PugsRN: Phillip, Danielle, Regan, Sadie, & Tucker

Christmas in Missouir 2009-2010

2010-01-08T19:05:00.000-08:00

The trip to Missouri, a 15hr drive with the pups, was a pretty tough job for the pups they thought!! They slept through the whole drive just about:)!! Here we have proof though that at least one of our pugs, Sadie, is a true Patriots fan, YEA!!

You can see how thrilled she is, hehehe!!

Not that this was a smart move on my part, but I took these pics while driving cause they looked so adorable! I was on a back road with hardly no traffic at all so I didn't feel too bad about doing it. Plus look at them, isn't it so sweet!

This is how my pictures begin in Missouri:)!! The twins attacked Uncle Phillip and being the good unle that he is he carried both of them all over the house:)!! They laughed and carried on for a good long time! Not sure how Phillip had enough strength to carry them like that for so long, but they all really enjoyed it and knew they had their Uncle Phillip wrapped around their fingers after that, hehehe!!

On Monday we started our week out by going to one of the twins', Noah, Preschool Christmas party. They began their party with the goodies that were brought in. Noah really enjoyed his cupcake the most! John was trying to be the dutiful parent by trying to convence him to eat more of his fruit:)!! Even Noah thought that was funny!!

After their yummy goodies everyone was put into groups of 5 or so and split up between the room. Noah started in the decorating cookie area. He was very much into that activity:)!!

Next he went to the play area to play with foam blocks. John and Phillip got in on that and they all 3 tried to build them up as high as they'd go and when Noah had decided it was high enough he said, "It's done!" John and Phillip said no we can add more, but Noah was done and he took his hands and tore the tower down, it was so funny:)!! Phillip said I guess it was done, hehehe!!

The last station they had was coloring a Christmas tree. I tried to help him by getting him to remember how his tree at home had all sorts of colors on it and he informed me that that was the ornaments and the tree had to be colored all the way green first:)!! He was only coloring the bottom half of it so I thought he wasn't going to do the top, but that just was not the case!!

After all the stations they were told to move to the carpet for a little bit of quiet time while they passed out presents. I started at one side of the group, but could not get a good pic of Noah so I moved to the other side of the room and it was much better over there. Noah quickly found me and would look my way for some poses, too funny!! At the end of the presents they sung this goodbye to my friends song and in one part they say our brains worked real hard so kiss my brain and Noah posed for that one. He looked right at me and held out his hand from kissing his brain just for a picture!! I was so amused cause he doesn't usually ham anything up! He's usually the shy one, but he seemed to be thrilled to have us there at his party:)!!

On Tuesday Savannah had her preschool Christmas party! They started out by having to sit quietly on a boot that was designed on the carpet, very cute! I decided I was too far away so I got a close up of Vannah from another angle!

Then they had their Christmas goodies that was brought in. There were cookies, cupcakes and I think some fruit. Savannah just like Noah was way more interested in the cupcake than anything else. John again tried to get his child to eat more of the good stuff, amusing to see that same scene all over again:)!!

After all the yummies they played musical chairs! That was cute to watch that many kids play. They played very nicely with each other from what I could see!

Once the winner was made and chairs were put back at their tables one of the mothers started a fun game of pin the carrot nose on the snowman! She blind-folded each kid, gave them a sticker carrot nose, and sent them on their way towards the snowman on the wall. Savannah seemed to have gotten a kick out of that!!

The same mother had another game to play as well where she would ask each kid a Christmas question and they got a treat for the correct answer. They all liked that one!

Then it was quiet reading time while teachers got presents ready to hand out. John and Phillip both got into that with Savannah. Then when Phillip got up and other kids realized that John was reading to his daughter a bunch of boys flocked him to get him to read to them as well!! It was really sweet!

Finally presents were handed out! Everyone went to ripping open their gifts! Savannah got a Mator Book from Cars, which was suppose to be a boy's gift, and the boy beside her got a princess book so they actually traded and were very happy with their books:)!!

I eventually got to have a picture taken with Savannah after all the activities were over! The Sunday before this event Savannah had worn little red bells in her pony tails and would come up to me all day and jingle them at me, so very cute! So I wore my jingle bell ear rings just for her that day and she loved them she told me:)!!

Christmas Eve wasn't majorly eventful unless you ask the kids I'm sure:)!! They got to open up all their gifts from Grandma and Grandpa! Us adults also exchanged gifts as well. We draw names for the adults every year and that works out so nice. Everyone buys for the kids though!

I just took random shots throughout the day. This one is of Sparkles and Sadie playing tug-of-war, a favorite passtime for the 2 of them:)!!

And this shot of Oreo and Sparkles was just too sweet not to get! Oreo is John and Vicki's old dog just like Regan is to us! The 2 older ones don't get their picture that often. I think they avoid them on purpose. Regan use to snub his nose at me when I'd try to take one. He just doesn't like them and I'm thinking Oreo might be like that too!

Now this was precious! Not that I should have allowed Tucker to be close to the table, but I was reading recipes for Christmas Day and while I was busy doing that he wanted lap time and I thought that was okay as long as he didn't touch the table. Well, everyone else caught him when he laid his head on the table and began to snore! He was dead asleep! It was so cute!

Eventually Vicki and I had to go to the store and so I laid Tucker on Phillip's back and he just plopped on him and went right back to sleep:)!! Isn't he adorable! Phillip was playing transformers in the floor with the kids!

Sleep took over the puppies by that evening! Have no idea why I was the chosen bed, but it made a cute pic!

Now this was too cute to me! Vicki was getting Noah cleaned up for bedtime and he just sat there like an adult with his legs crossed and he looked so serious! Had to snap a shot!

Well, we woke up to a White Christmas this year, which was totally a dream come true for me:)!! I don't get to see this kind of beauty every day and so I thoroughly enjoyed it! Here's some random scenery pics I took around the house. I love these pictures! The scenery was just breath-taking to me!

The dogs took to the snow after a while! At first Tucker kept lifting his paws up every time he walked, but eventually he got use to it! Sparkles ran all over it like it was the funest thing she'd ever been in. Although Vicki said it wasn't that way the first time they let her out before we had gotten up. I guess with the pups it gave her more courage:)!! The first pic is of Sparkles and Sadie, Sparkles wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good shot of her:), and then the second one is of both pugs.

Okay I know this might be silly to some, but for me even the steps as we walked out the front door covered in snow looked so neat!

Here's how the vehicles looked with blankets of snow!

On both sides of the front porch is these cool looking lil trees and I just loved how they got snow on them and it looks like layers! Really neat to me!

Okay check out my truck after all the snow had fallen, WAY COOL!! My lil pearl red Tacoma looked good with a blanket of white on it:)!! And in the last picture you can see that in the bed of the truck we got like 2in of snow, isn't that awesome!

I tried to get all the Dyer kids to pose for a picture on the stones/rocks in their backyard, but it was slippery and they ended up laughing and having fun just trying to get on them things:)!! So I just started snapping the pictures!

Then I got a good shot of John and Vicki! I like this picture of them! They had just built a fire in that barrel and unbelievably that was really warm from quite a distance!

Okay this is the camp fire that Phillip and John had been building fires in since we got there every night and now look at it with all the snow! I was so impressed with that! Then I just had to have a picture of Phillip and me in the camp fire! Like these pictures a lot!

Thought this was a cool head shot of Regan with a snowy background!

As we all started heading towards the front yard I caugh Noah cleaning out his car from all the snow and thought it was too funny! Had to have shots of it:)!!

We all thought taking all 5 dogs for a walk might be fun for everyone. We walked up and down the whole street looking at all the snow. It was a very nice walk! At the end of our walk Vicki and Mikayla decided the make snow angels!

