Boy What A Year

I can't believe it's been 3 months since I posted. We had a great Halloween. Mom, Christie & I took Kelli, Adrienne, and Adrienne's friend McKenna to the pumpkin patch. Adrienne & Kelli wanted to ride the horses, so of course I let them. Adrienne loved it and she cried and threw a fit when we took her off. She wanted to keep riding. As you can see, she had no problem being up on that horse.

Well she and Kelli had a great time trick or treating. Kelli went as Jasmine again and Adrienne was Tinkerbell. She had fun waving her little wand at people and telling everyone we saw "Happy Hawoween!"

I ended up getting the crud a couple of days after my birthday and didn't really get over it until a few days after Christmas. Now Jeff has a cold and he hasn't been able to shake it for almost 2 weeks now. I can honestly say that I will be glad when it starts warming up again.

Kelli had a Christmas dance show on Dec. 20th. Well, on the 14th, she decided she wanted her hair cut. So instead of discussing it with me or daddy, she decides to do it herself. You can see in the Halloween picture how long it was. Here is the picture after we went to the hairdressers to repair the damage she did. Talk about going shorter. We had a nice long talk about next time she wants her hair shorter that she comes to one of us and we will be happy to take her and have someone who knows what they are doing cut it for her.

I have gotten into making these really cool headbands and have been selling them. They are so much fun to make. My friend Carrie got me hooked on doing them (yes Carrie, it's all your fault). It's great because I can start 4 or 5 of them and then while Kelli is at dance, I can weave them and finish them. I need to start on some Spring/Easter ones soon. Pretty neat huh?! The girls love them. Between the 3 girls, they probably have kept about 10 of them. They each have 1-2 favorites that they wear all the time.

Well, Christmas was a big hit. We added a new member to the family. Meet Whiskers! Adrienne thinks he's great! Morgan and Kelli are thrilled to have another hamster. Jeff won't admit it, but he even likes the little guy. I think it's because it's another male in the house to even the odds a little.

Well, it's New Year's Eve and Kelli and I had a lousy ending to the year. We dropped Adrienne off at mom's and were headed home to meet Jeff to go out to dinner. And we had a headon collision. Which actually sounds worse than it was. I was making a left turn and didn't see a car (yes it was my fault) and I hit a lady coming up the left turn lane. My van doesn't even look like it was hit except for the license plate being all bent up. Her Allero on the other hand doesn't look so hot. It deployed both of her airbags. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Her wrist was hurting, so she went to the hospital just as a precaution, but the officer on the scene said he didn't think it was anything too serious. But Jeff is pretty sure that it knocked the van out of alignment and since we just put new tires on the van less than 2 months ago, he doesn't want me driving except to work and back until we have it repaired. Good thing the adjuster will be calling Friday to set up a time to come look at it, because school and dance start back on Monday and I'm going to need the van for all of that. I'm just thankful that no one was seriously hurt.

I think I am going to go put the girls into bed and I am going to go say goodbye to 2008 and quietly welcome 2009 and hope it's is better than the way 2008 ended.

Happy New Year to all and I'll try to do better about posting in 2009.

Woo Hoo

Two posts in one day, aren't you impressed?!! Actually, I was posting earlier from my laptop and all the layouts I did are on the desktop. I had to come work on something, so I thought I would go ahead and post a few of the layouts I did. I did a book for mom and some of these are from it. I scanned them into the computer. The one of Kelli on pink & brown and the one of Adrienne on Green are from that book. The others are digital for a book that I am working on for the girls. I haven't decided if I'm going to give it to them as a Christmas gift or what.

I'll have to load more later. There are a couple of ones I did from the wedding that turned out really good. I'll try to post them later tonight or early in the week. It's getting close to bath time and I think I have to go beat a 2 year olds bottom. She has this deck of cards and she will get it out and THROW the cards every where. I just finished helping her pick them all up and now she is throwing them down the stairs again. It's a never ending battle, that I am losing rapidly.

I know I know. . .

