Merry Christmas!

Christmas was an absolute blast this year. The best one yet. The girls were so in to the whole Santa thing this year. On Christmas Eve Chris kept the Internet up so the girls could track Santa. Before we left for Christmas Eve service at our church the girls called the Santa hotline and found out he was in Europe and then before bed they called again and found out he was in South America. The guy on the phone asked where they were calling from and Katie told him Oklahoma. He told her that Santa would be there in about 5 to 6 hours but they needed to go on to bed if they wanted Santa to stop. Katie and Bree both had big smiles on their faces and raced to bed. (I have to say the volunteers at the Santa Hotline are so good. They just talk with the kids and give them all sorts of info on Santa. So cute!)


The guy was right Santa did arrive a few hours later and he left lots of goodies for two very good little girls.

Checking out the stash Santa left. Katie got a Barbie scooter, Nintendo DS with some games and a Princess sofa, plus a stocking full of goodies.

Bree checking out her stash. She got her Dora house, a Mobi Go video game system and a Dora Sofa, plus a stocking full of goodies.

Time to dive into the rest of the presents. The girls got up at 6:30 that morning and all the presents were open by 8:10. It was like the Tazmania Devil tore through our living room. I was trying my best to get photos of the girls but they were so fast in opening it was almost impossible. Good thing Daddy had the video camera on and filming.

Katie is making her Magic Fabric creations. You can make your own puffy little friends.

Bree working hard to help her little critters with her critter vet clinic.

Samson even got a stocking full of goodies. Guess he was a good boy too.

Chris and his dad helping Katie build with her legos.

After lunch, Katie was dying to try out her new scooter. Even though it was super cold we told her we could go for a quick walk. See the Barbie on the front. Grandma and Grandpa got her this Barbie and it has a video camera in it. Crazy I know! Her scooter has a place where a Barbie can ride with you so she put it there and recorded her entire ride. Creative little girl!

Katie got the Loopz game also. She was making her own music here. The game itself is really fun. Test your memory which I learned isn't very good for me anymore. :)

This Christmas was fun but it was also special as Chris' mom and dad stayed with us for Christmas this year. They came up the week before for Chris' graduation and stayed until the day after Christmas. We don't get to spend a lot of time with his parents so it was really nice having them here and the girls got to really connect with them.

While they were here God gave Chris and opportunity to share about Jesus with his mom. We knew his mom believed in God but it has always been heavy on his heart to make sure his mom really understood. Chris was able to help her understand that it is not just saying you believe in God but that you believe he sent His son Jesus to earth to die for our sins on the cross and that he rose three days later. We have to believe the Jesus is the only way to heaven. We have to believe in him and ask him to forgive us of our sins and invite him to live in us in our hearts, so that we can live our life for Him. Chris' mom said she never knew that, know one every explained that to her. A few days later she told Chris that she prayed and asked Jesus to come live in her heart. We were so excited. Praise God for giving Chris the opportunity and for giving him the words to share with his mom. We ordered her a bible that is written in Thai she said she would rather read in her native language than in English. She was so excited to get it. It was so amazing to see the peace this gave to Chris to know his mom understood and was now safe in the hands of God.

I love how God just works everything in his time and gave us this time with his parents. The girls were sad to see them go on Sunday, but hopefully they will come back soon for a visit.

Now we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of my parents to spend a week with us!

Graduation Day!

Chris has FINALLY finished. Hallelujah! Praise God! Thanks You Jesus and any other praise phrase you want to add in there. His is now an official alumni of OSU with his Masters in Business Administration with a focus in Finance. He has worked really hard the past four years taking classes part time while working full time, being a daddy, husband, upwards coach for basketball, soccer and football, sunday school teacher, etc. He has had a full plate to say the least. Even with all these things to handle he still graduated first in his class with a 4.0!

Chris wasn't going to go through the ceremony but I told him he needed to walk. He worked hard and it would be good for the girls to see what he was working for. OSU campus is in Stillwater which is about an hour away. They have a campus here in Tulsa which is where he attended but for graduation we had to go to Stillwater, so we decided to go early and make a day of the trip.

