Christmas 2009

Instead of cards, this year I've decided to blog. I must say, I have really enjoyed blogging. Thankyou Carrie for bullying me into doing it! As you can see from older posts, we have had an action packed year. We enjoyed visits from family, soccer games, eating, cycling and flea markets, Aleisha sightings, golf, more golf, Zachary visits, reading and more eating.

Aleisha stayed in Provo this summer and worked on campus. She spent most of the summer hanging precariously from rocks. She loves to rock climb! (I don't want to know!!!) She did come home for a brief visit which is thoroughly documented in an older post. We love our Leish. She will be a senior at BYU this coming year and is planning on spending spring semester in Spain. As she is a spanish minor, she is hoping to knock some of the "white girl" (according to her spanish professor) out of her accent.

Mason spent his summer in New Jersey; living right on the beach and working for my brother Steve, installing alarms for APX alarm company. He had a great time being all grown up and on his own. He did quite a bit of site seeing all along the east coast and managed to navigate his way around New Jersey and Staton Island with only slight damage to his car. He has some stories to tell (Again, I don't want to know). He is an Uber Senior in high school this year. He is done with what can only be loosely described as "class" about 12:30 and spends the rest of the day joining varies school organizations so he can get a free t-shirt.

Daniel really got into his cycling this year. He rode in several races which culminated at the end of the summer with the "Hotter n Hell 100" in Whichita Falls, Texas. Dan also got his driver's license in September and has been doing a great job running errands! I'm in absolute heaven with 2 drivers! Dan is a Sophmore this year and in his own words is "just hangin on till May" he does not love school, but he enjoys learning. Go figure! Dan also loves a challenge. He likes to see what he can do. He is training for a marathon and is trying to find a triathalon to do!

Brandon has had a great year being in band and theater. I know one thing, he is the best dressed guy there. He was in marching band and did great as far as I could tell. I watched all of the trumpets (I could never tell which one was him) and no one ever messed up! Brandon has developed into the quintessential socialite. I'm pretty sure his phone is an appendage, as far as I can tell it never leaves his hand. Brandon is a Sophmore this year and doing really well. We are looking forward to his getting his divers license this year. Three drivers, Oh Joy!

Kendall is growing up, figuratively and physically. Much to Mason's dismay! All she needs is about 1/2 inch and she will have him! Kendall is every bit an 8th grader. She talks to friends a lot, she does her nails a lot, she takes pictures of herself a lot, she sings a lot and she practices the splits a lot (so she can try out for the high school dance team). Kendall played on the Jr High C volleyball team and is currently on the fundamental basketball team (Kendall says the coaches have no idea just how good an athlete she really is, but I suspect they do!) Kendall's greatest accomplishment this year is being 1st chair flute in the Honor Band.

Jerry and I are getting old. Well, I tell Jerry he is and he tells me I am! Jerry golfed! That pretty much says it all. Oh, and he ran the chains at the college football games. He loves it! Apparently it is a man thing. I don't get it but all of his friends are green with envy. Whatever makes him happy. I read! Which also says it all. I still work in the ER and I added teaching in the nursing department at the college. It makes me happy. We are all pretty happy here in Texas, considering that it is Texas and it can be really muggy and hot, the bugs are HUGE, there are tornados, it is way far away from Utah, there are jalapenos in everything and the language is hard to learn. All in all we are assimilating fairly well, except for Jerry and he has no idea there is anyplace other than Texas! Come visit, we will show you around! Merry Christmas, ya'all!

The Myers Visit, Yea!

Well, the last time I blogged we were entertaining Aleisha. That was July. August was spent getting ready to entertain the Myers bunch. And, did we Ever!!! We loved having Sean, Carrie and the kids come to Texas! We were so excited we went to a place we vowed (or rather, I vowed) we would never go. We plugged the old fridge in out on the deck and filled it full of sodas, water and gatorade! We are officially rednecks. But boy, was it worth it!

Look at 'em! Aren't they great! Zach must have said "Reese" a million times. In a row, mind you!

Good ole tramp. Jumpin with the sprinkler! They also slept on it every night. I'm sure the tramp was in heaven.

A great deal of our time was spent EATING! This was at Uncle Julio's! Sean can barely say the name without giggling. It is really good. Sean and Jerry sat next to each other and there was a lot of,"Duuuuudddee, this is sooooo good!"

We also went to the Alamo in San Antonio. If you come to Texas, you should see the Alamo. The day we went they had volunteers that would give an oral history of the Alamo. It is one thing to know the history and quite another to be there. Jerry was moved to tears! He is a Texan all the way down to his toes. Carrie and I sang the Disney Davey Crocket song all the way home.

