Happy New Year!

We want to wish everyone a very Healthy, Happy, and Prosperous New Year!

Happy Holidays!!

We just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

Kids

Today in the car I was talking to Haiden, the conversation went like this:

Me: I need you to help me clean the house today.
Haiden: The whole house??
Me: Yep
Haiden: Why, are Brett and Adri coming over?

So, I guess we need to have people over in order to have our house clean! Humph!

Great Neighbors

Our neighbor decided that she wanted to make a gingerbread castle to donate to the festival of trees in honor of Raegan. I can't begin to tell you how sweet this girl is. Their family spent a crazy amount of hours and $ doing this castle. It is SO cute! Breanna designed the whole thing (she is 11). her mom even got some NASTY glue gun burns while doing the project. If you have a chance please go see it at the Festival of Trees this week.

Our Thanksgiving:

We had a great Thanksgiving day. I have to say that I am very thankful that I have such a wonderful husband and great (and wild) kids. Here are a few pictures from our day.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving....

As Thanksgiving is creeping closer and closer and of course food is on the brain... I'm gonna throw this out there. What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish? I've decided I have 2. My dad's stuffing - the only stuffing I will eat, and my MIL's steamed pudding with yummy sauce - oh my oh my, sweet mercy! Just thinking about it has made me gain 12 pounds - but well worth it!

So, what is your favorite?!

We're HOME!!!!!!!!! and.. I'm tagged :)

Yeppers we are HOME! WOO HOO!! Rae is doing good and feeling her feisty self. I went to the store and bought every germ fighting cleaner I could find and plan on spending all of tomorrow de-germing our house.

I am tagged - so here goes -- Adri, I stole some of yours :)

8 TV shows I love to watch:
We never watch regular tv - we rent everything on netflix
LOST
24
Everybody loves Raymond
Seinfeld
King of Queens
30 Rock
Office
House

8 Favorite Restaurants:
Mikado
Happy Sumo
Mizumi
PF Changs
Olive Garden
McGraths
Spencers
Cafe Rio

8 Things That Happened Yesterday:
Sat at the hospital with Raegan
Watched TV with Raegan
Did Crafts with Raegan
Talked to Darrin on the phone
Came home
Took a Hot Bath
Darrin worked on our floor (thank you!!!)
Darrin took care of the boys (thank you again!!!)

8 Things I Am Looking Forward To:
Raegan being off treatment
NO MORE HOSPITAL VISITS!!
Thanksgiving
The first snow (that doesn't melt the same day)
Christmas
Hanging out with Darrin and the kids
Spring
Camping next year???

8 Things On My Wish List:
Healthy kids
Happy Family
New Jeans - haha
Nice long vacation
Steelers win the superbowl again
Go to see the Steelers win the superbowl :)
My house to magically stay clean (without any effort from me)
One billion Dollars (dreaming big)

8 People I tag:
(no pressure, do it if you want or don't)
Andrea
Tiffany
Anna
Zane
Abby
Skylar
Mandy (do it on your facebook!)
I DON'T KNOW ANYONE ELSE!!!

STILL HERE!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I am going stir crazy! We are still up at the hospital. Raegan got another fever this morning and her ANC (the cells that fight infection) is still zip, zero, nada. So... The plan is to keep us here until she can go 24 hours with no fevers. I am also hoping her counts will start to come up so she can fight whatever this bug is. She is really doing good, she is bored out of her mind (ditto for mommy), has done every craft we could come up with and watched beauty and the beast 64 times. Sigh. Cross your fingers and do the count dance - whatever it takes! I am missing my boys and my hubby!

Guess where we are!

That's right folks. Rae got a fever so we are spending a few days at PCMC. So far her counts look good except for her ANC which is only 100. She had a fever this morning so I am guessing they will keep us here another day. Other than being here she is happy, in fact she loves it up here! (ugh!)

1 of my favorites...

Ok, I couldn't narrow it down to just 1 recipe. That is too hard! Here is one of my favorites though.
I am sure there is a real measured recipe for this but I just like to throw stuff in:

Chicken Acapulco
4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Butter
Cream of Chicken Soup - 2 or 3 cans
1 big can diced green chilies
Sour cream
Monterey Jack Cheese

Cook chicken in about 1/2 a stick of butter on the stove until done. In a baking dish mix the rest of the ingredients together, throw in chicken and bake until nice and bubbly. (at about 350)

Serve over rice.

