I Love Black Friday!

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pooped! We have had such a fun day. The kids spent the night at my parents house last night, so Travis and I got up EARLY this morning to hit some sales! This was Travis's first time to shop early on Black Friday and he was just a little shocked :).

We got every single thing we had on our list, plus some!! We started at the Greenwood Wal-Mart at 5:00 and grabbed Kung Fu Panda, a Havoc Heli helicopter (price-matched Target's price!), 2 sets of Pyxos,a set of Rubbermaid, and a couple of clothing items for the boys. We weren't going for anything "big", but it sure was nice to get what we wanted. We were back in the car by 5:15.

Next we headed to Walgreens. Their sale didn't start until 7:00 but I wanted to see if the entry way trees that I wanted were even available before we wasted precious 7:00 time for them. They had a whole stack by the front door, and my favorite manager was there. He told me that the computers would actually re-set for the early bird prices at 6:00. It was 5:50, so we waited 10 minutes, got our 4 trees (2 for my sister in law) and headed to Staples. The line was wrapped around the building, and we opted to not wait there. (But, I was able to come home later and order the ?????? (a gift for one of my loyal blog readers) online with free shipping anyway!).

So, then we headed over to Michaels. Travis is going to "paint" some canvases for our living room, so we were able to snag the 3 big canvases that we needed, plus several other decorating things, and a basket full of ribbon and use the 25% off coupon.

Then we went to Yeagers, and got a some presents (can't say what....) there. We were there right at 7:00 and walked right in, grabbed what we wanted and were out in 5 minutes.

The only place we had to wait at all was at Ulta. I wanted that cheap Shaper hair spray and Chi silk infusion. I also had spotted an awesome hairdryer in the ad that I REALLY wanted. Travis and I divided and conquered. He went straight to the line, while I grabbed everything I wanted. I was so sad because they were out of the hairdryer. It was SO cute, pink and black polka dots and retailed for $130. It was on sale for $30 and apparently flew off the shelves with the first few people in the store. We ended up standing in line for about 30 minutes, but as we were standing, I spotted the hair dryer!!! Apparently someone had gotten tired of waiting in line and just set it down on a random shelf. So, I got my hairdryer after all, and got to use the $3.50 off coupon. Don't you just love a good bargain!

After that Travis was WORN OUT. It was about 8:00 so we headed to Calico County. We had a good breakfast (cheap also, because I had a coupon:). We made 1 more stop at Hobby Lobby and grabbed a gift for his office party.

Such a fun day!! Travis totally wins the prize for BEST shopper ever. He dropped me off at every door and searched for stuff like a champ! And the best part, we were back home taking a nap by 10:00.

We just finished putting the lights on the house. I'm hoping we are going to add a few more to the roof line, but it still looks so good. Travis, Blake, and Evan make a great lighting team. And, I'm a great boss!! Travis is going to take some pics, so I'll poste them later!!!

Happy Black Friday!!!!!

Busy but Blessed...

I just can't believe that it has been so long since I blogged. Time has really flown for me the last week or so. Our big news this week is that Evan got glasses. This was major for me. I really struggled with it for some reason. I was the same way when Blake got his glasses (also in kindergarten). I think I just hate that they have to have the responsibility for one, and the "stigma" for another. Kids can just be SO cruel and I would just die if anyone made fun of either of them. With that said, Evan was THRILLED to be getting glasses. In our family, where everyone is practically blind, glasses are the norm. He picked his frames out all himself. He knew exactly how he wanted them to look ("just like Dad's"). So, here he is on the first day he wore his new glasses.
I think in a previous post I have mentioned how much Evan LOVES Under Armour. Well, here he is at LaFiesta the day of his birthday with his NEW Under Armour shirt on OVER his regular shirt. Seriously, this was his favorite birthday present, by far. He also go a navy one, and we have alternated every day with one or the other. He even wears them to bed!!!

This was the night of Evan's birthday when we went to Chuck E Cheese. They had a BLAST!! The movie and sleep over were SO fun also!

