I've been tagged! :)

I love playing along and I love being tagged. I was tagged by Shortone and was so excited! I have seen many variations on this and I have had to think really hard to come up with 6 random things about myself. So, here it goes...

1. I was involved in a little bit of everything growing up. I took piano lessons until age 19, twirled baton until almost 19, took ballet, gymnastics, and then started playing softball at 14. Of all the activities I really LOVED being a cheerleader. That was what I had always wanted to do and I enjoyed it so much. I wonder where Ethan gets his involvement from??? Guess I shouldn't really wonder.

2. I would have LOVED to be a child of the 60's. I think I am a little bit of a hippy at heart.

3. I love concerts! There is nothing like live music! I have sat through many concerts that I cared nothing about but still had a good time. I have seen everyone from Garth Brooks, Prince, U2, Kiss and so many more. I have been to all genres and actually enjoyed every show I have seen. I even saw Milli Vanilli back in the day, and I have sat through White Zombie.. that should tell you how much I LOVE music. My favorite shows by far have been Garth Brooks, who just can't be beat live, and Keith Urban.. for obvious, previously stated reason.. and my random fact number 4...

4. Laughing at Shortone's desire to be the next Ms. Jovi, I thought about my dream and my wish that I was Nicole Kidman.. AKA Mrs. Keith Urban. Hubby has been warned that IF he ever followed me home.. I would have to let him in! Until then a "Good Day, Mate!" every now and then from hubby will have to suffice.

5. I am such a kid at heart. If there is a noise to be made, a mess to be in, I am the one that will let my kids be right in the middle of all of it! I think there is so much to be said for hands on learning! :) It used to drive my husband crazy that I let the kids bang on pots and pans, paint in the floor, and wait until you see our sugar cookie baking day! :) That is A LOT OF FUN!!!

6. Lastly, this is a random fact about my husband, but will explain why I call him "hubby" all the time on the blog. I guess it is a random fact about me at the end of the story. I call "hubby" Jack.. but that is not his name.. that is no where in his name. His name is Kerry. I knew him as Jack for a while before I was told by a friend of his from Tennessee that JACK was not his name! Imagine my surprise! So, I can switch from Kerry to Jack and back again depending on who I am with . I call him Kerry around his family, and Jack around my family and friends. I have mastered the art of the quick switch. So, out of respect for his family I try not to do anything official or send anything out and call him Jack since I know that is not his given name.

So, now to tag six people to list six random things about themselves. I loved the way that Naomi listed her six people, she played a game and they had to guess. I thought I would give it a try. So I tag the following people...

YOU have the cutest kids, you don't blog near enough, and I know how creative your "funny bone" is, so you really should show us all your talent. I figure if I call you out maybe you will post something. :)

YOU also have two of the cutest kids, great hair, your little princess makes me laugh. :)

YOU have been so much fun getting to know. I just love your little boy and I am so glad HE is friends with my guy. You guys were just what hubby and I needed. :)

YOU are missed here at GNO! We need your spunk and your fire.. so I would suggest a trip down the interstate for the next GNO! :) We need sum Roachel time! :)

YOU have already been tagged.. but I am trying to get my six.. so you get tagged again. What can I say, my life at the mall, at school, and definitely GNO would be so different had I not met you WAY back in the 70's. :)

YOU are family. Family is so important to us and I am SO thankful that we have such a close family and such a BIG family! I love your kids and wish we got to see them more. :)

So, if you were tagged try to play along and tell us six random things about yourself.

and with that I am done blogging for the day! I am all caught up and it only took me eight hours to get it all down.

Apple Pickin', Soccer Playing, Museum visiting kind of weekend...

Now, I will get back to my usually scheduled post. :)

We visited the Apple Orchard on Friday and had the best time. The kids took a hayride through the orchard, we talked about Johnny Appleseed, and read "Ten Apples Up on Top". I just love Dr. Suess books! I think they confuse Ethan when he is trying to read them, so I may have to hold off on them for a little while longer. I don't need anything to mess up or progress right now.

Anyway, back to the orchard. The kids picked four apples a piece, and then we had a picnic lunch. We are going to bake our apple pie tomorrow during school time. It is amazing how many things you can learn from a simple apple pie bake!