Noah had to get in on some of that fun:)!!

Got some nice shots of Phillip cooking the fried turkey outside! Good thing he had brought his thermal clothing that the military issued him! That kind of stuff comes in very handy even off the job:)!! Normall they would be used for deployments and such.

The fried turkey Christmas dinner was definitely a highlight!! Everyone enjoyed that dinner so much that there was hardly any leftovers of anything! It was awesome! My favorite shot though was of Savannah eating the big turkey leg:)!!

Everyone ended up sitting around while looking at all the guns the kids got for Christmas that morning!

John was working on dishes after meal.

Christmas night when kids were in bed all the adults watched a movie and Sadie thought Vicki's robe was the warmest thing to snuggle up to at that point:)!! First she tried the rear and then when Vicki moved Sadie decided the chest would do!! Way too funny:)!!

The day after Christmas I thought we had lost Sadie. We couldn't find her anywhere for the longest time. Finally Phillip found her amungst our suit cases buried underneath a sweater:)!! It was so adorable! She must have been cold. I told Vicki about it and...

She came out with these huge treats for all the dogs! Each pup got one and boy did that warm Sadie up cause she chewed on that thing til the day we left. Of course all the dogs traded throughout that week though:)!!

Here's Tucker with his!

And Sadie with her's!

Phillip is such a good uncle! All three of the nieces latched onto him and wouldn't let go for nothing!! It was so funny! He dragged them all over the place and of course they laughed and laughed:)!!

Here's some different shots of Phillip and John playing the Wii together! Phillip really got into it:)!!

All the dogs got along wonderfully as you can see! Here's Sadie comfortably leaning on Sparkles!

And here's Sparkles and Tucker snoozin' cheek to cheek! Vicki and I think they had a crush on each other! You know how guys like the long legs, hehehe:)!!

By the end of the day everyone wanted some snuggle time! Savannah and Mikayla snuggled up with mommy!

I got to cuddle with Noah:)!!

For the twins' B-day, which is actually on the 3rd of Jan, but the party was on the 1st, Vicki and I made seperate cakes for them. Vicki made a delicious double layer chocolate cake for Noah, his fav. And I made a Red Velvet cake for Savannah, she was all excited about having a red cake. Although in the end the kids ended up liking the choc. the most and the adults seemed to have appreciated the red velvet a little more:)!! That was fine, it all got eaten before the weekend and everyone enjoyed it!

Noah makes a serious wish!

Noah blows out his candles!

Savannah makes her wish!

Savannah blew out her candles!

Noah seems to be thrilled with the Mudflap Transformer we got him!!

And Savannah made the perfect face for her appreciation of the Polly Pocket Car we got her!!

Here's a great shot of Noah in his full Transformer costume his parents got him for his B-Day!! So cute!

Noah tried to put his Transformer mask on Uncle Phillip while laughing:)!!

Savannah showed off her new fuzzy pink sweater Phillip and I got her! She's such a ham!

This is the results of the cakes by the end of the party:)!! I think they were well recieved!

Alyssa decided that Sadie needed to be crowned with one of the doll crowns at the end of the party and it was so cute! Poor Sadie was not too impressed, but we got a kick out of it:)!!

Regan stayed underneath Ron's feet while everyone played games after the party. I guess he thought he was protected from everyone there, who knows!! It was precious though!

On our down days when we didn't make any plans to do anything we all played board games, read, or played on the Wii. Of course we watched movies too, but playing together was the best! We brought our remotes from our Wii so we could play 4 people at a time on their Wii and that was awesome! I got a Shrek game for the Wii for Christmas from the Shop party on base and we played that with 4 people and man we laughed more than anything, so so so much fun:)!! Regan on the other hand decided he had worked long enough keeping us entertained and was too pooped to do anything else, hehehe!! He doesn't let me take many pics so I am thrilled to have this shot of my old doggy!!

On the last Monday of our trip we drove out to Cracker Barrel for lunch, one of our whole family's favs and while driving I had to take a couple shots of John n Vicki's street with the bridge and of the sides of the road with all the snow! The second shot of the bridge looks like a post card to me, love it!! And I thought the stone walls on the sides of the road looked so cool! And you can see the snow falling in the pictures too!

The bridge was so pretty with all the snow that I convenced Phillip to go back to it and take pictures of us once we came back from town. I took one of the creek first and then one of us. Breath taking scenery!!

Vicki took this picture of me cause she thought it was so cute to see 3 of the 5 dogs surrounding me while I was reading on the couch one night! You can only see paws of Sparkles (Dalmation) and most of the body of one of the pugs, and the other pug is above me on the back of the couch! It was cute when I realized it!

The last picture I have is of Phillip's new hat rack that his parents got him for Christmas. He actually got it up the day after we got back home so I took a shot of it to show off how nice it looks. No more hats laying around hopefully:)!! We both really like it on our closet door too! It's a perfect spot. Thanks again Mom~n~Dad Dyer!!

We had an awesome vacation and can't wait to go back! Loved all the time we spent with all of Phillip's side of the family so much! I'll get to see my side this coming weekend:)!

2009-08-09T11:31:00.001-07:00

Wasn't too sure what this was all about, but I played with it anyway. It was where you can make a cartoon of yourself to post on facebook or whatever, but since I do not have that as of yet I just posted on here. This is the image I came up with for myself. It's not completely a true depiction of myself, but I like it. Anyway, just playing around.

Create your own

Dyer Vacation in FL 2009

2009-07-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

John, Vicki, their 4 children, and their new dalmatian puppy all arrived here in PC late late Thursday night and so Friday we kind of just took it easy except the guys. Well, they went fishing:)! Us girls, Noah and the doggies all went grocery shopping in the morning and that was about it. It gave us all plenty of time to visit. Here are a few shots I got from that first day.

This was our first meet with Sparkles:)!! She is so adorable! She turned 3 months old while she was here so she is still a very young pup and very hyper! She was more hyper than the pugs, but the pugs are 18months old now! They had such a good time together! Regan wasn't bothered much and he loved that too:)!!

Since everyone arrived early enough Phillip decided to take John out fishing. They had a termendous day with lots of success! They caught a shark each and boy do they make a lot of fish to eat! They fileted them at whatever location they were at at the time, but I did get a picture of the pompino (however spelled). They were very pleased with their catch of the day:)!!

This is the guys' speckled sea trout they caught! And yes I cooked all this fish that night! It was very tasty too! The guys really liked the shark best though.

Saturday was our big day to go to FWB for the fireworks display done at the Landing on the water. Several booths were set up selling this and that and it is so much fun! Nellis AFB in Vegas has a grand celebration for the 4th as well, but I haven't seen any other place make such a grand display anywhere else other than Ft. Walton Bch. They do this every year. That will be one thing I will miss if where we go next time doesn't have something. We love going to this especially because all our families that are local go to it as well.

Well, with it being the 4th of July I had to dress Sadie up a little to celebrate! Don't you just love her little pom poms:)!!

We got all the kids patriotic hats to wear to this thing! They played with them for awhile. It was long enough for me to get a picture of at least! Josiah is the only one missing in this one. This was taken at Evangelistic church where we parked to walk down to the Landing for the fireworks. We picked up Gabe earlier in the day so he could play with the kids. Josiah was with his parents at a grill out with some friends at this point. It's a cute picture.

No other picture will ever compare to this one from now on!! I got all my nieces, nephews, and little brother all in one shot:)!! I just love it! Actually there is one missing and that is my little niece Kaitlynn whom lives in Alabama and could not come down this time around. She was greatly missed along with all of her family, but this picture was a goal I had all along when I started thinking about this vacation! I knew they'd all be together on this day and so I had to make sure I got a shot with all of them! Yea, I did it:)!! I took several and none of them had perfect faces for any shot so this is the best one and I love it!