This is a picture at Evan's family party. This was the FUNNIEST present ever from Kyle and Amy. It's a book called "Walter the Farting Dog" and a stuffed "Walter" that, you guessed it, farts when you squeeze him. Evan has made Walter his own little bed next to his, all tucked in with a washcloth for a blanket.

This was the greatest present ever (after the Under Armour). It's a new bike from Nonnie and Poppy. Evan had outgrown his old bike and this one is just his size. He also got a full face helmet to wear with it. He has worn the helmet ever time, so far. If you live in our neighborhood, I'm sure you've seen him. It's pretty hard to miss a 6 year old on a stunt bike wearing a full face helmet :).

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pooped from all the Christmas decorating going on in my house right now. Our neighborhood Christmas Open House is next Sunday and I'm trying really hard to get ready. I'm so out of my element when it comes to decorating. I'm thinking our house is feeling pretty cozy, and I guess that's all that matters...

Chances are I won't get around to blogging tomorrow, so Happy Thanksgiving to all my loyal readers :)!!!! I feel absolutely blessed beyond measure, and have SO much to be thankful for. Here is a picture of the cutest Pilgram and Indian you ever saw!!!

Happy Birthday Evan Lee!!!

The countdown is officially over....Evan is a 6 year old!! Here I sit with tears pouring down my face as I look back at these precious pictures of the day you were born. It truly seems like yesterday. I can smell that baby smell as I look at these pictures. You were such a precious baby, and you have turned into an amazing strong, sweet, curious, 6 year old. You have been my biggest challenge, but we are both better for it! (Right??)

Everyday you amaze me with your strong opinions on so many things. Who would have known that a kindergartner could love Under Armour SO much!? I love you my sweet precious Evan!!!

Here you are just a couple of hours after you were born. You were dressed and ready to head home!

This is where you spent many hours of your first week of life! You are very jaundiced and we diligently kept you either in the sunlight or under the flourescent under cabinet lights to bring your bili down! How precious you were!!

Another one of my favorite newborn pictures of you....

We're missing a few pictures in between. But here you are on Halloween just before you turned 2 years old! You still talk about your army uniform!

Here you are on your 3rd birthday. Thomas was your thing that year. I think I loved Thomas maybe even more than you and Blake!

And here you are on your first day of 3 year old pre-school! You thought you were SO big...

And here is the famous 5 year old McDonalds birthday party! Another favorite for sure!

Now I have to head to the kitchen. You are waiting for me to help make your birthday cake for tonight! That's another thing I love about you. You ALWAYS want to help me. You try so hard to be like Daddy and I SO love you for it. You will make a nice catch for some little girl some day! (just hold off on the playground kissing for now!)

Evan, you truly have such amazing potential. I just know you are going to be a very influential grown-up some day. You have an amazingly strong will and a love for others that is inspiring. You love your family and are learning to love God with all of your heart. I'm looking forward to a fun-filled future ahead with you!!!

Love,

Mom

18 hours and counting....

Well, my baby will only be 5 years old for 18 more hours. The reality of that is hitting me hard this morning. It's that 6 year old threshold that makes them "big kids" and I don't like it one bit.

We are celebrating big time today! I am picking Evan up from school for lunch and we are going to LaFiesta to meet Nonnie and Poppy for lunch. Then back to school with cookies to share with his class. Tonight Evan has invited Brady to go with us to Chuck E Cheese and to see Madagascar 2. Then Brady is SPENDING THE NIGHT! Wow! Evan's first sleepover. Think of me about 12:00 tonight when I will, no doubt, be begging to 5 year olds (at least for 4 more hours at that point) to go to sleep.

Then tomorrow night we are having a family party, complete with pizza and Oreo ice cream cake. I do love birthdays, but boy are they LONG! Have a great day!!!!

Projects...