Here are some pictures from our trip. Ethan could not wait to climb up in the little trees to get the "big" apples! :)

Scarlett and her friend, Karlee, before gathering their apples.

Ethan and Scarlett with their sack of apples.

Saturday morning we had a early soccer game. I do not like anything before 10am! But this week, I was not so lucky we had to be at the soccer fields by 8:45. UGH!! Off we go to wet grassy fields. Yippee! Ethan is so funny about his sports. He may not always play the best but he is going to look extremely serious. He just had to have this headband and wristbands. He looked like such a soccer player! It cracks me up. I enjoy watching him play soccer, baseball, anything.. it is so much fun to watch your children to something they love and even more fun watching them really "get it". Ethan's soccer team is 4-0, so they are having a great year.

Getting ready to throw the ball in. The little boy to the far right was so cute! He would yell at his team and tell them "Come on guys, don't let them get "weady"!" everytime his team was throwing the ball in. He was a very serious soccer player.

Ethan heading towards the goal...

After the soccer game we went to the Museum. The day did not go as planned but I think it was better than planned. We had the neatest guide at the Arkansas Historic Museum that had "Toys of Yesteryear" and she was so great with the kids. I have never seen these three sit so still and listen so well to anybody! She showed them about 25 toys, let them play with each one and even shared her lunch with Scarlett before the boys noticed and wanted in on the action, too. :)

Here the guide is teaching them the game Mancala. They were very into her stories, it was fun and educational. You gotta love that!


I think when we first approached the museum, and the guide was in character the kids were a little taken back at first but they quickly caught on and laughed right along with her and had the best time.



They walked on stilts, stick pony races, potato sack races and so many more games! The kids were exhausted.. or atleast they should have been! But it was so much fun.
after the museum the boys had a baseball game. They played against each other AGAIN! I think they are getting used to it, it did not seem to phase either one of them. One time Ethan had a hit and while running the bases he was stopped third, which is where Hayden was playing. They were talking and laughing! Thank goodness they are still too young to care who's team they are on, or what the score is, it only matter that at the end of the game they are still friends.
That was a quick update, but some of the pictures were too cute not to share. :) Thanks Ms. Nancie and Hayden for spending the day with us. Tell Mr. Harold we are sorry we kept Hayden out before the ball game. :(

Playing Catch Up

I always feel like I am playing catch up! Usually I am catching up with my very own mind. My mind is always racing ahead of my body! Today, I only have my blog to catch up on. I am hoping to get lots of fun things posted but I decided to start here; My awesome time at GNO on Friday night! Nothing can bring you back in control and make things right like a good laugh and a good time with your girlfriends.



I have been so blessed with so many friends. I have made new friends over the years but I have always had my "besties". Thinking about old and new freinds brought to mind a little "ditty" LAH and I were taught in Brownies (It's okay to laugh at all that now, LAH) "...Make new friends, but keep the old ones; One is silver and the other gold". Kind of made me realize that these girls are GOLDEN!

I have not been able to attend our monthly GNO the last couple of months and I have really missed it! We had so much fun Friday night, even though the movie (I think I suggested) was a real snoozer (right, Toni?). I wanted it to be really funny with lots of things to laugh about. The reviews were good, but it did say that was a "mature" "Sex and The City". I think we decided that maybe we were just not mature enough to find the humor. :(

I just love laughter! It is so contagious! We always laugh A LOT when we are together. Rather it is funny things that happen to us, or venting about husbands and kids, we find the humor in everything! A lot of things are not nearly as funny when you tell someone else (Unfortunately, hubby didn't quite think the shower cap story was funny, LAH).

All that has led me to what I found this weekend. I am trying to start getting a few things packed up and I was going through old pictures and I found some real treasures. Hope you enjoy the walk down memory lane. :)

This picture is from WAY back in the late 80's. Wow! Just look at those bangs. Back then we had nothing to worry about but our hair and make up. Don't you miss those days! It is so funny to see how we all have such perfectly teased and sprayed bangs. Do you remember the techniqued used to get that look????