We hit a few of the local OSU apparel stores in hunt for the girls a sweatshirt. They both said they wanted one we have been looking here but can't seem to find much in kids sizes. We found some cute ones, plus they were 40% off! They had to wear them right away. After the stores we had to go eat at the one place everyone tells us about Eskimo Joes. All we every hear is how great the food is. So we decided to try it out.


Eskimo Joe's has a store as well with lots of their apparel. They girls thought this statue was funny. They asked for me to take their picture with him. I love how Bree has her tongue out like the dog.

The other thing we were told is that if we go to Joes we have to try the chili cheese fries as "they are the best every". We got an order and I have to say I agree. They were good. We kept asking Katie and Bree if they wanted any and they would say no. I finally convinced Katie to try them. As you can see she ended up really liking them. She downed half the plate. :)

Katie giving her Grandma some love.
Bree being silly with Grandma and Grandpa.

A family photo at Joe's before we headed over to the graduation ceremony.

Chris and the girls. They were so excited to watch him graduate. I don't think they really knew what was going to happen but they were excited.




Chris walking in. I remembered after he walked in that I had my video camera. Duh! I got some video of him walking to get his diploma which you can see here.
The ceremony was actually pretty short which I was surprised but I was glad because it was at 7pm. They were only recognizing Master and Doctrinal degrees and then next day they do undergraduates. The ceremony lasted exactly an hour which was long enough for my two little ones and it was their bedtime so they were fading. As most of you know if you have sat through a graduation ceremony they are not the most thrilling things in the world.

I just have to say I couldn't be more proud of Chris. He has always had a drive to learn and excel in his career. He has always accomplished anything he has put his mind to. He works hard to provide for me and the girls. Thank you for all you do Chris! Now you have all the time in the world to start on my Honey Do List. Ha!

Christmas Programs 2010

A couple of Sundays ago the girls had their Christmas Program at church. They go to choir each Sunday night and they have been working on their songs for the past couple of months. This year Bree got to make her debut as well. She was finally old enough to join. It was so much fun watching them both on stage singing songs for Jesus.

On Tuesday afternoon Bree had her Christmas Program at Rhema. Her class dressed up like sheep and sang Away in the Manager. In the video you will here Chris and I talking before they start, sorry about that, but we were having a hard time figuring about which one was Bree.

Our little sheep

Bree with her teacher Ms. Guillan. I love, love, love her teacher. Everyday she is always so joyful and full of love for each of her kids. If she has bad days trust me you never know it.

I combined the two programs into one video. Click here to watch. I hope you enjoy as much as we did.

Christmas Fun!

Christmas time can be stressful, but it is also time where you make time to do some fun things as well.

Like making gingerbread houses. When I picked Katie up from her SS class on Sunday she had a beautiful gingerbread house all made to show us. In her enthusiasm to show me she she picked it up and it went falling forward on the ground and broken into pieces. Mrs. Jill came to the rescue. There were several undecorated houses left so she let Katie take another one home and also gave one to Bree. On the way home we stopped to get some icing so we could decorate them.

Katie's finished house. I love how she made the door out of two mini snickers bars.



When Bree got up from her nap she got to decorate hers. This is how she woke up from nap. Still in her dress from church and sometime after we laid her down she got up and put on her hat. Guess her head was cold. Ha! She kept it on the whole time she decorated her house.



She worked very hard on hers. She would look at the candy and then look at her house and decide where she wanted each piece to go. Maybe we have an interior decorator on our hands.

Here is her finished house

Another fun thing of the Christmas season is spending time with friends and those you love. On Sunday evening we had our Christmas party for the 11th and 12th graders we teach. Stefanie and I made potato soup and chili while the kiddos all brought drinks and dessert. We had a great turn out. Most of our social functions we have about 8 or so but tonight we had 17. It was nice to have pretty much the entire class there. I know I talk about these kids in some of my post so I took some pics so you all can see their beautiful faces.