Next to Vicki and Sandy this is my best friend right here! This is my sister (Crystal), her hubby (Chris), and of course their son (Josiah). They take really gorgeous pictures!

Here's my dad, Roy, at the grill cooking away. He cooked grilled shrimp, BBQ pork, and BBQ chicken. He used his own BBQ recipe as well. O he is an excellent cook! In my opinion there is no one like him as far as cooking goes. Phillip has always told me that I have been spoiled with his cooking and no one can top it! He's got that right:)!!

My stepmom, Roxanne, is serving in their church booth BBQ. They worked hard that day, but had fun it seemed!! The lady behind her is her pastor's wife and she is a sweetheart:)!

This is my middle brother, Michael, and his wife, Ashley, whom we just found out is pregnant:)!! Their baby should be due around February timeframe! They're a good-lookin' couple! Very sweet too! Michael is persueing a career in youth ministry and/or pastoring. He is in bible college at this point, but is the youth leader for Evangelistic Centre now. From what I have heard he is doing an excellent job of it too!! Very proud of him! Ashley works at a local bank and is doing very well too! She has been a wonderful addition to the family:)!!

These were some good shots of Vicki and John!

We brought strawberries along with us for our day out. Mikayla thought they were wonderful! She has the most beautiful hair. I love her long red hair. She is precious!

Isn't Savannah a sweetie!! She has the most heart melting smile I think!

Noah is holding a squirt bottle I bought for this very hot day. I knew we were going to be out all day and would be hot so I got a couple of these and the kids had a blast with them! They pretty much stayed soaked! Isn't he so cute! This is his best picture as far as smiles go. He is not one for picture taking!

Now is this a good lookin' niece or what!!

I love this picture of Phillip! He is so handsome no wonder I married him, hehe!!

This is one of my favorite shirts. It is patriotic without being overdone! One of the kids took this!

Got a good shot of Ron and Elaine! O they were so happy to spend this special day with all their family. We all missed Matthew, but savored every moment the rest of us had!

This is my oldest brother, Jonathan, he is the one whom just joined the Air Force. He just graduated from Tech School while John and Vicki were in town in PC. We are all so proud of him. Doesn't he look good! I was so glad to have so much family around me this day!

Now this is my little brother Gabe (or Gabriel). I couldn't get him to calm down enough to take a regular smile in his picture, but at least it shows how excited he was to have so many friends to play with on such a festive day:)!! You've probably seen him on my blog lots!

This is my nephew Josiah that I think most of you have seen on my blog before plenty of times as well. I thought this shot was so darling:)!!

These are some old friends from Evangelistic Centre that we have known for a long time, Kevin and Michelle. Now Michelle we've only gotten to know since we moved back to FL, but Kevin was one of Phillip's really good friends since before I moved to FL back in 96. John was good friends with him as well. Kevin was John's best man at their wedding back in 98. Kevin was a groomsman in our's in 2000. They are a lovely couple and we were thrilled once we saw them there at the celebration and invited them to join us. That was such a wonderful treat. And now I'll have their picture to put up as well!

This is just random shots of everyone getting ready to watch the fireworks. As you can kind of see there is the Dyers on one side, the Halls in the middle (my brothers) and then the Richards on the other side (my sister and her in-laws)!! It was a wonderful gathering. I love that we can all get along and hang out like that. It was a nice memory!

This is how our Sunday ended up. Ron and Elaine went to church that morning in FWB and then drove over to our house that afternoon. Everyone was so tired from the night before (4th of July) that we all decided that everyone could sleep in. It was nice too! After lunch the kids decided to have a fashion show for all of us. I had several dresses and things put aside for just such an occasion! So the first few shots are of the audience and then I put in some shots of some of the outfits the kids tried on. Even Noah got in on this fun! He tried on Uncle Phillip's old BDUs. They seemed to have had a good time playing with all that.

Even Sparkles had to get in on the fun of dressing up:)!! Vicki borrowed Sadie's Hawaiian hat and put it on her and isn't she just the cutest!!

Here's the kids on floats and styling in their goggles that Uncle Phillip and Aunt Dani got them! They really liked those goggles too!

Had to get a shot of Grandma watching all the action in the pool. She wasn't ready to get wet nor cold just yet!

Noah is totally into swords and so Vicki bought him a plastic sword for the pool and it actually squirts water too! So I went back and bought 2 more for John and Phillip to be able to play as well. I got this awesome shot of Vicki fencing with Noah though! He had so much fun with that!

Vicki took some shots with me and the kids!! You can see the guys in the background too! We had lots of fun in the pool!

After a long, hard, grueling day the puppies collapsed, hehehe:)!!

Monday was our big Fishing Excersion! The night before the guys got all the poles that we (me, Phillip, Elaine, and Ron) had bought for spoiling gifts and started fixing them up getting them ready for our day. It felt like Christmas to us! I got pictures of each of the kids when they got their poles! They were excited about having their very own poles to fish with!

Savannah got a princess pole. Her whole room at home is done in princesses and she loves the color pink too. She gave the biggest smile when she got her's. I think she liked it just a little:)!!

Mikayla got a Spongebob pole. All the kids like Spongebob, but because it has orange on it she likes that pole the best out of any other character! She squealed over it too!

Noah got a Transformers pole that we thought wasn't going to work, but Grandpa worked and worked on it til he figured it out the night before. Noah was pretty pleased with it too. He didn't let it out of his sight much after that:)!!

Alyssa got a bright shiney red pole that she was thrilled over!

This is our crew after we arrived at the EOD Beach. Check out the scenery too!

Isn't this a good shot of Elaine (Grandma)!

Grandma helped Savannah get all wrapped up in a towel so she could warm up a little before fishing!

John taught Vicki how to cast the net to catch bait fish for her first time! She seemed pretty pleased with herself afterwards! Firsts are always fun!

I thought this was a good shot of Alyssa playing with the sand in the water.

Here's Grandpa fishing!

Isn't this just a sweet picture of Alyssa helping her little sister Mikayla fish! I'm so glad I caught it! They will cherish their friendship for a lifetime!

Mikayla caught several fish. This was her first one, a flounder.

As you can see she was quite proud of that. Later on she called it her "Nemo" and wanted Aunt Dani to cook her Nemo!! It was very precious!

Noah fishing. He didn't catch anything that I know of, but he enjoyed fishing though! I have come to find that fishing is not about success anyway. It's all about casting and waiting:)!!

Alyssa fishing.

Alyssa caught a shark here and boy was she happy with that!!

Savannah liked fishing close to her Aunt Dani!!

Savannah's catch of the day was her very own "baby" catfish! That's what she called it at least! We had to throw it back of course, but got a picture of her catch first! She was so proud of that though! Didn't bother her one bit that we threw it back either! Of course she was thrilled every time she brought her line back in and her bait fish was still on and she thought she had caught something:)!!

Here's the kids with their broken down sand castle. I was a little too late to get a good shot of the whole thing before they started breaking it down. Although I did get a shot of their pond they built for the castle and they actually stole some of the bait fish to fill it with, hehehe!! Little smartees:)!!

John and Phillip started the clean up by cleaning the shark. I guess they have to be done right away. They finished the rest of the fish once we got home.

With it being a fishing/swimming day at the beach it just seemed like the day to grill out for supper. While Phillip worked the grill John tried his hand at splitting wood! Savannah actually got these pictures while we were all inside getting ready for our burgers and dogs!! She did a good job!