I know this picture has some of the outsiders a little confused. This was our moment of glory. Our shining moment. We were OGHS Puttin' on the Hits Winners 1990! We worked so hard on "Summer Lovin". LAH, Tina and I were pretty cool T-Birds, and Kim was the perfect Sandy.


Here we are the class of 1991. Ready to take on the world and thought we had it all figured out. We are missing a few of you. Where were the two Abby's???

and here we are ten years later in 2001 at my baby shower for Ethan. Yes, I am the really large chick in the middle with the bows on my head. Thanks guys for making me look so gorgeous! ha! That day was so much fun. We had all waited for so long for LAH to get pregnant and we told everybody that she was at my shower. Of course, I don't have a very good "vault" so I had already told Abby, who was not supposed to tell, but she told LAH that she knew, and they both decided not to tell me that they all knew. Did you keep up with that?? Anyway, we were so excited and came up with a great way to tell the group that she was going to have a baby, FINALLY!!! We all had fortune cookies, and they could read their fortune or share a piece of advice, and LAH went last. When it was here turn she read her "fortune" and it said "A Bundle of Joy will arrive for you, in March 2002". It was great to see the look on some of the faces as they finally realized what she was saying.

We have always had so much fun together. I could bring pictures out for days but I have so many other things to blog about so I will stop here.

Here's to the best group of "besties" around! May we always be able to share a good laugh, a good time and GNO! Love you guys!

And the winner is...

Well, the egg drop challenge was a success! The kids both designed and built their egg cradle and dropped it from their playset. It took three trys, but we finally managed to successfully land an egg without breaking it. We talked about Gravity, Inertia, Mass, and shock absorbers. They decided that straws were not enough of a "shock absorber" once the egg hit the hard ground. :) The kids did so well. We compared an elephant and a mouse and which one would have more inertia. Scarlett summed it up pretty well "the elephant has more 'nertia because it is fat."

Here is Scarlett working hard to put her egg cradle together. They learned really quick how important a parachute was and how it could slow down the fall of the egg.

Our first unsuccessfull attempt to drop an egg. It was pretty messy. Of course Scarlett was right in the middle of the mess.

and finally a successfull egg drop. Yippee!

Then we talked out objects traveling at the same rate of speed. It was so neat to watch them hypothesis that the big ball would land before the egg. Once the test was over they concluded it was a tie. That objects dropped from the same height WILL hit the ground at the same time.

Ethan wrote in his journal once school was over and I asked him to draw picture of what he had learned today. He learned that your MASS stayed the same even in space, hence the drawing of the person on the moon. :) and gravity is what brings things down, the person with a parachute falling to the ground.

They are both up early and ready to go on their first field trip! They are so excited. We are headed to the apple orchard. Today is Johnny Appleseeds Birthday, how appropriate it that! :)

Last time, we picked 40 pounds of apples!! We had apple pie, apple sauce, apple juice, caramel apples.. you name it we made it! Hopefully this time we will not pick quite so many apples.

Have a great day! I will post more pics later. :)

Just another day at home...

Today the kids had another great day of school and I must say Scarlett is doing FABULOUS! I am so proud of her! She does have to take very frequent breaks but that is fine, I totally understand. I am most happy that she is starting to ease up on herself. Today she did her math work and even did a few of the problems all by herself! I was so proud of her. She was proud of herself, too. She hung her math work on the refridgerator for her daddy to see when he got home from work.
Once school work is done we do a WHOLE lot of THIS...





and then some of this...

Today the kids did this...they tried to rub two sticks together and get fire; and no they did not ever get a fire started. I was sure enjoying watching them try. The moved all over the yard as if that had anything to do with why the fire was not starting. :)
After all this we went to the library, after a quick stop to Sonic for my Route 44 Diet Coke with Lemon during happy hour! :) It was so funny, I was pulling into my stall and the kids are yelling, "NO! NO! Daddy said NO! That we have to stop going to Sonic!". Let me tell you, I told them real fast I would like to see their Daddy tell me not to get my drink at Sonic. :) ha! Ethan told me he needed to see my phone so he could call his daddy. He could not wait to tell on me!!! I saved him the trouble , I called his daddy for him and told him I was getting a drink, he talked to Ethan and told him he could have one as well. We really do not deprive our kids, I promise!



