Our accidental pirate!

This morning I woke up to Melissa screaming. Apparently, Kayla was stretching and accidentally poked Melissa in the eye with her fingernail. What a way to wake up! Ray had a flu shot on Friday and was REALLY sick last night, so he slept on Melissa's bed and the girls slept with me... well, I think this was the last time we will do that! Even with a King-sized bed, we are too close for comfort. SO, to make a LONG story short (as my mom would say) we ended up at the doctor and found out she has a pretty big scratch on her eye... Mommy saw it too! She has eye drops and will be wearing this "cool" eye patch for a couple of days. This has been a long day.

Trip to Grandma and Poppa's House

This is a LONG video from our most recent visit with Poppa and Grandma. Enjoy if you have time to watch it!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Pretty Pretty Princess

This photo and memory deserves a post all of it's own. Melissa's friend Emma gave her a "Pretty Pretty Princess" game for her birthday and we took it to Grandma and Poppa's house because she just knew that all of her aunts and uncles would want to play it with her. Before we started playing Uncle Glenn told Melissa that he was going to win and she said she was going to win. As you can see... Uncle Glenn was correct. He SO won! He has "teased" her about it several times since then. I don't think he has much room to tease very many people with this photo on the web! He was a good sport and we actually DID have a lot of fun! (After seeing the picture Melissa told me that she would have made a Prettier Princess!)

I Love the South

I LOVE the South! When you are in the "true" south you see things like this... EVERYWHERE:

Halloween Sneak Peek

Kayla the Leopard Princess FireFighter Melissa

This is a little preview of what the girls will look like when we go trick-or-treating with Eliza, Sadie and Levi on Friday night. We went to our ward Halloween party this past Friday and had a BLAST! We are looking forward to Halloween!

Our Halloween Tree

Last week we made a Halloween Tree following the telephone description that my sister gave me... this is what we came up with!

Chocolate covered Bananas

The girls saw a picture in one of my parenting magazines of chocolate covered bananas and decided that we just HAD to make them. Melissa told me the directions and all of the ingredients that we would need. We decided to make white chocolate bananas and this is what they look like. They were SO yummy! Good job, Kayla and Melissa!

Jack-O-Lanterns

This past Wednesday we went to Eliza, Sadie and Levi's house to decorate pumpkins! We had SO much fun! They have a playhouse set up INSIDE that the girls think is the COOLEST thing in the world. This time they had a television set up in there with a movie playing... needless to say, the girls were in heaven! Eliza, Sadie and Levi's grandma (Linda) is visiting for a few weeks and she went to Michael's craft store and bought all of the girls a paper mache pumpkin to carve and paint to make Jack-o-Lanterns. She is so crafty! The girls had a blast AND we came away with 2 VERY cute decorations! She even had battery-operated candle to light them with! Thanks for all of the fun, Linda! My girls are still talking about how cool you are!

Our cuties

These are some cute pictures from the past couple of days. The first one is of the girls ready to go to Melissa's ballet class and the last two are just some of their cuteness!

General Conference

The girls and I read in "The Friend" magazine about some children who made a tent and pretended that they were Nephites listening to the prophet speak. The girls thought that was an amazing idea so we set up our tent in the living room so that our little "Nephites" could listen to the Prophet speak. They had SO much fun! Melissa even took it one step further and asked if they could eat "loaves and fishes" and pretend that they were listening to Jesus speak! Sometime during conference she told me that they didn't need to PRETEND that they were listening to Jesus because President Monson was telling us everything that Jesus wanted us to know! This girl is too smart! Melissa and Kayla with their "loaves and fishes" Conference was WONDERFUL! For the first time we were able to watch it in our home instead of listen to it on the internet. The girls and I had such a wonderful experience watching and listening to the speakers on Saturday afternoon. The primary choir really brought a sweet spirit into our home and it was as if the speakers were speaking directly to us. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have that the Lord has given us a prophet on the earth today... just as He did back in the times of Moses, Lehi and King Benjamin. I am thankful that Ray and I are raising our daughters in a church that teaches the Lord's Gospel. We are truly blessed!

And I thought she was crazy!

It is happening. I am becoming my mother. My siblings and I have ALWAYS given my mom a hard time about some of the absent minded things that she has done in the past... Things like putting the milk in the laundry room, forgetting to pick us up from school, things like that. It wasn't until about 4 years ago that I realized why she was so "out of it" sometimes. No, she wasn't on drugs, she was simply tired!! She raised (is still raising) 6 children who are now between the ages of 32 and 17.. All of those years of mindless actions were a result of her EXTREME exhaustion! A few weeks after I had Melissa I put the ice cream in the pantry and did not find it until the next day! Ray made me call my mother immediately to apologize for teasing her for so many years. Since that first incident, things have just gone "down hill" for my mind. I have had a lot of "mindless" moments. I have put the bills in the fridge, opened the DRYER to find the laundry detergent, forgotten my young women's bag for church, really, the list goes on and on. The final straw in helping me see that I am truly my mother came 2 days ago when I was trying to figure out how old my sister Jenny is. For a split second I HONESTLY forgot how old I am! My mind immediately went back SEVERAL years to a conversation that I had with my mom. I asked her how old she was and she took the longest time answering. I asked her what she was doing and she said that I needed to give her a minute while she did some calculations because she couldn't remember how old she was! I remember thinking, Oh man, my mom has really lost it! She finally answered and guess what her answer was! 32. Yes, the same age I am now! It wasn't until this moment that I realized that I am as "far gone" as I thought my mother was so many years ago... It is funny, I don't FEEL crazy! I love you mom! Thanks for your patience with us!

The State Fair

We went to the State Fair with Grandma and Grandpa this past Monday and had SO much fun. Here are a few pictures from our day. The girls LOVED all of the Fish! Watching the duck race... Kayla and Daddy were contestants! Waiting to watch the pig races... Kayla riding a pony. Melissa riding a pony.

Melissa's Birthday 2008

This is the video from Melissa's Birthday party and her Birthday. We had SO much fun! Thanks for the fun times!

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Sad Day

Monday morning was a sad, sad time. After looking at the calendar Sunday night Ray and I realized that Monday morning would be the only time that we had to "close up" the garden for the year before the weather turns "frosty"... so, we did. We picked ALL of the green tomatoes, the rest of the green beans, peppers and watermelon and then took down the posts, rope, stakes, etc. We had so much fun with the garden this year and were SO blessed by the amount of food that it produced... it really was sad for us to take everything down. I am looking forward to next year. This is what we ended up with: 10 quarts of 10 bean soup, 10 quarts of Vegetable soup, 2 quarts and 35 pints of green beans, 8 quarts and 27 pints of tomatoes, 24 jars of Red Hot Pepper Jelly, 10 pints of salsa (we had more...we eat this stuff like crazy!), 12 jars of Hot Sugar Peppers, 8 pints of peaches (more, but again... we eat these A LOT!), and we have 4 remaining pints of the plum jelly that mom taught Ree and me to make at the beginning of the summer. Not too bad. I am pleased. Now, does anyone know what I can do with all of these green tomatoes??