Future Class of 2023

Just got Jaycie's first class picture and had to share!!! The future Class of 2023! :)

Literacy Night

I enjoy doing things with Jaycie at her school. We went to literacy night at Lake Park last week and it was a lot of fun! She read (told the story of) "Goodnight Moon" to Fletcha the black lab...visited the Cat in the Hat...played Starfall of a big touch screen...made a trash book....described how to eat an oreo...did more coloring and art work....and got to pick something out at the book fair!

CRUISE!!

I never posted my cruise pics!! What have I been doing?? We had a wonderful, awesome, amazing Carnival cruise from Galveston to Progresso and Cozumel. We spent the night before boarding at my Grandma Dobbin's house in La Porte, TX. We enjoyed Grandpa Don's dinner and breakfast meals! Before getting on the ship, we found a shop in Galveston that had our flip flops that we have wanted since we bought some a few years back there. :) The ship was great. HUGE! Our room was just right...little but everything we needed. We were comfortable and had a window to see the ocean. Here is our map from our TV in the room that always showed us where we were. Here we are at our dining room table on captain's night. We dressed up and took pics and had prime rib (some had lobster). It was fun! We loved dinner every night in the dining room with our new cruise friends. Here is the party crowd.

We enjoyed sharing our day's events with our table each night. It was nice to get to know some new people and have some friends to hang out with and go watch karaoke after dinner!

In Progresso, we took a bus to the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. We loved seeing everyting there. This is the ball court where the losers were sacrificed. Our tour guide gave us some really cool history! The stone carvings were really neat in person!

Cancun was too windy and not quite hot enough to enjoy. Our snorkeling trip was cancelled, so I was very sad. We shopped instead. It was good to get home to the kiddos, but so nice to get away for a week! Thanks to family for taking good care of them and returning them rotten!

Cinderella

We went to the Putnam City West's play Cinderella with our friends. It was a fun little mother daughter date and the girls got to dress up like Cinderalla for the occasion. Catherine and Heather Thomas (our friends at church and occasional babysitter) were awesome as usual...the little drama queens. Jaycie enjoyed finding them on stage. Catherine was gorgeous as the fairy Godmother and Heather was hilarious as a step sister. Lovely evening!!!

We got to take some pics after the play with Cinderella too! As you can see...Jaycie loves Heather!

Spring Break 2010

We went to see the new Children's exhibit at the OKC Zoo. It was really nice and lots of fun even though it was a chilly day! These girls are always great posers! Will have to get more pics of the boys to share!

Jaycie and Margie

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is a classic Jaycie picture these days, so I had to share. She is writing her name really well now, including the last name (dunno why it is there twice however) She has always colored beautifully and with detail..especially with crayons. I am proud of her! Her teacher, Mrs. Owen loves to show me her work. I get plenty at home too though. She draws hearts and writes ILU (I love you) frequently too.

Nathan on the other hand has never shown an interest in coloring until now. I am excited to see that he is beginning to trace things and will occasionally color something for fun. These are great pre-handwriting skills that I was hoping would come soon since he starts pre K THIS August!! Crazy!

*Hope everyone has a good St. Pattys and that you always find "pots of gold" at the end of your rainbows!!!*

Birthday nails

For Jaycie's birthday, Grandma Brown treated her to professional finger and toe nail polishing. She felt like a princess and it was fun to watch her pick her colors, etc.

Happy Birthday Jaycie

We celebrated Jaycie's 5th birthday at the Little River Zoo September 26, 2009. We were happy to have lots of family and friends able to attend even though it was a little drive there...especially for our out of town families. We had great weather though and it was fun! We had a guide that showed us the animals, taught us, and let us touch some.

The group was hopping like kangaroos before we went into the kangaroo habitat.

The kangaroos were a highlight for sure. The kids got to feed them bread and walk through their habitat. Other favorite animals were monkeys, a bear, foxes, etc. The petting zoo was also fun.

We had hot dogs with chips and apples. Cake for dessert, of course.
Presents!!! Thanks to all for coming. It was a great time!

Date Night 9/12/09

The kids love to play with their friends. I am happy with the group that we have had for almost 4 years now to have a date night every once in a while. When it is our turn to have the group, it is always a party. We feed all of the kids and they play and make messes until clean up time. The kids think that date night is designed for them. Everyone benefits, Iguess!!

Here are classic pictures of the girls playing dolls and the boys watching a movie.

8th Anniversary

Tommy and the kids came and picked me up at the airport late the evening of our anniversary August 4th with pink roses. I was so excited to see my family. It had been a long day in the airport with 2 connecting flights. My kids were missing me..they told me on the phone many times. I missed them terribly too. It was too late to do anything for our anniversary, but I took a couple of pictures holding the camera out because we don't have hardly any together! It is amazing, but Tommy is smiling. It has been a great 8 years. I can't believe how time flies. I am so grateful for a wonderful husband that is a great daddy too!

California part 2

Mom and I had a day to go to the Oakland temple. It was a wonderful day and an adventure. We took the Bart by ourselves and we could see the temple on the side of a mountain from the Bart. We were glad that we got the right stops because we had to catch a connecting train to Oakland. When we got off at our stop we walked a bit toward where we saw the temple but we never found a taxi. We found a pastry shop in Fruitvale and had some breakfast. No one we came in contact with spoke English to direct us toward a taxi except for a boy in a group that was about 6 or 7. We had turned the wrong way from our stop. When we got to the taxi, we were in business. The driver knew where to go. We were amazed by the beautiful flowers and palm trees when we arrived on the grounds! We had lunch there in the cafeteria and went to the visitors center.