I haven't posted in forever. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but I guess it has. Ok, what's been happening. . . For starters, the Germains have moved again. It's only been a year since they went to Richmond, and now they are in Mt. Juliet, TN. Drew changed jobs again, and they had to move to TN. I know they are happy about the move, they are from TN. It's been a couple of weeks since they moved. Needless to say, I guess we won't be visiting each other every month anymore. We've been talking about it and Carrie and I figured out we'll just get together 2-3 times a year and we'll make the best of it. Jeff has even said that he'll go with us. He's says there is more to do in TN than Richmond. I guess he's right.

We got some sad news about a friend of Kelli's. His name is Keegan Manning and on July 30, he was diagnosed with type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes. He is only 6 (he'll be 7 this month). He's been having a rough time. I talked to his mom and she said he has good days and bad days. He was able to go back to school when it started. She talks to the school nurse 3-4 times a day. There is going to be a walk on Sept 28. Kelli and I (and now Christie) are going to walk with them. If anyone would like to donate to us, you can go to the website www.jdrf.org and click on donate to a walker. We are on the team Keegan's Kure. Christie said she had a hard time finding Kelli and I, but she typed in the last name Morris and found us right away. So far, Kelli and I have only had one person donate (thank you Anita!) but I only signed us up on Fri. and we've got 2 weeks until the walk, so I'm hoping we'll get some more donations before the walk. I think we'll have a lot of fun. I just hope the weather is nice. The walk is at the Transportation Museum so depending on what time we finish, I'll probably take Kelli to the Museum for a little while afterwards.

What else is going on. . . Jeff is in FL at the moment. His softball team won a tournament here that allowed them to go play at the Wide World of Sports in Walt Disney World. I talked to him yesterday and they're out of the tournament now. They won 4 games this year (last year when they went, they only won 3), so they are improving. :) His flight home isn't until tomorrow morning. It hasn't been too bad with him gone. The girls are ready for him to be home. I guess I wouldn't mind it either. :) Just kidding! I'll be glad when he's home too.

I guess that's about it for now. Not a whole lot going on, but it's been busy. I'm off to finish dinner so we can eat and get baths and get ready for school, work and daycare tomorrow. I'll try to post more often. I've been working on my scrapbooking (both paper and digital). I'll try to post a few of the layouts later in the week.

Well, Kelli's party was a hit! I had bought a little wading pool for the little ones. Hunter & Houston didn't get in and it seemed like all the other kids were having more fun in it than Adrienne & Zach. Adrienne didn't want too much to do with it, although Carrie did get a picture of her in it. Adrienne wanted in the big pool and she LOVES it. She put a ring around her and she would hop right in and she didn't want to get out. I got in with her for a little while.





I hate having my picture made (most of you know that), but this one turned out so good with the

of us, that I'll post it. I had misplaced my camera, so Carrie took all the pictures for me. We have two cameras, so you think I would be able to find one of them. NO! Jeff has one at work and I've set the other one down somewhere, and I think Adrienne has carried it off. Oh well, it will turn up sooner or later.



The Germain's came in for the weekend for Kelli's party. Adrienne was so excited, she couldn't wait to see Zach, as you can see. She has asked me every day this week if we are going to see

Zach. So I guess I'll have to go get a webcam this weekend so she can "see & talk" to Zach. Although, it will be next week sometime before she'll get to talk to him. Carrie & Sami are at VA Beach this weekend. Carrie has an old friend and her daughter visiting, so they took the two girls to the beach for a long weekend. I hope they are having a good time.



Well, I need to go work on the laundry so the girls and I have clothes to wear this week. I'm going to TRY to work on scrapbooks today too. Plus the girls want to get in the pool. But I'm hoping to wait until this afternoon when the sun gets past the house a little. Plus if I can get Adrienne to take a nap first, the pool will wear her little butt out this afternoon and she'll sleep good tonight. :)

I'll post again soon.

Where has the time gone??

