Cookie Swap Night!

I thought it would be fun to have a holiday party for the families and friends that were staying in town rather than going away. It was especially for the folks that are new to Lubbock and couldn't afford to go home for Christmas. Well, most of the people I invited went home for Christmas! So, we had our favorite friends over - the Families Only Clique!!

What a good time! Everyone brought two types of delicious goodies. We had everything from Hot Chocolate Cookies, to Fudge, to Oreo Cookie Balls, to Christmas Tree Cookies, and MORE!  It was fun to try everyone's concoctions.  And, it was fun to get to keep some for ourselves.

The kids played together, watched Christmas movies together, ran around, wore themselves OUT! Of course when it was time to say goodbye and time to go to bed, there were tears. But, we will survive until the next get together!

Abbie's Apron

I am making an apron for Abbie. It's never to early to start promoting that girls belong in the kitchen, right!? Haha! I am JUST kidding. I know you know me better than that!!

Anyway.  I have had so much fun with this project.  I loved finding just the right fabric, figuring out how to make it without a pattern, and - most importantly, trying it on Aidan to see how it fit along the way!

He hated this part of course.  I LOVE the picture that came out of the modeling session. It's a hoot!

I trust Abbie will like her Christmas gift much more than Aidan likes it!!

Family Portrait Attempt

This was pretty hilarious! This outing, I mean.  We - okay, I - wanted us to get our family portrait done. Something that had a Texas theme. What better place then the Ranching Heritage Center near our house?  They have these really cool bronze steers placed out on the front lawn. It looks very Texas!

We enlisted some friends to take our picture. We would take theirs if they took ours.  So, we prayed for good light and warm temps and headed out. 

We didn't really get either - good light or warm temps! The time of day was kinda a bust but we just couldn't get out there any earlier than 3pm.  Add in the clouds that were rolling in, and the light was weird. But - we took the shots anyway.

Pretty funny, huh!?

Charlie Brown Tree?!

We got our Christmas tree the other night.  It was kinda weird because we purchased it from Lowes.  We have ALWAYS gotten our tree from a lot. Welcome to Lubbock yet again! The one good thing was, I have never bought a tree for only $20 before.  So, we are grateful for that. Livi and I had fun (the boys stayed home) picking out a tree and, okay, arguing a little bit over which one to pick!!  Then we drove home extra slow so the tree wouldn't blow off the car or get there transformed into just a big branch on top of the car.  I'm sure the other drivers thought we were nuts for going so slow!

The tree is small, but so are the ceilings in our house. It is still about a foot too short, but we love it anyway.  We have put it in the window and decorated it. I have A LOT of ornaments left over! We will just have to use them another time.

A small pile of presents is growing under the tree too. Thank you so much for those of you that have sent them!  And for those of you that have given us the gift of survival this past year - we give you a resounding THANK YOU too!

Olivia's Choir Concert

Livi's concert last night was AMAZING!! We are so impressed with the choral program at O.L. Slaton. The choir director is quite a talent. He motivates the students and pulls the most beautiful sound from them. Rick and I could see commitment in every singers face as they performed. It is clear they love to sing, but it also appears that they would follow the choir director anywhere! The choral program is obviously the strongest of the Fine Arts at O.L. Slaton. 

Olivia was so lovely on stage! She was dressed beautifully (thanks, Grandy!) and sang like an angel.  No, I couldn't hear just her but - I KNOW she did anyway!  And of course she had fun with her best friends too.  It means so much to her to have close friends in the program.  They love being a part of this choir but they love that they have each other even more.  We are so glad that she has this to fill her soul!

Rick is 40!!

We had a nice time wishing Rick a happy 40th birthday.  We made him a cake, gave him some cards, and surprised him with a few friendly visitors from school.  I am so glad that he is now 40.  Mostly because he will stop harrassing me for being 40 before HIM! 

The cake was delicious. The company was fun.  And we didn't burn the house down with all those candles!

How Do I Change A Diaper!?

This was the question posed to me by Olivia about an hour before her first away from home babysitting gig.  She wanted to be prepared to put an 18 month old to bed. She is so adorably nervous!! We talked about how to change a diaper and we tried to practice on her Bitty Baby with a dish towel. It didn't really work the way a diaper would, but I think she got the jist!  And, then off she went to babysit . . . I wonder when she will call me for help!?!

Where is the Turkey!?

Aidan brought home a homework assignment this week.  It was a "Disguise the Turkey" project.  He received a paper turkey that we were to disguise so that he wouldn't be eaten for Turkey dinner!! Aidan had a hard time deciding how we should disguise the turkey. First it was Batman, then someone from Star Wars, then - he made up his mind! Spike the Dinosaur won out . . .