You can't see it in the picture but, we are standing on the line that William Travis drew in the dirt and told the men to decide which side they wanted to be on. You'll notice we are on the Alamo side! Yea, us!

Carrie's kids specifically requested 6 Flags. So we went. Some of us rode all the rides, some of us rode them more than once and some of us had the sense not to ride ANY!! We all ate turkey legs, pink things and loaded fries, accompanied by alot of, "Duuuudddee, this is so good!"

Here are the intrepid riders after their first ride on the Titan! Look at 'em all smiles! No pukers here. That happened later on Mr. Freeze! Poor Uncle Jerry! It didn't stop him from making a beeline for the turkey leg stand!

Carrie, Tyson and Reese havin a good time!

Reese with the goats. We aren't exactly a farm, but we do have critters! I have stayed the execution of two incredibly brazen armadillos for a month so that the Myers kids could see them. After several nights of near misses, Daniel spotted one about 1:30 am. The boys were all sleeping outside so he woke them up! Hurray! Carson was very excited. Tyson was not. He wouldn't wake up and missed the sighting. The next morning he told me with big tears, "I wouldn't wake up Aunt Cheryl." Oh well, all the more reason to come back!

Here we are eating , again! This is a restuarant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. We also ate at a Papasidos in Austin (more Duuuuudddeee!) and Hard Eight, twice! For the first time in my life I hated Mexican food! (thankfully, the love is back). Besides eating we went to the Dinosaur Park, the Omni Theater in Ft. Worth, Sam Moon's, nagged Carlie about going into labor and Jerry. Mike and Sean went to the BYU game in the new Cowboys stadium. Which by the way, was well worth the money Jerry says! That place is incredible, just on the outside!! All in all, it was a rip roarin good time!!!

Summer Fun With Aleisha!

I'm a little behind on my blogging, so I've decided to combine the past couple of week's activities. We have enjoyed having Aleisha home and true to my word, she has NOT been bored!! We have crammed it in. And why I ask you, must I bribe my oldest child into coming home with guarantees of continual fun I don't know. We started out last week buying a new tramp. Not because we wanted to, the upholsterer couldn't sew it anymore! The kids haven't wanted a new one because the old one was really bouncy not to mention a member of the family. But, a major catastrophe was inevitable if they kept jumping on it. It was missing nearly half of the springs and there was a rip in the middle. So one day in Walmart we gave in. We had a ceremony when we took the old one down! It had served us well. We jumped on it with the sprinkler, slept out on it at night, used it as a fort, jumped off the treehouse on to it, jumped off of it into the pool, jumped from the treehouse to the tramp and then to the pool, and for one whole summer it served as Steve's bedroom (complete with TV)! Ode to the Tramp!!!

The end of an era!

Out with the old!

To put it in perspective, I found this picture. Look how young the tramp is!

In with the new!

A new generation of jumpers, sprinkler and all! Remember Daniel jumping at this age. He didn't even make a dent, neither does Zach. The new one is okay, but it isn't as bouncy and the top is so tightly woven, the water can't get through. But Zach loves it with the sprinkler and a popsicle and it has been slept on twice! Welcome to the family!

This is the end product of a entertaining afternoon of doing nails! Kendall is very in to nails, so we made a day of it. We had flowers and butterflies, WITH jewels! Good times!

Aleisha has such stubby toes, she barley has nails. But we made it work!

Mike took this picture. Look at the concentration! She was attempting a flower on her toes!

Kendall has a lot of nail polish. I mean alot. On her blog she tells you the website she watches to learn how to do the designs. We referred to it several times. Kendall tends toward the bright colors. She had them mustard yellow for awhile. And my favorite, her nails were white with black zebra stripes and a pink french tip. Awesome.

This weekend we went to visit Jerry's sister Shelly. She lives 30 minutes from the Gulf. We spent saturday at the beach. The ocean is not really my thing. It is big and there are sharks! But the kids really like it and I do like watching the surf and looking for shells, both of which can be done safely on the beach.

The kids however, go way out. The only rule being that Jerry is out the farthest. You know, in case of sharks. The surf was about 3 feet saturday so the kids could body surf. They had a great time.

Shelly and her husband Steven love to fish and really wanted to teach Dan to surf fish. I'm not sure you should stand in chest high ocean with dead fish on the end of a pole but they tell me it is fun. I said "What about sharks?" and Steven said "Yea, I hope we catch one!"

