Pay It Forward

Okay, this is from Karen Scott, a friend of mine from church. We'll see, eh?

A very good friend had this tag up on her blog. I am anxiously awaiting my prize! So now it's my turn to host the game. Here we go! I am unlucky when it comes to winning contests...How lucky are you? I double dare you to accept this challenge. Here are the tagging instructions: The first three people to respond to this post will get something from me! You'll have to tell me what it is I can do for you because I can't come up with much off the top of my head - but I'll make it good! The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 3 people who do the same on your blog. Thanks Karen!

Christmas

Apparently I haven't posted anything about Christmas, so I might as well do that - considering it is almost March!

We went to visit Andy's family for Christmas. We drove to Northern Wisconsin (which took 2 days) so stay with his mom. We were there for about 3 days, then we drove to Southern Wisconsin to stay with his dad (that took a day). We stayed there for a week, then drove home (another 2 days). I think we were gone 12 days total. But we all had a lot of fun. The drive gets better as the kids get older and they don't really get homesick while we are gone. Tyler loves dogs and everyone in Andy's family has at least 2 dogs. So he liked that. Natalie....not so much. She is not a huge dog fan but there was one dog that she did absolutely love. Andy's step brother, Kyle has a girlfriend who had just got a little bitty chiuahua. That thing was TINY! Well it was so small that Natalie thought it was the cutest thing ever. She just wanted to hold it and hug it. It was really cute.

I think the dogs name was Delilah. It looks like a toy!

Speaking of toys, the kids got a million things for Christmas, as ususal. Tyler got just about every Thomas the Train toy in existance and Natalie got a ton of Princess things. They opened gifts a total of 4 times, I think. Needless to say, they enjoyed it.

The day we left Las Vegas, it snowed. Later that day, my mom called us to see how things were going. At that point we were in Nebraska getting ready to stop for the day. We hadn't seen one snowflake the entire day. My mom was worried that we had gotten stuck somewhere because they got something like 8 inches of snow!!! IN LAS VEGAS! It was crazy. But apparently we just missed the bad weather, which was good. Actually, we missed the bad weather the entire trip. Every day we drove there wasn't a single drop in the sky. But as soon as we stopped, it snowed like crazy. The kids just LOVED playing in the snow. Natalie wanted to build a snowman and Tyler just wanted to throw snowballs. Buddy (our dog who we brought with us) did NOT like the snow. It was really funny to see him try to walk around in it. He would pick his feet up really high with every step - man that dog is spoiled!

So it was a great trip. Its good to see Andy's family since they live so far away - its the only time we get to see them, and the only time they get to see the kids! Hopefully this will continue to be our family tradition each year.

Tattoo

So its been a while since I've posted - I can't really use the excuse that I've been busy...just lazy. So here's a little update.

First off, a little something cute: The other day I was getting the kids ready for a bath. Natalie loves playing with tattoos and is well known for having many plastered all over her body. I don't really know where she gets them from - she did get a coloring book for Christmas that had a few pages of tattoos in it. Anyway, this particular day I had found out that they had played in the tattoos - I found little papers all over their bedroom floor. Tyler had been running around in his undies all morning. So they are getting ready for a bath and Tyler takes off his undies and is climbing into the bathtub and this is what I see:

and I just LAUGHED and LAUGHED! Yes, that is a monkey tattoo right above his butt. I hadn't seen it all morning because his undies covered it up. So I went and got the camera and took a picture. Well anytime I take a picture of the kids, they want to see it right away. Tyler seemed a little confused that I was taking a picture of his butt and when I showed him the picture, he got a really serious look on his face. Then he tried to turn around to look at his butt to see the tattoo. Apparently he didn't know it was there either! I can just imagine Natalie putting a tattoo on Tyler while he was sleeping. Oh my gosh it was so funny.

The other day I hosted Family Home Evening at my house for my family. Only Dennis, Stephanie, Will, Leigh Ann and the kids showed up. But we still had a good time. We had sandwiches for dinner, had a simple lesson, and then had some delicious dessert. I guess it was good that more people didn't show up because I have such a small house! But I'm glad those that showed up came. Hopefully next time more can make it.

Andy applied for a manager position at the Ritz-Carlton and we are so anxious waiting to see if he got the job. He is very well qualified and is the best candidate (as far as we are concerened)...but you never know. So we are keeping our fingers crossed.

That's it for now. I'll do some more updates later.