New Year

Beauty in the Common Things: Manners. Some kids have never heard of them. Mine is still learning. We took are dogs to the vet and Grant kindly said, "Thank you doctor for taking care of my animals." Aww, so sweet and yet so random1

Listen In: Watching "Shrek Forever After". I love Gingy!

View from Kitchen Window: 2 dogs ready to come in and melting snow. Pictures of snow fun to come later.

We took a small vacation to Sea World on New Year's Eve. We joined up with my sister in law, Winonah, and my nephew Fletcher. Everything was still beautifully decorated for the holiday season.

First stop was the dolphin and baluga whale show. Here are the boys getting ready for the show. Fletcher is ready to rock out!
Dancing dolphins.

Too sweet.

Mmm....funnel cake!!!

The Shamu Show! That baby in the middle was born last January.

I did notice that none of thetrainers got in the water with the orca whales. Probably a new change since the incident this past year in Orlando.

Still a fun show to watch though! Isn't this every kids' dream job at some point?

Aww, adorable!

I wanted to take this whale home...so adorable!

Grant couldn't take his eyes off of him.

We then went to visit Cookie Monster. Winonah and Fletcher got a good picture with him.

I was happy Grant wasn't scared of him.

They had decorative snowmen all over this one side of the park. Here is Elvis:

This one is a shout out to my brother, The Blues Brothers:

Outside Shamu Stadium.

Some adorable "Happy Feet"

Grant was double fisting the cotton candy.

Otter performing on a ball? That is awesome!

The Sealion show included Santa at the end! What a surprise!

This walrus has got to be one of the more difficult to train.

After the sealion show, we ate a special dinner put on by Sea World. Winonah and Daniel went and rode the "Steel Eel" while the boys and I had some down time at the playground. Our last activity before Sea World's New Year's event was seeing "Polar Express" in 4D. The boys LOVED it! Here is everyone in their crazy glasses.

G like them better this way.

We got "VIP" access to the fireworks show at the end of the night. We sat on our Shamu blankets and waited for the show. Grant played with his new suitcase o' animals.

There goes the fireworks! It was a chilly night and a great end to a great (and LONG day).

Happy New Year!

Christmas Part II

Beauty in the Common Things: Not really common here, but it just started snowing!!! I hope it sticks!

Listen In: We are watching "Couple's Retreat", so far so good.

Dinner Plans: Left overs...Pizza Hut!

I love sending out Christmas cards. Some people CLAIM to be too busy but I don't believe it. My sister took our pictures for our card this year. They took a total of 10 minutes and turned out great!

Here is the runner-up:

Here is the winner!

This picture I had to share...my cousin who passes through town every once in a while stopped for a day for a visit before Christmas. He gave Grant some dinosaur eggs. He was so excited about them and proud of them. He kept asking when they would hatch. Turns out they weren't dinosaur eggs after all...just full of sugar :)

Grant had surgery the day after "Christmas Part I". He had his adnoids taken out and tubes put in his ears. We went to a great ENT here where we live. It was a quick surgery. Lamb Chop and Puppy were anxiously awaiting his return to the recovery room.

It took awhile for him to get out of the anstesia, but we waited patiently.

We finally got home and Grant rested for quite a while and ate plenty of popsicles.

After a while, playing time came back to him, sort of....

Later that night he was caught jumping on his bed. Quick recovery :) The surgery already has seemed to improve his health.

The next day, Grant and I put together a gingerbread house. I iced everything and he stuck the candies everywhere. Students gave me candy and such, it was a great way to use them besides eating them!

Christmas Eve afternoon, we took Grant to see his first movie at a movie theater, "Yogi Bear". The movie was absolutely awful, but he pretty much made it through the movie. Afterwards, we played in the arcade.

Like father, like son.


Grant and Fletcher got to bowl some.

It was 'mini-lanes'. Adorable and just the right size!


This is PawPaw and Vivian. He was rocking her to sleep...sort of.


I kept taking pictures, and she gave me this look...just like her mother!
Here is Grant giving Vivian some more kisses :)
Daniel rocked her to sleep, and did this when she woke back up...aww.

When we got back from the movies on Christmas Eve, it was time to prep for Santa's arrival!

Here is Fletcher and Grant putting out the reindeer food in the yard.

Greg and my mom played Christmas carol duets on the piano. I love hearing my mom play on the grand piano!

MiMi did crafts with the boys. Here they are writing a letter to Santa and making mugs for Santa's beverage!


We made cookies for Santa to eat.


The boys loved rolling out the dough.

We also made a few for us to eat!

It was a late Christmas Eve night, but we made sure Santa got his letter, goodies, and was able to see the gingerbread house.
Before Grajt woke up, I snuck in the living room to see what Santa had left.

Can you believe Santa carried this large train table in his sleigh. He really must have plenty of magic!

Grajt was excited to see what Santa had left. Daniel and Grant spent most of the morning on the train table.

Santa also brought this neat firetruck puzzle. Its four feet long!

