New Contest!

My friend Mary at Owlhaven is having a contest drawing for some Sesame Street K'Nex and boy, these are about the coolest things I've ever seen!

Here's a link so you can check them out: Sesame Street K'Nex

I would love to win them for my youngest, and you can have a chance too. Just comment on her blog and answer the question, "Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?"

Good luck and happy Christmas shopping!

Fave Friday 5

Well, it's my first time doing this little exercise with Suzanne above.

Here are my favorite things of this week:

1. Eating lunch with my kindergartner at his school -- he loves to get a cafeteria tray! LOL

2. Keeping my niece and nephew today. It's so fun to have preschoolers around again since all mine are in school!

3. A great terrific fall bag that I made for an auction here. It's brown with this awesome fall fabric... I wish I had made one for myself!

4. Watching my 9th grader play in the band at the football game.

5. Going to the football game and the weather being so wonderful, I was actually cool in my summer shirt!

6. I know, I know, I said 5, but I'm so glad that Grey's Anatomy is back on!

Like My New Look?

Do you like what I've done with the place? I was blog-hopping last night (that's what I call it when I go to someone's blog I regularly read and then find a blog on their list that looks good and before I know it, I'm 10 blogs from where I started!)

And I don't remember whose blog I got it from.... Oh, yes, yes, I do remember!

It was here Kelly Parkison's blog. Bart and I love the Amazing Race and one night I was waiting for one of the boys to finish whatever before going to bed and I thought, "I wonder whatever happened to some of our favorite people on TAR?" And I searched and Kelly is the first one I found.

Anyway, on her site she had a button for Leelou Custom Blog design and when I went there, I LOVED this design. So here it is. And I added a button on my blog so you could go to her spot and get a new design of your own if you want!

Thanks, Leelou!

It's his birthday...

It's official, as of Sept 13th at 8:44 p.m.

Ryan is 15.

WOW! How did he get to be this old? I mean, seriously. I remember the day he was born just like it was yesterday. And now he's one year from driving a car without me even in the car. HOLY COW!!!!

He had a Batman birthday, we took him and some guy friends along with his brothers out to eat at a great pizza place here where they bring pizza around to you, you just run the flag up if you want more and they have great pizza like chicken bacon ranch and chicken honey mustard and meat lovers and barbeque chicken pizza and baked potato pizza (really!). Then Bart took Ryan and the older boys to see Batman, er I mean, The Dark Knight at the IMAX movie theatre and they came back to the house and we had Batman cake:



that I made... I have a tradition of making the boys birthday cakes and I've made every single one for every boy for every birthday... and if I add right, that's 41 birthday cakes. Each and every one different. We've had Buzz Lightyear and elmo on the same cake, Pablo from Backyardigans, Mickey Mouse of course, baseball, you name it and we've had it.

Then the boys decided they were sleeping outside in the tent so they went out there, wayyyyyy after dark and tried to set it up. I think they finally succeeded and were all in bed out there... then during the night I kept hearing the "beep beep beep" of our alarm system that beeps everytime a door or window is opened. And eventually they were all inside sleeping except Ryan and one friend!

Doughnuts for breakfast, more cake and then everyone was gone.

Birthday over, oh, except for going to Nana and Grandad's house (my parents) on Sunday and having his birthday dinner, and his actual birthday on the 13th which we went to Gran's (Bart's mom) to have birthday dinner.

And so Ryan-fest continued....

where have I been?

I've been AWOL, that's for sure! But I'm baack....,,,,

I've been sick and I've been busy working at my "part-time" jobs, so busy I didn't have time to post.

So to catch up, we went to Bull Shoals White River State Park for Labor Day weekend. Me, Bart and the boys, my dad and my sister Tracy and her husband Tim. We got there on Friday, everyone else was already there, but we did get there before dark at least! And we parked and set up and got dinner going...



and this:


you got it, 1 travel trailer and 2 tents! But we had a great time, Saturday my mom came up which is amazing because she doesn't really like to camp! And the boys stayed with Grandad in the tent (except for Tyler) and got up and fished every morning, caught several several trout, and cooked Spam over a campfire before I got my lazy behind out of bed to cook breakfast! They had this hilarious thing that they put the meat on sticks and cooked it, they did it last year while we were all camping and well, there's nothing like being awakened by the smell of Spam cooked over a campfire! I'm kinda the unofficial cook, which is fine, I enjoy cooking for everyone. And if I don't plan our meals, well, who wants to go to the store every camping trip? So I planned the meals, did cooking with the help of Mom and Tracy and then I had the camper to clean up in, with hot water to wash dishes instead of heating water on the camp stove and doing it the way you have to do it when you're tent camping.

Anyway with the boys in the tent, my Mom actually slept in the camper with us (we have 4 bunks and only Tyler sleeping in there) both Saturday and Sunday nights and we were so glad to have her with us! My great-aunt has a house in Mountain Home which is about 30 minutes from the park, and we were afraid Mom would want to stay there, but she stayed with us and we were grateful because we don't get to spend enough time together. We even all trooped down to the camp showers because without sewer hookups, staying 3 days in a campground fills up the grey tank (the one that holds the shower and sink water) very fast, so I even showered in the camp showers! And I usually hate to do that!

The funniest thing was Tyler (who is 5) "caught" two trout on Sunday. And by "caught" I mean Ryan put two previously caught trout on his fishing line which didn't actually have a hook on it. And so Tyler thought he had caught fish. The first thing I know, he's telling his Dad, "I caught two fish and their names are Brownie and Ice Cream."

I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack! He named his fish! Then later that night he said, "Dad, did we eat Brownie and Ice Cream?" He's just so cute, it's funny! After his dad looked him in the eye and told him, yes, we had eaten Brownie and Ice Cream for dinner, Tyler was okay with it. I thought we were catching trout to eat, but apparently Tyler was naming them, too!

Ryan caught a lot of fish:




And here's Tyler fishing, and I tell you, that boy can cast!! He spent all weekend casting and casting and casting...


And here's Kevin fishing:



I never got any good pictures of Jake fishing, could be because he and Tim were getting up at dawn to fish.....

But here are some photos of the river, it was higher than it's ever been....but it's really beautiful there.

I got an award...

from a friend that's nearly related:) Her mom was taught in middle school by my great aunt!

in the South that makes us cousins, at least!

So thanks so much, Jessica, I really love it!