Next we met Daddy to do some things for the house. We are finally picking out our flooring and we have been getting estimates on laying the flooring. I am so excited to feel like we are ALMOST finished! We looked at light fixtures for our bar, and fireplace and hopefully this weekend we will finish that project. Lastly we had dinner at Sam's Club. Where else can you feed a family of four on TEN DOLLARS! YIPPEE!!




Wish me luck tomorrow. We are doing a "science project". We love making or doing things from Mad Science. Have you ever bought things from them? We love it. We have made dinosaurs, been a dinosaur curator and now we will do the EGG DROP CHALLENGE. Sounds like fun, huh? This is definitely a outside project. I bought a extra dozen of eggs just to be safe. They have already decided that they wanted to do the Bubble Experiment Lab next. That sounds almost as messy as this egg drop. I am sure I will have lots of pics of this disaster. :)

Hope everyone had a great hump day!

"How to Bake and Apple Pie and See the World"

Today is the FIRST DAY OF FALL!!! Yeah! I am so excited! We have started talking about Apple trees and are planning our trip to the Apple Orchard. This time of year always has me so excited. Today we talked about apples. They go from bud, to blossom and from blossom to fruit. We painted apple stencil pictures. What a mess!!!! Tomorrow we will do more apple lessons and hopefully Wednesday make our trip to the Apple Orchard.

Every year we read the book "How to Bake and Apple Pie and See the World" when we get ready to go to to the apple orchard. It is such a neat book. It ties in so much geography during the book that it ends up being several lessons all rolled into one great book!

Much to my surprise out of all the ingredients in an apple pie only one originates here in the US. You got it.. THE APPLES! The book talks about going to Italy for Semolina wheat. You have to go to France to get a chicken to lay the egg. Then of course you must visit Sri Lanka to find the best cinnamon from the bark of the kurundu tree. Pick up a cow in England for fresh milk. Grab some salty seawater on your way to Jamaica for sugar. Finally, go to Vermont for the best apples. Can you believe all the different countries involved in making good old American apple pie? I look forward to this book every year with the kids.

Here are a couple of pictures of our apple pictures we made today. Apple stencils don't work near as well as potatoes but they lasted long enough for the kids to stamp a few apples on their trees. :)

Long Weekend Wrap Up...

This has been a long weekend at my house! We started the weekend off on Thursday since it was Ethan's birthday and we played ALL day at the park with some friends. I found a Razorback cupcake cake and it was just perfect for my football loving birthday boy. The kids played so hard all afternoon at the park! I know I already mentioned the park but I now have pics to share.











Can you tell how tired all these kids look! They have been played non stop for over three hours at this point. They are tired and FILTHY!!!











I don't know if Ethan was ignoring Hayden or really didn't notice what was going on! ha! :)













Friday night we went to the Polish Karnawal. The kids had a blast! They look forward to the carnival every year. The games are easy enough and they always win lots of prices. They even have a flea market there and Ethan found these football pads that he just HAD to have! :) He then won a football my tossing it in the hole on the quarterback challenge. I am telling you this child is destined to be a football star in some capacity! :) Here is my sweet child in his Heisman pose with his pads and football! :) Isn't that funny!! Scarlett played all the games and won lots of prices. I think when all was said and done we had "spent" $40 but walked out with a cake, 2 pounds of deli meat, 2 liter Sprite, footballs and tons of other prices. Definitely worth the happiness of the kids. Between the kids taking pictures and the in and out of the camera my settings were changed so I really do not have any good pics from Friday night. But here is Scarlett playing golf. She just wanted some "face time" on my blog, too. :)

Saturday Ethan had his second fall baseball game and I had to work at Duck Duck Goose. Out of 123 items I sold everything but 8 items! I did really well! Definitely worth all my hard work for those few days.

All in all we had a very busy weekend! We are geared up for the week to start and do it all over again. :) I am already looking forward to GNO this Friday!!! Yeah!! I finally am going to be able to attend! I can't WAIT!