Here are the pictures (thanks to Travis!) of our recent projects. This first picture dates itself. Look how little Evan is! This chair belonged to Travis's Granny and Grandpa Bartlett. It sat in their living room for a VERY long time. It has lots of sentimental value for Travis, so we just had to keep it. Too bad it only took 7 years to get it recovered!
Here it is with it's new skin! Much improved I think!!!

This picture is the only one I could find of the old baby blue piano bench. Again, we've been putting this one off for a while!

And, the bench made over.....again, much improved!

In this picture you can see the old dining room chair and the old sofa table.

Travis surprised me and painted this while I was at work one Saturday. Who knew what a difference a can of spray paint could make!

And here is a picture of the new dining room chairs. There are six, so it took us a little while. Don't look too close, it was our first re-covering project!

I'm so glad to have a few things checked off the "to do" list. Just wish we had done them sooner...

I love this day!

Well, today I was supposed to work at St. Edwards. I had myself prepared to get up this morning and go, but then the phone rang about 5:00 this morning. It was the hospital wanting to know if I wanted to stay home. Uh, let me think....SURE! I'm so weak in the morning, it was so warm in my bed and I was still SO sleepy. So I caved and agreed to stay home. Not great for the Christmas budget, but holy cow, I've already gotten more done today in the 2 hours since the kids left for school than I have in weeks around here.

I've done 2 loads of laundry, folded them and put them away, cleaned out both boys closets, putting all the outgrown summer stuff in a tub for Growing Kids, finished the book fair financial form, verified it with the Scholastic rep, and submitted it, and decluttered the living room and kitchen. I'm feeling like Super Mom already!

Then I read Sherry D.'s blog. She was talking about all the projects she is working on to get her house ready for our neighborhood tour of homes. Now I'm feeling totally overwhelmed. I'm just going to tell everyone right now, don't expect too much at my house! I promised myself when I decided to do this that I wouldn't let it get me stressed out. So, what you see is what you get at my house this Christmas!!!

Speaking of projects, Travis and I did get one big project that we've been talking about doing for about, let's say....7 years, done on Saturday. We recovered our dining room chairs!!! Back when Blake was about 2 he was obsessed with squirting anything in a spray bottle he could get his hands on. During that time he managed to get a bottle of Clorox Clean-Up and sprayed the seats of 4 out of 6 of our dining room chairs. So, for the last 7 years most of the seats have had cute bleached out spots on them. My mom had given us some fabric, let's say....about 4 years ago that we thought we would use to recover a chair. Well, it wasn't enough to recover the chair, so it's been sitting in a closet for the last 4 years waiting for us to use it for something.

So, last week we got "the chair" that has been in our garage for let's say....6 years, to the upholsterer, and she also recovered the piano bench in the fabric from the closet. Well, we got the chair and piano bench back and thought, huh, we could use the rest of the fabric on our dining room chairs. So, basically after procrastinating for 7 years, we finally had the orange floral chair recovered, the baby blue piano bench recovered, and the dining room chairs recovered!!

I would love to post some pictures, but I still don't know how to get the pictures off the camera to the computer in a way that makes Travis happy, so I'll just have to wait for him to get my pictures on this thing later tonight!

Okay, now I'm inspired again. Time to get back to work!!

Don't Forget To VOTE!!

Okay, so I know that I do not stay caught up with news in general, especially politics. I haven't watched the news in months. I haven't even read more than the ads in the paper for forever. But, I have voted!

I have really been thinking about this election and how it will affect me and my family. I loved Bro. Ronnie's sermon Sunday morning. It reminded me that no matter who wins the election, God will still be my king and he is in control of everything! But, that said, we still live the the United States of America in a democratic society and we have the gift of getting to vote! So, get out there and vote tomorrow. You can't complain if the results aren't what you wanted if you didn't even bother to vote!!

If you aren't sure who to vote for, just be like me!!! McCain Palin 2008 !!!! :)

Halloween Fun!

