Let this be a sign.

WOW! Now that was FUN!

OMG! No kidding - that was a truly good time! Last night the other Thompson's, The Kennemur's, The Blann's, The Seilhant's, and The Lobsinger's joined us to celebrate Tanner's birthday. All in all, 11 adults and 12 kids - hehe! Man, did we have fun! First things first - here's the cake:

We actually had a small disaster. The truck came crashing down. I didn't actually see it happen, but Lily and Grace were chasing each other around in the vacinity of the table, and just seconds before I noticed the cake I saw Grace use the table for redirection (much like a racecar uses the wall). We reassembled and this picture was taken after reassembly. The cake board holding the body of the truck up is supposed to be completely hidden but I just couldn't make that happen. Still think it turned out pretty good.
Presents! Little monster trucks, Medium monster trucks, GIANT monster trucks, monster trucks that light up and make noise, a monster truck hauler, and a monster truck ramp thingy that spins around and makes noise. Tanner is in HEAVEN. And, let us not forget the GINORMOUS Tonka crane truck (which we discovered Tanner did already have, but no matter!). He's had both the cranes out in the sand pile this morning building all kinds of stuff!!
The Pinata!
The loot for every child. Which, much to my chagrin, instead of going for volume Tanner decides to try and pick through it and choose only the stuff he likes while everyone else is grabbing everything they can get their hands on. Only Tanner.
Morgan - hangin' with the big kids!
CJ - enjoying some much needed family time.

The kids had a great time. Thanks to my friend Jeanne for taking charge of the camera or I would have no pictures of the event. You're the best! There were no fights, no one got hurt (at least not very bad-hehe), fun was had by all. After everyone left CJ said, "now those are the kind of friends we need." To which I replied, "I KNOW. Too bad we just moved an hour away from them." He sighed in acknowledgment. We're commited to Granbury for 2 years. Hopefully the friendships will prevail through the strain, and we'll be close again one day. WE LOVE YOU GUYS! Thanks for coming down and making Tanner's birthday very special!

Tell me he didn't lose weight.

I swore Morgan was a shell of a baby after the sickness and looking at these pictures I just proved it to myself. According to the Doc's scales it was a pound or less that he lost, but just look at his skinny little face now...
Morgan before the sickness

Morgan after the sickness

The good news is we're all happy and healthy right now and I have my beautiful smiling boy back. On to bigger news....

HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY TANNER!!

That beautiful hat is his "birthday crown" that his teacher gave him. I took cupcakes in for his class, they sang happy birthday to him and he even wore his crown into the store after school.
The new birthday bike from Mommy and Daddy.
The new 18-wheeler - Papa Dave made it and Grammy Jan made it shiny. THANKS!! And thank you to everyone who called and sang to him, sent cards, and dollars (as Tanner calls it). Everything really made for a special day for him. We're having a few friends over tomorrow night for cake (which by the way ROCKS - I can't wait to post pics of it), and I promised him I would take him to the store this weekend so he could spend his dollars - he's stoked!

Beating my head against the wall.

We are still sick. Well, Morgan is still sick. I think Tanner and I have dodged the bullet, and Grace and CJ are definately better. Morgan was sick again last night. This is 8 days now. I swear he's half the baby he used to be. His face is so skinny. I've got another call in to the Dr office this morning. We'll see what they want me to do. This is completely ridiculous.

But I MUST blog about something other than the sickness for fear of losing my mind!

On a happy note:
WAY TO GO ELI! I have never been a Giants fan, and I still am not, but I'm glad for Eli. No matter what he says there has to be pressure being his father's son, and the younger brother of Peyton. Now, maybe that will lift and he can just be Eli.
I know Eli got the MVP, but did you see that Giants Defense??? Give 'em a little love now!! Share that trophy with the defensive front 7 because they rocked Tom's world last night!

And, did I mention that I'm going Fantasy Racing this year??? I'm so stoked! My friend Jennifer started a group and asked me to join and I'm SO excited. This NASCAR season is going to be so FUN! This coming saturday night is the Bud Shootout...
LET'S GO RACING!!

Waiting on the ball to drop.

That nasty stomach virus has moved to poor little Grace. I felt awful last night and I think it's because I was worrying myself sick thinking I'm next. CJ slept out in the living room with Grace. He's resting now and not going to work today. I'm keeping Tanner home from school. He's not sick - yet, but I'd hate for him to contaminate the rest of his class if that's possible. This is awful!!

He lives.

CJ is up and moving, though a little slow. I tried to tell him that the next time he wants me to clean the bathroom all he has to do is ask! There's really no need to go through all of that just to get me to scrub a toilet.

No Luck

Morgan was still sick yesterday. Only threw up once, but was not feeling well at all. He slept alot, which I'm thankful for, but when he was up he was miserable. I felt so bad for him. Then about 2:30 this morning CJ has got it. I feel so bad. He's resting now, but it was a long, awful night.
So let me say this little prayer: God, please protect the mama. If the mama gets sick we're all in trouble. Amen.