Tuesday was our down day. Ron and I both got sick and couldn't do anything. Fortunately, Elaine and Vicki didn't let that ruin their day and they took all the kids to Toys R Us and then on to Books A Million. They got backpacks and all sorts of goodies at Toys R Us and then got several books at Books A Million. These kids love to read books, which I think is awesome. John and Phillip that evening went fishing again while Vicki took the kids outside to the swimming pool. They all made a pretty good day out of not such a great start. It had rained most of that morning anyway so we wouldn't have been able to go out during the early day anyway, but I was so glad they were able to find things to do. It made good memories for all of them, but of course I didn't get any pictures!

On Wednesday we were all finally feeling up to going out. It rained Tuesday anyway, but we all drove out to the Destin Commons to play in the water park and go shopping! We started at a nice sandwich shop called Zoe's for lunch. Very yummy:)! Then the kids headed over to the water area where they played and had a blast!

Here are some random pictures of all the kids playing and running through the water area! They had such a good time. I'm not sure how long we were out there while they played, but it was a good long while!

Ron and Elaine found a bench that wasn't far from us at all, but it gave them time to have some grandparent moments! You could really tell that they were enjoying watching their grandkids run and play all over the place. I think we saw Ron draw a couple tears of joy over his blessings out there! Seeing that made everything even more rewarding after all the planning that us women did before this vacation ever started. I'm glad it meant so much to everyone!

I thought this was a good picture of the 4 of us.

Actually got some shots of when all 4 of the kids had the whole water area to themselves for a few short lived seconds!

Talk about getting your man to squeal, hehehe!! Set a wet kid in his lap and see what happens! Uncle Phillip yelled like a little girl! It was so funny:)!! Savannah laughed so hard!

Savannah's favorite color is pink and this picture really doesn't do her outfit justice. The outfit is a bright almost fuscia pink, but this picture makes it look like it is a light pink when it isn't at all. She is still so very cute though:)!!

Mikayla got her orange in her outfit. I told her she looked like 3 shades of sherbert. She likes sherbert so she thought that was cool!! Doesn't the hat just complete this outfit!! Adorable!

Noah got a dinosaur outfit that he really liked, but he is not fond of having his picture taken though. I'm not sure if Vicki will ever get this outfit off of him now:)!! He's so handsome!

Noah got a shoulder ride from Uncle Phillip while we were walking around.

I like these shots of everyone walking around the Commons. That is a very cool place to check out and walk around. There is plenty to do and see especially for kids.

We stopped at the Cold Stone Ice Cream Shop and everyone tried different ice creams. Got pictures of all of us just sitting around outside the shop. It had rained earlier that morning so it was nice to sit outside with the sun shining again.

Noah enjoyed his blue (cotton candy) ice cream as you can see:)!! This picture was actually taken by Savannah and I thought she did such a good job that I had to have this one in particular for the post. She took several that were good throughout the week

Uncle Phillip held Savannah on our way out from the ice cream shop. I thought the way she held on was so cute!

I got Alyssa's new outfit later on when we got home. This was her first opportunity to wear it. I loved the colors of it because I would have never put these 2 main colors together, but the flowers matched perfectly which made it all connect and go together well. What a cool outfit!! She is such a beauty!

Got several shots of everyone walking along the boardwalk Thursday morning. This boardwalk is about 1/2 to 3/4th of a mile long, no joke! The scenery is to die for though and it makes it totally worth the walk!

In the middle of the boardwalk is a tower that all the kids loved running up to and over looking everything! It is a pretty cool spot.

Here's where the shell finding started right after we got to the end of the boardwalk.

All the kids were thrilled with this land crab that was walking around!

Mikayla is finding shells everywhere!

Had to get pictures of everyone with the beach in the background. It was such a beautiful day!

This was a really cute picture of the twins!

We saw this blue jellyfish and thought it was so unique! Isn't is gorgeous though!

This is all of us walking back. I think the walk back and forth took longer than anything else! It's a beautiful walk though.

Once we were done with the beach we went over to Phillip's shop and checked it out. They greeted all the guys as we walked through. Then everyone stopped to look at a bomb that has always been displayed in the shop. I've never even paid attention to it honestly, but it's been there! I guess I am use to seeing them around now.

Phillip had to show off the segways they have, but no one got to play on those of course!

Uncle Phillip told all the kids to shake hands with the robot! They seemed impressed with that!

Alyssa gave the robot a can to see if it could crush it or not.

These 2 pictures are of the kids checking out the crushed can! They thought that was pretty cool!

Got a shot of Phillip actually controlling the robot. Can you see him using 3 fingers at a time. It's pretty amazing to watch in person.

John actually volunteered for Phillip to dress him up in the bomb suit and they just had a good ole' time doing that together!

Noah is checking out his dad in the bomb suit here!

Thursday night Ron and Elaine treated all of us out to Carrabba's in Panama City Beach. It is a wonderful place. The food is a little more expensive than Olive Garden, but the food is fantastic and the portions make it worth it as well. We all enjoyed the meal very much.

Here are some of the kids playing with some actual bread dough that the waiter brought out for them. They had a blast with it too.

The waiter took a picture of all of us, which I thought turned out quite nice!

After a long week of playing, wrestling, and lots of tug-of-war these pups were exhausted:)!! This is how they ended up at the end of the week. Actually every day was like this, hehehe!!

This was the last picture I got before everyone left. I didn't take any other pictures on this day actually. John and Phillip found this shell when we went to the beach on Friday and gave it to Alyssa. I had to have a picture of it. Isn't it the coolest shell ever!

We had the best time on this vacation and can't wait to get together next time. We hope to get orders to move overseas and then everyone come over there to vacation. That would be incredible for everyone including my side of the family as well.

Show~n~Tell

2009-06-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Ceramics have become a major hobby for me in the last year so I thought I'd share them with you. People ask me all the time if I would sell stuff, but I am NOT that confident in them at all. I mostly do them for myself and/or our home. This is just another collection to add to all my other collections in my house:)!! I collect anything with pugs just about, Thomes Kinkade puzzles, trip puzzles, 7 dwarfs, angels, and now Victorian dolls with fall colors. Unbelievably though I actually started ceramics when I was in middle school and that is what I started this post with. Enjoy:)!

Never got around to naming these 2 cats! These were done when I was in Middle School in one of my art classes. I loved art/crafts even back then, but now it is more available to me and has become a wonderful hobby! Am pretty impressed that I did this well with it back then though. There are flaws, but I'm proud of it!

This is a vase I actually made and painted in 8th grade I think. The colors changed once it was fired. It was suppose to be white with red and blue spots on it, but as you can see that's not what I got, but my name was on the bottom of it so we knew it was mine. I was very disappointed about it back then, but now it doesn't bother me at all. I actually like orange now!

This was my first project when I went to the ceramic shop. I saw 3 of the 7 dwarfs and that got my attention! They are my favorite characters of Disney. Phillip got me my first dwarf, Sleepy, when he was in Missouri when we were engaged and he was up there for Christmas with his family that year. From then on I was hooked worse than I was before. I had gotten hooked before we started dated when my dad and Rox took all of us kids to Disney World the first time and I got to see ALL 7 dwarfs walk in singing their song and got pictures and signatures of each one! Now my guest room is full of them:)!! Needless to say I enjoyed very much doing these dwarfs to add to my room!

I am definitely a collector and once I get hooked on a certain collection I usually do not pull away from it. Although I did let go of my Pilsbury Doughboy that I use to have in my kitchen, but it did not flow with the rest of my house and unfortunately no one sells him anymore either, so I needed to move on from that collection. An old collection that I have always enjoyed and kept since before Phillip and I got together was Angels. My Living Room and guest bathroom are done in angels and I think it is so elegant and the colors go with the new Victorian style I am working towards. These angels are called Molly, Winnie, and Isie (or Isabella). They are painted in my favorite wine color and they look great in our living room.

