taking a look back

It's New Year's Eve, and I've decided to take a look back at the past year.  My photos are one of the few things that are actually organized in my house.  My iphoto program makes it easy to take a look back.  So, here's a look at the year through pictures.

Here's a picture of my NVP and me at the first National Meeting of the 2009 year.

In January, I was also the director of the Miss NWOSU pageant.  We had a spa day for the Stars and Contestants a week before the pageant.  This is a picture of my niece at the spa day who was one of the Stars.

Also in February, Arbonne had a road tour for the new FC5 product line.  Here I am with two of my upline NVPs in OKC before the presentation began.

Braylon had his Valentine party at school in February.  Of course, Brickman did, too, but I couldn't make it to both parties, and it was Braylon's turn for me to go to his class.  The next day, he performed Bala-Vis-X at the Wellness Center.

In March, we had the Mercedes Test Drive Day in OKC.  I took three awesome girls with me to try test drive a Mercedes.  I think that everyone picked out their favorite one.  I know that I did!  Maybe I'll get mine over the next year?!

The boys went fishing with Papa, and Brickman caught his first fish in March.

That first fish caught started an obsession with fishing.  Over Spring Break, we took the boys camping at the pond.  The boys set up their first tent (with our help, of course).  The day started out really nice but the night turned freezing cold, so they didn't even sleep in the tent.  Instead, they slept in the camper with they're Nonnie and Papa while Jerad and I slept in the very cold tent.

Also in March over spring break, we went to the zoo with cousins.  It was definitely a day well spent!  We had lots of fun spending time together.

At the end of the month, our area had a blizzard that came and went quickly.  It snowed 22 inches in a matter of a day, but because it was so late in the season, almost all of it was melted within a matter of a day.  The boys had great fun having snow ball fights, sledding, and making snow tunnels.

In April, the boys had their Easter parties at school.  I was able to make it to both of their parties.

We had Easter with the cousins, but it was too rainy to do an egg hunt outside, so we did it in the basement instead.

The Easter bunny came by Nammie and Bumpa's house before the flashlight hunt started.  It's always tradition to do a flashlight egg hunt on the evening of Easter.

It was Archer's birthday in April, and all the kids got together for a Star Wars party.  They went home with homemade light sabers and busted the Death Star and discovered it was filled with candy.

Brickman entered a poster contest and got third place.

Braylon entered his first science fair with "Will citrus juices work as invisible ink?" as his project.  He loves science, and he loves spy gear, so he mixed two of his favorite things.

I went to Las Vegas for the first time to the National Training Celebration for Arbonne.  Although I was sick much of the time, I had a blast.  It's always uplifting to spend time with like-minded people who are working toward the same goals as you.  And Arbonne always puts on a good party.  David Cook performed at the end of the celebration.

In May we went to see the Lion King in OKC with the entire family.

Afterwards, we grabbed cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory.  It was packed, so we went to the mall to sit and eat.

 Hadley celebrated her fifth birthday in May with a princess party.

Then Brickman celebrated his with an American Idol party.

In June, I finished my responsibility as the Miss NWOSU director during the week of Miss Oklahoma, and Amanda took over.  I'm glad it's over for me and know that she'll do a fantastic job.

We also had season tickets for the Music Theatre Wichita for the starting in June.

In July, we celebrated Independence Day at the family pond.  The kids had an incredible time riding the sea doo around the pond.  It was the boys' first time to ride one.

It was time to change chisel points and the boys wanted to help.  It was their first time to really help out on the farm.  Braylon enjoyed the work, but I think he enjoyed the pay more.  I loved taking pictures of four generations working together.

Before the end of the summer, we went to Alabaster Caverns with cousins.  We didn't really take a vacation through the summer, but we realized that it doesn't take driving for hours to have a little get away.  The kids enjoyed it just as much as if we had driven somewhere many miles away.

The boys met their new cousin Ella on the last day of July.

August brought on the first day of school.  The summer didn't seem to last long enough, but the boys were excited to go back to school to see their friends.

Braylon's birthday was also in August.  He wanted a pool party this year for his birthday.  I'm considering doing that from now on.  I didn't have to worry about a mess to clean up or entertainment for the kids.  It's just a matter of whether or not the lifeguards show up to open up the pool.  (Ours were late.)

September took us back to the pond for a Labor Day get together with family.  The boys really enjoyed swimming in the pond.

September was also Libby's birthday.  We celebrated with a sports party.

September also brought on a new project for our family.  The boys now have chickens to take care of.  The chicks came by mail on September 17.  It was quite a challenge the first couple of weeks to keep them alive, as they are so fragile, but we came out ahead with only losing two.

