Saturday's trip to see Grandpa in IL

Wow, can't believe I didn't blog in July.

The kid's and I took a trip to IL on saturday to see my grandpa. We had a great visit and also got to see my Aunt Mary, Uncle Rick, Laura and Aunt Iris.


After that, we went out the the cemetary where mom is at.





Then we went to the big rock again @ the Lewis & Clark memorial site.
We also discovered that there is a museum down there too. Awesome! http://www.greatriverroad.com/lewclark/campriverdubois.htm




My GPS is so funny. I asked it to give me the fastest route from Granite City to Rolla, and it took me THROUGH the residential areas of St. Louis. Interesting drive though. Once we got to Sullivan, we HAD to stop for spicy tacos at Jack in the box.

We had a great time. And believe it or not, I've never made the trip to IL without another adult in the car to guide me. I did it all by myself (with the help of my handy-dandy GPS system). We'll have to do this again soon. I want more tacos. lol

My bff Jenny came to visit!

I haven't seen Jenny in over a year. We don't see each other nearly often enough.
We had a great time "playing tourists" in my own town. lol


First, we went to see the stonehenge on campus.


Then we went to lunch @ McD's.
From there, we went to the walking bridge by the courthouse that goes over the RR tracks. And we took pics by the Phelps County Museum.


After that, we went to the Millinneum Arch. This was pretty cool. In the 15 years that I've been here, I've never stopped to see it.


We also hit the park for a while and let the kids run off their energy.

Lastly, we finished off with some icecream @ DQ. What a great day.

My hair is so short!

I know, I was supposed to wait until after September. That way it would be a year since I've gotten it cut. But seriously, it's freakin' hot out there. So I got it cut. Since my hair was layered, the lady put it in 3 pony tails so that the layers would be seperated. The shortest layer was 8 inches long. The longest was 12 inches long. And I got a cute cut out of it. :D

Perhaps you didn't know...that my daughter is a genious!

In case you were still in the dark about her genious status....

Morgan got straight A's on her report card again for second grade.
And on her end of year AR (Advanced Reader) report, it says that she reads at a 6th grade level.

She makes me so proud!


I am so happy that it is summer vacation. No getting up at 6am every weekday just to have to fight with the girl to HURRY UP or you're never gonna be ready for the bus.

God help me, 'cause this fall I will have to get BOTH of them ready for school. 2 different busses, 2 different locations. The head start bus won't pick up out this far, so we have to drive him to K-mart parking lot and they pick him up there.

I will definately enjoy my 4-5 hours of quiet time though. :D

9 years of wedded bliss

Yesterday marked the 9th wonderful year of marriage for Chad & I.

It's hard to believe that it has been that long.
We've been through so much these last 9 years.

The best part has been bringing our 2 beautiful children into this world and watching them grow into amazing and smart kids. They complete our lives so perfectly.

I couldn't have asked for a better family.

I couldn't have asked for a better life.

Wish us luck

We go tomorrow to look at a house. It's 4 bedroom, 2 story, plus a basement!
4th room is mine for a scraproom! Basement is Chad's play room. lol
Here's the outside.

I like Mondays!

Yeah, I know that I'm the odd Mii out (and yes, I just made a wii reference!). But I DO like mondays. Especially when I'm off work. :D
But what made this an even greater monday? Well, that would be the new girl at work agreeing to bring me some Jack-in-the-box tacos on her way to work. She..Is..Awesome!

And yes, I did save some for Morgan. :)

Sick again

My baby is sick again. GI bug and an ear infection.
2 days off of school.
She feels better today. She's up playing baseball on the wii now. Yep, can definately send her back to school tomorrow.

This was at the dr. office yesterday afternoon.

April has been a busy month

Easter was great! I love knowing exactly what I work on Sundays so that Easter can be planned out perfectly. And this year, the weather was beautiful. We live in Missouri. The weather is always wacky in MO. And always cold and/or rainy on Easter. But this year, it was in the 70's and no rain. The ground was dry and the kids were in summer clothes. The egg hunt was perfect.



The pollen around here is horrendous. It's been so dry, and no rain for 2 weeks, that the pollen is looming in the air like crazy. And Orin seems to be more allergic than all of us combined.
Poor kid.


The last couple of days have been much better though because we finally got some heavy rain. The rain helped pull that pollen down out of the air. I didn't even have to give him his medicine yesterday and he slept without the cold mist vaporizer on. Hope it continues like this. I hate seeing him so miserable.

Morgan has learned to ride her bike without training wheels. We bought her a new bike for her birthday in December, but she hasn't been able to ride it yet, because the seat is a little too high on it's lowest setting. Chad is gonna use his dremmel to saw of maybe a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the post so that she can sit on the seat and still reach the ground.
So we've had her new bike stored away since December. I decided the other day to take the training wheels off of her old bike so that she can practice riding without them on a bike that she can definately reach the ground on. She's way too big for this bike, but it was helpful to her for learning to ride.
Chad helped her start out in the yard. He only held on for about 10 seconds, and then she was doing it on her own. About an hour later, she was walking her bike up the hill and riding it back down. She never crashed once.