We used green paper and cut it out to the same shape as the printed turkey. Added a 3 dimesional mouth, including sharp teeth, some spikes and a tail - and, voila! Spike the Turkey Dinosaur was born!! Aidan was VERY proud of Spike and happily took him to school for the display on his hallway.  Too cute!

Halloween Weekend

What a FULL weekend! Friday night, we went to the Ranchers Heritage Museum old time Halloween event. Saturday night, we went to a TOMBSTONE Pizza Halloween Party. Tonight, good ole trick or treating.  Lots of family fun!

Friday was a really cool experience. We had heard that the museum had this free event for families and we had been wanting to check out the museum anyway, so it seemed like a good fit.  Costumes were encouraged as volunteers would be giving out candy at different stations throughout the museum.  We weren't really sure what that meant since we had never been before.  Boy were we impressed!  We walked up to a beautiful building, walked through it to the back and - wow! What a layout.  The grounds were much larger than they appeared from the front of the building, and spread out across it were many buildings that represented the way that cowboys and ranchers lived in the 1800s.  We saw different types of homes, a train/train station, carriage house, school house, cowboy commissary, stables/barn, pay office, etc. It was very interesting. The volunteers were dressed as cowboys or as women of the time.  We had so much fun!

Saturday we went to a friends house for a Halloween party.  The party was sponsored by TOMBSTONE pizza through a website called House Party.  My friend applied to host this party and was selected. Then, she received a party pack that contained everything she needed to through a party, paid for by TOMBSTONE. It was cool.  We had TOMBSTONE pizza, Nestle Tollhouse cookies, Nestle candies - all on TOMBSTONE'S dime.  They even provided coupons for the guests to go get pizza, cookies, and candy at a discount.  The hostess planned a Frankenstein craft for the kids - it was a hit! We left with smiles on our faces and some swag!

Halloween evening was really fun. We had to go to a different hood than our own because of the heavy student demographic!  We found a charming, wonderful neighborhood and started enjoying ourselves.  We started at about 6:30pm but found that the streets really started getting crowded after dark.  It was fun to see what costumes were popular this year.  Aidan was the only Anakin Skywalker we saw and Liv was the only Alice.  They came home and sorted through their loot, and all in all were very pleased!

Now I gotta start thinking about Christmas . . .

Pumpkin Contest!!

We are all about Halloween around here! We've got our fun decorations up around the house, a couple of pumpkins out on the porch, and we are eagerly awaiting trick or treating.  In the meantime, we have entered a pumpkin in a contest at Aidan's school.  Aidan came home with a flyer that gave us all the details and he was super excited to participate.

I asked him what he wanted to put on the pumpkin as the contest required paint and no carving.  He thought about it and waffled between a Frankenstein, Vampire & a Dragon. We finally narrowed it down to a Dragon! Aidan and I looked online for some images and we saw a few that we liked. The trick was, which one Mommy could draw on the pumpkin!! 

I gave it a shot and drew a long dragon that wrapped around the pumpkin.  Then came time to paint! We only had three colors - blue, green, and hot pink.  Aidan decided what colors he wanted where and we set about painting the dragon.

It took a couple of days because the paint had to dry between coats.  The pumpkin skin didn't take the paint very well, it even peeled off a couple of times!

Eventually, it was done and ready to go to school.  What do you think?!

Apple Update!

We made PIE!! And it wasn't as difficult as we thought it would be. Homemade crust, filling and a pretty little pie plate - and Voila! Yummy pie!

Livi and Aidan helped out with every step. From gathering ingredients, to measuring ingredients, to mixing ingredients. We had a lot of fun!

And the pie? DEE-LICIOUS!!

Went Apple Pickin'!

We went to the Fuji Apple Pickin' at Apple Country Orchard this morning. Lovely morning, kinda odd little shabby orchard!

We were looking for something different to do and came across the orchard online.  Picking apples sounded fun, something we could all do and it would get us outside and breathing the fresh air.  Olivia asked if she could bring a friend so we asked Katy to come along.  She was thrilled with that, and Aidan was too. 

We headed to Idalou on Highway 62 and were soon there.  We knew by the old timey and not quaint sign that we might not be getting what we came for!  We walked into the front little shop and looked at all the ancient gifts but were soon met with the most wonderful smell!! There was a little bakery/cafe in the back and they had been making apple pancakes all morning - yum! We didn't have any however, we were there for apple picking and that's what we wanted to get to.  Didn't want to waste the lovely weather!

We got our buckets and headed to the orchard.  We were hoping to find Fuji and Arkansas Black apples. Never heard of Arkansas Black apples so we were curious. It was a nice little walk thru the orchard and we soon came to the row that we wanted to investigate.  While there were many apples on the ground around the base of the trees, we still managed to find some apples still on the branches.  Aidan picked the first one - it was really fun!  He just reached right into the leaves and plucked!  Livi and Katy had fun too.  We were allowed to eat the apples while we picked so, we picked about four and ate one then did it all over again. the apples really were delicious and seemed to taste better than the ones at the grocery.