Not fun

Morgan has been sick with the vomit virus since last night. Yuck. It makes me so sad for him. And for all babies who get it. Mainly because you can't reason with them. You can't say, "I know you're hungry but you can't eat because you'll just throw it all back up," or "I know you like milk but you have to have little water until your stomach settles," or "I know you usually drink 8 oz but the Dr said only a couple of tablespoonfulls at a time until you can keep it down." They don't understand and all you get in return is screaming until they're tired enough to go back to sleep. *sigh* He hasn't been sick in several hours and he did keep 2 oz of water down this time so maybe we're on the way up....I hope.

Sorry for the Delay

but there has been very little going on lately. Which I guess is a good thing. We are all healthy - YEAH! I have started exercising at home - step aerobics, pilates, yoga. I'm having a good time I just have to keep myself motivated.

Tanner brought home his report card yesterday. *Sigh* He has all high marks EXCEPT in personal behavior! What's up with that? Things like being respectful of others feelings and property, following classroom rules, working well with others, etc. What happened to my wonderful son? He used to be so shy around other adults that he would never do anything wrong. Is he just getting more comfortable in school and now he's doing whatever he wants? Am I not hard enough on his personal behavior at home? Is he allowing himself to be influenced by other not-so-well-behaved boys? What do I do? Aaaaahhh! I'll be calling the school today and setting up a conference with his teacher, at her request. I'm scared. What is she going to tell me about my son? I feel like I want to cry. How do I positively influence Tanner be more respectful of others, to follow the rules, to be the good kid and not the one that always gets in trouble? HELP! I hope it's not as bad as my brain has made it out to be.

Headaches

I hate money (or the lack thereof), I hate insurance, I hate that CJ's company doesn't feel compelled to take better care of their employees and their families. My head hurts from thinking about it all. CJ's insurance from work has always been bad. Now it's worse, and it's more expensive! I just want to kick and scream and cry and tell his boss how crappy I think it is! Yet the owner of the company always boasts about how he matches 401K and how we should take full advantage of that because it's free money and what I want to tell him is we would increase our 401K to the maximum amount BUT WE CAN'T BECAUSE OUR INSURANCE PREMIUMS ARE EATING OUR LUNCH!!

KICK*#!SCREAM#!*KICK#*!SCREAM

What Staci Means

You are the total package - suave, sexy, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do. You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless - and you have a lot of questions about life. You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home. You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are very open. You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily. You are a naturally creative person. Ideas just flow from your mind. A true chameleon, you are many things at different points in your life. You are very adaptable. You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long. You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

Hey Becky, Look!

My super wonderful, very talented friend, Becky, made these letters for me when Morgan was born. Our old house sold so quickly after he was born I didn't even get a chance to put them up. Then, as I'm unpacking boxes from the storage unit and decorating our new house I find them - all stuck together! I seriously almost had a complete meltdown. I guess the heat of the summer and the Mod Podge just didn't get along and there they were. One big clump of letters. I had tears as I called Becky to let her know. She gently calmed me down and reminded me that there are no disasters in scrapbooking and it could be fixed. Well with a little sanding, inking, and a few patches, there almost as good as new. THANKS BECKY!!

My project

I've been working on my "room". My office, scraproom, studio, whatever. Anyway, I've had to consolidate because my new room is smaller than my last one (I know poor me)and the way the windows are situated decreases my ability to use the space even more (note so self for next house). Anyway, I finally took my good friend Jeanne's advice and invested in a pegboard. It's not completely done yet. I have two shelves to add so that I can move my SU stamps and my inks up and give myself some more working room. Check it out.....


Maybe soon I can actually DO some scrappin!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HaHa. I know I'm a week late. But, it has been a happy new year so far. We're all finally better, just in time for Tanner to go back to school so I'm sure that won't last long. Cross your fingers. I told him to wash his hands really good everytime he was near a sink and don't touch anyone or their stuff. Do you think that will work? HA!
I finally got some pics of Morgan enjoying his Christmas presents, and a couple new ones of Tanner and Grace. The big kids both got new boots for Christmas and that outfit for Grace is new too. She put it on the other day and came trotting out of her room proclaiming, "Mommy, I wanna be a cowgirl!" I love it.

Busy, Busy

Saturday Dec 15th we went to a Christmas party with the Mom's group I've been trying to get involved in down here. It was at a place called Gym Kats - VERY COOL! It's a gymnastics/tumbling place for kids ages 18ms and up. The kids had a BLAST and they've been asking to go back ever since. It's very reasonably priced and I think we're going to sign them up. My contribution to the pot luck was the cake.
CHRISTMAS EVE
Dave, Jan, Brian, Beth, and Lily were here. We ate, made sugar cookies for Santa, opened the Christmas Eve PJ's (which every child had a matching pair thanks to Grammy Jan!) opened a few presents from out of state relatives (Thanks everyone!) and of course put out the Reindeer food before we went to bed....

