Closing out 2007

Wow, I let it get WAY away from me for the holidays. But I'm finally posting some highlights. My number one New Year's Resolution for this year is to keep my blog updated once a week. I end up leaving out so much terrific stuff when I go so long without posting.

I have been AWFUL about taking pictures for the holidays this year. I don't know why I did so badly on that, I'm usually a picture fanatic. But I hardly took any photos at all. We had 6 nights of Christmas this year, and enjoyed every one of them. So, in a nutshell:

1. Friday before Christmas we went for a get together with our friends at the "Big House" of Cheryl's and Clay's family's. We took the kids and had a good time with Cheryl, Mike, Clay, their mom Rosemarie, Jason and his son Carson, Steve, and Lysa. I tasted one sip of absinthe for the first time ever, wasn't great but wasn't as bad as rum and tequila and other things I've tasted. Apparently absinthe has recently been made legal in the US again. Anyway, no pictures from that night, or any of the following ones. Kicking myself.

2. Saturday morning before Christmas we piled up in Rusty's truck and went to Alabama for a whirlwind trip to see all my family. It was nice traveling in the truck, it was very very roomy. But I tell ya, I sure missed my Corolla when we made stops at the gas stations. Our total cost for gas going to Alabama and back was $120. In my Corolla it's usually about $50-$55!!!! But we all agreed that it was a very comfy trip. That Saturday evening we went to the Rigsby Christmas at Patsy's house and visited with my Dad and Johnnie and all those relatives. We went back to the lake to spend the night and the next day we had Christmas with the Myhand side of the family. I was so glad to FINALLY get to see the babies, too, for the first time. Brandon and Christie had their little ones there. Emma is enough to make me wish I'd have gone on and tried to have a little girl at some point, she is adorable. And the twin boys were adorable also. I kept thinking to myself......how DO they do it??? I only had ONE baby at a time, and there is 5 1/2 years between them. I can't imagine having 3 little ones, but they appear to make it just fine and enjoy every minute of it. I miss mine being babies quite often. But then, I do enjoy them as they are right now too. Anway, we got to visit with Dustin, Randy, and Glenda as well - just seemed like such a short visit, wish we could have stayed longer. And of course, Mamaw, Papaw, Susan, Rando and their girls, Sherri, Josh, and Hannah, Greg and Marcia, and Brooke and Blake were there as well. We sure missed Chris and Kyle. It was all such a short, quick visit but I'm very thankful that we at least got that much of a visit! We usually don't even get out there at Christmas time. We drove home on Sunday afternoon and got here just in time to see the last half of the Redskins game.

3. Monday was Christmas Eve and we went to Rusty's dad's house that evening for Christmas with that side of his family. We had a good time there, and ate far too much of course. Donnie and Terri and the boys were there with us and we all had a nice, but short, visit with Rusty's dad and stepmom. On that MOnday morning I came to realize just how EXHAUSTED I was from all the chaos in the last week of school, plus the fast trip to Bama and back, and the last minute shopping......I decided I'd have a talk with Santa and see if he might could swing by our way a little early. So, Santa came and brought presents on Monday night while we were gone to Rusty's dad's house. Once we got home though, we were here nearly an HOUR before the kids even realized that he had been here. And we pretty much had to tell them to go look lol. But they ended up happy with what they got. They got less in quantity but more dollarwise than they usually get. They got an xbox 360 and numerous games for it. Tyler got some clothes, pajamas, Amazon gift certificate, and a nice new printer and Tanner got an Ipod shuffle, a cell phone, and some gameboy games. They were very happy. They really didn't ask for much this year. Thank goodness! lol

4. Christmas Day we slept late and then went to Aunt Joni's for a Christmas dinner with his mom's side of the family. We watched some old home movies she had of all of their family back in the 60's and 70's. I love watching old home movies. Aunt Joni has always had quite a collection of cats. And apparently Rusty was just caught up in the Christmas spirit that day because Tanner asked if he could have one and Rusty said YES! There were tons of them to choose from of course. While Rusty was looking at them all with Tanner, he picked out a long haired solid white female that was kinda shy. Tanner picked out a short haired playful Tabby male cat. Rusty couldn't talk Tanner into the solid white one, and Tanner couldn't talk Rusty into the Tabby cat. So we ended up bringing them BOTH home. The solid white female we named Eva, and the male we named Jack. They were obviously a bit ill so we took them to the vet the next day and got medicine for upper respiratory infection, ear mites, worms, and fleas. But they have done well here at the house. Jack is playful and into everything and very loving. Eva stays hidden all day long. Seriously, we don't even see her. But she comes out around 10pm and will let you pet her but not pick her up. And she gets up early and hangs out with Rusty in the early hours. But from 8am til 10pm she disappears to I don't know where. So, basically, Tanner and Rusty each picked out cats whose personalities totally suited each of them lol.

5. The day after Christmas we went to mom's house for our Mississippi Christmas together. We had such a good time up there, it's nice to get together and I hope we do more of it this year. THe kids enjoy being together and we all enjoy watching them be silly. We did a pizza Christmas this year, it was great. I got a new Bama blanket and a digital picture frame that shows slideshows, it's awesome.

