisters fight and she would have to share her stuff with them. I'm more worried that when she becomes an adult she will feel gypped. BUT, for the time being she seems perfectly content playing with her dogs.

Here are some pictures of her taking Barnaby for a ride around the house.

Do I have to?


I'll just take a little rest...


Notice that our dog has an English accent at the end of the video...

Excuse the messy house...

Here he is in his Ninja costume I got at the after Halloween clearance at Target. I just had to add this photo. Aww, he's so cute!

Happy "VET"eran's Day!

Maclaine told me that she was going to wear her Noah Webster T-shirt today since it has an animal on it and since it's Veteran's Day. Huh?

It took me a minute to figure that one out. After I chuckled a bit I realized I had some "splaining" to do. Here's how the conversation went: "Honey, we actually aren't honoring Veterinarian's on Veteran's day we're honoring the men and women who fought and are fighting for our freedom."

Then, she smiled and said, "I'm going to wear it anyway."

Don't you just love what comes out of our kids mouths! Life would be SO boring around here without our Clainey girl!

"Where's Melissa?"

Remember those books "Where's Waldo?" Well, today we're going to play the game "Where's Melissa?"

This picture is on Pioneer Woman's site today...

Did you find me?

Isn't he cute?

Not only do I love this man, but, I really do LIKE him too!!!

I'm not saying our marriage is perfect but we love each other, respect each other, support each other, laugh at and with each other, we're a team and we actually REALLY like each other. I feel very blessed that God put him in my life 15 + years ago and I've made the choice to love him for the rest of my life!

I love watching him worship God and use his amazing gift...

"She likes me, she really, really likes me!"

I finally got to meet my "BFF" last night! WOO HOO! I brought Maclaine with me for moral support to meet Ree Drummond or as she's known in the blog world, Pioneer Woman. I've been reading her blog for about a year now and when I discovered it I spent weeks going through her archives. She's just so funny, down-to-earth, humble, generous, and just purely entertaining.



She told me I had cute hair! She also told me to e-mail her the picture of us since we are BFF's and all...


See, it's true! We ARE BFF's, she even said so :)


Maclaine was the most patient little girl ever, I bought her a book to reward her....

I didn't buy her Pioneer Woman's cookbook, I actually bought her a book she wanted :)

Halloween night!

We went to my sister's on Halloween night to trick-or-treat her neighborhood. It's always more fun for Maclaine to go with her cousins and it's fun for us too. Everyone came for the fun event except my younger sister Jamie and her family. We missed seeing them...I wish I could have gotten pictures of her kiddos.

Here's Clainey as a rocker-biker chic...




Clainey and Tanner as Albert Einstein...


Clainey and Aubrey....


Granny with the kiddos...




Mom and Aubrey, my mom made Aubrey's bag of jelly beans costume...








I wish I had gotten a picture of my Dad and Lin with the kids. They were getting tired of us snapping pictures at them though and were ready to get the trick-or-treating started. Boy, did they get a lot of candy! I've eaten FAR too much!

Hallapalooza!!!

Our church hosted an event called Hallapalooza the day before Halloween so we signed up to pass out candy at the trunk-or-treat. I thought for sure that Maclaine would want to walk around and "trunk-or-treat" but she said, "no, I'm fine just sitting here eating our candy." I didn't realize just HOW MUCH candy she was eating until we closed up shop and decided to go check out the other cool stuff at the event. Well, let's just say there was a pile of wrappers and a VERY hyper girl to show for it.

You'll notice in these pictures that she was having a hard time being serious for the camera. She reminded me of someone who had a little TOO much to drink if you know what I mean!

This was taken right after we found all the candy wrappers...


A little crazy....


Crazier...


Craziest...


We were on the hayride here....


They found a fire truck to play in...watch out world!


I think Ty might have had a few pieces of candy too, he was a little wild himself....