Bunko!

So Jake was reading through his facebook and one of his cousins was starting a Bunko group. She was in need of one more person to get the group going officailly so Jake volunteered me. This is a one year commitment that was going to happen on the last Wednesday of every month. Now I have never before played Bunko so I was a little leary about what skills it required. Well, Wednesday January 24 came before I really got a chance to look up the rules on how to play and I got to Gina's house in the dark on what to expect. It turned out to be a whole lot easier then what I thought and I had so much fun. Not only did I get to spend some extra time with family that even though we live so close we see far to little, but I got to have a wonderful night with just girls and they all were over the age of 5. I am so excited now to be a part of this group that is scheduled to meet every month for the next month and nothing can get in the way of it. Yeah for girls night!

A Fun Filled Week

This has been a long week but at the same time it has been a very fun week for me and my family. It started on Tuesday with Leighton's pine wood derby for scouts. Leighton and my dad worked on his car. I think that my dad had more fun then Leighton on this project but as my mom put it "it is more for the dad's then the boys". Leighton loved designing his car and working on it. He has become a little contractor. He loves to build things with his hands. It reminds me of me when I was younger I always was playing with tools. My dad used to say that if a tool was missing he knew where to find it. It was usually in my room. Well back to what I was saying. Leighton had his pine wood derby. We were planning on it lasting from 6:30 to maybe 8 well they didn't even start racing until 8 and there were 64 cars to race. I was glad that Leighton's car didn't make it to the finals because by 9:15 Leighton and I still had not had dinner and neither one of the kids had their homework finished.

"getting ready"


"all the cars"


"Leighotn 's first color guard" Leighton got to be part of his first color guard at this Pine wood derby.



"the race"

Tuesday was followed by Wednesday. Jake, Leighton and I got to go see Jeff Dunham at the delta center. It was so much fun to spend some quality time with just Leighton and Jake. I love Xia but sometimes she requires so much work. I sometimes feel that Leighton misses out on someone on one time because of all the attention that she seems to need. I really enjoyed watching him as he got to see his favorite characters live. We got to see "Achmed's son A.J" before he is put on the next movie that Jeff Dunham is going to do. We got Xia a talking Achmed doll because she didn't get to go and Leighton got a peanut hat and I got a shirt. We all had a really good time. However like I said it was a long night. This show started at 7:30 and didn't get out until 10:30 leaving us getting home at 11:15.

Thursday we finally got some quiet time at home. However we had to catch up on the homework that we fell behind on because of Tuesday and Wednesday so we still didn't get to bed until late.

Then on Friday I had a doctors appointment for my shoulder. I had another round of cortisone to hopefully help with the pains that I have felt. I go back for the last round in March. If this doesn't work the next step is surgery. I hope that that isn't the route that I end up going. Well with this I had to leave work during kindergarten time and so I ended up staying and closing because Brenda had to take Avery to the doctors because she was running a high fever. I was there until 6:30 because one of our parents didn't get there until 6:25.

That was how my week ended. But it was made all better when Jake and I got an extra bonus so we bought a new 42" flat screen T.V. and blue ray DVD player for the living room. I was also able to de-clutter the house and get a bunch of homework finished for school. Yay me!

It's official!!!

I am now starting my teaching courses and have started the ball rolling to student teach in January of 2012! Slowly but surely I'm getting there. My mentor has been very pleased with how much I have gotten done considering how difficult my classes were last semester. She has had so much faith in me and my abilities. She stated that she highly recommends that I student teach in that I have excelled very quickly with the difficult level of classes that I took and passed last term. The classes for this term are supposed to be easier if you have had previous teaching experiences and seeing as how I have taught kindergarten for the past 6 years she said this should be a breeze. I hope so. I just can't wait to be done and really teaching in the school systems. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's only been 12 years in the making. I guess that the saying "slow and steady wins the race" might just be true after all!

