Thanksgiving 2008

We had such a great Thanksgiving holiday this year...spending time with family, reflecting on how much we truely have to be thankful for, the amazing Thanksgiving dinner (and the not so amazing weight I am sure I gained), playing games, and just relaxing and enjoying a break from normal routine. I love it all. We had a jammed packed few days.

For the past two years, Aaron and Kobe have gone to a church downtown to serve a Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless people the night before Thanksgiving. This year we decided it would be good to include Maddie, Jaiden and Kya. For so many of us this time of year is so wonderful, but for a lot of people its an extremely sad time of year. With all we have, sometimes its so easy to forget how incredibly blessed we are. That life isn't like that for everyone. And since God has blessed us, how can we reach out to someone else and bless them? We find that its so easy for us to just get lost in our own world and plans and never even give a second thought to others. So as a family we are getting involved in a few different things on a regular basis. My heart is that serving would be first nature to the kids. That they never 'get stuck' in an 'all about me' mentality and that they see Aaron and I live a life of service and not just 'talk' about it.

So on Wed evening we all loaded up in the van and drove down town. It was such a great time together and the kids worked so hard. It was only our crew and the 2 guys that put it on that were helping, so they really did put the kids to work! They helped prepare the food, set the tables, served the food and cleaned up. Aaron and I were so proud of them. It was great to see them serving others, meeting new people and genuinely enjoying themselves. We had a great time hanging out and talking with people. It was so fun to see how the kids responded to it. They were so excited in the car on the way home talking about the evening and different things that happened. It was so neat to see how great it made them feel to serve others and see just how much fun they had.

Since there was no school, their cousins got to spend the night with us, for which they were all so excited about. I love the holidays when you just feel like their is that break from 'real life' and you just enjoy being together with no real agenda. It was a nice relaxing evening filled with games, hot chocolate, candy canes and even some Super Nanny (we all love that show :).
We love JoJo!!!!

Playing games at the table. Clearly, Kensi was enjoying herself. :)


The next morning Aaron left early for week (he had to work 7-3p...boo!hiss!) and the kids and I all got ready and peeled a ton of potatoes while watching The Macy's Day parade. Even after all these years, that is still one of my favorite things to do on T-day. Then we all piled in the van and headed to Mimi and Papa's.

It was so nice to have a whole day set aside just to spend with family. It is such a blessing to live so close to all of our family. I love that the kids get to grow up with their cousins, aunts/uncles and grandparents as part of their every day life. Sometimes we take it for granted, but I am always reminded when we are all together that it is such a HUGE blessing to be completely surrounded by family.

The food was absolutely wonderful, as always.


Dinner Time! It was all so delish! Yum.

The kid's table had a new crew this year. Kobe, Maddie, Jaiden and Kya have graduated to the bigger table and Kensi and Parker took over the kids table. And next year they will be joined by Roman and Gianna. Ca-razy! These kids are growing so fast!

Some random pics from our day...

Uncle Shaney lovin' on Jaiden.

Dad, Kim and Mom. I think this is such a great picture of all of them.

And here is one of Mom and Dad with their favorite daughter. :) j/k

Kobe and some of his girls. They were getting pics taken from every side;)

Just relaxing after that big dinner.

Jamie-Jam posing for the camera.

Papa with two lovely ladies.

I love this picture of Kobe and his smile with his missing teeth! I think he looks so precious in the "aukward" stage.

And we finished the evening by playing a game of Boggle with the kids! We had so much fun. And it was fun to see all the words they came up with. Very cute.


What a great holiday it was! It was nice to (almost) all be together. We sure did miss having little Joshy and Cortney with us though(they were with her family).

And thats a wrap for T-day '08.

Maddie's Thanksgiving Play

On the day before Thanksgiving, Maddie's class (as in the whole 1st grade class) put on a Thanksgiving play and invited all the parents. It was so, so precious to say the least. I felt like one of those super proud mom's sitting out there in the audience snapping insane amounts of pics of my girl in her Pilgrim get-up and trying to catch her eye every 10 seconds.Haha :) She was so, so cute. I suppose I am a bit biased, but she seriously was just adorable. I was so proud of her. I even had tears in my eyes...hahaha. Its so funny the random moments in life where my heart just gets so full because I just love her so much.

Here are a few pics. Maddie was a Pilgrim woman and when the narrator said "...and the Pilgrim women" they put their hands on either side of their face and said, "Mercy me". hahahahaha...it still makes me laugh. Adorable.