We thought we were picking Fuji apples but it turned out we had picked Red Delicious apples. Of course, we could have gotten those at the dang grocery store but oh well! At least these were super fresh!  We picked about four pounds of apples at 89 cents a pound. We walked outta there with lots of apples for $5!

My plan is to make my first from scratch apple pie and apple turnovers.  The kids are gonna help me, we are gonna make an afternoon of it.  We will let you know how delicious they are!!

Fall is Here!

Well, mostly here! Oct is tomorrow after all. We made an excursion to Dallas this weekend.  Our goal was to hit the Arboretum, but the weather had other plans for us!  As we drove in Friday night, the rain poured and we wondered what Saturday would be like.  We hoped that the weather would clear so we could go to the Pumpkin Festival at the Arboretum the next morning. Our hopes were dashed as we woke up to raindrops on our windows.

So we regrouped, thanks to Uncle Matt, and went to the Dallas Aquarium instead. What a cool place! It was kind of an aquarium and a zoo combo, with a tropical feel.  We saw everything from monkeys, to birds, to turtles, to snakes, and oh yeah - fish!  Aidan got to feed a baby bird, Olivia marveled at the manatees, while Rick enjoyed the snakes and I, the bats.  We even got a little scare (but it was pretty awesome too!) when Aidan decided he wanted to see the cayman croc. He climbed up onto the exhibit, which was fine there was no danger that we could forsee, and no sooner had he bent down to take a look in the cayman's face - the croc whipped around and snapped at Aidan! It was so fast our brains didn't even recognize what had happened until it was OVER! It was amazing. And a little scary.

The weather cleared enough for Uncle Matt and Gramps Brier to play tag and hide & seek with the kids out in the cul de sac. Then, Gramps and I took the kids to the park. It was fun, Gramps played "Mario" (yes, the video game in live action!) with Aidan and Olivia.  We headed back when we thought Abbie might be up from her nap - cause we wanted to play with HER! She is so much fun!! Then, it was off to dinner (thanks Dad!) and then home to relax.

Sunday, Arboretum day - not golf day as hoped, sorry guys!  It was slightly overcast and 71 degrees. Perfect weather for walking thru the gardens. We really couldn't have asked for a better morning.  As we pulled into the parking lot, we could already see the beauty that was in store for us. There were flowers in abundance, interesting plants, and lots of girls getting their pictures taken amongst it all!  Brides, Senior pics, Hispanic girls celebrating their very special 15th birthdays by getting their portraits done in prom like dresses - it was fun to see all of the activity.

We went into the frontier days exhibit and the kiddos loved it. Abbie and Aidan jumped right into the covered wagon. Where Aidan quickly told the other boys inside that Abbie is his little sister!!  We checked out the teepee or tee tee as Aidan called it.  The kids, and Dad, didn't want to come out! We moved on to a series of pools and statues - all of which we posed with and on and laughed a lot.  After a quick potty stop, we finally made it to the Pumpkin Houses. There were 4 of them and they were so impressive. We were beyond excited! Okay, maybe it was just me but I thought it was really cool.

Each house had a storybook plaque outside and explained  what story the house was affiliated with. Cinderella of course was the main story and the others were kind of made up or in keeping with some fairytale.  Each house also had a pumpkin yard next to it. The groundskeepers had arranged the pumpkins and gourds in patterns that were really pretty.  There was also a maze of hay - the kids loved jumping around in that. And, a Tom Thumb pumpkin patch. We didn't buy any pumpkins but the kids, even Abbie, loved picking them up and walking around with them. Very cute!

Our mission was accomplished. We had a great day, a wonderful visit and an experience we can think of fondly.

LEGO Batman Obsession!

So first let me give a HUGE shout out to my most amazing sister and brother-in-law. They passed their Wii system to my kids and now have "Beyond Generous" stamped on their foreheads.  We couldn't be more appreciative and this is our public shout out!

We have all used it. Rick loves his Tiger Woods golf game, Livi loves her Animal Crossing game, I have been getting into shape with the many workouts, and Aidan is OBSESSED with LEGO Batman!

He really is addicted. We may need professional help.  Before school started, he woke up asking to play it. Now that school has started, he comes home asking to play it. He has become quite the master of the game and is hilarious to watch!  He is so committed to every level, every character and every trick.  And, if he lets someone else play  he is coaching them all the way. 

As each level is unlocked, Aidan can play with more vehicles, play against more villians, and use more special suits for Batman and Robin.  It's a really cool game and it takes him awhile to get through the levels. I like that because he isn't blowing through the game so fast that it gets boring.

Okay - back to the Wii!!