I can't believe that it is July already. Kelli's softball banquet went well. We didn't have to pool up, but the kids had a blast playing on the slip & slide and in the sprinklers we bought. Here it is July 1st and we still don't have the pool up. It has been a nightmare. We got the last of the cracks filled today. If all goes well, we should be able to start filling it on Sun. and have it ready for Kelli's birthday party on the 12th. We went up to visit the Germain's a couple of weekends ago and can you believe it, neither Carrie or I took a single picture. Trust me that is very rare. I had the camera with me and never even got it out of my bag. Oh well! They are coming down for Kelli's party, so I know both of us will take lots of pictures.

I haven't worked on any more digital layouts yet - I've been working on Kelli's birthday invites.

Well, I'm going to make this short, I am tired. So I think I will call it an early night. I'll try to post again this weekend.

I must be crazy

It's almost midnight, and I'm still up. I really must be crazy. Well, Christie & Galen are on their honeymoon. I've talked to her a couple of times and they are having a good time.

I've been playing around with some digital scrapbooking to make a book for Adrienne. I did one for Kelli & Morgan a while back, so I figured it was about time I did one for Adrienne. Anyway, I'm putting it here to get opinions. Mainly I'm doing it so Carrie can see it. :) It's not bad, but I love the picture of her. It was taken back in March when we went to Richmond to see the Germains one weekend.

Ok, Carrie, so tell me what you think.

Well, it's way late and I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Plus I need to get the house cleaned up for Kelli's softball banquet this weekend.

I'll post more later.

We made it!

The wedding is over! and we survived. Christie & Galen are on their way to FL for a cruise to the Bahamas. Over all, everything went pretty smooth. It's hard to believe my little girl is now an old married woman. :) I looked at Jeff at one point and told him one down 3 to go and he just looked at me. At least we have a while before any of the others are even close to getting married. I don't have all the pictures yet, but here are a few.

Of course we have the happy couple first.

I hate myself in this picture (of course) but its a good one of mom, Christie & I. I wish I had thought to have one with Amy too. It was just the 4 of us for so long, that it would have been good to have one of all of us together.

and lastly is Christie's dad, Jeff (I know I must have a thing for guys with the name Jeff) walking her down the aisle. He cleans up nice.

Today, Amy & Bryan had Houston baptized. He is still such a little cutie. Betsy & Todd (Bryan's sister and her husband) had their sons Riley & Wes baptized too. Wes is such a little cutie and a flirt.

Update on the kitchen, we have our new cabinets. They look wonderful! I've got to call the countertop people and get them over here to do the template and to pick out some granite. So far the biggest problem we've hit with the kitchen is that the Pergo flooring we have has been discontinued. And for a little while it looked like we could possibly have to replace the entire kitchen floor. But, I did a little digging and found a place in Long Island, NY that still has some. So we ordered 2 boxes and hopefully they will be here tomorrow or Tues. As soon as they get here, I get to repair the floor. Our neighbor across the street is going to help me get started (he's done this before) and he's going to cut some plywood to fill in the area in the floor that we cut out the other cabinet. He said it's easy to do and wouldn't take me but an hour or so to pull up the existing floor and relay the new boards to cover the area where the cabinet was cut out. I have pictures of the kitchen right now with the cabinets (with a temporary countertop) and the hole in the floor. I'll try to post them in a couple of days. Jeff and some of the kids he knows from Lord Botetourt are still sanding the pool. We postponed the Softball banquet to this coming Sat so that we would have time to finish the pool, and it looks like we're still not going to have it finished by then. I can't postpone the party again. so it looks like we'll have to get out the slip & slide and some sprinklers. I know the kids won't care, but I hate that it's still not done. We're having 100 degree weather, and we still don't have the pool open. Of course, that's part of the problem. It's too hot to work on it during the day, so we're having to wait until the sun goes down which doesn't leave a whole lot of time for working on it.

Well, I need to go drop an email to the softball team with some reminders about the party then it's off to bed. I have to get up and go to work in the morning. Boy, am I ready for a vacation. :)

Where has the time gone???