Taylor is our kids favorite. They are always hugging on him and wanting him to play. This night he was their jungle gym. They were all hanging on his legs everywhere he went. Thankfully Taylor is a good sport.

Several of our crew. I really thought trying to get two kids to look at the camera and smile was hard, but I found out it is much harder with teenagers. :) This is the best I got from this group out of about four pics.

L to R: Ian, Lindsey, Andrew, Drew, Sarah and Charles aka Chuckles

The two Taylors

Casey, Sean , Devin and Chris

I really do love these kids, they are so much fun. We had a great party. Played a little Family Feud Christmas version and had a gift card exchange dirty Santa style.

Jingle Bell Run

Saturday I ran my first ever 5k run, 3.2 miles. About 2 months ago I started running, not sure why just thought I would try it see if it was a sport I would enjoy. I found out I did. I wanted to run a 5K and was planning on doing one in March as my first one but then I heard about this one and decided to go for it. As the date got closer I wasn't sure if I should still run it as I mentioned earlier in my post below the last couple of weeks have been more than hectic. I haven't been able to run as often as I wanted to help me meet my goal time for the 5K, but I decided the heck with it. I am going to run it just to run it and not have a goal time on this one. My only request to God was that there would not be 40 mph winds that morning it was going to be cold enough without wind to help out. He was gracious to me, very little wind. I got there a little early to register and then Chris and the girls came later before we started.

I got a chance to get a pick with my cheering group before the race started. See Katie's mega phone, thought it was cute she brought it along.


The girls and I trying to stay warm before the race started. It was so cold. We were jogging in place, jumping and doing jumping jacks to get the blood flowing.

And we were off.....there were so many people there. Katie and Bree were yelling "go mommy, go mommy" through Katie's mega phone. When I stared the race I had a long sleeve shirt on, fleece jacket, ear warmers and gloves. Even though it was cold by the end of the race I had taken my jacket, ear warmers and gloves off.

The run itself was pretty easy, until around the 2 mile mark I was running down a hill and was following along and took a right into a park and before me was at least a 70 degree hill. I didn't know hills like this existed in Oklahoma. I told Chris I felt like a cartoon character just running and running and not going anywhere. The hill about killed me but I made it up and thankfully the rest of the way back was pretty much flat. I was getting really tired towards the end but I was deteremed to run it all. All I can say I was so thankful to see in my site the finish line. When I ran across the finish line I did a big jump in the air. I was just so happy that I finished and that I finished in 36:12. I really thought it would take me longer since I didn't run much the last couple of week.

Now that I have completed this goal I am on to the half marathon training. I started this week in a training program to run a half marathon in May in Oklahoma City. I am excited to to meet this goal because I honestly thought I could never run 3 miles.

For Unto Y'all

Okay, so I know I have been slacking on my blogging but there have just not been enough hours in the day. Basically for the past two weeks I have been a single mom. Chris has been super busy every night with play practice for the church Christmas play along with finishing up the semester with a big project due and his final. I know you all are thinking he is crazy for being a part of play during this time, so did I but that is just Chris. He wasn't planning on being apart of the play but he got a call from our Music Director, Mike, at church a few weeks ago and the guy playing Joseph had to quit. Mike was all stressed out because this play was a dinner theater and we had already sold lots of tickets and he thought he was going to have to cancel it. Chris having the servant heart he does had faith that God would give him and me the strength we need to get through these next couple of weeks. It was tough but so thankful we toughed it out because the play was amazing and there were many that accepted Christ. That in itself is worth any amount of stress we have been under the past few weeks. Okay, enough with the reasons why it took so long for a post on with my actual post, the first of several I have to catch up on.

For Unto Y'all was dinner theater that was catered by Texas Roadhouse. The Christmas story was set in western time in 1897. They did the show four times (Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening and at lunch on Saturday). All four shows were sold out they had 900 people come and see it. I went on Friday night with my friend Stefanie, it was nice because they provided free childcare.

The dinner theater starts out with the meal of course but they provided some pre show entertainment Hee Haw Style, silly songs and really corny jokes but it was fun. After dinner it was time for the main event. Some of this pictures are not very good. My camera is a piece of junk lately and does not take pics very well in low light. Sorry for the grainy looking pics but this is all I got.