The rest of the week we've just been hanging at the house playing with all our new stuff. Brooke has stayed a couple of nights this weekend, and we have Drew now too. So Tanner has been very happy having the both of them here all the time. I finally got the tree down yesterday (Jack had started it for me) and have gotten some minor cleaning done. Rusty got a game called Guitar Hero III for Christmas and we've all gotten addicted to it. It's a lot of fun, and not very easy either. I'm making plans to get on a crash diet after New Years because I've about eaten myself to death since Thanksgiving. Rusty's gained around 20 pounds and I've gained about 25. It happens so FAST.

So, my New Year's Resolutions:
1. update the blog every week
2. take more pictures for the blog
3. lose at least 25 pounds! Fast!
4. enclose the garage as a room, and move my favorite couch back home from the lakehouse lol

and I'm sure there are many more things I need to do. If all goes as planned, I'll be writing again on Friday................

The birthday week

This was written on Dec.10 and I've sat around not posting it because I didn't have the pictures ready. But I guess I'm just going to post it with no pics or videos and try to have those by the next post later this week. It's hard changing over computers and getting everything set up on the new one lol. So, in this post there may be several places where I refer to a picture or video, and there's not one there. But at least I got the post done!

I guess the highlight of last week was the Christmas Caroling Contest. I took my group to the preliminaries expecting the usual – nothing lol. But my group of 5th and 6th graders really did an excellent job and they had a complete ball doing it. You could tell. And for the first time ever, we made the callbacks for the final competition! So, on Thursday, I was back out there with them again. To compete against the others in the top 3 in our category. And we WON 1st PLACE!! I was so excited, and so were they. We won a 1st place trophy and $500 to spend on our music program at school. We were on the front page of the paper as well, it was awesome. Tanner and Cody were both in the choir this year, but didn’t manage to get in the picture for the paper. But I was very proud of my whole group for sure! Here’s the link and a copy of the story:
http://www.vicksburgpost.com/articles/2007/12/07/news/news02.txt

News
Winners in the Upper Elementary Choir Division, Warrenton Elementary Christmas Choir, performs Winter Wonderland during the 2007 WVBG 105.5 Christmas Caroling Contest Thursday night. (Meredith Spencer * Vicksburg Post)
73 compete, 7 tops in annual caroling contest
By Nate Delesline III
[12/07/07] It started as an idea and is on the way to becoming a tradition. In its third year, 73 soloists and groups entered a caroling contest in Vicksburg with seven earning top awards at Thursday night's finals."I've been working on this for a long time," said organizer Mark Jones, who moved to Vicksburg when he purchased local radio stations. The contests are open to anyone who wants to participate. "We had people from Louisiana, Brandon, Flowood and Port Gibson," Jones said. "We've got more geographic diversity than ever."Jones recruits sponsors for the event, including his FM station, WVBG, to provide cash awards of up to $500 each after four rounds of competition.Each performer was judged by a panel of three on the difficulty of the selection, how well the performance was executed and creative interpretation. Although the panel was introduced, members did not comment during the event or announce the winners.Jones, who has organized similar events in two other states, said the contests are meant to be a friendly and fun opportunity to share a fun evening. More than $6,000 was awarded overall, much of which will go to charitable purposes.Jones said many of Thursday night's performances before a full house at Warren Central Auditorium will be rebroadcast on WVBG (105.5 FM) on Christmas Eve so the community can enjoy them again.

Solo highlights Thursday night included Kiefer Slaton with his performance of "Little Drummer Boy" and Marquis Goodwin with "Mary did you Know?"The son of Kathleen and Farris Goodwin Sr., Marquis said he wasn't nervous. "I've been singing since I was 4," he said.Marquis has recorded a CD and said he plans to make singing a career. His parents will share the joy, too, this holiday season -- Marquis said he'll spend some of the $200 he took home on Christmas gifts.Finalists were:
One Voice from Bovina Baptist Church* The Clefs from Hinds Community College* Voices of Praise from Word of Faith Christian Center* Vicksburg Intermediate third-grade Choir* St. Francis Xavier third- and fourth-grade Choir* Claiborne Education Foundation* Brian Wells* Glentrice Johnson* Redwood Elementary fifth- and sixth-grade Honor Choir* South Park Elementary Showcase Choir* Warrenton Elementary Christmas Choir* Jamie Lynn Robinson* William Michael Morgan* Kiefer Slaton* The St. Aloysius Choral Music Group* United Way Teen Help* Morgan Teller* Marquis Goodwin