My collections start with my Cooking Collection. I had fun with these! No these do not have names as do all my other collections! Unfortunately these didn't even get dates on them because I honestly didn't think of it before I got them fired. Do not want to refire them just for that. All these pieces were done in food safe glazes with no toxic paints. Glenda, the ceramic shop owner, will not even let me paint a napkin holder in regular paints because of the napkins getting close to your mouth. She is very safe oriented when it comes to her ceramics. Slightly less colors to choose from, but they still make beautiful ceramics in the end.

Now if any of you know me at all you also know that I LOVE PUMPKIN PIE:)!! I ask for it every year for my birthday instead of a cake. I also love my dad's ice box cheesecake with blueberries, which he makes for my birthday every year as well. My Grandma usually makes the pumpkin and yes I had 2 different type pie/cake for my birthday every year if I can help it:)!! So with that when I saw this pumpkin pie holder I had to paint it:)! It was really simple to paint and it now sits on my china cabinet. I made Roxanne a Boysenberry Pie holder at the same time and it turned out really good, but did not get any pictures of it. Will have to do that later. These were glazed and fired. That's what makes them so shiney and hard to take pictures with:)!

I thought this salt/pepper set would be perfect for my Victorian theme and boy do we love them. Phillip says they are manly cause of how big and heavy they are. It took a whole canister of salt and pepper to fill these guys up and once I did that Phillip would not use anything else. I still had my regular sized ones out and he said no give me the manly ones!! It cracked me up! That is when I finally started putting my Doughboy stuff away. We are thrilled with the change!

This series is what convenced me to change my theme in my kitchen to Victorian, which I realized later that my whole house mostly goes off of the Victorian style really. Now my kitchen will flow much better with the rest of my house, which will be really nice. Anyway, I glazed and fired these canisters and now they sit on my high shelf for decoration. I have really enjoyed them too. Part of them is painted with my favorite color, wine!

This collection below is my Easter Collection. Did not have them done in time to put out this year for Easter, but will have them next year. Have a few more Easter pieces to paint as well to add to this collection, but not sure when I'll worry about getting to them as I am working so diligently on my Victorian stuff right now, but we'll see.

Now to tell you the names of these little dudes I have to start with the chick sitting on the brown rabbit's head. His name is Nester then Howie, Chester, and Peter Cottontail. Can you believe it I actually used a common known name for one of my rabbits, but he looked so much like the image I have always had in my head for Peter Rabbit that I had to give him the name!!

This was my first big item I had done before and he almost made me not ever want to dry-brush ever again! To make the different shades of gray come out in different spots I had to go over it so many times I lost count, but it was worth it in the end! I named him Oscar! Have a lot of pride in this guy! I just think he is so adorable:)!

This is Phillip's Easter Collection. This rabbit's name is Mr. Riquettes! Don't ask me where that name came from! It just kind of popped out of my mouth and Phillip liked it:)!

This series of rabbits Phillip worked on for a good while, but had really good results! He's definitely got talent in the painting area as well. Although he does not enjoy as much as I do. Snoozer, Dangle, and Rocky are their names. I'm sure you can figure out which name goes to which rabbit:)!!

Below is my Garden Collection so far! Use to have a Daisy in this collection, but it got broken and shattered to where there was no way we could repair it. Will just have to paint a new one later on. All these pieces looked great in my flower garden when I had it. Now they decorate my porch by themselves and still look very entertaining:)!! Even the UPS man says how much he likes them when he comes!

Now these I have not antiqued as of yet so I shouldn't have a picture of them yet, but I keep forgetting that they need to be finished! They are still cute to me though. Their purpose was to hold some venus fly traps for us, but so far no one has had them at the stores yet. We check every so often. Their names are Mavis and Mathis!

Since I enjoyed my sunflowers last year I had to paint some ceramic sunflowers. Their names are Mrs. Sunburst and Sonny!

This mushroom was so cute I just had to try and paint her. Picking out colors is sometimes harder than what you think, but it was fun! I named her Penelope, she just looked like a Penelope to me:)!

Phillip and I both did a tree trunk and stump together. Phillip did the stump and I did the trunk. We had a lot of fun doing these together. We named them Trunkton and Frumpy:)!!

Walley is my ogre pot that holds my plumeria plant that a friend gave me. In a year's time I will have to transplant the plant into a bigger pot. It is much bigger now than it is in the picture, MUCH BIGGER! Has not given me a beautiful yellow flower as of yet, but gorgeous nice big leaves. It is still a young plant though.

This is my lady ogre pot named Willa. Walley had to have a partner on the porch!!

This catipillar was done by Phillip. This was his first attempt at dry-brushing and he did an excellent job of it! We named him Mr. Jeepers!

All the above would not be possible if it wasn't for these 2 pieces below! Here is my palat and brush holder. The picture really doesn't do them justice for their colors. They are orange with yellow sparks on them. I love the colors! They were glazed and fired. I haven't had any problem with anyone getting mine mixed up with their's at the ceramic shop as of yet:)!!

Of course I have plenty more ceramics than what's listed, but do not have pictures of everything as of yet. I keep forgetting to get a picture of my manger scene, which in all honesty is one of my finiest works in collections. The wisemen are my favorite cause I used matallics and those are fun to use! Also have all the figurines and such that we, Phillip and I, made for the Dyer's. And I am still working on my Victorian figurines at this point and will do a post on them alone once I am done with them!

Hope you enjoyed my little hobby:)!

Gabe's Visit June 22-26, 2009

2009-06-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

I hadn't realized how long it had been since we had Gabe over, but after this week it dawned on me that it's been quite a long while since his last visit. The first 2 days were the hardest just getting on some kind of routine with him. He did wonderfully it was me that couldn't keep up, hehehe!! By Thursday I was doing pretty good, but he was going home on Friday, of course! Isn't that how it always works! Here's the pictures I got from the week when I finally realized that hey I need to be taking pictures! That's how I keep my memories of each adventure! Enjoy!

This is the project we ended up working on for the week. Although I thought it would take longer than one day! This is the beginning pictures of Gabe's dolphins. As you can see he is wrapped up in Phillip's apron so that he wouldn't ruin his clothes. He looked like a kid chef:)!! It was cute.

I took Gabe swimming in our pool several times throughout the week and boy did he love it! We ended up out there 2 to 3 times a day! He would try to scarf his lunch and/or supper down to get out there faster. I'd have to explain to him that him joking wouldn't help us getting out there. Plus we had to wait to let our stomachs settle. I'd let him watch a short video to distract him during the waiting time:)! He looks older than 6 though doesn't he!

Gabe loved this little duck we had in the pool, but it carries chlorine it to help keep our pool clean. We have another smaller duck in the pool as well that is a thermometer. Gabe had a hard time not playing with them. I've got to get more toys for the pool.

Here's a great shot of Gabe swimming under water! He did an excellent job of swimming. I was very impressed with him on his skill level!

This is a good shot of both Phillip and Gabe! They make my pool look so much deeper than it really is:)!!

Got several shots of the puppies in the pool, but Gabe was only in a few of them. This is Tucker swimming with the guys. Those puppies would follow Gabe all around the pool!

Gabe is swimming with Sadie here. She doesn't like to get in as much as Tucker does nor does she seem to swim as easily as Tucker to me. Gabe loved having the puppies in the pool!

Once Gabe finish his dolphins I got some pictures outside with him and his dolphins he worked so hard on. O was he proud of them things! The last thing that was done was spraying them with the sealer and it just takes a few minutes to dry and that's why we were outside. He seemed to have had a really good time with this project!

