BYU ENJOYS GIVING FANS AN ULCER!

So - that was a tense game! For starters I spent the game at my grandparents house. That automatically made the game 100% more tense than normal just because they are very In-tense!
Yes, I gave up my season ticket spot in order to get my life in order a bit before I move home. I'm sorry to say that I gave up on my Cougars. I mean - you have to admit that our offense wasn't stellar (especially in the 2nd half) and our defense seemed to run the same lackluster coverage on every single play! But in the end, the stress and ulcers were pushed aside for a last second win that will go down in the books. And I will also admit that, every year at this time, I feel exactly the same as Max Hall. 'Nuff said!

Tea Time!

Bet you never thought you'd hear me say that right? Wrong! I was able to go to a fabulous tea party with Carol, Katie, Emily, Melissa, Savannah and Donna. It was really fun. And yes - our tea pot was filled with Hot chocolate rather than tea.

The girls and I all dressed up and ready to go

Emily and Savannah all dressed up for christmas tea

Melissa and Savannah with the beautiful tea table - there was a lot of yummy sandwiches and the desserts were divine



Yes - it really says 13 1/2 street. And it really was a 1/2 street...it only went partway down the block and then...it just disappeared...

Say Hi to Sage!

So Mel was nice enough to let us ride on the horses. I just wanted to say Thanks! Mom has most of this pics, but here is just a little bit of the fun we had!


Riding off into the Sunset...

Halloween 2009

Pics from the family party will have to come later - as I didn't get my camera out the entire weekend. But on Halloween night, I was able to go trick or treating with the scariest "good" dragon and beautiful evil vampire in the world. Melissa, as usual, went all out with costumes and make-up. And this year, I actually got to join in a bit!
Savannah looked awesome as a vampire. Melissa has a close-up of the cute little swirly/sparkly design on her cheek. Yes - I'm taking credit. I didn't do much besides spray hair and rub white all over, but I did do the swirly thing on Halloween. For a non-artist like myself, I think it turned out pretty dang cute! Also,she was such an awesome vampire, that when we hit a house that had run out of candy, the guy went in and got her a dollar. When he asked if she took money, she whispered in a very spooky voice, "why yes I do!"
>


What else would Mikayla be besides a dragon? She's obsessed, and this just fed the obsession. But even I had to admit that she was the cutest darn dragon I've ever seen. She got more compliments while we were out trick or treating that anything I've seen! Of course, it helped that she told everyone "Beware of dragons...for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup". The adults just couldn't help themselves as they piled the candy into her bag. And as she left, she always made sure to tell them, "Good dragon's don't eat good people". We left most of them just cracking up!

The girls "carved" pumpkins. Which involved them drawing all over and Melissa and I trying to figure out a way to make it into something carvable. Savannah's was actually not too difficult. Mikayla's, on the other hand...well let's just say that I think I should be nominated for the Carver of the Year award!

Getting ready to go trick or treating with Freya and Tracey. They were a pain to lug around (we went quite a long ways and they have little feet), but we got a lot of attention from both kids and adults

Melissa's pumpkin - all lit up


Mikayla's pumpkin had a color changing light

Savannah's had a strobe light. It took about 7 tries just to get it to light up enough to see in the pic!

Beat the Heat!

So - while all our family and friends are enjoying a very cold and very early winter, we here in Hot, Humid Texas decided to beat the heat and go ice skating. I think it was karma that made it a little chilly for pretty much the first time this fall just in time for us to go inside the "giant freezer" as Mikayla called the ice rink.

Savannah, giving her skates a try while still safe on normal floor.

Mikayla asked us to carry her to the ice because she couldn't walk on the floor in those ice skates...I'm still trying to figure out what was in her mind since she couldn't walk on the regular floor, but it didn't seem to occur to her at this point that she would have to skate on those same skates...on ice...which is a lot slicker than the rubber floor. Hmmmm.....


Savannah clung to the side for only just a minute or two.

Then she took off on her own for the rest of the afternoon all by herself. She did fall a few times but she was so brave she just jumped right up again and tried even harder.