What a fun day! This year I decided we were really not going to make a big deal out of Halloween. I've never been a big fan of Halloween, and I just wasn't looking forward to it this year. So, I told the boys that we weren't buying costumes and doing all the hoopla this year. They were totally fine with it and said that they would wear a costume that they already had. So, Blake wore the Darth Vader costume that I bought on clearance for $5 two years ago (it has been worn for MANY light saber battles). Evan truly didn't have a costume that fit, but out good neighbor Sherry happened to have a garage full of costumes. So, we borrowed a costume from Evan and we were set!

Instead of the usual frantic pace of Halloween night, we just took it easy and had a great time! Here are the boys on the front porch ready to go! Notice Evan's vampire teeth. They were in his goody bag from school and he wasn't taking those teeth out for anything! Also, notice my little bumpy pumpkin Evan picked out earlier at the pumpkin patch...
I thought this picture was too funny! Darth Vader riding his bike down Woodland Trail!

The boys and I went to Sonic for their FREE hot dog and Coke. They just don't think it's Halloween without out our annual trip to Sonic for the hot dog! Then we stopped by Granny's house to show off the boys for her! She had a special treat for them ~ a whole bag of lemon heads!!! (Granny always has lemon heads at her house and the boys raid her bowl everytime we are there).

Then we headed back to our neighborhood for some trick or treating. It was SO fun. It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood was out walking around. We hooked up with the Townsends and the kids had a blast! Evan was running as fast as his little legs would carry him from house to house. I think he's still totally amazed that all you have to do is ask, and people GIVE YOU CANDY!! Here's a pic of Peyton, Evan, Jake, and Blake! Here they are in action!

After walking around our neighborhood we headed over to Nonnie and Poppy's to visit and order some pizza. We took a quick trip around their neighborhood while we waited for the pizza to arrive. The boys couldn't wait to get back and weigh their candy bags.... Here they are with Nonnie! (Notice the firehat...Evan took off his mask and wore the tiny firehat he got from the fire station earlier for the rest of the night!)

While we ate, Blake and Evan got to pass out candy to the trick or treaters. Evan took it very seriously! Fun, fun night. Oh, and the candy bags each weighed over 4 pounds each!!! That's a lot of "loot"!!!

Wild Things Farm ~ Kindergarten Syle!

On Friday half of the kindergartener's from Westwood went to Wild Things Farm. This worked out great because since it was Halloween, they did this instead of a party. Since I'm the homeroom mom, it saved me from having to plan a party:)! I made goody bags instead...

This place is totally awesome. If you've never been there, you should take the fam and go! When we first got there, Evan's class loaded up in a trailer and took a hayride. A tractor pulled us all over the place. We stopped and a bunch of horses came over to the trailer. The kids got to pet the horses and they even started eating straw out of the trailer!
This is Evan's class and Mrs. Fein on the trailer. You can see how beautiful this place is!

Next we got to shell some corn, play a sling shot game, then walk through a corn maze. I've never been through a corn maze before, but it was totally cool. It would be even funner in the dark with a flashlight!

Next we got to pick a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch. It took Evan forever to pick one. He finally picked a cute little round one for him, and a bumpy, ugly one for me. He really loved the bumpy one! Later when I post some Halloween pics you can see them both on the front porch...

Okay, now for the BEST part of the Wild Things Farm!! The GOATS!!!! Seriously, have you ever seen anything like this before???

I was totally amazed by this sight! I know I have a tendancy to get really carried away with the animals on Evan's field trips (flashbacks of the fair!), but this was absolutely HILARIOUS!!! The goats were walking on this little narrow bridge....Seriously, who thought of that, and what crazy goat would actually try it!?

Here is Evan posing beneath the goat in the sky, just for perspective's sake!

This was really the best field trip I've ever been on. After the animals we had a picnic lunch, then the kids headed back to school. The weather was SO perfect and the place is just so beautiful and perfectly organized. There were at least 8 classes of kindergarteners there, but it seemed like we had the place to our selves most of the time! Fun times!!