We had a blast with Gabe for the week and are looking forward to his next visit. Hopefully it will be longer too. I loved having him here while Phillip was at work the most. The house wasn't so empty or lonely:)! It was sad to see him go home! Got to start thinking of some projects for us to work on when he comes back!

Our 9th Anniversary

2009-06-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, June 13th, we decided to go out for our late Anniversary since I was in Las Vegas for the actual day, which was June 10th. We both wanted to do something outdoors and not spend money on just a meal, but have fun. So we went Goofy Golfing and had an absolute blast with it! We couldn't have asked for a better day and we got great pictures of it too, which makes it all the more memorable!

At the begining of our game there is these bridges we had to cross in order to get to some of the holes! It was a really neat setup, which made it all the more fun! We got some good shots on the bridge!

I thought this man-made waterfall over all the rocks was absolutely breath-taking! Had to have pictures taken with that in the background! Then Phillip got the bright idea of taking them diagonally and they turned out pretty good!

I added this one to the list because I thought it was cute. This octopus (however spelled) was right in the middle of the water and I thought it was a great character out there on the course!

Our of all the pictures we took at the Goofy Golf course this was our favorite! As you can see I like it so much that I changed the header of my blog to this picture. It turned out so well! This will be added to our wall of Anniversaries in our hallway for our 9th!!

There was one part of the game that we had to walk inside a cave to putt one hole and it had a waterfall cascading down on one side of the cave. We took the best shot we could of us in front of the waterfall, but you can't see it all that well in the background. We still liked the picture though! It was really neat scenery!

We are pretty much at the end of our game with these last 2 shots. We had another 2 or 3 holes left, but there was these really cool looking wooden stairs we were having to walk down to get to our next hole and so I thought it made for a good picture or two!

This has got to be my most favorite picture of Phillip to this day! I think he is so cute in this pose:)!! He was trying to be funny, which he was, but he didn't expect me to take it and I did:)!! I love it. This is him on the top of the same stairs I was on the bottom of. We met in the middle to swap out the camera!

This is what we did for our Anniversary and we had a blast with it. We went for ice cream at a specialty shop afterwards, which was really yummy too! It was called Bruster's and Phillip had a key lime pie waffle cone ice cream that he just loved and said it was his new favorite now! I got a hot fudge sundae with white raspberry truffle ice cream and it was out of this world! Raspberry is one of my favorite flavors anyway and this was really good!

It was a perfect Anniversary Day. We really enjoyed it and plan on doing it again in the near future!

The Narrows @ Zion National Park

2009-06-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

Here is the beginning of our hike at the Narrows on Zion National Park. This was an incredible display of nature! I was in awe by the scenery!

This is part of our group getting ready to start. Don't you just love Uncle Norman's dew-rag (however spelled)!! He didn't keep it on very long, but for the length of time he did you should have seen the looks he got or at least that we acted like he was getting:)!! Makes him look like a mean biker, but he is nothing like that at all so it made it funny!! We all had lots of fun on this trip together.

This is what the ground looked like the whole way, solid rocks! There were very few and far between spots of sand/mud to walk on which was refreshing, but like I said there were not many places like that. I thought this picture was pretty though. It reminded me of the rocks by the Lighthouses in Maine when we went up there to go camping. Although we never walked on them. We only saw them from a far off distance. I did see pictures and they look just like this is seems. I even have a puzzle of the rocks up there. Amazing how you can find simularities between a lush humid place and a desert!

And here's the reason why this place is called the Narrows because there is a narrow path between the mountains! Isn't it just gorgeous! I couldn't believe this was actually my camera taking this picture. It looks too beautiful for a regular camera:)!!

Here we are all just walking through the rocks and water. We made a zigzag trail through it because we were trying to stay where the shallow parts were. So this is pretty much what we looked like the whole time we hiked.

At this point we hit the deepest water we had walked through. This water is melted snow and is so cold it aches so imagine letting that cold of water get all the way up to your chest! Yeah, that was rough, but fun!

This is also the point where Scott and Laurie (Uncle Norman's friends) had to turn back because it was too deep for the kids to try to cross. Fortunately, for us it didn't last long, but the kids would have had a hard time with it that deep and having to walk on rocks as well.

Aunt Diane was the one who inspired the picture taking at this point though. Boy was she loud when that water got higher and higher on her! The pictures of her coming out of it are priceless:)!! You can see Dalston smiling at the situation too!

I thought this was a good shot of mom! I like all the rocks and scenery behind her. She did very well on this hike!

Obviously I didn't get many shots of myself since I was the one with the camera, but I saw this beautiful waterfall coming right down the mountain side and had to have a shot with it. So I gave the camera to mom and hiked across the rough water to get to it. Really made my hike a little harder to get over there cause no one else went that way except Dalston and me, but it was so worth the waterfall though. I like this picture. Waterfalls are one of my favorite sceneries too!

This is the end of our hike here. I actually finished first and was able to sit on top of a stone wall and watch everyone come in and I would holler their name and when they looked up in surprise I'd take a shot! It was quite amusing:)!!

In second place came Dalston! His picture actually turned out pretty nice! I thought it was a good shot of him!

In third place was Uncle Norman (mom's brother)!

In forth place was my mom, Sheila!

In fifth place was Dalston's friend that I will not try to mess up on spelling, but she is a character to hang out with:)!!

And in sixth place was Aunt Diane (mom's sister)!

Everyone really did a great job on this hike! It was not simple, it was quite tough and we were all quite proud of each other! Of course that's after we all thawed out and realized it was over, hehehe!!

This was a wonderful experience that I am glad to have on my list of things I've done, but I have no intention of ever doing it again:)!! It was an amazing challenge! Although Phillip says I will be doing it again because he wants me to go with him when he goes. I told him Dalston and Michael Fedele could handle my spot!!

Josiah's Visit

2009-05-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

We had Josiah from late Thursday night til Sunday afternoon. We made the best of it. We had a really good time with him.

Every morning Siah was with us he would watch some cartoons while I finished waking up with my coffee:)!! Tucker decided this was his place with him in the morning too! It was really sweet! The chair they are sitting in is one of the ones I am getting reupholstered. You can tell it took a tumble out of my truck on it's way here with the little mishap on the arm, but I do not consider that damage because that will be easily repaired with the reupholstering. I can't wait for that.

On Friday while Uncle Phillip was at work I took Josiah to the park we had been walking at and he had a ball there. This police car was his favorite I think. He played on it more than anything else.

At his house down the street there is a park that he calls the "Yellow Park" because all the equipment is yellow so he decided this one was called the "Red Park"!! It tickles me what kids come up with!

He loved this slide. He kept telling me watch Aunt Danielle watch! Of course I was watching him! He was my only purpose for being there and I enjoyed it so much!

I honestly did not know what this thing was to begin with. Actually I still don't know what it is called, but Siah knew exactly what it did. He told me to put him on it and so I picked him up and he grabbed it. Then he said spin me so I did. That thing was pretty cool. It's tilted a little so that when you come down one side it goes faster and he loved it. He went around it twice, but I stayed right with him so didn't get any pictures of him actually on it. He finally told me he was slipping and I grabbed him. I couldn't believe he knew what that was, but Crystal told me later that there is one like it at the park she takes him to in FWB. That explains it!

Now this was the highlight of the day for Siah. There is some train tracks at the park, but I have never seen a train come through and with perfect timing one showed up while we were there and Josiah was thrilled with it. He kept asking me if we could go to it. I had to explain that it was working and couldn't stop for us to check it out:)! He was mesmorized by it! And it honked it horn a bunch too and he liked that as well. That was pretty neat!

I got him on the teeter totter and bounced him all over the place. He laughed and laughed!!

