Baby goats

Hayden's big game

Today, I didn't have to keep score and I was able to watch the game and take pictures. It was much more fun than trying to keep score and be the babysitter of the bench and the mom that wants to take pictures all at the same time. A bench full of 5-6 year old boys is the hardest thing to control. They are in play mode; it's almost like they aren't mature enough to handle that part of the game. Hopefully it gets better. Today, one of the other moms said she was going to keep track of how many times she had to tell each kid to sit down and then they would have to run that many laps. I don't think that is a bad idea. It was a great game and the kids had a lot of fun.

4-H Dog Club

Rachel has joined the 4-H dog club here in Canyon. She had her first meeting today. She was ready to go. She talked to Lily early this morning to let her know what treats she was packing. Rachel packed a bag for Lily that had 2 different leashes, dog food, treats, water, poop bags and I'm sure I am forgetting something. She was prepared for anything. Oh, I did forget something. She also packed a dog 101 book. It tells you everything you need to know about dogs and possible injuries; she wanted to have it just in case a dog got hurt. Well, Lily was not too sure about obedience training, but she did very well. Rachel learned what side to hold Lily on and how to hold the leash and how to walk her. She is supposed to work with her 20 minutes a day. Rachel is VERY excited. She can compete in shows if she wants to, so we'll see how she likes it and how much she wants to do. It was a very fun morning. We learned a lot.

Locks of Love

Yesterday, Rachel decided to make the big cut. She has had really long hair for a really long time. Recently, she talked about cutting it pretty short and I told her about Locks of Love. I showed her the website and we talked about what they did with the hair and she thought that might be kind of neat, so she decided to keep growing it out. You need 10" to send in. She wanted to get it cut yesterday, but still wasn't sure if she wanted to do the 10" cut. After talking to Carla, she decided that she wanted her hair to be shoulder length, so we told her that would be 10". She decided to go for it. She even let Sarah make a cut. She was so excited when it was all done. She bopped around the house all evening with her new hairdo bouncing with her. She got tons of compliments at school today. What an experience!

Easter Sunday 2009

Today, we celebrated Easter by having our two youngest children baptized. Hayden and Rachel accepted Christ as their savior and today, they were baptized. They each had to write their testimony. I wanted to share it with you.

Hayden’s Testimony

When I was age 4, I wanted to be a Christian. So, I kept on praying for Him to be in my heart. In my bed, in my room in Ohio, He came into my heart. I told my mom and dad and they came and prayed with me.
I think being a Christian means you don’t lie and treat others the way you want them to treat you.
Jesus dies on the cross and rose again to save me from my sins.
I am a Christian.

Rachel’s Testimony

When I lived in Ohio and I was 7 years old, I went to AWANA. I heard a lot about God and Jesus. Ms. Merilee was my leader and she taught me about God. I learned Bible verses and got stickers for memorizing them. My favorite verse is John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son; that whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life.”
When I heard about baptizing, I didn’t know what it meant. When I learned what it was, I said, “Hey, I need to do that because I already asked Jesus into my heart.”
I talked to my parents and they said I needed to be baptized. We waited until we moved to Canyon and joined First Baptist Church.

Hayden's Luau

Today was Hayden's Luau. Their school has been doing this for a long time. Some of the teachers were talking about their Jr. High kids participating in the Kindergarten Luau. It was so cute! They all got to wear their swim suits and sing and dance. They learned motions to all these Hawaiian songs and performed them for the parents.

Blizzard 2009

Rachel, Hayden, Sarah and Abby

Palo Duro Canyon by: Hayden, Clay and Abby

Pizza night

Rock Band

Cookie making!

Well, as most of you know, the Texas panhandle got pounded with snow. We only got about 4 inches here, but Amarillo got 11 inches. I-40 was shut down on each side of Amarillo. There were wrecks all over the interstate.

Here in Canyon, we had tons of snow blowing in at 50 mph. If I could have mounted a bucket sideways on my tree, we probably would have had a foot of snow. It was blowing sideways. It snowed for about 24 hours and then stopped. This morning, we went out and played and tried to make a snowman. It ended up being a snow sculpture of Palo Duro Canyon. Texas snow is so dry that it doesn't pack well.

We spent our snow day making cookies, enjoying our usual Friday night pizza night and John played a little Rock Band. He took the day off and was really glad he didn't try to go in to work. Later in the morning, they did close the plant.

Spring Break

We had a wonderful vacation. We went to Las Cruces to visit friends and went to White Sands, saw "Race To Witch Mountain" and had a great time visiting with our friends. This was the first trip we've made in a long time with no DVD player. For those of you that don't travel much, this sounds crazy, I'm sure. For those of you that have moved multiple times across the country with the military know that a DVD player is a must with 4 kids. Okay, maybe not a must, but a lifesaver to say the least. John knows movies by heart that he's never seen but heard playing behind him as we drive for hours. "Ice Princess" to be exact. The trip was just fine without a DVD player, believe it or not. We survived.

Because we had been to that area before, we decided to stop at the Eagle Ranch Pistachio Farm. It is a little place John found on a TDY to New Mexico. They make everything you can think of out of Pistachios including wine. We loaded up on Pistachio Carmel Corn, Green Chile and Garlic Pistachios, Pistachio toffee and a few bottles of wine. If you are ever in the area, you should stop by; they have samples of everything the make.

We took a trip over to White Sands and on the way over, Rachel started feeling a little car sick. When we got there, she was miserable. We had packed a lunch and she didn't even want to eat. She laid in the back seat of the truck. After a little while, she got out and had something to drink. The next thing you know, she threw up all over the white sand. She felt much better after that and joined us for some fun in the sand. She says that she made the white sand colorful sand. I'm sure she wrote about that in her journal for school. This was the first time that our kids did not complain about getting their picture taken. It was a great day!

We had a great time and can't wait to go run our toes through the sand again!

PPHM

I took 3 of the 4 kids to the museum today. We went to see the Belles of the Ball Exhibit. We had a great time. We stayed for about 2 hours. We saw the Belles of the Ball, Woodie Guthrie, the music exhibit that features a square grand piano and the old pioneer town. The kids loved it. It's fun to go and just spend a couple of hours. Rachel took a notepad and a pen and wrote down all kinds of things. In the art exhibit/gallery, she sketched pictures of her favorite paintings and the artist and price of the piece. She is too funny. We found out that one of the volunteers feeds the neighborhood cats at one of the back exits. He told us they live under some of the buildings on campus.

Rachel's Birthday Party

Breakfast at the Donut Stop

Decorating cupcakes

The party

Sprinkles anyone?

Rachel's cupcake

Hayden's cupcake

Rachel turned 9 on March 4. We went to the Rock-n-Roll soda shoppe after school to celebrate. We had a party on Saturday and she had 9 girls come over and decorate cupcakes. We had 3 colors of frosting, 9 kinds of sprinkles and a whole lot of fun. She had a couple of girls spend the night Friday night and we took them to the Donut Stop for breakfast. We've had a great time celebrating Rachel's 9th birthday and wanted to share some of her pictures.

Family Birthday

2

Friday was my Aunt Cece's birthday. She turned 65. We hosted a family pizza night at our house to celebrate. My cousin and her kids came from New Mexico, my aunt and uncle and their 2 great grandchildren, and dad and Carla all joined us for the celebration. We had a great time.

Jump Rope for Heart -Rachel

Rachel did her Jump Rope for Heart last Friday. I ended up substituting Friday also. I am glad that I was still able to watch her jump. She did a great job and had tons of fun. 3rd graders jump way longer than Kindergarteners. They jumped for an hour and rotated jumpers in groups of 5 or 6.