Go Cowboys!!!

As most of you may know, Chris and I are HUGE college football fans; especially, SEC football. Chris loves his Volunteers, which I still don't understand and I am love my Dawgs. We just won't talk about the very horrible beating they received from Alabama over the weekend. Anyway, Chris and I have been missing the fact that we have not been able to go to any college football games this season. This past weekend we were invited to go see Oklahoma State University play Troy. Chris is enrolled at OSU for is MBA so we have been wanting to go see a game all season but our busy weekends always seemed to get in the way. This weekend we decided to make it a point to be able to go. Chris' boss has box seats at the OSU stadium and invited us to go with him and others to this game. We gladly accepted. We were told these were suite boxes but I had absolutely know idea how nice it would be. We were given a parking pass which allowed us to park right in front of the stadium. We had to walk like ten feet and we were inside of the stadium. Then once we got upstairs to the suite area there was all the food you could imagine. Anything you wanted they had. It was so nice to watch a game in that type of luxury. You had no lines for the bathroom, no waiting in lines for food, sit in air conditioning, it was great. There were about 10 other people in our suite so we enjoyed having adult conversations with other and rooting for our Cowboys to win. The other great thing is that the suite had two flat panel TVs that we could watch other games on so I was able to watch my Dawgs play, which I wished I hadn't. My night became very sad as I saw them loose the chance to possible be number 1 in the nation. Hopefully, the rest of there season will be good. The picture is of Chris and I at the game.

Update

Not too much new stuff to report on us we are just staying extremely busy. It seems that we always have something new going on. Chris is back in school trying to finish his MBA so he is school two nights a week so it is just me and the girls tonight. As they sit staring aimlessly at the TV watching Spongebob I thought I would take a few moments to update the blog because if I watch another Spongebob episode I might go crazy. Last time I wrote I told about Katie's big accomplishment on starting to go to bed by herself. We are now on week 4 and she has been going strong each night she goes to bed, we read a few books and then we go out and she goes off to sleep. Still sleeping all night long. Chris and I are so proud of her and love the fact that we have our nights back and to say the least we are getting more sleep because she is not getting up at all to come and get us in the middle of the night. Katie is still taking her dance class each Saturday and is doing great. She follows instructions really well and all those little girls look so cute trying to follow a little routine to a Hannah Montana song. She has her first recital at the end of October so we are looking forward to that. Bree is still doing great, she is all over the place now and has become my little climber. It seems every time I turn around she has climbed up on something and I have to go and get her down. She thinks it is so funny. Every time I tell her no she just laughs. I think I will have my hands full with her when it comes to discipline.



Let's see what else, oh yeah we have become really involved in the church we have joined not to long ago. Chris and I have been working with the youth group. He helps teach 11th grade boys on Sunday mornings and I have been teaching the 9th and 10th grade girls on Sunday nights. We have really enjoyed getting back involved with the youth again. They have such a good group of kids that it is a lot of fun spending time with them. We have also made some realy good friends at the church. Chris and I are truely seeing God's purpose for being in Ok. Speaking of God's purpose I have really felt lately that He has wanted me to do something with children. It has just been something that has been on my heart for awhile and so I finally took some action. I contacted our local hospital and asked about volunteering in the Children's Hospital. I met with the volunteer director today and I will be volunterring one night a week working with babies or the kids at the hospital. I am really excited to see what God has in store for me by doing this. I am not sure what will happen with this but when it is God's plan you never know.



I think that is just about it, like I said we have been staying busy but I think that I wouldn't have it any other way, well sometimes I think I would have a different way when I am loosing my mind.

We got a big girl in our house!!!!

Last week Chris and I started working with Katie on going to be by herself like a big girl. Now I know some of you might be gasping at the fact that she is 3 1/2 and does not sleep by herself, so let me give you a little background on the situation. When Chris and I moved back from MN to NC last year Katie decided shortly after that move she did not want to sleep in her crib anymore but she also didn't want to sleep by herself in a big bed. So Chris and I thought the moved had upset her and decided to help her out a little by laying down with her while she went to sleep. New parent lesson # 1, if at all possible never start this habit because it extremely hard to break. We tried several times over the past year to break this habit but we had a hard time because Katie got so attached to us being there. New parent lesson #2, kids know exactly how to work their parents guilt button. It is born in them. Hence the reason why it has taken over a year for us to break this habit. :) Chris and I grouped together and decided to come up with a plan that would make both us and Katie happy. We were determined not to fail this time. It was two against one how could we lose... yeah we talk big.