Mikayla had way more fun "gliding" than "walking" (or ice skating on her own). At one point she looked up at me and said "Aunt Kimi, why are all these people so much better than I am?" It was so adorable! I had to explain that it wasn't most of their first times ice skating. I don't think that made her feel any better. I love her enthusiasm for anything new, but the poor kid just can't understand why she isn't just perfect at everything the first time. (ie: the 5K we ran on July 4 when she started out knowing she would win the race, then within about 100 yards of running, decided winning wasn't so important afterall!)

Melissa and Savannah enjoying some unsteady feet on the ice. It was fun to watch all the little kids twirling and swirling all over the ice. We would go backwards, forwards, make some unsteady turns and just hope like crazy that we wouldn't fall right in front of a 6 year old Olympic hopeful!

Kayla taking a little break to give her feet a rest.

We treated the girls to lunch after ice skating since they were "just starving".



Over conference weekend, we took a few walks to enjoy the nice weather and the pretty flowers. Here are just a few that we saw. The girls were nice enough to hold my camera for me while I pulled them all over the neighborhood in Mikayla's new wagon. Aren't they just the sweetest? (everybody say, "Awwwww")

Photo lessons

I'm half convinced I need a new DSLR camera. My up close zoomed in pics seem to be blurry. But I like some of the pics anyway. Here's two more for this weeks lesson.

Photography Class

I'm in a photography class - and I have a long ways to go to even just figuring out my camera - but these are some of my favorites...





They are all taken around Melissa's house in Killeen. It isn't nearly so colorful here...I wonder where all our flowers are.

Mikayla in her B-day finery

Any ideas how old the birthday girl might be?

Princesses and Dragons...mostly Dragons

Happy 5th Birthday Mikayla (our little Dragon)! The big 5 is an important one. To Celebrate, we had several days of non-stop Partying!


Thursday (on her actual Birthday) we went boating and she learned to kneeboard all by herself. Then Melissa and I started working on her birtday party cake. Friday Melissa did all the party shopping and worked on the cake. Saturday I got myself and Emily Call up really really early to get up to Kileen to finish the cake. So - what do you think?


The girls made princess tiaras and the boys made King crowns, they all beaded necklaces and were very much in the princess/prince mentality. They looked adorable!

The girls wanted to make more silly faces while the boys went off for a balloon fight!

After a successful (meaning no one was hurt) game of pin the tail on the donkey (so glad they use stickers and not actual pins!), and a few rounds of duck, duck, goose, we had a purple pony pinata. Here's Mikayla taking a whack at it. The younger girls made no dents in it at all. (in case you're wondering, we had to do it inside because it rained for about 2 days straight. I think Texas is almost out of their drought status!)

It took the two boys and Savannaha and Emily to finally get the darn thing's head off so the kids could pick up LOADS of candy.

Emily with her weirdly small pony pinata legs...

Next came presents. Mikayla got tons of fun toys, beads and princess paraphenalia. She also got dragons (thanks grandma, Savannah and Melissa). She got squishy dragons (below), puppet dragon, stuffed dragon, miniture dragons...

...A Dragon shirt (she was SO excited)

And of course her dragon crawling on her princess castle on a story book cake. Only she could have dreamt this up. Melissa and I were just grateful we could figure out how to make it...and that it didn't fall over before the party!

Happy birthday my cutest little 5 year old niece/dragon! I love you!!

OH....MY....GOSH

Emily said it best on a text right after BYU won it's biggest game in recent history against Oklahoma. I know that I wasn't even sure I wanted to watch the potential massacre. I'm very glad I stayed home to watch the game on Rick's big screen (just to get the full effect). The tension was massive and the atmosphere was electric as the final minutes were counted down. Halls final drive to take time off the clock and throw for a touchdown were some of the happiest moments of the game. YAY!!! I was so excited for football season to start, but the thought of this game marred my happiness. I was a bad bad fan, but i promise to have more faith in my team from here on out. That is my pledge. WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!