I can't believe it has been 2 months since I posted. Sorry! It has been crazy around here the last couple of months. Well, the wedding is now only 2 weeks away and everything is going good. We still haven't heard from a few people-you know who you are :) but other than that we're doing good. Kelli & Morgan have their dance recital next weekend and of course, Jeff has to be in VA Beach for training. He's going to go to the girls' rehearsals this week and watch so he doesn't miss them. Kelli is playing softball again and she loves it. I think she likes softball more than dance. Which doesn't really surprise me. She is like her daddy. And as usual the hardest part of being at a game is keeping Adrienne off the field. She loves going to Kelli's games. Oh and guess who voluntered to be team mom. Yup, you guessed it. ME! It hasn't been too bad. I need to email the man about the girls trophy's. I need to get him a list of names & numbers. Here are some pictures of Kelli at softball.

This is the whole team. Turns out that I went to high school with the coach and our team sponser. We all have daughters the same age. This isn't the same team she was on last year. They didn't have enough girls that wanted to play so they had to eliminate 2 of the mini-mite teams (ages 5-8)and Kelli's was one of the teams. The good part is that the 4 girls that came back from her team last year were all put on the same team this year, so she at least knew some of the other girls.

Remember what I said about trying to keep Adrienne off of the field. Well, one of her favorite things to do during the game is to go find Kelli's bat and carry it around like she's going to be the next one going out on the field. Fortunately, all of the parents (especially the ones from last year) love watching her antics, so they help me keep her off the field if she gets away from me. Which she can do pretty easily. There is one little girl that her sister is on the team that likes to play with Adrienne at the games. And Adrienne loves to follow Molly around. Several of the fields have a playground and Molly (she's 5 I think) and one of the other player's older sister (who's name I can not remember for the life of me right now and is about 12) will take Adrienne to the playground during the games and let her slide, which is still one of her favorite past times.

Well, you all know that Houston is here. Aint he cute!!! And I'm sure most of you know about Amy & Bryan's little adventure concerning his arrival. If you don't, well lets just say that my newest nephew made his entrance into the world in a parking lot on 419. There were a couple of articles and news stories about it. This is the interview done by Channel 10.

http://www.wsls.com/sls/news/local/article/local_man_helps_his_wife_give_birth_in_parking_lot_on_electric_road/8234/

Here is the one that was done first. It was an article in the Franklin County paper. Turns out that the reporter for Channel 10 gets a copy of all the little local papers and she saw the article and called Amy & Bryan and did the story that day. It aired on Channel 10 for like 2 days, on every news time. They said it was just a great story, so they kept airing it.

http://www.franklin.chatmoss.com/article.cfm?ID=10541

Jeff & I took yesterday and today off to work on the pool, and it was a wasted effort. Turns out all the work we had done this past winter getting leaks fixed didn't fix them all. One of the cracks that they filled they didn't fill it very well and when Jeff was cleaning the pool the other night to get it ready for painting and he hit an air bubble with the water hose and it popped and ground water started coming back into the pool. So we had to wait until that stopped to get the pool people out here to fix it. Now it's probably going to be next week before they can come out because they never showed up today like they were supposed to. Oh well, I'm getting ready to paint my kitchen this weekend and next so that I can get my new grantite countertops that we won last fall. We've already ordered the new cabinets and they are being built right now. :) They should be going in next weekend too. Yes, I think I am trying to cram EVERYTHING into the next 2 weeks. At least that's what it feels like.

Well, I'm off to get Kelli & Adrienne from daycare, then we are going to pick up Morgan's dress from the alterations shop and go fill up the van before gas prices go up anymore. I may have to take out a loan to put gas in the van if this keeps up much longer.

I swear, I will try to do better about keeping up with this blog. I'll get some before, during & after shots of the kitchen so you can see how it turns out.

Gotta Run!

Ok, here are the pictures I promised. This is Adrienne on her new slide on Christmas morning. She loves this thing. I'm not going to complian. She will go down it 20 times and still not be tired. But the good part is come bedtime, she is worn out and ready for sleep.

The other one is from Adrienne's 2nd birthday. She wasn't too sure about blowing out the candles, so her friend McKenna helped her. The girls look so much alike, its scary sometimes.

Her mom & dad & I took the two girls to K&W one night for dinner while Kelli was at a birthday party. It was amazing how many people asked us how old the twins were. Melissa (McKenna's mom) and I just kind of laughed and told them that the girls were not related. Everyone was just amazed. Here is a picture from McKenna's party in October. I know it's amazing how much alike they are.