CHRISTMAS MORNING
Grace was up at 5am. We put her off for a little while, but eventually quit torturing her and woke everyone (but Morgan) up. We opened presents from Santa and the grandparents. And played, and played, and played, and played.

Dave and Jan MADE those cool adirondack chairs for all 5 grandkids. No they weren't kits - Dave designed them and cut every piece. And they made the cool wood truck, trailer, and car you see in the same picture.
Notice there are no pictures of Morgan on Christmas day. It's because he STILL hasn't been awake long enough to open his presents. The whole family has been sick. I've had the kids to the Dr 5 times in the last 8 days (including two different appointments on Christmas Eve), countless hours and $350 later they're all medicated. Morgan ran a fever for 6 days straight. He's slept literally 64 out of the last 72 hours. We've had the normal cold virus, a weird bacterial skin infection, the vomit virus, and all three have ear infections. Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!
Despite that we tried to make the best of it and had a very Merry Christmas and I hope you did too!

Making Progress...

in the living room. It's as done as it is going to get without buying the last couple of things we need. The only thing that is lacking is some tie backs for the curtains and a clock to hang in between the windows over the couch. CJ wants to use barbwire for the tiebacks and we're searching for a clock we like but nothing has really struck us yet. It may have to wait until after Christmas.
With that said here's BEFORE

DURING

AFTER



Yes, unfortunately that's our old, nasty, stained, dirty furniture that we really did not want to move into our brand new house. But, alas, we had to spend (and are still spending) more on the house than we had budgeted so the new furniture will have to wait until tax return time. Good thing it's only a few months.
The picture below is one of my favorite things we have in the house. A box ceiling (one in the living room and one in our master bedroom). Because we elected to just do standard 8 ft ceilings, having the box really opens those two rooms up and didn't cost us any more money in the construction of the house.

The Spic N Span journey begins

with the utility room. The utility room? I know what your thinking "Staci, we really want to see pictures of the HOUSE, but is the utility room that important?" Well, to me it is. Mainly because I've had boxes and boxes of stuff sitting around with no place to go until CJ built these wonderful shelves in my utility room. YEAH!


Now, on to the kitchen: BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER


See the fabulous woodwork on the backside of the cabinets? We ordered those cabinets unfinished because our origional plan was to lay a rock wall up the back side of those (which was CJ's idea and I thought it would look awesome), but in the interest of shaving off many more hours of labor intensive work this is what we have. Isn't it beautiful? It is the idea and handywork of my brother-in-law, Brian. Way to go Brian!
Well, I'm off to try and clean the living room and then maybe you'll get pics of it too. I'm on a completely finish one room before I move on to the next mission. Wish me luck.

She got her groove on!

I have the most beautiful niece, even when she's not dressed up and dancing. Lily had her Christmas recital on Tuesday night at Ridgmar Mall. When I told the kids we were going to go watch Lily dance Grace says "Mommy I can't wait to see her moves!" And boy did she have some. They were all adorable, but especially Lily. I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted because my camera was flippin' out on me but here's a few good ones. Enjoy...(and make sure you tap, tap, tap in your head as you watch the pics)

After, we went to Olive Garden for dinner. It was taking forever to get seated. They kept calling "..... party of two ..... party of two.....party of two...." After a while CJ says "I remember those days." But, what about us? Oh yeah, our two families are now a party of 8! (and soon to be 9!) WOW! How did that happen? As we were leaving I was walking toward the back of the group and as the kids held hands and skipped through the parking lot I thought to myself "wow, look at our clan!" It made me smile and gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Life is good. It's kind of weird to be able to step back and see reality from an outside perspective. To sort of take yourself out of the moment and not be so caught up in the middle of everything that you can't appreciate it. Things have certainly changed a lot in 10 years. 10 years from now they'll be even more different. I can't wait to see.

It's starting to feel a lot like HOME

So much to blog where do I start. How about Halloween...Grace was a Bat Girl, Morgan was a goat, and Tanner was a police officer. We went to the square to trick or treat and also around the neighborhood where the rent house was. Kids had a great time only Morgan was about to suffocate because we went to the square about 3:30pm and it was like 80 degrees.

And, of course, we made time to decorate our tree last weekend. Here are a few pics of the kids to tide you over...





(sorry about the poor quality of the pics. Had a smudge or something on my lens and ended up with a white blurry fuzz in the middle of every pic.)

Now, show of hands, how many people knew it's impossible for three small children to sit still and look at the camera for a picture?

I know, I know

I told you to check back and then.....nothing. I just can't seem to keep up with my life yet. Between the everyday things of running a household of 5, trying to unpack all the stuff we got out of the storage unit, and trying to make progress on our "to do" list of unfinished things on the house - I'm buried. There's so much stuff stacked in my office that I can barely get to my computer. I'm trying to get some pics up but it's going to have to be another day. Just wanted to let you know we're all doing pretty well and I'm up to my neck but I'm trying. Don't give up on me!