Veteran's Day

Kaelyn, Zack, and I were off school today for Veteran's Day. We went to the park today ... here are some pictures that we took.

I'm not sure what's going on here but Zack was insistent that I take a picture of him doing this, enjoy:-)

Kaelyn

They spend A LONG time putting these flowers into the little holes on the ... the ... the whatever this thing is called that they yell into and it carries their voice to the other side of the jungle gym.

I was making up obstacle courses for them which all ended with them running into my loving arms at the end for a kiss. I couldn't resist getting some video footage of them coming up to the finish line. Here's Zacky coming towards the finish line for his smoochy! I was all ready to get Kaelyn running towards me too, but she fell off the monkey bars and hurt her back pretty badly.

Quick Hello

Okay ... not quite the miracle I was hoping for, for John McCain. But, today is a new day and America has spoken ... rather clearly might I add:-) Hmmm ..... well enough about that for now.

The good news is ... I only have 31 more days until I am done student teaching! I have SOOO enjoyed 4th grade this semester! They really are the perfect age ... old enough to be somewhat responsible but young enough not to think they are "too cool for school" ... (they still love ya and think teachers are wonderful). It would be absolutely lovely if I could get a job teaching 4th grade, I have lots of lesson plans and activities all ready to go!! But .... my number 1 priority is to get a job at Kaelyn's school. Unfortunately, I'm desperate so I'll take what they have opened:-) I haven't observed or taught in a grade that I didn't like, so I'm sure that everything will be just peachy!

Election Day!

I hope that everyone VOTED today! Kaelyn and I are watching CNN closely to find out the results ... the anticipation is nerve racking to say the least!!

We are praying for a miracle -- Go McCain!

I voted early, but rather than mailing it in, I hung onto my early ballot until today because I wanted to take Kaelyn with me to drop it off at the official voting site. I thought it was important that she come with me and "experience" the democratic way for herself. I imagined myself walking past 100's of people standing in a long line .... right up to the front to drop my early ballot in the box. HA HA HA -- Not really the way it happened, there were only 2 people in line when we got there .. bummer (for us, not the people waiting in line)!! We ended up waiting in the line and then I let Kaelyn drop the ballot into the box.

Talk tomorrow!

Trick-or-Treat

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween this year! I wasn't sure that I was going to make it after such a LONG day at school! I came home with a headache and a tight back/neck ... planning and carrying out a Halloween Day for a class is much harder that one might think. I was stressed out to the max by the time I got home from school, but my students had fun and that's what is important. Nothing like 15-30 minutes of alone time and a couple Advil to take care of a long stressful day!

We have a great neighborhood for trick-or-treating so we invited our friends over to pass out candy with us. We set up camp in our driveway and ordered pizza. We sat in the driveway passing out candy, eating pizza, and hanin out for several hours -- It ended up being a really fun night!

Kaelyn was a nurse this year and Zack was Spiderman.

Here's Jenna and baby Mckenna the bunny. She was the cutest little bunny in the world! Her costume was adorable.

Here's a close up of the cutest baby in town! I seemed to have caught "baby fever" last night. Can you imagine why??

My little Spiderman

The kids just came back from trick-or-treating. They were showing off the goods!

Missy, can you believe you will have a little munchkin next year?

Pretty Polly and Cute Kaelyn

Jack & Jacky Lantern

In our family, we give an name to ABSOLUTELY everything. Every toy, stuffed animal, doll, picture of a doll (you get the point) has a name. Kaelyn probably has about 500 stuffed animals and dolls. Every single one of them has a name and a middle name and she REMEMBERS all of them. It's actually quite impressive! Naturally we had to name our pumpkins too.

Now I never said we were very original, so here's Jack and Jacky Lantern:-)

Kaelyn and I got bored from watching Mike carve the pumpkins so we started

taking pictures of ourselves.

After 6 years of watching her mother, Aunts, and all their friends snap pictures of themselves, here is Kaelyn's first picture of herself. In case you are wondering, all you have to do is pick up a camera, hold your arm out, point it towards yourself and SNAP! This was a "big girl" milestone in our family:-)

Wacky-Wacky-Yay!