Brickman was asked to be the crownbearer for the Miss Cinderella pageant during the NWOSU homecoming festivities.  During this time he met Miss Oklahoma Taylor Treat, who he now claims as his girlfriend.

The next day he got to ride in the homecoming parade with the flower girl.

Homecoming also brings one of Jerad's favorite times of the year.  He gets to play in the alumni band with his brother and all of his buddies from the college days.  He misses playing his tuba so much.  Times like this give him the opportunity to go back in time.

For Halloween, we were a medieval family.  This was one of the most difficult family costumes to make, but it was also the most memorable and impressive so far.  Everyone loved our costumes.  But most importantly, the boys loved their costumes.  We'll have to see what we come up with next year.

Brickman performed in a Poetry Cafe at school.  He chose a poem to recite in front of all of the families who came to watch him and his classmates.  His poem was Alphabalance by Shel Silverstein.
Balancing my ABC's takes from noon to half past three.  I don't have time to grab a T or even stop to take a P.
I didn't know if it was appropriate, but his teacher approved it.  :)

Thanksgiving brought the sisters together again which meant that all of the cousins got to play together.  That is the boys' favorite time when they get to spend time with their cousins.  I never get asked if it's time to go yet.  They're always having too much fun and feel that we leave too early.  In fact, they normally want to end it with a cousin spending the night.

We went to Guthrie to spend Thanksgiving with Jerad's extended family.  We took the annual family picture for Nammie and Bumpa's Christmas card.

And here we are at Christmas!  The boys always know that they'll get a new pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve.  This year (because I didn't have them wrapped yet) the boys decided that we needed to have a scavenger hunt in the house for them.  So, I hid them and played the hot and cold game until they found them.  Maybe it will be a new tradition.  I guess that depends on how on top of wrapping I am.





I guess that sums up the year.  It's been a good 2009, but I'm excited for the next chapter starting in 2010!

continuing christmas

Christmas is over and the New Year is approaching, but for our family, we continue to have more celebrations of Christmas with our family.  It's always tradition that we have our family Christmas with my sisters on Christmas day, but you never know when the other celebrations will be.  We won't celebrate with Jerad's extended family until the second.  With that in mind, I'm keeping up my Christmas tree.  I've always had a hard time with Christmas being over.  It's always approached with such anticipation, but then the day comes and goes so quickly.  I hate to just immediately take down the tree.  Okay, I'll admit that I'm not the best housekeeper and part of taking down the tree has to do with procrastination and taking it down is such a chore, but I love having it up, especially since we still have another Christmas to celebrate.

On Saturday, we drove out to Walmart to check out the after Christmas sales.  They normally have everything at half price the next day, and we really wanted to get a pre-lit tree.  The tree that we have, we purchased half price on an after Christmas sale and have had it for most of our marriage.  The problem is, it takes a couple of hours to get it set up, putting each individual branch on and then wrapping the lights evenly.  We bought a new tree and tested it out as soon as we got home.  Jerad was able to set it up and plug in the lights within ten minutes.  I think we'll be setting up our tree a little earlier next year!  We also bought a tree for each of the boys to hang their ornaments.  I also bought several ornaments at half price.  I might have gone a little overboard, but I wanted to make some of those really cool ornament wreaths like this.  I made four of them so far, and I love them.  So, the question is, what am I going to do with this many ornament wreaths?  I'm really not sure.  Like I said, I went a little overboard.  Maybe I'll give them as gifts next year.  I think that this one is my favorite (although the picture isn't very good against my ugly shag carpet).

merry christmas!

I guess I'm a day late in wishing you all a Merry Christmas, but I certainly hope it was merry for you!  Ours was great!  I did stress myself out just a bit on Thursday, though.  I realized on Wednesday evening that we were missing a couple of gifts.  We didn't have anything for Jerad's grandparents.  I always have extra Arbonne in my product closet, but I didn't think that was something that his grandpa would be too crazy about.  Of course, they never want us to give them anything anyway, but I can't not give them something.  Then, I came up with the grand plan to make them something.  We were already settled in for the evening, so I waited until Thursday morning to make a run to Walmart to get some supplies.  Of course, there were multiple other things that I also needed to get finished.  One of those was making this yummy delight for the family gathering that night, which I knew was going to take a while.  I also needed to finish wrapping several gifts.  About 2:30 on Thursday, I begin the project.  I had it all organized in my mind on how I wanted to make it.  Of course, I did not schedule enough time.  I had both of my boys trying to help me at one point, but I got irritated, so they got irritated with me and quit helping.  About 5:30, my husband is telling me to stop the project.  It's obvious that I'm not going to finish it, but I keep on going like I have plenty of time.  Of course, I don't because the Christmas Eve candlelight service started at 6:00, and I still needed to wrap a few gifts.  I finally put the craft project aside, realizing what my husband already knew, I was not going to get it finished.  I hurriedly wrapped the few gifts that were still exposed.  We quickly threw the food and the gifts in the vehicle and headed to town.  Thank goodness it wasn't as icy as they were predicting it to be because if it were, we wouldn't have been on time for the service.  We had to stop to drop off the food so it wouldn't freeze during the service and got to the church just in time to get seated before it began.