Why Aleisha agreed to this I don't know. Daniel buried her and did the scuplting. We were worried there for a minute about Dan's anatomical knowledge but then he added the top two abs! "Oh, there abs!" Whew. Jerry helped by pouring water on her face, slowly! We had a good time. The girls got very sunburned, even with sunscreen. But we ate fresh shrimp, swam in Shelly's pool, drove to Galveston Island and now we are exhausted. All the time we were there we missed all of you and wished we could take you there. It would be fun. We could rent a beach house. Come anytime! Hint, Hint.

6 Flags . . . More Fun!

That's what the commercials say anyway! I beg to differ. I really don't enjoy amusement parks. I don't think hurling your lunch is amusing. But, I took one for the family and went. Luckily, the Weather Fairy took pity on me and I think the high on Tuesday was 85 degrees. Amazing for this time of year. Also amazing, were the short lines. Must have been the work of the Short Line Fairy!

My role on these amusement park outings is to hold everyone's stuff and take pictures. I think I did very well. Jerry's role is to go on all of the rides with the kids (not because they need him to, but to prove he can!) and snack. He is great at the snacking, the riding is getting tougher the older he gets. He was doing really well riding rides until they went on one that is mostly in the dark. Most of his snacks ended up on the side of the exit path! As I have stated, hurling is generally not amusing, but the kids died laughing. I'll admit to giggling a little but I refrained from pictures. Even Jerry had to smile, after awhile. There is no quit in Jerry, after that ride he made a beeline for the nearest turkey leg stand.

This coster is called the Titan! Tallest, fastest, narliest ride in the park. I can't remember the numbers but it goes really fast, drops you incredibly quick and pulls 4 G's. A hurling machine! Mason routinely blacks out when he rides it, which he does over and over! Kendall and Brandon had never dared attempt it and I can't say as I blame them. They prefer whirling tea cups and parachutes. However, this time Kendall said "Look Brandon, I don't want to go my whole life and not be able to say I didn't dare ride it, let's go!" Brandon said, "Are you kidding? Alright, but if I die it is your fault!" What was poor Jerry to do but man up and ride! This picture is actually of them going up.

Here are the fearless coaster riders after the ride. No one died . . . or hurled. Although, Brandon was a slightly different color. Kendall asked Aleisha, "Does that ride go under ground or did I blackout?" Aleisha said, "It goes under ground but how would you know your eyes were squeezed shut?" Kendall said, "Well it got blacker for a second and I thought maybe I passed out." We went from the Titan to the kiddie rides for some much needed recovery time! We had a great time. Jerry figures that was our last. He says we are too old. I don't know about that, I stood at the end of every ride holding the stuff and taking pictures just fine. He plans on sending the kids by themselves next time. Which was my idea this time.

Saturday!

Have you all seen the beer commercials with the "Most Interesting Man in the World"? We love those, especially the one that says he is so interesting he lives vicariously through himself. Well sometimes we are like that and we thought we would let you all vicariously through us. Because, well "most interesting" might be a stretch, we can really pack it into a day! Saturday started out with Dan riding in the Firecracker 100 bike race here in town. He rode 43 miles.

He really had a good time he said. It took him 2 1/2 hours and only got beat by the pros doing the 100K. This is him at the finish line. While he was riding, I ran 5K at the park, it took me 30 minutes and I got lapped by the little old grey headed man that always laps me. Why are there no pictures? Do you really have to ask! Meanwhile, Jerry was somewhere in Texas playing in a golf tournament. It took him about 5 hours and on the course nobody laps Jerry, Nobody!


After the riding and running, we went to lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant and ate way too much. The kids were complaining about having to take pictures, "We look like tourists!" Notice Aleisha is with us, YEA! We are so glad she came home.

After lunch we went to the Chicken House Flea Market. One of the greatest attractions in Texas I believe. If you want to experience the south, go to a flea market. We wandered aroung looking at the wares and listening to the people. Awesome! We found one stall that didn't seem to have anyone in it. There was an old truck with the tailgate down and a little wire cage with 3 bunnies in it in the shade of the tailgate, that's it. We were wondering about this when we heard a voice yelling, "Lion's head, Lion's head!". From behind us and across the walkway came an old man and he was waving his arms yelling, "Lion's head!". It wasn't till he picked up the cage, we figured out he was talking about the bunnies. They had long hair around their face that looked like a lion's mane. He really wanted to sell those bunnies. He took me by the arm (literally), "I give 15$ a piece for'em when I bought 'em. I let 'em go for 30$, all three of 'em. And if you don't got 30 I let 'em go for 25$. I asked him if they made good pets (Kendall had her Pleeeaaaseee face on). "You betcha!" he said, taking one out of the cage. "They tame right up." All the while the bunnie is clawing and wiggling. We very politely started to move on, which was hard because he had me by the arm again. "I'm leavin here at 3 o'clock, you come on back afore then if you want 'em." We assured him we would. It was great! Oh, did I mention he didn't have teeth! And that folks is why you go to Chicken House Flea Market.