First main scene....small town hoedown. Originally the part Chris and I were suppose to do was this very small part of just being a couple for square dancing, but that all changed when he moved up to the role of Joseph.

Here Joseph and Mary are announcing their engagement to the town. On Saturday at lunch I took that girls so they could see Chris. In this scene it was too cute. Katie leaned over to me and she asked. Is daddy really going to marry her. I giggled a little and told her no it was just pretend. I think Katie was getting a little protective. :)




Joseph walking Mary home after the big announcement. At the end of this scene when Joseph leaves Mary he kisses her hand when he says good night. Katie cracked me up again here because she looked at me and said " momma he just kissed her hand. He is not suppose to kiss someone elses hand" I really thought she was going to yell something during the show. I had to reassure her that it was all pretend and that momma was okay.

Gabriel the angel sent from God to tell Mary the good news. Our friend Steve played Garbriel. Only he could have done this part in the play. He is beyond a character and he did so good on this part. I don't have it in any pics but in each of his scenes he comes riding in on a white stick horse.

Gabriel coming to reassure Joseph that he doesn't need to leave Mary.

Baby Jesus has arrived.

After the show on Saturday.

I was so proud of Chris, he has a very short time to learn his lines and he did amazing. I thought it was funny how so many told him he did great on his "country accent" they didn't know that part wasn't acting. :) Everyone put in so much work to make this event really something amazing. I am really so thankful for our church and the wonderful family we have there.

Thankful Restful Weekend!

Thanksgiving is the time to be thankful, well I am thankful for a long relaxing Thanksgiving weekend!

Our weekend was just the four of us. We didn't go anywhere and no family came to see us. Everyone is headed this way for Christmas. So on Thanksgiving we had a relaxing day of staying in our pj's almost all day except for the short time we left the house to take the girls to the movies to see Tangled. Very cute movie by the way. The girls were glued to the movie the whole time. :)

Friday was an out day as we did some Christmas shopping with the girls. We weren't with the crazies at 3am in the morning. Side note, a friend of ours was actually out at Kohl's at 3am and they said they saw mom's out with their little kids that early. I am sorry, but there is not a good enough deal in this world for me to get my kids out of bed that early. Anyway, we did head out when the girls got up and we got almost all of our shopping done except for the girls stuff. We were able to do it all without having to go anywhere near the mall or other crowded areas, so thankful for that!

Saturday, well sickness started at our house. I must have jinxed us, because I told my mom on Friday night how healthy the girls have been so far this season. Saturday morning Katie woke up running a low fever, no other symptoms except she complained of her stomach hurting. I knew she felt bad as she didn't want to play at all and even took at 3 hour nap that afternoon without complaining. She even offered to go to bed. By Sunday she was all better and no fever, but Chris woke up with it, fever and stomach pains. So far Katie and Chris were the only ones to have it. Hopefully, it will stay that way.

Saturday night we had Sydney come over and babysit. She was home for college and was nice enough to come over. The girls were so excited to see her. Chris and I went out to finish up our shopping for the girls. We knocked it out and even had time to enjoy a nice dinner together.

The weekend was wonderful and relaxing. Sorry there are no pictures but I was just being lazy. I promise pics of December events are soon to come!

The Time Has Come

I guess the time had to come eventually but when it actually got here I guess it made me realized how fast time goes by. This week we made a few changes in our house with Bree. She is now in a booster seat in the car. We no longer have car seats. We also got Bree a full size bed and the crib is gone. We really have no baby or toddler stuff in the house anymore. Sippy cups are pretty much a thing of the past. Only big girl cups or cups with straws around here. We only dig out a sippy cup when all others are dirty.

Bree is beyond excited to get to sit in her new seat. When we go to the car she says " Mom, I get to ride in my big girl seat." She ask every time almost as if she thinks it is going to stop sometime soon. She loves that she can unbuckle herself, she can't quite buckle herself but she tries awfully hard.