After the play, we went back to her classroom to make a Thanksgiving craft. And I just want to add that Maddie's teacher is wonderful. Fantastic. Creative. Such a great "in-tuned" teacher and so much fun. I know sometimes teachers in public schools can be talked down about, so I just want to say there are DEFINITELY awesome teachers out there.And honestly, we have experienced quite a few of them between Kobe and Maddie. And my Maddie girl happens to have one of them this year! She is even coming to Maddie's play at church on Sunday....what a teacher!

The Pilgrim woman herself. I think Maddie looks stunning in the pilgrim attire.:) I think we should add it to her every day wardrobe.

Maddie's 1st grade classroom....


The cute, sugar-filled treat we made. So nice of Mrs.Swartley to get them all sugared up and then send them home. Nice.

Maddie's Desk...

Maddie and her buddy Trinity in line to wash their hands. So cute!

Maddie and Mrs. Swartley talking....

It was such a fun day to spend with my girl. It was so sweet, because she was so excited I came and stayed and kept taking me around to all her friends to tell them I was her mommy. I loved it! I love going to the kids classrooms and being a part of their day there.

And for memory's sake, I just had to ad this picture. I was SHOCKED to see that my super neat girl, who keeps her room spic and span all the time had a desk that looked like this...........

Say what?!?!?! :) My clean-freak, OCD ways wanted to take over and give it a good cleaning, but I am proud to say I held back. I asked her how in the world it looked like that, and she just looked at me and grinned. Ha! She is so funny.

Maddie, I had such a fun day with you and will always remember it. You are my precious, sunshine girl and I am so proud of you!

Unbelievable....Kensi's Newest Injury

I cannot believe it hasn't even been 4 full weeks since my goosey had her hand incident and now she has re-injured herself again. I am not sure how much more this mama's heart can take!:)I at least need a little break in between....sheesh. I am learning what it means to pray without ceasing for this girl of mine. Here is how it all went down...

Sunday we were at my sister's house to have a friend take some family Christmas photos for us. They had just got there so we were talking in the living room and Kensi was running around playing. She went in my nephew Parker's room to play (which is right off the living room and is completely baby proofed) and suddenly we heard a scream. I ran in there and she had blood all over her forehead. UGH! I picked her up and hollered for Aaron. I was so nervous because she was really, really screaming. I was very panicky to say the least, so Aaron calmly took over with her. While Aaron was with her trying to clean it up and see what it looked like, I went back in the room to see what happened.

It appears that my little goose thought it would be fun to climb up the dresser and slipped and one of the drawers was opened just a bit and she hit right on the corner where the two boards came together. Which explained the reason her cut looked like it was so deep. It really was just a bizarre looking cut/bruise. It looked like her skin was just pushed completely inward. She recovered pretty well after a few minutes and Aaron was able to stop the bleeding. So we weren't sure wether it needed stitches or not. I finally ended up calling our doctor and he said he could take a look at it a little later on in the afternoon.

So we went ahead with our photo shoot. hahaha. Wouldn't you know something like that would happen just in time for Christmas pics! She has a nice big band-aid right across her head. Oh well. It will be a memory. :) And we got some pretty good pics with Kensi smiling and being happy....what a girl.

When we took her into the doctor, he ended up "glueing" her back together again. He was able to pull it together so nicely and now there is only a small line. I am so glad we ended up taking her in, otherwise it would have been a really wide scar right in the middle of her forehead.

What is a mom to do?! It seems like she really does think she is 5 yrs old stuck in a 18 month old body. She thinks she can do any and everything and appears to have very little fear of anything. This girl of mine is definitely keeping me on my knees. I am beginning to think the helmet and bubble wrap isn't such a far-fetched idea for her.

Thank God it wasn't any worse than a big egg and some glue to put things back together. And seriously, if you ever get the urge, just pray for her because who knows what she is going to have up her sleeve next or what her next stunt may be. :)

Kensi's Latest Injury

My poor goose. She has had more than her share of bang ups over the past 17 months. I am seriously considering making her wear a helmet and elbow and knee pads at all times.

So last Sunday we were at church having lunch and watching Amy give her presentation and Aaron took the kids outside to play. Aaron and Kensi were walking on the kid's castle, and Kensi stumbled and caught herself with her hands. Unfortunately at that very spot was the head of a nail sticking up and it went right in her hand and sliced down her palm. It was pretty gross looking. Her tiny little hand was just laying split apart. I seriously do not do well when it is my kids that are hurt. I am fine with blood and keeping my head together when something bad happens, but when its one of my kids all that goes out the door and I panic. We rinsed it out under the faucet and was able to see right away that it was extremely deep. Fortunetly their was a doctor there who also took a look at it and confirmed that we did need to take her into the hospital to "put it back together."