The candlelight service was so moving to me.  I'm often moved to tears but taking the communion, realizing the reason for this season that we call Christmas, I was so humbled.  What an amazing gift that we've been given!  That is the reason we celebrate, and so often we forget.  We get so wrapped up in trying to find the perfect gift, or making sure that the decorations are just perfect, or worried because we've spent a bit too much, or multiple other things that may be going on in our minds.  Jesus is the reason that we celebrate this most awesome time of the year!  I love the candlelight service.  It's so pretty seeing the church lit up only by the individual candles while we sing Silent Night.


I caught a picture of Brickman before he blew out his candle at the end of the service.  He had fallen asleep during the service, but we woke him up when it was time to light the candles.  This is the boys'  favorite church service of the year.


After the service, we went to Nammie and Bumpa's house for supper.  It was delicious, as always, and we had a great time hanging out with family.  I love having such awesome in-laws!


When we got home, the boys were expecting a new pair of pajamas, which is always the one gift that I let them open at home on Christmas Eve.  I didn't have them opened yet, so they thought it would be fun if I hid them and let them try to find them.  Maybe we've started a new tradition.

Here's the boys' annual picture in front of the Christmas tree in their new pajamas.  They are getting so big!  Time goes by so quickly.


The boys enjoyed Christmas morning at home and were pleased with their gifts.  Braylon was excited about his microscope and Brickman loved his Fur Real chimpanzee.  I think my favorite part of the morning is watching them open the gifts that they bought for each other.  Braylon bought Brickman a Star Wars Transformer and a wallet, and Brickman bought Braylon a Transformer and a book light.  It's so cute to take them shopping.  They're always tempted to buy something that they would like themselves, but they always know (and buy) what the other one wants.  They played all morning with their gifts until it was time to head to my sister's house.


Christmas day was fantastic!  I feel so blessed to have the family that I have.  Unfortunately, my little sister and her family didn't make it home from being snowed in, but he continued to have a great time, knowing that they were safe at her in-laws.  We all ate way too much, and then later had fun playing a game that caused us to laugh until we cried.  The kids had fun tearing open their gifts and loved everything.  The adults played Dirty Santa.  We always joke that we each need to buy a gift for ourselves and keep it because many of us go home with our own gifts, but we know that we'd never actually do it.  So, even if we go home with our own gift, we've just bought something nice for ourselves, which we don't often do.  Jerad went home with his own gift, movie passes and a trip to the concession stand for the whole family.


Now, that I'm trying to catch up on the days past, I'm realizing that this is getting to be a bit of a long post.  I'll stop there with our Christmas stories.  We are so blessed!  I could go on and on, but I won't.  I hope that everyone's Christmas was a merry one!

homemade ornament attempt...and fail

Last night, not long before bedtime, I started a project that I shouldn't have started.  I saw these these cute and easy ornaments on One Pretty Thing.  Last year the boys made ornaments for their teachers (even though we do give a gift) for Christmas.  They made enough for each of their classmates and a few of the elective teachers (ex: music, gym, principal, secretary).  So, when I started the project, I thought it would be quick and easy.  Instead, it turned out to be a huge mess.  I don't know what went wrong.  Brickman wasn't in to it.  Braylon was flopping glue everywhere.  It just wasn't happening.  So, I tried a new plan.  I had some paper that I cut out into stars and painted gold.  I was going to mod podge a slip of paper on it that said merry christmas, then add some glitter.  The gold paint ran out, and I couldn't find the glitter.  What I found was glitter paint from a bottle that was almost empty.  Another flop.  By this time, I sent the boys to bed.  After they told me that it was a tradition to have ornaments for everyone (which apparently in their terms, a tradition qualifies as something that has been done once before), I told them that I would finish the project and have something for them in the morning.  So, I tried my third attempt.  I used some of the flopped stars and sewed cute red and green scrapbooking paper onto them then mod podged the merry christmas slip of paper onto that.  Success!  Except that it took so much longer than I expected.  Who knew that cutting out stars was so tedious?!  Especially when you're trying to make enough for two classrooms full of students plus all of the teachers and special people that they want to give stuff.  It didn't happen.  I needed close to 50 ornaments.  I made seven.  Not quite enough to go around.  So, I stayed up way too late getting nothing done, and I'm sure that I'll pay for it today in the form of a headache and being exhausted.  So, when the boys woke up (late, I might add, since I slept through the alarm), I had to tell them that I didn't get the ornaments finished.  Although they were slightly disappointed, I showed them the flopped messes, and they agreed that they didn't want to give those to their friends.  They were satisfied with giving just the normal gift to their classroom teachers.  Braylon did take one of the good ornaments to one of his classmates who will be moving over Christmas break.  I realize that there wasn't enough to go around to each individual, but I thought it was thoughtful of him to think of the boy who won't be coming back to the classroom.