Kaelyn took a pictures of Zacky and I (as of now,

Kaelyn wants to be a photographer when she grows up).

Zacky is picking out the "guts".

A little pumpkin guts never hurt anyone:-)

Best Dad in Town!

The Wolf

One of our favorite shows is American Gladiator ... seriously! I know it is kinda silly but Mike and Kaelyn especially like it. Kaelyn knows all the names of the gladiators and she watched faithfully last season with Mike. I think Mike secretly wants to be a gladiator. You can imagine how star struck he must have been when he ran into "The Wolf" this weekend .... here's the evidence.....


My hunk and The Wolf (The picture was taken by Mike's camera phone so not the best quality.)

Salty Senoritas

Today we went to Salty Senoritas for dinner. My sister-in-law Joanna is in town for business so we rounded up some of our friends and spent a good part of the day hanging out on the patio outside the restaurant with her. Jenna, Pipebomb, Baby Mckenna, Bryce, Missy, baby on the way, Jayson, Logan, Darcie, Joanna, and the Harris Crew all enjoyed the day together. Love you everyone!

The restaurant is nice because you can watch the baseball players practicing from your table if you are sitting outside (right next to Peoria Sports Complex). Plus the kids can run all around and only mildly irritate other people .. ha ha ha! My kind of restaurant since my kids seem to enjoy running around.

Kaelyn, Jenna and Zack (and a few kids we don't know:-) on a huge life-guard type chair.

Mike, Bryce and Kaelyn - Mike and Bryce kept making mean faces and I couldn't get a good one of them together so I posted a good one of Bryce and a good one of Mike separately. Here's the good one of Bryce:-)

Missy, me, Joanna, and Darcie. Missy is a couple months prego! She is due May 2nd ... We keep teasing her that she better be ready for our Cinco De Mayo weekend at the Pointe.

Kaelyn, Darcie, and Jenna eating Sopaillas. If you look really close ... in the bottom right corner of this picture you can see baby Mckenna's chubby little cheek peeking out!

Darcie and Zack at my house while we were waiting for Joanna to arrive.

Night out with Darcie

Last night I got to hang out with Darcie. We attended a charity event for Arizona Children. The night started out on the rooftop of the Valley Ho Hotel for coctails. The Valley Ho was really fun, the decor was very 70's / Brady Bunchish / Austin Powerish. Then we all moved downstairs for an amazing dinner and Carolina Herrera fashion show. It was really fun and I got to meet all of Darcie's future inlaws and friends ... all wonderful people!

This is Darcie and I being silly on the way home from the event. She got camera happy in the truck so we took pictures of ourselves at all the stop lights:-) It was as if I was 22 again:-) Fun stuff! Oh, and sorry about the grease! A big shiny face is how I always end the night.

Here are some of Darcie's girl friends ... Tram, Vicky (Darcie's future sister-in-law), Darcie, me, and Kate (she is so cute ... 6 months preg and as tiny as can be). All the girls were so sweet.

Darcie and I

Kate, me, Darcie, and Tram

Darcie with one of the fashion models in the background.

Darcie and I enjoying the rooftop at the Valley Ho.

Student of the Month!

Wow ... this week zipped by for us!

We were notified by mail last weekend that Kaelyn would be the recipient of the Student of the Month Award at her school. The school invited us to come and watch her receive the award. Kaelyn did not know that she had won and we decided to keep it a secret too:-) Polly, Adrienne (Mike's sisters), Mike, Zack and I all went to support our little "Student of the Month".

When the principal called the kid's names during the assembly the kids would run down the isle of students, past the parents who all gave high-fives, then through a tunnel that the teachers created by locking their hands together. When Kaelyn's name was called she started WAlKING SLOWLY towards the back with a completely bewildered/deer in headlights look on her face. The P.E. coach, bless her heart, decided to make the "victory run" with Kaelyn. She was very cute, but the PE coach blocked my view for getting her picture (and high-five for that matter!!). O'well. So, sorry I don't have any pictures!

We were very proud of Kaelyn! She won the award when she was in kindergarten too! We have a VERY good girl and we are very proud of her!