So Aaron, Kensi and I all headed into the ER. I was a nervous wreck, Aaron was his usual calm/together self and my little goose was just looking around like nothing in the world was bothering her. She didn't cry at all. Aaron said she didn't even cry when it happened. (I am starting to think I may have given birth to the female version of Clark Kent. She appears to be indestructible. ) Ok, back to the story.

When we got to the ER, Aaron dropped us off at the door. He had to run home to get his weekly paperwork because he was supposed to be heading into work, but had called his sergeant and told him what happened. He told him to take as much time as he needed to. But all his paperwork has to be in by 5pm on Sundays so another trooper was going to come to the hospital and get it. So, that left me (the panicky one) alone with Kensi. I really think this is God's way of making me get over this issue because this is how it happens every single time one of the kids gets hurt....same thing last year when Kobe had to have his head stapled shut. Aaron is always so calm and good with the kids in situations like this and yet it seems when the big stuff happens it just always works out that I am the one that has to do it. Is this God's sense of humor?!?

We went and got registered and then they moved us to triage. Kensi was so great and just let them all look at her hand. They wanted to take her oxygen levels, so I took her tights off so they could put the clamp on her toe. Well, she did not like that one bit and started screaming. It was sad and hilarious all at the same time because this girl has her hand gaping open and doesn't care a bit, but they put a clamp on her toe and she goes postal. Hahaha...its a girls perrogative.

So they took us back to our room where we waited for the doctor. They ended up glueing it back together and also putting the steri-strip tape all the way down it to pull it together. The only time she cried was when they washed it out with gauze. She did not like that. I, seriously was telling myself to breathe and not freak out. I hated seeing her so upset. And to put the final touches on breaking my heart, when they were down cleaning it, she said with tears still streaming down her face, "tank you". Talk about making a mama cry! But after the cleaning, she was so still and completely fine as they glued it and taped it up.

She was so funny as we walked out of the ER with her little hand all bandaged up waving and saying "bye bye, tank you, bye bye, tank you" to everyone. It was cute. What a fun girl she is!


The hardest part of all this has been keeping her bandage on. She never stopped using her hand at all. Again, I am thinking this girls tolerance for pain is off the charts. She has taken her bandages off at least 3 times every day, driving me completely batty because I don't want it to get infected. She seems to think she is pretty funny though, because she will do it and then run and find us and smile from ear to ear to show us what she's done. What a goose.

Today is the first day we have taken everything off and letting some air get to it. It has healed so nicely and is really looking great! I am so thankful to the Lord for such a quick healing and recovery. Because let me tell you, it is not easy to keep a 17 month old from using her hand and trying to keep it clean. Iyiyiyi!

I am so thankful for God's protection and healing over her and that if it was going to happen that it was just her hand. It could have been so much worse if she fell on her face or head. I have a feeling this girl of mine might just have two guardian angels assigned to her!

I am thankful that she has both her hands back now. Although, I must say, she didn't let having one "usable" hand slow her down a bit! But I am so happy to see those two, precious little hands back to being busy as ever!

BARGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is too good to not share! So my hub-bub went to Home Depot the other day and came home with this....

Just in case you can't tell, that is 28 AA batteries and 6 D batteries. And can you see that price? And just in case you need a closer look to believe it, here it is up close...

Can you believe that?!?! I know, me either! I was so proud of Roy for finding a bargain. Its good to know that after almost 10 years of marriage, my bargain shopping ways are starting to wear off on him! Way to go, Roy!

Some of my favorite Highlights from this Political Campaign

I for one, am glad that this political election is done. It was a hard fought campaign for the boys and I am sure that by the end of it they were as sick of it as we all were...hahaha. It seemed that by the end of October that was the only thing I heard about, read about, listened about....saw. You get the idea. Not because I was necessarily seeking it out (although I did alot of the time :), but just because it was everywhere. But to me this item just tells me how crazy this dang election was. It truely left no area untouched. When it gets down to this, you know both parties are desperate for a vote....

HAHAHHAHAHHA! I hope that makes you laugh as hard as it made me laugh. When politics start affecting our chewing gum, I say its time to take breather, fellas! My sweet friend Colleen brought this priceless gift over to me one day and I thought it was hilar!

Another favorite for me were these smoking, red hot shoes on Sara Palin...

Say What?!?! I don't care what your political persuasion is, you must admit seeing these bad boys on a VP pick was pretty sweet! And yes, just in case you were wondering, I absolutely loved all her wardrobe....all $150,000 of it, the girl was workin' it! :) A girl has to look good when she is on a national stage.

