Basketball pictures

Maggie's Favorite Weather

No....there has been no snow in our part of Arizona. Maggie was "star student" last week for her class. We had to fill out this poster of all her favorite things. And, of course, Maggie, my child who never wanted to stay out in the snow for more than 15 minutes, picked "snowy" as her favorite weather. How quickly she forgets that being cold is absolutely no fun. So I had to dig through all the files on my computer and find some snow pictures. These were from our last few weeks in Canton. Four snow days in two weeks...and since I wasn't going to get much done with everyone home from school...we had fun playing in the snow with the neighbors! I miss the neighbors, but not the snow.

So, Wednesday night last week I ran to Walgreens to pick up a snow picture for Maggie and somehow, someway, when I got out of my car I left the interior lights on. I'm not sure where my mind was. @#$%&#!!!

I thought it was a little odd that my key chain would not open up my doors when Andrew and I went to leave Thursday. I knew it was really bad when I manually unlocked my door and the rest of the doors wouldn't unlock. @#$%&#@!!! Hopefully, Andrew will never repeat what he heard. So, no big deal, Andrew and I were just heading up to the club...so, I had him put his helmet on. He rode his bike and I ran next to him. Of course, Hillary had planned on bumming a ride home from me...sorry Charlie...I told her Andrew would ride her home on his bike.

We had plans to meet Pamela and the boys at the park in the afternoon, so I called her to pick us up. She brought over some jumper cables, but we could not get my van out of the garage. I learned later from the tow truck driver the trick to getting the van into neutral.

Anyway...Andrew and I went to the park for awhile. When we got home I called AAA and they told me someone would be over in an hour and 15 minutes....plenty of time for me to take a shower, right? Of course, the first time in my life that I haven't had to wait hours for AAA. As soon as I turned off the shower I could hear the truck outside...so with my hair slightly dripping I explained the problem to the guy. He got it started easily, but told me I needed to take it to get a battery right then-which I had been told might be the case, but did not believe. I asked him if I could turn off the van and then take it in an hour for a new battery. Nope. Unless I wanted to call him again for another jump. Wonderful....So, I left the van running in the driveway and tried to dry my hair a little before going to Sams for a new battery. Life would be so boring without all these little hiccups.

This weekend Christine started her basketball season. They played well, but still lost. Christine had fun. The more games I watch, I can almost understand parents yelling at referees. I contain myself though...after all, it is 6th grade basketball. I'll wait until junior high basketball to help out the refs. I did get to play with my new camera.

Of course...big football weekend. Go Cardinals!!!

Andrew's Preschool Performance

I couldn't get any pictures during the show, but these were some from after.

Christmas Day Pictures

Maggie with new clothes for her Bitty Baby and Andrew on his new bike.

We're Moving!

No...Not back to Ohio. We are just moving less than a mile away from our house now. Same neighborhood, same school, bigger house, more room for guests....and a loft so I don't have to see all the kids' toys! While we are all excited about the move, I have a lot to do in the next month-or less now. Find boxes, pack everything up, meet with movers about all the big stuff, pick paint colors, figure out what light fixtures we want (foreclosure and the former owners took all the light fixtures with them), find a renter for this house, sell our extra freezer, go through all the junk in the garage and figure out if we really want to move it...plus the regular running the kids around to practices, with the added bonus of now having to stay at the soccer fields for Andrew's practice. I'm sure it will all somehow get done!

Christmas Break

I'm not sure where our Christmas break has gone to. Right now the kids are exhausted and all hanging out watching Hannah Montana. Andrew is currently laying next to me with his head resting on my right arm as I type.

The last two nights they have run around with the neighbor kids up and down the street playing tag and hide and seek and anything else they could think of to continue moving...I'm not sure where they get all their energy, but it may actually be starting to run out! Last night we could not find marshmallows anywhere...our neighbor Marcie even made a special trip out because no one believed Steve that our grocery store didn't have any. She came home empty-handed. Steve found one lone bag at a grocery store a little further away tonight...but there was a reason it was left. All the marshmallows were stuck together. The kids didn't care. They ate them anyway.

(Andrew is now out cold..)

New Year's Eve we headed to the zoo for zoo lights. It was fun. The kids love walking through and seeing all the lights. I talked everyone into sitting through the "tree show" twice. After we went through everything I had Christine talked into going back and sitting through it one more time, but everyone else vetoed that idea. Andrew FINALLY got to ride the shark at the carousel...all the times we've been to the zoo he has never been able to get on the shark, so he was happy. My little man is so sociable though it was hard to get a picture of him. Every time he came around he was talking to the boy next to him!

Other than that we have kept busy with renting movies, playing with friends, Christine's basketball practices, having sleepovers....Steve actually took the kids to the pool to swim for a little bit today.

Now to just get back to our normal sleep schedule by Monday. Andrew has school Monday and the girls start back Tuesday.

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!

Christmas Break

Well, our third official day off of school and I am exhausted! (I'm not counting the weekend.) The kids and I went to see "Tale of Desperaux" yesterday. The kids liked it. Maggie and Christine had read it, so they were excited to see it. I somehow fell asleep right at the beginning of the movie...woke up and the rats and mice were already banished. So, I kind of missed out on the whole moral of the movie.
Today the kids played at the club while I worked out. After lunch, Kim and Bradley stopped and wanted us to ride bikes with them to pick oranges. So, we got a backpack and headed out on our bikes to get some oranges. The girls picked some, but mostly they were just drilling each other with all the oranges on the ground. Of course, Andrew ended up crying. He had gotten Christine, but then when she got him he was not too happy. They all had fun. We've got a ton of oranges now!
Then tonight we surprised Jennia with a birthday gathering at the park. We got her to the park by saying that we were going to have a pre-Christmas gathering to let all the kids play. She was thinking about not coming, so we had to let her husband in on the secret. The kids were all excited since they knew that she didn't know about it. Her bday is on the 24th. She was very surprised and touched. She said since her birthday is so close to Christmas no one has done that for her before. So, we had some cake, let the kids run around and now hopefully they will be tired enough to go to bed at a decent hour!
Tomorrow we have the "Hot Cocoa" walk in the AM and we'll be decorating gingerbread houses. I'll try to get some pictures!