I also had her 1st grade parent-teacher conference on Monday. All good stuff! Her teacher said that she is already at the level they hope students will be at the end of the year:-) Yay Kaelyn! Kaelyn's class has been doing The Beary Good Reader program. We keep track off all the books that she reads and then she earns stickers at school for every 5 books. At the end of the year they give out awards. Kaelyn is in 1st place in her class and VERY motivated to stay there! She has been reading chapter books independently and has read pretty much everything we have so we will probably have to add to our book collection soon.

Happy Birthday Quaid

Happy 35th Birthday Quaid!

QUAID - It occurred to me as I was looking for pictures of you to post that you must be hiding when the cameras come out - ha ha!

Here are some that I came across.

Quaid and Cubby (This is my favorite face that Cubby makes!)
What a cute father and son!

My fabulous dad, Zack, and Quaid roasting marshmallows

(When I loaded this picture Zack said, "I wanna go there" ... Gee I wonder why??)

Me, Quaid, Jill, Joanna, & Ben (Jill & Quaid's house)

Thunderbird Mountain Hike

Yesterday we hiked Thunderbird Mountain. The kids did famously! I was so proud of them because it was a pretty long hike. It took us about 2 hours but we were stopping regularly to throw rocks, draw maps in the dirt, and examine anything else we came across. We had a great time together.

While we were hiking a sweet lady offered to take our picture. I was happy because we got one of all 4 of us.

Kaelyn led the way most of the trip. She was really into it!

Zacky and I were usually in the back taking our time. Zack was full of adventure ideas and we had to act them out as we hiked the trail. For example, ducking down low so that the "thorns didn't get us" and hopping over the rattle snakes ... you get the idea. I'm sure that the other hikers probably thought we were insane, but Zacky enjoyed bossing me around.

Kaelyn stopped to take a rest.

At the end of the trail the kids stopped to run through the tunnels.

Zacky throwing rocks.

Zacky drawing a map in the dirt "do we don't get lost".

My babies and I.

Kaelyn and I

Mike and Zack

Quick Update!

This week FLEW by! I can't believe it's Sunday already. On Monday Mike got to have "Daddy-Bro" day with Zack. They always have fun together on Mondays. Kaelyn is excited for tomorrow because we are all off for Columbus Day. She officially declared it "Daddy-Bro-Doodie Day". I'm not sure how I fit into the equation, maybe I'll just be forced to go get a pedi .... all alone ... nice!

Zacky woke up sick today. We told him that he could not go to church because we didn't want him to get the other kids sick too. He cried for a long time because he wanted to go so badly. Mike was up at about 5am getting ready to go mountain bike riding, then had to change plans to go road bike riding instead so that he could be home in time for Kaelyn and I go go to church at 945am. Mike and I have been attending the Saturday night church service so that I can teach on Sundays at 945. Kaelyn is now in my class. It's fun having her in class but she tends to get a bit jealous of the other kids getting some of my attention. She has told me that "it feels like they think you are their mommy" and "why did you ask that girl to be your helper and not me" ... I have to constantly explain to her that I have to love all the kids and give everyone an opportunity to help.

Yesterday Marlon took the kids to the AZ State Fair. I wish I would have sent my camera with him! Apparently they were VERY lucky with the carnival games. They both came home with three stuffed animals!! They are great shots with the squirt guns I guess. We are SO blessed to have family that loves our kids so much! Thanks Marlon for surprising them with the fair yesterday. I got the opportunity to go through their rooms and clear out old art work and toys they don't play with anymore. It's funny how they WILL NOT let me get rid of toys that they never play with, but if I clear it out while they are gone they don't even miss it.

Here are some random pictures....

This is Zacky on "Daddy-Bro" day ...

Both of them ...
Here's a picture of Zacky this morning ... he's sick! I quite possibly am the only mother that would make her kid smile for a picture when they are sick .... sorry Zacky!

Mike before he left for his bike ride. He likes to ride about 30 miles on Sunday mornings -- FOR FUN!!!! (I wish that was my idea of fun.)

Count Down!

**65** more days until I'm done with school!

Graduation is on December 19th @ 9am!

I love ASU!