We took his scooter to the park with us so that when he finished with the playground he could ride it around the park. He had a blast with it and went everywhere. I definitely got my exercise with him on that. I chased him all over the place with him yelling come on Aunt Danielle:)!! O goodness what a day! I took him to the bridge as you can see and he rode it all over that too. I did get him to stop long enough to check out the pond and got a couple shots there. Doesn't he look so much older than 3! I can't get over a 3 year old being coordinated enough to ride that scooter so well. He amazes me!

Okay I do not know if Josiah has ever had a popcycle or not before, but he was in heaven with this thing we gave him:)!! The pictures are priceless! The last one he is telling Tucker he can't have any, which was so adorable:)!! The orange one was his favorite.

Uncle Phillip took him to the beach on Saturday to go fishing! They seem to have had a really good time, but of course no pictures. All they caught was bait fish too. Josiah told his mommy he didn't get to go fishing, but he actually did for like 2 hours. They came home soaking wet!

The last pictures I have of Josiah are of him coloring. He likes markers better than crayons and Crystal made sure he had the kind that wouldn't mark on anything, but paper:)!! I didn't mind that one bit. We had a good weekend together and I can't wait for our next one. He's so cute!

Hawaiian Babies:)

2009-05-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

It was time to show off the babies for a change so I put on their Hawaiian hats and started shooting the camera. They are so adorable, hehehe:)!! Although they couldn't get the hang of the hats, but the pictures were priceless to me!

I started with Sadie and she is our "little princess" of the house. She acts as if we are suppose to kiss her paw every time we talk to her:)!! She is so cute. Even if we ask all of them to go outside she will wait about 2 minutes after the boys have went out and then she'll expect you to let her out on her own terms and time. Sometimes it is quite funny, other times it gets annoying. She does the same thing coming in too. We have shut the door before to make her think we're walking away from the door and that seems to work perfectly. She'll come running then. She definitely doesn't want to be left behind, hehe!! Anyway this is our little trio that we absolutely adore!

This is Regan or "Reganodo" as I often call him for some reason, not sure why! He is not too fawn of pictures really. He turns his head every which a way to avoid them, but sometimes I just think he needs to suck it up and let me have some bragging rights:)!! He is such a handsome old doggy and we love him to death. Everyone always tells us he has the prettiest colored coat and we totally agree! He is very loyal too. His hearing loss and arthritis are getting pretty severe lately, but we will love and take care of him for as long as we have him around. He is very well behaved and has the best manners.

Last, but not least is our "little man" Tucker! He is definitely the clown of this house. He is so playful and full of energy. He can go for hours on end. He makes us laugh more often than anything else. These pictures show his personality perfectly. As you can see he is also the "HAM" of the family too:)!!

Missouri Trip April 21-27, 2009

2009-04-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is where our whole trip starts according to pictures because I didn't even get the camera out til we went to the kids' Tumbling Classes. We actually snuck away for a week and went to Missouri. It was such a wonderful trip. We mostly stayed around the house and visited. Although we did get in a couple outings and so I got some cool pics of them. First we went to the Tumbling Class on Thursday night. then we went to Mikayla's Field Trip to a Farm. After that I caught some pics just around the house. It was one of the best trips we have had in a very long time.

So the first picture I took was of Alyssa running around her class getting ready to start. Alyssa has her own class and the younger ones have the class right afterwards. Mikayla will be moving up soon though. We were totally thrilled to be there, they all did such a good job. Here's Alyssa.

I got a couple shots of Alyssa stretching before they started. She did a great job with it.

Alyssa is actually touching her head with her feet in these two pictures. This is not normal! My body says "I don't think so"!!

Alright can we say "OUCH"!! I mean look at her split and she had to do it on both sides. My legs and everything else cramped up just watching her:)!!

She did some type of backwards crawl here. Very interesting!

This is Alyssa's Bridge. She just goes into these moves with such ease! She is very graceful.

Isn't this an awesome handstand! The instructor might be holding her up there, but she got up there by herself! I was so impressed!

Here's Alyssa doing a flip of some sort. I am clueless to all the names of these moves.

She is learning to go into a bridge without using her hands first. Then she pops them back at the last minute. I don't think I could do it, but she did very well. This was the first time she had done it in class I think.

This is the last move I have for Alyssa. She is doing a cart wheel here.

Now this starts the younger ones' tumbling class. They start just like Alyssa did by running in circles.

This is the beginning of the stretching. As you can see Noah goes in the opposite direction some of the time and it just made watching it even more fun in my opinion!

This is so funny to me! The instructor told everyone to act like they were rubbing on peanut butter and jelly. Noah told her that he wanted the peanut butter on top while everyone else was busy rubby it on the bottom, hehehe!! It cracked me up:)!!

Here is some kind of roll back stretch. Love watching them do all this!

First you have the girls doing thier Bridge. Then Noah did his, but Mikayla fell so I did not get a pic. with all 3 of them doing it at the same time!

Don't you just love this hair!! Static got a hold of Savannah when she got done doing her bridge:)!!

The girls both did this backwards crawl while Noah was waiting to do his bear crawl.

I think this move was called the Bear Crawl. Noah could not wait to show this move to Uncle Phillip:)!! First is Mikayla, then Savannah, and finally Noah!

Noah is so cute starting his forward roll.

I thought this one was so funny and cute. Savannah decided Noah was taking too long on his roll so she just took off and ended up right with him.

Here's Mikayla doing her frontflip. All the kids were taught to do a "tada" before and after each move, but I only caught one of them each time so Mikayla's is her ending "tada".

Savannah decided to do a backflip. I got her begining "tada" here.

Here's Noah's "tada" before he does his next move.

Here Noah goes with his front flip. I really thought it was neat how they used the ball to help teach them how to do this.

Mikayla did this low flip thingy. I have no idea what it was called, but it looked like something I don't need to try:)!!

Here's Savannah doing her low flip thingy! She really took off too!

I tried to get Noah's low flip thingy, but all I could capture was his beginnings. He was too fast for me to get the endings. He did well though once he got going:)!!

At the end of class the instructor told all the kids to shake it out and they did!!

On Friday Mikayla had a field trip to a farm. The preschool was taking a bus for all the kids and any parents that would ride with them and help with the kids. Vicki could have ridden with them, but she knew she would have the twins with her and not that they were coming on the field trip with Mikayla, but the farm and it's tour is open to the public so it was okay to bring them. So with them she knew she had to take her own vehicle and meet them there. While we waited on the bus to arrive at the farm there was a pond close to the parking lot so Uncle Phillip took the twins down to it and we went down after them and I got this awesome picture of the twins sitting on the rocks. They were wearing thier "twinsy shirts" and the shirts said "Mom's Official Cookie Tasters". Isn't that just the cutest!!

This was Mikayla's first bus ride and she was absolutely thrilled about it all week. So I made sure I got pictures of it for her!

This is one of my favorite pictures of Mikayla mostly because she is yelling "AUNT DANIELLE" hehehe!! She was so excited that I came to her field trip. The funny part was she ran to her mom first while yelling for me and gave her a hug first! I grabbed her and tickled her to death for that and said what's up with that!! She just laughed at me! It just melted my little heart:)!!

While we waited for the tour guide to come out there was a well with a pump that all the kids started playing with. Mikayla tried to get a chance, but I'm not sure she ever did get to pump it once. She did get pinched once when she grabbed it because she grabbed it too high and the other kids pumped it and she got caught, OUCH! We all tried to intervene, but those kids were ruthless and pushy. Teachers and other parents didn't help either, that was frustrating, but that seemed to have been the only issue throughout the field trip thank goodness.

Uncle Phillip held Savannah high in order for her to get a good look at all the kids crowding around to pump the well. He's such a sweet uncle!

Noah got his chance to pump the well after everyone had moved on. He's so handsome!!