After the thrills of the flea market, we stopped at Brain Freeze to get a snowcone. It was 102 degrees out! Jerry (who is not nearly as interesting as the rest of us and doesn't see the attraction in the flea market, I think it is because he IS a Texan and doesn't see peculiarities) found out we were at Brain Freeze and met us there for an x-large snowcone. He LOVES snowcones!

Dan wanted me to take a picutre of his guns, which I did. He also wanted to make sure you know they look bigger in real life! And yes, he is in the driver's seat! This made the whole day just a little spicier!

After snowcones, we went to see Transfomers! Dan, Aleisha and I liked it. Kendall went to sleep and didn't know what the plot was. Brandon went to sleep but knew the plot and said it was ok.
Kendall said it was too long. If a movies is going to be that long, she said it needs singing and dancing. Whatever! So that is a saturday in the life an incredibly interesting, relatively speaking, family. Just in case your saturday wasn't as interesting or action packed!

Cutest Kid on the Course!

As most of you know, if Jerry had a bumper sticker on his truck it would read, "My other car is a golf cart!". Jerry literally will shutdown the course. On their way home the owners holler, "Hey Hunter, will you lock the gait when you leave?!"

So since Zach has been spending a couple of days a week with us we thought we would start him off right. He has his own clubs and has had several fairly successful cart driving lessons.

And Zach has learned the secret to good golf scores, when no one is looking pick your ball up, walk over and drop it in the hole.

Dan is amazing!

A few weeks ago, Mason had an art project due. Part of the assignment was to take a picture of something in motion. So naturally we thought of Dan, mostly because he was already in the back yard jumping over one of the frames we use to play a game called lawn golf. I know I'm the mom, but I was very impressed.





It is especially impressive if you know how many times he did it. I lost count but Mason kept saying things like, "Oops, I pushed the wrong button could you do it again?"














This shot required Mason to lie down under the frame and aim up while Dan jumped. An amazing act of bravery and trust in his brother don't you think. Especially if you consider it took numerous attemps (on Mason's part) to get the shot with Dan right over the top and Dan's legs were giving out!

Spending the day at Dinosaur Valley!

About 20 minutes from our house is the Dinosaur Valley State Park. I knew it was there and we have done the obligatory day trip to see the sights but we haven't ever really taken advantage of all the park has to offer. Danny has been going for several years with a couple of friends. He told us it was fun but we didn't get too excited. But a couple of weeks ago I was looking for something to do with the kids that was close to home and inexpensive so we decided to go to Dino Valley and see what fun we could get into. We had a Great Time!

The park is full of hiking trails and bike trails, camping and the Paluxy River runs through the park. There are fossilized dinosaur tracks in the rock of the river bed that you can stand in.

The dark spots in the pictures are Dino tracks. Kendal and Mason are standing by big round tracks made by that big long neck dinosaur. Daniel is pointing to one, you can just see it. some three toed dinosaur (a raptor Dan says). Obviously, I'm somewhat lacking in my knowledge of paleontology. The park brochure says that the tracks were made in mud then filled up with silt and fossilized. The experts says a small dino (the afore mentioned raptor) was chasing a big one (the long neck). However it happened, it is very cool.

The boys spent the whole hike looking for "Man vs Wild" opportunities hence the hanging from cliff pics (these are tame compared to what they wanted to do!)

So when Mike and Zach came to spend the day we decided to take them! It was a lot of fun. The weather was beautiful and Mike is a better map reader than me so we weren't lost near as long (or often) as last time! It was a great day!

Jacket Soccer 2009

1. There are two things that are a sure bet in Texas: You can't bet on the weather and you can bet if the weather is bad there will be a soccer game. Jerry vowed last year to invest in some really good "soccer watching" clothes. You should see him, well you can't all that is visible is his nose. So far this year we have endured t-storms with golf ball size hail, cold and rain, and cold, rain and 30 mile an hour wind. But we are winning!!! Dan has been center mid on JV and Mason center mid on Varsity. Both teams have done really well. We are in the middle of Region Tournament playoff games. The varsity has advanced to the fourth round, which is further than any other Jacket soccer team has ever made it. Daniel was moved up the varsity for the playoff season and played over half of the 2nd playoff game. They play next in Odessa on Tuesday at 4:00. If you are interested (and I can't imagine why you wouldn't be) we will text score updates during the game. Two more wins and they win their region and go to state. GO JACKETS!!! (The link below is to the state playoff bracket!)

http://www.uil.utexas.edu/athletics/brackets/soccer/pdf/4ABoysSoccer.pdf