Christmas 2008

What a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!! Enjoy the slide show.

Basketball

Kaleigh has started her basketball season with the church. She is very excited. I have a few pictures of a practice. Our 5th grade team played a practice game against the sixth grade team. Our girls lost by only one point. Both teams looked really good. Kaleigh shot a couple of baskets but missed. In practiced she shot and made 5 in a row. It's a shame she could do that in the game! Maybe she will in a "real" game!

Running "suicides" at practice!

Reader's Theater

Kaleigh's 5th grade class came to my 3rd grade class to perform a Christmas reader's theater. (One of the perks of teaching at the same school where my daughter attends!!) If you are not familiar with reader's theater, this is where you read your script not memorize it. This helps with fluent reading. They did a good job plus it was a great way to get to see Kaleigh in the middle of the day!

Oh, yeah! It was pajama day for her class and for the kids in my class. We all dressed in pjs and watched Polar Express. It is fun to go to school in pjs!! Yep...even I had on pink snowflake pjs. One of my students gave me frog slippers. I wore them all day!

Wrestling

Donovan placed third (out of about 12) in the 145 weight class at yesterday's wrestling tournament!!! The tournament was here at Hewitt's new high school. It was a great day. Of course, he did this on the day when the batteries went dead in the only camera I had with me!! So, no pictures :o(


We are so proud of him!

Camp McDowell

Well, I survived 3 days at Camp McDowell!!! I am too old to go to camp, that is for sure!! It was great fun don't get me wrong but my bones can't handle camp beds and 3 hour hikes twice a day! Our weather was crazy. Monday was freezing...42 for the high. Tuesday was 65 degrees and very cloudy. Tuesday night the rains came in...tornado warning about 11pm. Yep...our cabin slept through it all!! Wednesday was cool and drizzly. We learned lots. The best part of the trip for me was meal time and not for the reason you might think. We learned about making wise choices at dinner about the amount of food we put on our plate not necessarily wise choices about the kinds of food we ate. Our goal was to have zero waste at the end of each meal. It was so cool to see how much we wasted at the end of each meal. The first meal we wasted 18 pounds of food. At the last meal we wasted 4 pounds of food. WOW!! My table of kids (9 in all) rocked. We had two meals with zero waste! (There were about 80 kids in all that went.) We learned about ponds and streams, Native Americans, writing about nature using your senses, and using the land for mining. I don't know about the group of girls I was with but I sure learned a lot!! I think Kaleigh would go back again if she had the chance. Here are some photos in no particular order.

Kaleigh in the creek looking for bugs.



Kaleigh in the pond looking for bugs.


The bugs!


Our Field group at the waterfalls.


Kaleigh and me!


Our field group with painted faces like the Native Americans.


Our field group crossing the swinging bridge.


Kaleigh was blindfolded then led to a tree. She had to use her sense of touch, feel the tree, be led back to a starting point, take the blindfold off, then go find the tree she had been led to. (Not sure why!)


Killing a stuffed rabbit using a Native American weapon. The girls had way too much fun doing this!


The fork in the road that led to Camp McDowell! To the right- the girls cabins. To the left- the boys cabins.



The girls at bedtime!



It was a great group of girls. They got along. They did everything that was asked of them without a complaint. It was great!!

Donovan had a wrestling tournament in Gardendale this weekend. Donovan had 1 pin and 2 losses. He lost his last match to his own teammate. It was hard having to wrestle your own teammate. But, they both had a good time and that is what counts.

Thursday evening, Donovan was in a rare silly mood!! It was so entertaining. He had no idea how many pictures I took! (Sneaky me :P)

...While Kaleigh was busy doing homework. So responsible (don't let the picture fool you! :D)

Kaleigh and I leave for Camp McDowell on Monday. This is her 5th grade class trip. All the other classes that have already gone have said it is a wonderful trip. I'm sure I will have lots of pictures! Weather forcasts say it will rain on the 2nd day of the trip. I'm praying hard that will change! I know it will be great spending time with Kaleigh rain or shine!

Wow...I can't believe it has been three months since my last blog. I'm telling you, when school starts, things get crazy. It seems like so much has happened in that 3 months. So, I will update as best I can.

Donovan finished his football season. He was on the scout team but I told him he'd better guard the sidelines with pride!! :o) He finally got to play the last game. It was actually a quarter and a half. He did a great job. He made the tackle his first play in. He's #53.