Over the past month Chris and I have been talking with Katie about why she does not want to sleep by herself and she always says she is scared. She is scared of the dark, of shadows, of any noise she may hear. She doesn't even like to walk down our hallway if it is dark. We have tried hard to help her understand that there is nothing to be scared of that God, Mommy and Daddy will always protect her. She loves Veggie Tale movies, so I even went so far as to buy the Veggie Tale Movie - Where is God When I am Scared, thinking it would help her. It didn't, it only made matters worse because she completely focused in on the scary parts of the movie and not the song they sing about how God is bigger than the boogie man. So my efforts there failed. But we continued to talk to her about God would not let anything happen to her when she sleeps by herself and even went as far as to tell her that Bree sleeps by herself, not that she has a choice, but we are grasping at this point.

Last week we sat Katie down and told her the plan. I made a chart that has six weeks on it. We told her that each night she went to bed on her own without mommy or daddy in bed with her she would get a sticker and for each sticker she could get a prize out of the prize box(this box has a bunch of dollar items in it but it is a jackpot to her). At the end of each week if she has all seven stickers on her week then she gets to go to the store to pick a bigger prize, within reason. If she completes all six weeks she gets a day at Chuck E Cheese with mom and dad. I know this all sounds like a little much but at this point and time if bribery works then I am all for it if it means I will get back my nights of having some down time. Katie was all excited about her possibility of earning all these great things. Katie has talked big in the past about doing this but once night time comes around it is a different story and of course this time it wasn't any different. She wasn't ready to do it, so Chris and I made one little adjustment to our plan. We told her that we would start out by one of us staying in the hallway while she went to sleep and that we would slowly work our way further and further from her door. Amazing enough she went for it.

So, as of today I am proud to say that our little girl has gone to bed for an entire week all by herself and has slept through every single one of those nights without coming in and getting mommy and daddy. We are also halfway down the hall now when she goes to bed. I know this doesn't sound like a hug achievement to most but this is huge for her and we are extremely proud of her. She has not once cried, fussed or said she didn't want to do it. So today Katie and I went to the store and got her big prize. She picked out the new Barbie movie, so this means we will watch this about a thousand times. We are on to week two and our goal by week six is that she will head on to bed knowing we our not in the hallway. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well and we don't hit any speed bump. Below is a picture of Katie by her Big Girl Chart.

Family Trip to Branson MO

Over Labor Day weekend Chris and I took the girls to Branson MO for a long weekend. Branson is like the Pigeon Forge of TN. It has lots of shows, shopping and amusement parks, plus a lot of traffic. We dedided to not see any shows because we weren't sure how well Bree would sit through anything so we took the girls on Sunday to Celebration City and they had a blast. Katie of course was ready for every ride and Bree was finally up for riding a few rides she felt comfortable with. It was really sweet to see Katie and Bree ride their very first ride together. Bree was grinning from ear to ear. Celebration City is a small park and it only open on the weekends, but for some reason the day we went we thought it would be crazy crowded but it wasn't. We were so excited that we didn't have to wait in line at all for rides so we cruzed through the park in no time. It is really a great park for smaller kids because most of the rides are made for them. They also have a big firework show at the end of each night but we didn't make it to that, by 8pm both girls were worn out. Maybe next year. On Monday we went down to an area called Branson Landing which is on the water and it is an open shopping area with lots of restaurants. We walked around and they had several things for kids that day for Labor Day. One of them was face painting so Katie got her face painted. Bree wouldn't let the lady near here so she didn't get to partake. We had two day of fun and sun and the next two days we were there were rain filled so we had two days to just hang out and rest. It was a great family trip and Chris and I realized that since we had kids this was our first trip together with just us and not going to see other family. Every vacation we have had with since we had the girls has always been with family. It was neat to just have this time with our girls. Below are a few pictures from the weekend, but I will post them all on picasa.