On another note, since I was up all night, I caught up on some infomercials.  I haven't watched those in quite some time.  I've got to tell you, I'm totally addicted to them but that's another story.  I discovered that the new rage must be steam mops.  I saw three different infomercials for them, each a different type. I think I might need one.

what a weekend!

When I picked up the boys on Friday from school, I didn't have any grand plans for the weekend.  Apparently, it was a good thing.  Shortly after we got home, I found out that Brickman had carrots for lunch...not because he told me.  Rather, I saw perfect little chewed up chunks all over the carpet.  All over our shag carpet.  Now, I'm not fond of our carpet.  In fact, that's what I asked Santa to bring me for Christmas, but Santa said he couldn't afford to carpet our house right now.  The point is, I wasn't upset about the carpet being ruined or stained.  I mean, how can you ruin yellow and green shag carpet anyway? Answer:  red kool-aid.  I digress again.  My poor Brickman was sick.  While the rest of us were outside messing with the animals, Brickman stayed inside since his tummy was hurting.  To be honest, I really didn't think he was sick.  Oftentimes, he'll say that his tummy hurts to get out of doing something he doesn't want to do.  This time was not the case.  As I was coming in the door, the poor guy came out crying because he really was sick.  We got "the bucket" ready for him so he didn't have to run to the bathroom, and he continued to be sick for a good three to four hours.  He made it through the night with no problems and asked for breakfast at McDonalds when he woke up.  A good idea?  It was questionable, but I took him on a breakfast date anyway.

All was well until the night.  When Jerad got home from his dance, he was the next victim to be hit by the sickness.  I later found out that Braylon was also sick throughout the night.  The boys stayed the night at their Nonnie and Papa's house, and before I went to pick them up to take them to practice for their Christmas program in the morning, I got a call telling me that he had been sick throughout the night.    Jerad and Braylon were both crummy feeling in the morning, and although I thought I would be spared the sickness, it hit me, too.  I don't think it hit me as hard as it did everyone else though.  While it lasted hours for everyone else, I only got sick once.  When I picked up Brickman from church, he said, "I guess I'm the one that needs to take care of everyone since I'm the only one who's not sick."

So enough about sickness...
The Christmas program at church was last night.  Poor Braylon still felt bad and had a bit of a fever, so he decided to stay home.  Brickman was encouraging him to go since they had made plans to go  together to ask Santa for one big toy to share.  When he realized Braylon wasn't going to go, he told him that it was okay.  He would tell Santa his list.  (I thought that was sweet.) Brickman brought Braylon back a bag full of candy from Santa.  The Christmas program was really cute.  I'm just sad that Braylon had to miss out on it.

back at it again...

For the past several months, I've been keeping a blog on a different site.  Lately, I've noticed that several of my entries have vanished.  I have no idea what happened to them, so I decided to copy what I had and save it to my computer and start again here.  So, here I am.  I have no method to what I write about.  I really just like to keep a record of what my kiddos do, so this seems like just as good of a place as any.  That, and I enjoy scrounging the web and looking at others blogs.

With just a few days before Christmas, I've been trying to stay on top of things.  With less than a week, I have almost everything bought and wrapped.  I still need to wrap most of the boys' gifts, but I've got all of the niece's and nephews gifts ready to go.  Tonight I've been home alone (hubby has a dj event and kiddos are at grandma's house), so I've taken over the space and have been cutting material.  I found a scarf pattern that I loved!  When I was at Wal-Mart the other day, I picked up some material to experiment.  To be honest, I was a bit skeptic, but it was super easy!  Check out the pattern here.  I found the material on the reduced rack for $1.50 and bought four yards in white and pink, which were the only colors in the jersey knit that I needed.  I bought eight yards total for $12 and will make seven or eight scarves.  That's only 75 cents each!  What a cheap gift!  For the white material, I think I might use some left over dye that I have so they aren't so plain.  I'm excited to give them away.  I hope everyone else thinks they're as cute as I do.

Tomorrow is the boys' Christmas program at church.  It should be really cute!

Oh, and check out my layout!  Isn't it cute?  You can get a really cute one, too, at My Style Backgrounds.