Well, after we got back from Richmond and we only had a couple of weeks to get ready for Easter. It was an interesting day. Jeff was all set to take the girls to church when his mom called, she was sick. So he took off to take care of her. The girls and I cleaned up a little bit more around the house before we went over to Grandma Salmons' house to have lunch with dad's family. Stan & daddy got a few pictures. All the other kids were playing in the basement, so they only got a picture of Adrienne and Houston, well as close as we could get to a picture of Houston at Easter. As you can see, Amy is so ready to have Houston. She is now 3 days overdue. And there is no change. He's like his siblings, he's going to stay right where he is until he is good and ready to come out.

After we left Grandma's, we all went back to my house and had an Easter Egg Hunt. The kids had a blast.

After the egg hunt we had dinner and watched Peeps Jousting on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypKRsSsV0Nk

Here's the link so you all can watch it. Well, of course we had to try it in person. We all laughed so hard watching the peeps. And of course we had to look at all kinds of silly things on youtube and laughing ourselves silly. What started out as a not so great day ended up being a really nice one spent with family.

Well, now that the holidays are over, it's time for the rest of the chaos to begin. I got the phone call tonight about Kelli's softball starting. Her first practice is next Monday. Turns out, that they didn't have enough kids to have 12 teams this year, so Kelli's team from last year (the Rockies) only had 4 girls come back, so they moved all 4 of them to the Blue Jays this year. At least they kept the teammates together. Kelli wasn't too sure about being on a new team, but when I told her that the 4 girls from last years team were all going to be together, she was happy about it. Now I have to get her a new pair of cleates before Monday.

The Germains are coming in the weekend of April 12th. Carrie and I are giving a baby shower to one of the other moms. She actually had the baby last Friday by C-Section. There was no time to have the shower before the baby came, so we figured instead of playing all these silly games, we would play "Pass the Baby". Should be a fun game.

Well, I need to go work on laundry before CSI:Miami comes on. I am so glad the writer's strike is over and we get some new episodes.

I'm off to work on laundry and watch tv.

I am so bad

Ok, I know it's been a while since I've posted anything. It has been so crazy here. We made it through the holidays. Adrienne got a slide for Christmas, and she absolutely loved it. She still does. When ever Adrienne's friends come over, they love to go down the slide. I'll have to post pictures of it later. I am actually in Richmond at the moment. One of my presents to myself this year (with part of the tax refund) was a new laptop. So I am posting from it. :) I love it. Jeff & the kids love it too. Jeff will sit up and play games on it after everyone else goes to bed. And the girls like playing with their webkinz online on the laptop. So, everyone has enjoyed it.

Well, we had some high winds here back in Feb. and boy did we have fun. We never actually lost power, but we started having power surges. Between the wind damage to the house & truck, and the power problems, it was lots of fun. The wind blew some tree branches down. One of them bent the gutter on the garage before it hit the truck and put a dent in it and scratched the hood. It also picked up our glass top table on the deck (can you guess where this is going) and dropped it on it's side and shattered the table top. The power surges kept the heat from coming on, so we ended up in a hotel for one night. We finally got the power company to come out and get that fixed and then DirecTv had to come out and realign the satellite. Now we have to have an electrician come out and figure out why we now have no power in the garage. Get this, all the outlets inside the garage still work and the lights will come on, but we can't open the garage door anymore, because it's not getting power. and all the outlets on the outside at the back of the house don't work either. And now that it's time to start opening the pool again, we need to get it fixed so the pump can work. And on top of everything else going on, I had the crud for 3 weeks. So trying to deal with everything else and being sick was not fun.

Wedding plans are coming along. I can't believe my baby is getting married in just under 3 months. Now all I need to do is for them to decide on a font so we can get the invitations printed and mailed. Everyone needs to keep June 7th open.

Well, we're off to Kohl's & Chuck E. Cheese. When I get home I'll post some pictures from the last couple of months. And I'll try to post more often, promise.