Can't believe it's April already!

Where did the last 3 months go? They just flew by!

So, Orin can write his name now. This is the first time he's even tried, or shown interest in writing anything.
He is also sounding out words and can read a lot of 3 letter words.


Tuesday I took the kids for a walk. We ended up walking the entire mile and a half trail, round trip. 3 miles of walking with two crazy kids. We all had a great time.
(Click on the collages for bigger pictures).

Nice trip to IL

We had a nice trip to IL on saturday. It was just the kids, my dad and myself. We went to my sweet cousin Peggy's memorial service. What a beautiful service it was too. You could feel how much she was loved and how much she will be missed.

After that, we went to the luncheon at the church.
Went to the cemetery. It was pretty muddy and washed out, so we didn't stay long.



After that, we went to show Morgan where I used to live when I was 10. That place looks so different. I almost cried. Our's was 2nd door from left.


Then we hit the Lewis & Clark Expedition site in Granite City, IL. I have pics of Mom sitting on this huge rock from 1988. I don't know why I've never been down there before now. But we did it. And I have to say, I don't know HOW she got up there. lol. We don't have that kind of energy or desire, so we just stood beside it while my dad took the pic. (Orin was asleep in the car. Wish he could've been in the pic. Next time....)


Then we headed home, but not before stopping at Jack-in-the-Box in Sullivan, MO. lol Gotta get those tacos!

I have a new nephew....and a couple of great kids.

So this is my newest nephew Caleb. He was born on Friday evening (the 5th). He's just so stinkin' adorable. And I get to see him again tonight. :-D




And here are some new pics of my kids.

She certainly doesn't get it from me.

So, in my previous post, I said that Morgan's as tall as the hamburgler.
See those pants that she's wearing in that pic, well, they're about a 1/2 inch too short now. What the heck? She grew that much in the last 2 weeks???

I measured her on our "measuring wall" yesterday. She's now 4 ft 5 1/2 in tall.
I'm only 9 1/2 inches taller than her??

I was watching her from the window this morning while she was waiting for the bus. When the bus gets close, the teen girls from across the street come across to get on. Morgan is as tall as them. (She's only EIGHT!).

And yesterday, I got her some new tennis shoes. (With Cindy's help.) They're size 5, and there's just about 1/2 inch growing room.

So, are we absolutely positive that she's mine? She's gonna be taller than me by the time she's a teenager.

Morgan's as tall as the Hamburgler!

lol. We went to McDonald's on Super Bowl Sunday, to get out of daddy's hair. We ate and then I let them play for about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. I demanded a pic before we left. Orin was completely against it. He was afraid of the Hamburgler. So Morgan told him he could stand on the other side of her, and he was good with that.
So, Hamburgler is pointing to the 4 foot mark here. My kids are tall!

Missing my mom and grandma

This saturday would've been my mom's 56th birthday. Each year I wonder what she would've been like. What would we have done to celebrate her birthday?
I daydream about how her and my children would interact with each other. I'm sad that they didn't have the chance to know her.

And 6 years ago, on mom's 50th birthday, my grandmother (her own mother) passed away. I wasn't able to be there with her. But my Aunts all told me that after her being so quiet and sleeping for so long, she just woke up and started talking. They listened for a little while and then one of them said, "Mom, who are you talking to?"
She said, "I'm talking to Gail. And she wants to know where her G** D*** birthday cake is!"

I hope that they have some delicious cake together in Heaven. I will be making cupcakes for her this year.

I love you mom. And I love you grandma. Miss you both so much.

Mmmmmm...smells good in here.

This is currently cooking in the crockpot right now for Chad. Really simple to make.

And I'm making this for myself.

I love Max & Ruby. It comes on the tv and they all stop what they're doing, it gets quiet, and they are being good. Love it when the tv gets their attention like that.

New year...new resolutions

Last year I gave up alcohol and biting my nails. I succeeded. It's been more than a year since I've drank or bit. :D

So, my 2010 resolutions. If I can quit drinking alcohol, surely I can do this.

~No soda. Period. None. I've been drinking mostly water with a really watered down lemonade here and there just for taste.

~No eating out while I'm working. This is a big one. It's dinner time, we go get something to eat. Problem? I eat too much and spend too much. I'm figuring this is gonna save me more than $1500.00 this year alone.

~I will eat breakfast everyday. A bowl of oatmeal and toast is my current thing. I'm not counting calories or anything, just eating better, and less.

~I WILL get on the wii fit at least 5 days/week. I was shooting for everyday, but I've already messed that one up.

~And finally, if I can do all of the above, then there's no reason why I can't lose at least 50# this year. Right?