On Saturday we went and picked up a full size bed for Bree. She was getting so long that she just didn't have much room left in her toddler bed. I guess it was time to let her move on up. After we picked up the mattress and unloaded it at home we went to Wal-mart and let her pick out her bedding. When we walked down the isle I knew what she was going to pick.

Do you????

Yep, you guessed it Dora..........big shocker I know. :) Well, I may have lied earlier, we have one baby thing left. Her birdies, they had to stay with the bed. Chris and I joke that she will be the only girl in college that still has her birdies to play music to her while she goes to sleep. She just isn't giving those up yet.

Even though I wanted to stay away from getting character bedding Daddy talked me in to letting her get what she wanted. I think Daddy wanted her to get it because it made him feel like she wasn't growing up quite so fast. Bree was thrilled and couldn't wait to sleep in her new bed that night. It's funny how she looked so big in her toddler bed but now looks so little in her big bed.

I know this post is mainly about the changes with Bree but I had to show a pic of Katie's Room. A while back she said she wanted new bedding for her room. She was done with the princesses. She said she wanted a big girls room (they just need to stop growing). I told her she could earn money to change her room if she wanted to do that. So we started a chart and she would do chores. She would make her bed, clean her room, pick up toys and put away her laundry. For every chore she got a sticker. When she filled up her chart she had earned her part of the money. When we let Bree pick our her bedding, Katie got to pick out hers as well. Katie definitely picked a big girls room. Hot pink bedding with zebra print sheets that by the way make me a little dizzy when I make her bed. :)

She asked if we can paint her walls pink with black stripes. I laughed and told her she must think her momma is a designer. I told her we can do pink walls but no black. We will add the black to the room in some other way. Both the girls rooms are going to be painted, so I will post more pics of the final room once we paint.

We had lots of changes this past week. It made my heart is a little sad that the time that everyone said would go by so fast seems to have gone by so fast. Don't get me wrong, I do truly love the stage that the girls are in now. They are playful little girls with lots of life and great imaginations, but it is hard to see the baby days gone.

A Ton of Halloween Fun!

We had jammed packed weekend of halloween carnivals, birthday party and of course trick or treating. We started it off on Friday night with a halloween carnival at Bree's school. Her school is at a VERY BIG church so I knew it would be crowded and we were right. The carnival was very well organized but there were just so many people. We stayed for about an hour and half and then had to leave. It was just too many people for us.

The girls were so excited to get to FINALLY wear their costumes. Bree went as a good witch, she said she did want to be bad. :) Katie went as Taylor Swift. She saw her perform on TV one time and just thought she was the stuff. Katie loves that she is all about the sparkle and glitter.

So here you have them, the good witch and Taylor Swift. Bree wore her witch hat for all of 2 minutes and then wouldn't put it back on.

Katie saw some fake purple sparkly eyelashes at Wal-Mart and she said that this was something Taylor would wear. We got them and they actually fit her eyelashes pretty good. In true little sister fashion, Bree wanted a pair just like her big sister. I really didn't think she would let me put them on, but she did and she wore them almost the entire night.

Playing some games at the carnival and getting lots of candy and goodies.

On Saturday we had a very important birthday party to attend. Little Miss Lydia was turning 3. Here is the beautiful birthday girl.

She had her party at a corn maize. Some of the kids thought it would be funny to cover Chris in the corn.

Bree and Braedyn hunting for corn

All the kiddos at the party getting ready to go for a ride.

Bree running on the hay bales

Me and Bree on the hay ride. I was so suprised she just smiled and didn't give me one of her faces.

Daddy and Katie on the hay ride.

The girls and some of their friends jumping into the pit of hay. I think this was the biggest hit for the kids.

They had a paintball shooting range. Chris bought some paintballs and let all the kids take a few shots.

Sunday evening we went over to our friends Stephanie and Jeremy so our girls could trick or treat with their friends Lydia and Braedyn. All four before we went out.

Make a stop at the first of many houseHalloween weekend was a big success, we ended up with way to much candy but I am sure I can help with that!