What is your favorite recipe?

Ok, please respond to this one :)

What is your all time favorite recipe? Is it a main dish, dessert, breakfast, salad?

I am trying to decide what mine is. I will post it tomorrow after I think on it for a bit!

Halloween

Halloween was really fun this year - all of the kids seem to enjoy trick or treating (of course). Xander likes the idea of going door to door to get candy, and to my surprise, even when people would offer him more than 1 piece he would only take 1 and wanted to move on to the next house. Raegan was Princess Jasmine for her school party then decided that she wanted to be Cinderella for trick or treating. After going to a few houses we took the kids to Aunt Allisons house for her annual halloween party. The kids LOVED it! they were so excited to tell us all about all of the games they played. She does a great job! Darrin, Xander and I headed over to my parents for their annual taco soup - we missed the rest of my family but had a nice time chatting with my folks. All in all a fun night.

Carving Pumpkins

We carved pumpkins with the kids last night. Really cute to see what they want to carve. If you can't tell from the pictures, we have a guitar, a bat, a scary face, and a butterfly for the kids. Raegan wanted a barbie on hers but I don't think that is possible :)

Hope Kids - Bear Lake Weekend

This weekend we went to Bear Lake with "Hope Kids". It was so much fun! The kids really had a great time. There was a cool bounce pillow that I think my kids could have lived on if we allowed it. We also went on a nice "hike" that was kid friendly. Xander really liked the hike, he would stop on every rock or fallen tree and tell Darrin to take his picture, so I think we have about 47 pictures of just him :) Raegan was cold (as you can see from the pictures) and Haiden discovered "rock on" fingers so we have quite a few pics with him doing that. It was pretty cold but I think we all had a nice time. The kids liked making s'mores - Raegan has her own version, no graham cracker - just chocolate and marshmallow hehe.

Kids say the darndest things

Today my sweet darling daughter comes up and says "mommy, I think you are getting old." I asked why, to which she replied "because you are getting crinkled."

I think I will go check out the old folks home today.

Just sharing my day.

Tre: hi stooped NINET (hi stupid Nanette for those of you that don't know 1st grade spelling)

This is from my son Tre. He is mad because I am making him clean today and not play games - heaven help us all!

It is nice to be so loved and appreciated isn't it?!!!

SIGH!

The birthday party.

Yipee, my computer is fixed and I am able to download pictures off of my camera - wooo hooo!

Here are a few pictures from Tre`, Xander, and Kolten's birthday party. It was a lot of fun, we learned about a lot of different animals and BUGS (EWW!) - I think the kids had a really good time - and they got spoiled for sure!



Super cute crested gecko - makes me want one!

Tre and Xander helping Cousin Kolten blow out his candles :)

HUGE Boa!
Cute little ferret
Way soft chinchilla!
Really gross giant millipede. We don't have a picture of the hissing cockroaches but trust me, they were gross!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY XANDER!!!!!

Happy birthday to the little caboose in our family. Even though he is a wild child and Darrin calls him Spawn of Satan he really is a cute and fun little boy. He loves to tease pretty much everyone he meets. He is Raegan's little buddy and follows her everywhere she goes - he even goes to her when he is in trouble and needs a hug :)

HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY TRE`!!!

I can't believe how old my kids are getting, especially since I am still just 29 (hahaha). Tre is a fun little boy with a wacky sense of humor that always has us laughing, he loves all things Power Rangers and Nintendo related and likes hanging out at home with his siblings (well maybe not Xander as much-hehe). Have a great day bud, WE LOVE YOU!!!!

Jiggle

Just thought I'd share a moment of my day with everyone. Today I was combing Raegan's hair and she says to me "mom, look at your legs, they are jiggling".

As not funny as this is I am sitting here giggling about my jiggling!

More of our Trip

Look - my kids are running vertical! Just kidding, I just don't know how to switch the picture the right way.


Candyland night at the GKTW, each night was a different theme. Once again AWESOME!



These are more pics from the trip - some Universal Studios, which was AWESOME btw - with Raegan's pass if they saw us they would grab us out of line and take us to the front.

Feeding the stingrays at seaworld, we did this twice! We also fed the sea lions and the dolphins (I'll post pics of that tomorrow)

Meeting one of the characters from a show at Universal.




Waiting for lunch.




I'll post more about our trip (with a few less pictures) tomorrow. Right now I am going to cook dinner!