The view was amazing.

Another one of my favorite little trips was to the Redwoods. It was truly mesmerizing to see how tall and beautiful the trees are. I could never fully explain the feeling, so I really want Tommy and the kids to go there with me. There were campers there, and that would be my dream camping trip!!

We are standing by some of the redwood trees. You could get inside of the middle of the trees, the trunks are so huge and so tall.

This is the beach of Santa Cruz. We went for a walk along the beach and had lunch on a pier. There were shops selling fresh fish and crabs on the pier. We watched the sea lions and birds. It was beautiful but the water was very cold. Ryan went for a swim and was ok, but mom and I didn't.

Mary got to join us for a few evenings for dinner. We had some very nice and different foods. Argentenian food...Kobe mini burgers, brisket tacos, ceviche, etc. Of course we had to try In N Out burger. It was good and fresh. Mary took us to Palo Alto to see the campus at Stanford. It was very nice. Thanks Ryan and Mary for an amazing week!

California visit 8/1/09

I had a wonderful opportunity to meet my mom and visit my brother Ryan and sister-in-law at their home in Freemont, California. It was such fun and I really enjoyed visiting. Ryan was a great tour guide, and Mary stayed very busy with her Anesthesia work as she is knee deep in

her residency. They have several lime and fruit trees in their back yard. The weather was amazing there.

Our main source of transportation was the Bart railway transit system. This was (for good reason) very foreign to me. There were all types of people to watch on the Bart. Mom and I were a little scared of it all at first, but we got the hang of it. We took it to San Fransisco for my first day. Here is Alcatraz. It was very cool from a distance. That is a close as we got this time.

We walked all through main town San Fransisco. It was very windy, of course. We went to the Fisherman's Warf for lunch. We saw Pier 39 and all of the sail boats and sea lions on the way.

Ryan and mom are both seafood fans, but all who know me know that I am not! Here is one of the dishes that I ate (for documentation). We got crab legs, swordfish steak, and this seafood stew in the picture called ciopinni (sp?). It was acutally not bad. I avoided the tiny purple cuddlefish though. I was already out on a limb tasting everything. Those would have put me over the edge.

Chinatown was pretty cool. Mom got us sweatshirts and we got a smoothie. We drove through a small part of Castro (to catch mom off guard).

It was neat to see these famous things that I have only seen in movies or heard about. The streets are very steep!

Another day, we went back with their dogs and took the scenic tour. We walked across the Golden Gate bridge. It was very foggy and windy there!

We hiked some hill that had a great view of the bridge before we got on it. Kermit and Blakey had a nice walk.

The view from the bridge was awesome too, even though I am not sure exactly what it all is.

Where did 2009 go???

Oh my, my last post was in July. One friend (Tammy Jo) keeps reminding me of that, but other than that I haven't thought about my blog. (I almost forgot how to log in) I have been so out of touch because of it. I am excited to get back into my routine. It keeps me on track taking pictures and keeping record of the kids, etc. My only excuse for all of this time passed is ..........CHEMISTRY!! I have decided that if I am going to get my master's degree like I have always planned, I need to get to it. I feel like the timing is right with the kids starting school. So..I took Chem II with lab at OCCC with Dr. Zhu on Tues and Thurs evenings. There were moments through this past semester that I thought I was crazy! Some of those times were when Zhu said "remember from Chem I..." I realized that it has been 10 years, marriage, and 2 children since Chemistry I and there was no way I knew the remainder of his statement!! However, after lots of class and study time, frustration, and a horrible sickness on the day of my final.........I got an A. That makes it all good. So, now that it is over I am going to resume normal life and get back to blogging and I have a lot of time to make up!!

Fireworks

James did a great firework show over the water on the 5th. (We missed most of things of the 4th and the kids fell asleep in the car)

I was shocked that Nathan joined in with the sparklers. Fireworks have not been his thing thus far. Last year he was scared of them and this year he held his ears because of the noise. I was glad that he gave it a try!

Family Reunion

My grandma hosted the reunion this year. Here she is with her brother and sisters. Corky, Edith, Ben, and grandma. (not able to make it this year, Jerry Sue)

Here is grandma, mom, and her sister Jacquie. It was so wonderful to see Aunt Jacquie and her daughters Dawn (and her 2 boys) and Angie. It has been over 10 years since we had seen them, but I have great childhood memories with them!

Here is Jaycie and my cousing Angie! The kids loved all of our extended family members!

Grandpa Don Dobbins, the fisherman, did a wonderful fish and shrimp fry for us the evening of the 4th. We had the standard auction at the hotel meeting room and games in the afternoon. I won the "guess how many monkey finger puppets are in the jar" game. We had a good time with everyone together.

Kemah Boardwalk

There was an amusement park, shopping, aquarium, etc. downtown in the city of Kemah. We spent one HOT afternoon there.

We all met up and rode the train.

A "blue" snowcone saved the day while we were waiting on a ride to be fixed. Jaycie had been talking about riding on an airplane earlier in the day and it took us a while to figure out that the ride is what she was talking about. Great grandma had told her about it and we thought she was talking about a real one that some of our family members flew on to get here.

Finally...the airplane ride.