Happy Birthday Luke!!

Happy 30th Birthday Luke!

To celebrate Mom and I headed to Independence to visit Luke and Leslie...and to maybe get away for a weekend. :)



Here's Luke holding one of his babies, Louie. :)

Here's Luke's fiance Leslie smiling to indulge me.

And here's Luke and Leslie's newest baby, Roxie.

We had a birthday lunch at Arthur Bryant's - AWESOME BBQ!

Luke indulged us and let us go to the Kansas City Library where the parking structure looks like above. Seriously, this is the outside of a building! Crazy huh?

Here's the other side, stairs in the middle to get out.

So then we went and checked out the new Bass Pro Shop they built near Luke's home.

And to finish off, here is a pic of the HUGE catfish that was in Bass Pro Shops aqarium.

Thanks Luke and Leslie for letting us come and visit to celebrate Luke's birthday around when he got old. :) I hope that you have a great birthday 30th Birthday today Luke!

Love ya!

My Attempt to Find Funny

So I was videoing my neices and nephew trying to find something funny. Because I had just watched AFV - America's Funniest Home Videos, and I always wanted something funny to send into them. So here is the progression of my attempt to find funny in our family:

I started taping B while she was playing Playstation 2 with her Papa Charlie. Normally B is a riot, but this night she just wasn't all that funny. And then Cutie was trying to get me to only video and play with her. But listen to B's suggestion at the end:



So next I moved onto Stinker. He couldn't think of what to do that would be funny. So I told him what B's suggestion was...and he liked that idea. Which then produced this video (I swear this is not abuse...no child was hurt during the filming of this flick...that I know of anyways):



Cutie has been trained by her siblings. B used to call me Nanna when she was young then would correct herself. Well...I reminded her of that once when she was older and then promptly started getting both of her siblings to do it when they were learning to talk and tell who was whom. My answer is always, "Who's Nanna?" Not me that's for sure. I'm way to young to be a Nanna. :)

Anyways, as you can see in the last video that now Cutie wanted her own turn to be video taped doing what Stinker did. So, here is her attempt to be funny:



So, all together I do think they are kinda funny when you see the whole context. But still not hilarious material for AFV. But, what do you think?

Some more fun trip from my AZ trip!

Okay, here were a couple of my favorite moments from the trip.

One was we went to the Phoeniz Botanical Gardens where there was a Chihuly glass art exhibit. It was totally awesome. Here are some of the pictures of the glass art (I a HUGE fan of glass art):

And here's a video of Sweetie begging for some ice cream. She can't quite talk fluently, and her version of 'please' is to shrug her shoulders and hum. :) And for more she uses sign language hitting her fingers together. :) Enjoy!

Inauguration Day

Whether you voted Obama or not, today is Inauguration Day 2009. Times are changing and so is the president.

There are just so many sides to this day: happiness, antipathy, resentment, indifference, racial reasons, political party reasons, etc.

I know this will get some strong opinions but I still think I’d like to share my view:

Obama is now the President of the United States. We all voted and this was the decision. Please just accept that this has happened and move on with your life. We will all see how he does in the future when his actions and decisions finally have an impact on our lives.

And please stop bashing Bush. We all voted on him as well and he has served his two terms to the fullest of his ability. Everyone makes mistakes, even the President of the United States. Getting anything to work/pass in government that will make EVERYONE happy is a disillusionment that we all need to realize cannot happen. A President has so much to deal with that none of us can truly understand or appreciate. But each and everyone has and will do what they believe will be for the greater good for this country.

We pride ourselves on living in the United States and our freedoms and rights in this democracy. Why are we being so judgmental on those in the past and on those who will be the future? Can't we all just get along? :)

Internet

YAY! My internet is back! Happy days. :)


Ever since 12-16-08 our internet has been out at our house. We get a DSL line through our phone company and goes through or phone lines. So our phones would work...but no matter what we plugged and unplugged and rebooted...the interenet just wasn't working for us. So finally I broke down...got impatient waiting for my brother to come and fix the problem...and called AT&T to have them figure out what the problem was.


They did three different diagnostic programs, and they could find nothing wrong. So they sent out a tech to come and check our house and see if it was a line problem or what was up. Saturday we had to stay home between 8 am and 5 pm to wait for him. He finally called at 1:30 to say he was in the area and would be stopping by. YAY!


So what was our problem you ask....

Our modem died! Apparently the one the phone company sent to us only has a warrantee for 6 months. 6 months! I thought these things were to last for years! Anyways he was a great guy...replaced our modem (for free...shush...) and I am now finally able to access the outside world. hehe. :)

So I finally broke down and downloaded all my pictures from my trip and recently. Man...I'm starting to take after Audra and am getting picture happy. I seriously now carry around my camera in my purse at all times. New addictions...fun times.

So since there are so many pictures I'll work on a slide show so you can all see the fun times I had. :) Eventually. Life is busy. I'll try to get it done soon. But in the mean time just wanted you to know...I missed you! But now I am back, and hopefully will continue the blog fun. :P

Volleyball

So last night at Fa-HE (FHE - family home evening) with the singles branch we played volleyball as the activity. I apparently have forgotten that I like to play that game cause it has been forever....as was apparent by my innate ability to hit the ball out of bounds. But the more I played, the quicker my reactions were. I still am not a huge..."diver" for the ball, but I have to say that I didn't do THAT bad overall. :)

Ahh...those days in high school where we played it almost everyday in gym...we all got pretty good then!

So apparently I need to start playing volleyball, pool and bowling a little bit more to hone my talents back up to what they were when I was good. Ahh...the good ol' days. :)

Happy New Year!

Okay, so I'm a bit slow on posting new items on my blog...but my DSL is down at home. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :)

But I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year!


So, I've seen a few other blogs where they post what was going on throughout the past year, with pics to help. And I do really like the idea, but as I'd have to bring my laptop to work in order to hook up with an internet connection that wouldn't take forever to post something like that...it may be postponed.

I also have tons more pics from my recent vacation I'd like to share...internet connection problem rears it's head again. :) I'll get to it. I think.

But in the mean time I think I'll review over resolutions.

I never have been a huge one for setting resolutions, or sticking to them like most of the population of this world. And I even have a friend who decided to set resolutions this year of things she will NOT do this year...like she will not walk through sewer water. :) Interesting perspective I thought. So I'm going to try and be realistic when thinking about new year resolutions.

Now in 2008 I kept blogging that I'd finish that cross stitch I was working on for the past 6 years or so. Well...I was having too much fun with the kids over the break that I didn't do much....so it's not done yet. But one of my 2009 resolutions is to finally complete it...then get it framed. I should hopefully be able to complete that resolution. :)

Secondly I'm going to have to resolve to either find a better paying job, get more money out of my current one, or find a second job. Cause I'm not trying to be materialistic, but I need more cash in flow somehow...as many of my clients say, "Everything is rising in price except what you get paid". I'm still working on getting rid of my personal financial obligations...and I'd like to help out with stuff around the house a bit more so I'm not 'sponging' off my mom.

Of course there are the usual thoughts of resolutions like...I'd like to lose weight, I'd like to be more active, I'd like to date a little bit more. But those I kind of always have in the back of my mind and either I just procrastinate them, do them sporatically, or just stop trying to make the effort. Yes, that is my lazy side rearing it's ugly head. I think I'll stick to the top two above and see how I do. Those other small ones will still always be in the back of my mind...haunting me.

But I'll try to work at being more pro-active. We'll see how this year goes.