We had to pry Grant away from Santa's gifts to open the ones from us. Then we went to my parents to see what Fletcher and Vvivian got from Santa as well as open gifts from each other. It was a wonderful and blessed Christmas!

To end this long blog, I'll show you a project we finished over the break. Woodshop at the high school made these dog houses. They were unpainted when we got them, so I told Daniel we needed to paint it for our dog Honey. I helped paint the roof black, then left to play with Grant for a while. I come back and he painted the rest gold. GOLD! I was horrified and so angry about the super ghetto dog house. My Honey could NOT sleep in such a horrible thing! He just laughed at me and repainted it all.. Now Honey can sleep in a pretty place that is maroon.

Christmas Part I

Beauty in the Common Things: Grant made it through church today...yippee! Ok, so he got a little loud at times, but we are making progress!

View from the kitchen window: Well, I'm looking out my in-laws kitchen window and laughing. Their dog is sleeping on my husband's old comforter with Ninja Turtles on it. Oh, I bet Daniel was a cute Ninja Turtle!

Listen In: Veggie Tales on the tube and my son in whining about something. "Its beginning to look a lot like bed time..."

Dinner Plans: whatever it is, I'm not cooking it, so that is exciting!

We went to my in-laws this weekend right after we got out of school. I was so ready to have a break from these students. All week they have been crazy. I will enjoy the breather from teenagers for a while.

I just wrapped up my 9th class for my masters. I think I only have about 3 or 4 to go!

We spent Saturday morning opening presents, eating and then playing "Just Dance 2". Who doesn't love 'shaking it like a Poloroid picture'? I'll post pictures later of that ordeal.

A busy week is ahead of us, including Christmas Part II

Cowboys, Clownfish, & Christmas

Beauty in the Common Things: My husband taking on some extra 'chores'. Due to my recent injury...see below...Daniel has to do all the dishes, which he hates. So shout out to him, thanks!

Listen In: Watching "The Office" from Thursday for the second time. So good. "She's one sassy black lady!" Buhahahha!

View from the Kitchen Window: Christmas lights twinkling. I heart the holidays.

Dinner Plans: left overs from lunch with friends. Good times!

Fletcher came in a for a weekend visit (anticipation of this can be seen in the previous post). We visited the Dallas Children's Aquarium which recently got a makeover. It is small, but interesting.

They have a covered outdoor area where you can pet small sting-rays.

Awesome eel.

The stingrays were quite hungry.

Watching the anticpation of the stingrays was the best.

The lady in the background fed the sharks and stingrays while we watched. I decided it'd be a great job for Daniel. Fletcher and I liked it, too.

Fletcher loved this sea turtle. You can't see it, but it was handicapped. So sad!

Two cousins who had a good day!

The week before Thanksgiving, the stomach virus hit our house. It was a busy week that did not have a slot for the virus!

That Thursday, Daniel and I were to take my Sports and Entertainment Marketing class on a field trip to Cowboys Stadium for a tour. It had been in the works for months and I had 20 kids counting on going...Daniel and I could NOT get the virus! We had a great day with my students. All were well behaved and enjoyed the tour. Thursday evening is when Daniel got the virus. We were supposed to go on vacation that weekend, but we canceled in anticipation of the virus finally getting to me. I ended up being safe and we went on with our Thanksgiving plans as usual. We went to visit Daniel's family and had a good few days.

"Jerry's World"

Each student got a picture of themselves on the prestegious blue star. The photographer figured out that Daniel and I were married and made us pose like this. It was kind of embarassing to do in front of my students. Daniel is a huge Cowboys fan. I even looked into getting married at Texas Stadium when we looked into wedding venues. Yea, it was way too expensive and I'm not sure I would have anyway. All bathrooms in that place were scary!

View of the Ballpark in Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers. A possible field trip location for next semester? If I get brave enough again!

After tour, we took them to CiCi's Pizza. Some student told me the food was the best part of the field trip. Well, I was glad to spend 3 months planning this trip just so you could enjoy some pizza!! Anywho, most of the students were male...so guess what they did after eating.

You can tell Daniel was ready to go. So bored, he tried to ride the 'quarter' horse.

Back to school we went and prepared for a long week ahead of us. D and I sponsor a club at our high school called Interact which is a community service club affiliated with Rotary. Our fundraiser this year was "Breakfast with Santa". All week we prepared for the Saturday morning event. More members came to help out than expected, even parents showed up lend a hand (which is actually rare).

To advertise the event, we collaborated with FFA for float in our town's annual Christmas Parade of Lights.

Here is Corbin and Grant waiting for the parade to start. Haven't I seen this before???

Our float wasn't as decorated as some in the parade, but we got our point across. We handed out invitations and candy to the children for "Breakfast with Santa".

Here is Amber and I with our little ones. We kept them bundled during the parade as they yelled "Merry Christmas!" Grant enjoyed it so much. He didn't care about his hands freezing!