Sunburst Market

We spent Saturday morning looking for the local Farmers Market.  We had some addresses, and off we went eager to find a market like we were used to in KY and VA.  It was a gorgeous morning so we were up for the drive.  We asked some friends if they'd like to come to, so we formed a convoy (two cars really!) and started our adventure. We drove downtown - nothing. We drove out of town - nothing. We stopped and asked someone, they said go downtown, we must of missed it. So, we headed back but, I took a wrong turn. As we were trying to find our way back, we noticed a sign that said SUNBURST MARKET. It was a sign that looked straight out of the 1930s, so we were both intrigued and doubtful that it was still in existance.  But, we decided to check it out.  Success! We found this cute little family run market sitting in the middle of a field. 

We parked and went in. It was really crowded for being a hidden little spot down a country road.  The kids thought it was neat and really enjoyed looking at all the produce. We saw some two tone squash that we had never seen before. They had a display of cotton still on the branch. The kids touched it and thought it was cool.  Olivia was really fascinated by the hot peppers. There were many of them in different sizes. She especially liked the little tiny baby ones!

Aidan loved the honey. We had just been talking about the honey sticks we used to get at the market in Lexington. He was telling all of us how bees like to eat honey. Imagine his surprise when we told him that bees MAKE honey! We sealed the discussion when we found jars of honey with the combs inside. He loved that!

I got a lesson in black eye peas.  There were three different types of peas.  I had no idea what the difference was between them, so I asked.  The lady working there was very nice and explained that the plain green ones were creamy peas, the ones that were purple were the black eye peas and the ones that were both colors had a bold flavor and were the best sellers. I ended up buying a very small amount of creamy peas. I wasn't sure if the kids would like them so I didn't want to get too many! Gonna make em today, with the help of the kids. I think they will like shucking them. If that's what you call it with peas!

We also got some cucumbers and corn on the cob. Can't wait to eat them!  It was a fun time. After we looked around the market, we went out into the field a little ways because the boys wanted to look for snakes! Believe me, that didn't last long with me around. I vetoed that action quick!  We did enjoy the sunshine and the reasonable temperature though. It was nice to be out and about and experiencing some Americana.  I don't know if we will go back again, maybe for pumpkins?  We'll see . . .

New Home, New Beginning

We are here. A month and a half in Lubbock, Texas. We are almost used to the wind, the dust, the heat - the cookie cutter box we live in! We live in the more under-developed side of town. It's nice because we have crop fields mixed in with the neighborhoods and small shopping areas. We have explored the other side of town; the mall, restaurants, the library, movie theatre - and James Avery! We almost know where everything is! We have found a few local restaurants that we like too. Ruby Tequila's and Rosa's Cafe. Both of those ladies have got us wrapped around their fingers! The food is good and the price is right. We are happy to be in a place where we can get good mexican food. Yum!




We have been living for school to start and it has. Two days in and the kids seem happy. One in kindergarten, one in middle school. Aidan's teacher is Mrs. Spradley. She is a seasoned teacher who started in kindergarten, moved to 4th and is back teaching kindergarten. We hope that she will be excited to get back to an age group that she prefers, and that it will make for a great year for Aidan. He has eagerly woken up, gotten ready and headed into his classroom.







Today he rode the bus! He was so excited and absolutely fearless. He barely gave me a hug before running up to the door and climbing on. Of course, I called the school later to make sure he made it to his classroom. He did thank goodness! I think he is ready to have a great year. When he gets home, he tells me that he didn't get sent to the prinicpal's office and he followed all the rules! So cute.




Olivia's school is a Magnet School set in a regular middle school. She is taking all pre-AP classes and we are super proud of her! Her first day went well. She enjoyed all her classes and met some new friends. She came home happy and I was thankful that she'd had a good day. Then came day number two. Her new friends didn't talk with her very much so she's convinced that they don't like her. Her classes were over crowded as they work out some scheduling kinks. And she ran into some people that she thought were loud and obnoxious in her advisory. There were tears the whole way home and I wanted to seriously hurt someone!! But, I put on my mom hat and tried to comfort her. By 7pm, she was happy again - playing and being silly. This morning she was a regular Scarlett O'Hara, a new day with new possibilities. She amazes me!

Rick starts school on Thursday. He has had meetings all week though. He will be a teaching assistant this semester, and yes he gets paid for that. He is also on a list to tutor athletes - he is excited about that! I am just hoping we can get tickets to the football games! Rick is also going to possibly assistant direct ANTON IN SHOW BUSINESS. More on that later.

I am searching for a job and hanging out at home. Subbing probably won't start until Sept. but I have turned in all required paperwork and am just waitin' for the phones calls to start pouring in. Of course, I hope to find a permanent teaching position, but am not holding my breath right now. Keep your fingers crossed that I will find something soon!