Friday was Rusty’s official birthday and I made him country fried steak and gravy and black eyed peas and bunch of other stuff. Today is Tyler’s birthday and I’ll be making him some chicken tettrazini and chocolate cake probably. Rusty had already gotten most of his birthday present the week before, being a bunch of stuff for his new truck. I still owe him some rain guards though, we just can’t find them yet. Tyler had already gotten his cell phone a couple of weeks ago but he’s getting a game today as well. Donnie, Terri, Cheryl, Mike, Dale, James, Norma, Bob, Keith, Britt, and Mary all came by at various points over the weekend to visit and tell Rusty happy birthday.
I went to visit at Mom’s for a bit on Saturday. She had taken Tyler shopping for his birthday, but he was his usual self shopping and didn’t pick out much lol. We played with our new cell phones a little while we were there and ate bunches of stuff. Drew came to spend the weekend again so he went to visit at mom’s with us. We had planned to go visit Pat on his birthday Tuesday but then we found out he was in Alabama lol. That’s pretty much all from the past week. It’s certainly been busy with work and planning for Christmas. I can NOT wait to be out for a couple of weeks and I’m sure going to need the catch up time at the house! My camera kept getting left at school or in the car or here or there all week and I don’t have any pictures. I have just the video of the Choir performance if it’s not too big for putting on here. I will try and see.

November, in a nut shell

We've spent a lot of time on books in the month of November. We listened to a John Grisham book on CD in the car going to and from school. I have been reading "100 Years of Solitude", and Tyler got 2 more books in that he ordered a couple of weeks ago. I set up Tyler and Tanner their own amazon.com accounts so that they can keep a collection of books on their wish list for me to view and buy from sometimes. Tanner likes the Goosebumps books, just like Tyler used to. Tyler loves R.A. Salvatore and has a good start already on collecting the hundreds of books that he's written. Not to mention the numerous other authors he reads. It's hard for me to keep up with what he has and what he doesn't have yet. Thus, the amazon.com wish lists. Tanner had to do a reading fair project so he read a book about a werewolf and he and I together made the project. He was impressed with my drawing of a werewolf, he was very surprised that I could draw at all lol. Both of my kids inspire to be writers some day. I always wanted to be one, too, so I hope they get closer to it than I ever did lol. In fact, Tanner sat down at my computer and wrote a story this month. Here is his beginning of his story, he says:

"it was one hot shiny summer day in california people were hot and sweaty and then the collisoin started the people could see every thing that went on it was angels vs. demons the people ran and srceamed why the demons and angels fought it was absoulutly terrifingthey fought sword to sword gun to gun fist to fist no matter what happend they wouldnt stop fighting the fight raged on as the people watched people were voting for angel and some for demons then the one the only satan came and fought god and jesus fought his most powerful minion then suddenly the people helped with holy water and the angels and the humans won the battle"

I think it's a very good story so far!

Anyway, Thanksgiving came and went. We went to mom's for Thanksgiving on that Wednesday night. The food was great as always and we enjoyed getting together, it's been awhile. On Thanksgiving Day we cooked at our house for some of Rusty's side of the family and enjoyed visiting then also. The weekend before Thanksgiving we went to a bonfire at Mike and Cheryl's house so I have a few pics of that. I finally got a picture of Rusty's new truck to put on here also.

This past weekend I got dragged into participating in the Christmas parade on our school float. I had to bring some kids from the honor choir to sing through the streets. Tanner and his friend Brandon got so excited at the crowd, both of them being big hams and all. So we finally just put the two of them out front with their jingle bells to lead us through the street with their dancing, hopping, skipping, and jingling. They had a blast, and were very funny lol. I have a few pics from the parade also.

Tyler went to the pulmonary doctor over the Thanksgiving week to set up his sleep study. They'll be doing the sleep study December 19-20 here in town, thank goodness. Tyler got a new cell phone for his birthday. I had to give it to him a bit early because the deal I got on it was only good that one weekend. But he really likes it, and it even plays music - once he gets a memory chip for it. While shopping the other day, I went ahead and bought me a new cell phone also. I got a Samsung Blackjack that I've been wanting for some time. I took Rusty shopping for his birthday (early also) and got him some floor mats for his truck and several different little things for his truck. I'm going to get him some of those rain shield things for his windows also, as soon as we find some that fit. I'm writing down everything we get Rusty for his birthday because every year he says that we never get him ANYTHING for his birthday, and then we can't remember what it was we got him last to be able to argue with him lol. We always get him something for his birthday, and I'm writing it down this time for proof lol. Heck, I think I'll look back at last year's blog and see if I wrote it down then too lol. This coming weekend will be Rusty and Tyler's birthday weekend. Not sure what we're gonna do yet, but we'll be doing something.

Rusty bought me a new computer for Christmas, a bit early. It's awesome! But it will take me awhile to get all my stuff put on it. It's definitely faster and bigger than that old one. It was getting to where it took FOREVER to do anything on it.

We went to El Ranchero's for our restaurant night on payday, Mike and Cheryl went with us also. Basically, November was just a regular month I guess. I didn't write the whole month so I've definitely got to get better about that. It's Dec. 3 today and I still don't even have my Christmas tree up or anything. I'm aiming to do it Wednesday night, I hope.

My honor choir performed tonight for the local Christmas Caroling competition. They really did an awesome job. But we were 12th on the list of 20 singing groups. It started at 6:30, and we didn't get on stage til 8:00. I also didn't get pictures, being that I had to be on stage conducting. But Terri got some and I"ll be getting them from her for next time.

I have so much to do in this month of December that I've had to just make myself go completely numb to get it done. ONe day at a time. lol