Sitting on Santa's lap

December

It is amazing how much we try to fit in to the month of December! Christine had a band concert, Maggie had a clogging recital and a third grade school performance, and Andrew still has a preschool Christmas performance. The picture was from brunch with Santa. Christine had told us ahead of time that she was not sitting on Santa's lap. He didn't give her a choice though. It was pretty funny.

Christine's band concert went well. They sounded really good. The kids wore sunglasses for the last song. (Andrew insisted on being in the picture with them.

Maggie's clogging performance was cute. The girls did a good job. They were supposed to perform in the backyard of her instructor. Three freak days of rain in Arizona made their yard too muddy for that so we squeezed into their house. The show must go on....

Spelling Bee

The spelling bee was this afternoon. Christine was runner-up-again! That means if by some chance the winner can not participate in the spelling bee, Christine gets to. Her missed words-rouge and daffodil. When she missed the word "rouge", I was thinking "Man, if I had the movie Moulin Rouge she would've got that right." Dang!

She did great! We are so proud of her. This was her third year of qualifying for the spelling bee!

Life in general

We all survived our long weekend! I know both girls blogged about the Turkey Trot. They had a good time. I was dumb enough to do the 10K and then get talked into a free boot camp by Hillary. After the second exercise of the boot camp I was wishing I would have headed to Starbucks with everyone else! I ate a piece of apple pie to make up for my stupidity!

Steve left Friday morning for a surprise visit to Ohio-I was just a little jealous. This meant I had all three kids for the long weekend. We played at the school playground for a while on Friday. I definitely was not going to attempt "Black Friday" shopping with three kids. Actually, Christine would have LOVED to have gone shopping. Maggie hates shopping and Andrew-well, Andrew is just Andrew.

Saturday I somehow let the Kirby vacuum salesman in my house and he was there forever. I think we need to get another dog that seems really vicious when people come to the door. I did tell him when he started that I was not going to buy anything. I let him clean my house though. So, now my carpets are much cleaner but he wasted about two hours of my day!

We did find out that Sonic had ice cream cones for a quarter this weekend. We went Saturday night and Sunday. Christine even wanted to go back on Monday! Sunday we got our cones and drove around looking at Christmas lights. I still can't get used to those icicles lights in a place that will NEVER see any icicles.

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I don't know if I'll get a chance to post anything before Thursday, so I thought I would post while I have a minute. I went to the grocery store today to get a turkey and all the fixings....of course, I forgot to get gravy mix. Now I will have to go back to the craziness tonight or tomorrow. You would think we would have one measly gravy packet in our pantry, but no such luck!
Tomorrow morning Andrew's preschool is going on a field trip. We are driving up to the Tempe Arts Center to see "The Velveteen Rabbit". It's supposed to be a cute show. I just hope Andrew is entertained. We don't have the book and I vaguely remember it from childhood.
In the afternoon the elementary school is having their annual "Turkey Bowl". The sixth graders play football against the teachers and staff. It should be fun to watch Christine and her friends play football. They are excited about it. Andrew and I should be back in time to head over to the school to see the game.
Thursday morning the club that we belong to in our neighborhood is having a Turkey Trot. No awards, no t-shirts, no cost. Just a way to get some calorie-burning in before the big feast. Christine and Maggie are going to run the 5K. I'm going to run the 10K. Steve and Andrew are going to ride bikes and cheer for us. Last year Steve pushed Andrew in the running stroller. I got rid of the running stroller because Andrew was getting too heavy to push, so that is not an option this year.
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Gobble, gobble!

Mad Mud Run Champions!

The Dirty Soles-Kim, Niki, Hilary, me and Stacy. Notice how clean we are before the race.....

And how dirty we are after!

We came....we saw....we got soooo muddy!

Other than getting mud in my eye and in my mouth-yuck!-the mud run was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. We met up at our house at 5:45 AM and "the team" loaded into our van and headed up to Scottsdale. We are very spoiled when it comes to weather here, so we were freezing in the 50-some degree temperatures.

We got to McDonald's Ranch and saw that we were very outdone when it came to the costume department. These people had some crazy costumes on. The guys in speedos were voted the best. The were supposed to be vikings-speedos, with sheets as their capes, and toy helmets and swords. I know we got at least one picture of them. I'll have to download some of Gokey's pictures of all the crazy costumes.

We were the last wave to leave the starting line. They started with solo people, then teams of two, then teams of three and finally five-person teams. The starting line was the "soak zone". There were kids with squirt guns getting people as they started. We had strategized that if we were to the back left we wouldn't get squirted-but we knew that our kids would be upset if they couldn't squirt us. Of course, Maggie was kind enough to squirt me right in the head-so much for that "No squirting people in the face rule". So, my teeth were chattering for the first half mile or so. Stacy is the one in the back. She is the kids' PE teacher. They were nice enough to get her with the dirty water!

During the four mile race we had to belly/knee crawl under a tarp, go over and under hurdles, climb a wall (it wasn't as high as I thought it would be), go over a balance beam and then finally the mud pit! The kids had a front row view of everyone going through the pit!

And what great prize did we get for winning this race? A box of Tide and a bottle of wine!

More info and pictures. (Won't be posted until 11/25) Gokey's album.