His dad was on the "chain gang" as much as he could possibly be. You can see what he actually got to do!! (He's the one with the pole on the left.)

Donovan went to the homecoming dance with his girlfriend. This picture is as close to her as he would let me get!! Gone are the days when he didn't mind me being around his friends! But, doesn't he look nice? :o)

Kaleigh didn't play a sport this fall. But, she starts basketball this week. She's excited. Following are some random pictures of things that have happened in the past three months with Kaleigh.

Kaleigh and Devin being silly.

Sandi and Kaleigh became scientists.

Kaleigh is a great reader but hates to take the time to sit down and read. She obviously found something much better to do!

Kaleigh has discovered that stuffed animals in the bed with you at night make you feel safer...how sweet is that!

As Kaleigh and I were leaving school one afternoon after a good rain, we saw a rainbow. It is kind of hard to see because my lense kept fogging up. It was so close to us though. It was way cool.

That leads us to Thanksgiving. Everyone around here went out of town. My mom and stepdad went to Florida. My mother-in-law went to Huntsville. So, that left just Keith, the kids, my uncle and me. Of course, I still cooked like I was cooking for a small army. When I told Keith what all we were having, his response was "all that for 5 people?" I said, "Of course!! These are traditional Thanksgiving foods. We have to have them all." Donovan walked in about 5 minutes later and made the mistake of asking what we were having for dinner. Of course I had to read him my "menu". His response..."all that for 5 people?" All his dad could do was laugh! :P

Here is Tom being ready for food:

I got a second refrigerator several months ago. I have been anxiously awaiting Thanksgiving so I could fill it up with all the food I knew I was going to cook. So, here is a picture of it completely full. So worth purchase...thanks Daddy Ern!!!!

Okay...you are now up to date. There are lots of things left out, but that's what happens when I don't blog as often as I should. I will do better in December. Donovan started wrestling. He has 2 pins and 1 loss. Kaleigh starts basketball. Christmas is around a very short corner. I have 2 weeks off so maybe I can keep this better updated.

You, too, can be "the talking stain"!! Go to mytalkingstain.com (no www.) Yes...I am the talking stain. How funny is that! :o)

Wow, I can't believe I haven't had an opportunity to blog since August 5th! It has been crazy around here. Lots of things happened before school got sarted and then once school started it got even busier. School started on Thursday, August 14th; I had a garage sale on Saturday; Kaleigh's birthday was on Monday; Keith's mama moved on Tuesday; Donovan had a jamboree football game on Friday; and Kaleigh had her spend the night party in Saturday. Have I lost my mind? You bet! I have some photos to share of some of the things. (I wish I had taken photos of some of the other things.) Now that school is underway, maybe I can keep up with my blog.

Syl and MamMaw came over for a visit.













Steven (Syl's son) came for a visit at MamMaw's a couple of weeks later.

















Donovan and Kaleigh got to visit with cousins Tanner and Tristian while visiting with cousin Steven. They always have great time together as you can tell.













Cousin Tristan turned 9. He had a great celebration!
















Donovan had his first scrimage. He is #54 in practice games.













Kaleigh turned 10, as you can tell! Just click on the picture to view larger.

It's hard to believe so much has happened in such a short time. It's even harder to believe that both my kids are in double digits. I was looking at a friends blog the other day. Her boys are young and she had the sweet pictures made with them in white and kakhi. It reminded me so much of when my kids were young and we made the same type pictures. But, then, of course, I immediately had the thought of how old mine are and how quickly those younger years passed. I am so proud of my kids at the ages they are now but it is so hard to believe the baby years are gone. Sometimes I just want to go back. Okay...sentimental moments can creep in at any time can't they!?!

What a busy few days we've had around here. We start school in a week so I hope things are a little slower so I can savor these last few days with my kids.

Friend Cam came to spend the night. The girls had a blast!

We had our last hoorah at the local pool with lots of friends. The pool's last day to be open was the next day.

We met friends for dinner to celebrate my birthday and frined David's birthday. You should know that my birthday was in April and his was in June. So, we celebrated a lot closer to these actual dates than when we celebrated Christmas last year (in July!!).

Donovan worked his first job. He served "free Red Diamond Tea" to patrons attending The Birmingham Zoo. Of course, I helped. Apparently, Red Diamond has become a large sponsor for the zoo and this is their way of reaching out to the zoo's patrons. It was fun greeting all the people as they entered.