Although SNL was majorly slanted / biased, I so enjoyed their skits this season. Hilar! Every last one of them. But far and away, this was my favorite!

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

From Amy Pohler about to have that baby at any second, to Sara grooving out, I couldn't quit laughing! Simply brilliant!

Alright. I better stop while I am ahead. Hope you enjoyed my recap!

Birthday Parties!

I am finally going to play catch up and post some pictures from our birthday parties this year for memories sake. Here it is November and snow flurries are falling, but I am starting my catch up back in August....oh well. But I want to have it recorded, so better late than never! :)

This year I turned the big 30! It was a bit surreal for me. This was a big birthday for me because I remember thinking 30 was sooo old. And here I was. About to turn 30. I really am ok with it, even excited about it. But its so weird to me because I remember those days of "30 being so old and so far away" like it was yesterday. When I think of myself I just seem to think of me as 'just out of school' even though I have been married for 9 years with 3 kids! Talk about a skewd sense of reality. hahaha. Anyway, all that being said, this year was a great birthday for me. My sweet sisters planned a big surprise party for me with family and friends. My mom made a big Italian meal (it was delish!), my dad and brothers decorated, and my sister's organized everything. Talk about making a girl feel special and loved! So here are some pics from the party....





Hmmmm...these are the only pics I can find. I will try and find the rest and post them later. So here I am 2 months into my 30's and feeling more grown up than ever. :)hahah. My 20's were great, but I am expecting my 30's to be even better. What will the next 10 years hold? Who knows, but I am ready to live it to the fullest and enjoy every minute.

Now on to Maddie's birthday party. This year we had a princess party. My sister Sheri planned and organized the whole thing. She did such a great job! I could have never made it as girly and princess-ish as she did. She was in all her glory! We had some of her school friends and neighborhood girls over. They all came dressed up in their princess dresses. They were all so cute! And even I got in on the action dressed as Snow White...now that is love, I tell ya!

We had a nail station, hair station and make-up station, some princess games, some princess stories read to the little princess by the queen herself....Mimi! My sis had decorated the back of each of their chairs with some big fu-fu tool (i am sure that is not the way that word is supposed to be spelled...hmmm) material and made each girl their very own fairy wand and got each girl their own tiarra. Is she a cool aunt or what?! It was fun, it was loud, it was a bit chaotic, but Maddie sure did have a good time! Here are some pics.....












What a day! My sweet birthday girl had a great time and rang in her 6th birthday in style! :)

And then, 4 days later we celebrated Kobe's 8th birthday. And to that I just want to say...I CANNOT believe my tiny baby boy is 8 yrs old. Thinking about that is enough to bring this mama to tears. He is such a sweet boy with a big heart. He is a fantastic big brother and I couldn't dream up a more perfect little guy for us. There are so many things I just love about him. He is very adventurous and wants to try any and everything, he truely has such a tender heart and is very thoughtful, he is very artistic....I love looking at all his drawings.....I could go on and on, but i will just say he is such a cool person and I am so blessed and a better person to have known him.

Anyway, back to his bday party. He had over his school buddies. We had his favorite dinner...Fettucini Alfredo. He loved it, although we came to find out this must not be a favorite among all little boys because the others were not big fans. :) Then Aaron and all the boys went to a big field and played capture the flag nerf-gun style! Oh yeah, good times! After that we had some cake and icecream and had a good time watching them all take a turn at the pinata and then stuffing their bags full of candy. ( I even broke down and bought the really good candy filler bag (snickers, M&M bags, etc)instead of the regular filler bags....thats right, we spare nothing when it comes to our little man. haha :) ). Then it was back upstairs to open some presents. He was in little boy heaven with lots of Nerf guns and he even got a Crossbow Nerf thingy (and let me know he is now ready to go hunting with our friend Chris. Nice. haha.), board games and laser tag! Lots to keep him busy with thru the winter while we spend many days inside. And after presents it was back downstairs to the family room where they had some intense matches on the Wii!

Oh, one other cute thing, was watching all of these little boys do The Cha-Cha. What a riot! My sister brought this cd with all these fun songs on it. And The Cha-Cha is one they all do in gym class and they were a total hoot watching them. I wish i would have videoed it. What a memory. :)

It really was a fun night, a very loud night, but fun all the same! Here are some pics from his big day...












He had such a great time and on top of it all, his best buddy, Nick, spent the night with him and stayed up most of the night watching movies and playing games. I tell ya, its great to be eight! :)

So we are partied out for the year! It was a fun time for all of us, but Aaron and I made the executive decision that next year we are gonna have a nice, quiet family party. :)