Real meaning of Christmas

So last night I found out a friend of mine wasn't going to be able to have a good Christmas for her and her kids. After talking with Jake and the kids we decided that we knew what to do with the extra money that we found we had. This year has been very good to us and we wanted the kids to see what the real meaning of Christmas is. Lei has never had a hard time this time of year he is just so caring and wants everyone to be safe and happy Xia on the other hand I felt was getting the wrong idea of what Christmas is all about so we wanted them to be part of this whole process as much as possible. So we took that extra money and at 10:30 last night the kids and us went shopping for some toys for the kids. When we got home the kids were so excited about the presents for the family that they had to wrap them right away. Then this morning I was able to take my friend shopping for cloths for the kids as well as for her and then we went and found shoes and boots for her. She had a hard time finding something for her because she never buys herself anything so it was so nice to see her find something nice. My kids can't get enough of the giving thing now. Lei was commenting as we were cleaning the house that it felt so good to get to give then it does to receive. Xia has also finally gotten the true meaning as well I think.
On another note my mom called me this morning and told me that she ran into a lady that has a down syndrome girl that I babysat and had in my primary class for years. The mom is an only child and has no family and my mom asked if she had a will so that if anything happened to her Maddy would be taken care of. When she said no because she had no family mom said that she and dad would take her or that Jake and I would be willing she was so grateful. Mom then called me and said "I thought I should let you know that I volunteered you." I said that I would love to have that honor. Maddy was such a good girl. At 17 she was finally able to be baptized and she got to be baptized by a down syndrome boy. I am just glad that both my mom and Maddy's mom know that I would have no problem with this it just makes me feel so good because it means that I have shown that it has never bothered me and they know that if there is anyone that needs a home I am willing to do what I can to help out.
That's all for this post "Merry Christmas to All"

School Pictures

I have been very luck in that I get school pictures at a huge discount and for the most part they are wonderful. Well this year we had the company Lifetouch come and do the school picture. I later found out that they are the same company that does the JcPenny portraits. Well like I said I got a huge discount and it was a good thing because I think that all the poses were fantastic.
Here they are.





I think that these ones of Xia make her look so grown up. How ever she is beautiful in all three of them. I love the color of her dress against her skin color.









Now we have Lei. Let me tell you getting him to cooperate was a challenge. I want you to notice the shoes. I it was enough to get him to wear the tie so I gave in with the shoes. However it does fit his personality with the shoes and it could have been worse they could of been ugly shoes and not his nice "Nike". He also has is famous ca-lick that no matter what you do it won't go down and cooperate.

Pictures as promised.

The gang in Idaho on Thanksgiving. Yes we did the 2 1/2 hour drive up the morning of then stayed 2 hours to have dinner and chat then turn around and drive back. Jake had to work in the morning and I went shopping with my mom and sisters at 3 in the morning then went to work. I love that tradition that we started we never really get any wonderful deals but we just enjoy the time together without any kids or husbands, We also get to get to shop for each other in the mean time if we have each others names.

This was the sunset as we were leaving Shelly and we couldn't resist a picture the way you could see the stream of light rising between the trees in the mist was just breathtaking.


Hafey Thanksgiving the Sunday following the real Thanksgiving.






Now for my house at Christmas time. The first thing to come out is my Precious Moments Nativity. This was my first big Christmas presant form Jake 10 years ago. I fell in love with all the dolls the first time I saw them but they were so expensive. Jake saved up and bought my the whole set all and all totaling around $500. Needless to say it has been my favorite presant yet becasue it was the first Christmas that we were married and I hadn't planned on ever owning the set because of the price.


Next is the tree and stockings. Notice I don't theme my tree (its as crazy as me :))




The last is our "story a day until Christmas"

Snow Party

When starting out on his bucket list on this day Jake had decided to make a snowman with the kids. I want you to notice how involved they are. Notice Xia in the background and Leighton is nowhere to be seen until the end.





This next picture is where Leighton comes in this is about 20 minutes into the process.



The finished product wasn't even a snowman Lei called it a snow bull and then proceeded to ride it.



Again if you were paying attention Xia was noticed in the back ground and towards then end her finished project was a couple snow angles. She couldn't be bothered with all the pushing and rolling involved. In her words "that's too much work!"



This next few are of our friend Ladd who is living with us (notice the wonderful snow attire) is teaching Xia how to do a snowball fight. All Xia was doing was running up to people hitting the snow onto them and then she would run. In the meantime she couldn't figure out why everyone was throwing them and hitting her while she is running at them.



In this one you see what I mean once Xia spotted you with a snow ball she would fall on the ground and wait for it to hit her.

All in all Xia's face summed it up!