For the first thing that we did on the tour was the guide read a silly sheep book to the kids that told them a little about sheep and gave them an opportunity to ask questions. All three Dyer kids listened very well. In the picture there is Mikayla on the left side, Savannah in the middle and Noah on the right. They had really good behavior!

All three kids got to pet a real sheep once the story was over and then we headed out to the barn to go pet other animals. That sheep was so cute and it didn't even attempt to bite anyone. All the kids did really well with it and honestly gave it no reason to either. The sheep's name was Marsha and she had a last name too which was Mellow, hehehe!!

They had a fake milking cow that they poured water into so the kids could pretend to milk a cow! Mikayla laughed at the fake cow and I just happened to catch it!

Mikayla finally got her turn to milk the cow the right way when everyone else cleared out. She is very shy so she doesn't push herself in the middle of it at all. I wanted to do it for her, but she enjoyed it much better once everyone else was out of the way anyway. Plus I got a better picture of it then too.

The little pony stuck it's head in between the fence so that the kids would pet it! Mikayla thought that was funny:)!!

Here's Mikayla looking at the goats. They were too far away to pet.

Mikayla had to check out the cows first and then she pet them!

Uncle Phillip is petting the cows with Mikayla and Savannah on his shoulders!

John was able to get off work a little early to meet us at the farm to enjoy the field trip as well. I got John and Noah's attention for a quick shot while they were checking out the cows. The twins love to be on shoulders! I think it's sweet!

This picture was actually taken almost as soon as we got there, but I decided to put it with all the playground pictures because it is a good one of the whole design of this playground. Isn't it cool! You can see Uncle Phillip walking with the twins to it, but they didn't get to play because the bus showed up and on to our tour we went. The playing came later after the tour. And boy did they love it too!

I just thought this was a good picture of Noah coming down the slide at the playground.

Savannah just climbed the side of the barn to get to the top and she looked behind her to see if Noah was coming or not!

And here he comes climbing right behind her!

Here's Mikayla about to go down the slide. That playground was really neato!

The last thing we did on the Field Trip is have picnic lunches right outside the barn. I got shots of all 3 of the kids just before we ate. First is Mikayla, then Noah, and Savannah. They were all so good for this trip and we had lots of fun with it too!

Below is just some pictures I took while we were sitting around the house relaxing. I love pictures if you haven't noticed and so I get them whenever I can!

Alyssa is giving Tucker a good ole' belly rub and he is milkin' it up! He loves his belly rubs!

Got a couple cute pics of Vicki and Mikayla. Vicki is braiding Mikayla's hair in the first one and then lovin' on her in the second one:)!

Mikayla is learning some of Alyssa's tumbling moves here so that she is somewhat ready for Alyssa's class since she will be moving up to it in a week or two. She was doing pretty good for her first tries.

While Alyssa was practicing her "bridge" she decided to say hi to Grandma!! So if you are looking through this Elaine, these 2 pictures are especially for you!!

O this was so funny! Sadie found herself a little flying friend and got it to the ground and somehow while she was playing with it, it got stuck under the little rug by the door. Well, Sadie proceeded to actually "ROLL" the rug to get her friend back out to play! We were laughing so hard at her and couldn't believe she actually rolled that rug. Cheap entertainment, what can I say:)!!

Now Sadie is getting pampered to the max by Aunt Vicki:)!! She was eating this attention up! She's so precious!

Talk about being pampered! Does Tucker know how to use a pillow or what! That just struck me as funny when I noticed he was actuallying using the pillow for his head. How did he know to do that! It was really cute though!

Here is Mikayla petting the pups and she had a great smile! She is also wearing an outfit Uncle Phillip and I got her for this past Christmas. It's kind of a challenge to find the right colors for her gorgeous red hair, but she turns out so adorable when we do. I love finding clothes for all the kids.

I had never seen the dogs do this before, but Sadie decided to eat in between Regan's feet and it looked so cute I had to take a shot of it!

We really had a blast in Missouri this past week and cannot wait for them to come here in the summer. I didn't get pictures of everything, but I think I took quite a few even so.

Ron Dyer's Birthday Weekend

2009-04-20T14:41:00.001-07:00

This year I really wanted to give Ron a Patriots Birthday. Ron (Phillip's dad), John (Phillip's oldest brother), and Phillip all are fans of the Patriots Football team. So I knew this would be a big hit. Of course there is no where here to get this kind of stuff so I ordered it online. Found some balloons as you can see and took them to Winn Dixie to get blown up. Got a table cloth too, but didn't get a good shot of it though. One came out too dark and the other blury so I gave up. Those balloons were huge though! They definitely made a statment!

To keep with the Patriots theme we were going for Ron's B-Day I actually got an edible cake image that I got personalized as well. Then I tried every pan I had to see which one it was going to fit in. Of course it had to fit in the biggest one possible. In order to make that fit that meant I had to make a massive pie. I have a tradition of making Ron a Lemon Chiffon Pie that our friends in Vegas taught me how to do, but it is not very big. Well, I had to double the crust, which wasn't too bad, but I had to triple the lemon chiffon part to fill it all in. Let it sit all night long and the next morning went to put the image on it and remembered that we'd end up putting the whip cream on top the image so I decided to put a layer of whip cream on the pie and then added the image. The image only took a short time to absorb into the whip cream and it turned out great! I was very impressed with it. Ron seemed to have loved it. His reaction was perfect when I showed him the pie with the Patriots on it. I was pleased:)!!

Here's Phillip lighting the balloon candles. We definitely needed more volume (in people that is) when we sang Happy Birthday, hehehehe:)!! You can also see the Patriots slipper socks we got Ron for his gift! He love them and put them on as soon as he opened the box:)!!

This was a good picture of Ron and his Patriots Pie. It was a good shot of him even though I cut a part of his head off. I took others that didn't cut him off, but he gave his best smile in this one so I kept it:)!!

I thought this picture was funny! Sadie is subtly trying to beg Elaine for her popcorn:)!! Elaine is not paying her one bit of attention, hehe!! It cracked me up.

We all know how much Ron and Elaine love dogs, hehehe!! NOT!! Well, the puppies want to say Happy Birthday by saying how relaxing Ron was:)!! Aren't they so cute!

This is another good shot of Ron's Patriot socks too! He really liked them. Wasn't really going to do gifts this year, but I couldn't pass up the Patriot socks when I saw them.

It was a nice weekend and we all enjoyed each other's company. Phillip grilled ribs on Sunday and they were so tasty and tender, yummy yummy! He did a really good job with them. Will have to carry on this Patriots theme to Phillip's B-Day though. He told me he expected it now! Have to see if I can find some different stuff for his so it's not a complete repeat:)!!

Washington D.C. April 4-8, 2009

2009-04-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

We flew into Washington D.C. on Saturday afternoon. We stayed at the Key Bridge Marriot Hotel in Arlington. The hotel was way more than what I could have expected. It was absolutely breath-taking! We got a corner room on the 9th floor so we had windows on two sides of the room and it was from wall to wall ceiling to floor. The scenery outside the windows were unbelievable!

I woke up Sunday morning and got my camera out and took a few shots of the scenery right outside our windows. You could see the Washington Monument on one side. The one thing I truely enjoyed was that the city was centered around so many trees. They knew how to build a city without cutting down all the trees or they planted them. That was so impressive to me! I absolutely loved the scenery!

I thought these two pictures were really neat because I caught my own image in the pictures along with the scenery! How cool is that!

I had so many firsts on this trip that I wasn't sure if I could handle it all at one time:)!! This was my very first time on any Metro. Not that it's looks are impressive at all, but just the fact I had never been on one gives reason to take a picture! The guys were really gracious about all my picture taking too! I was grateful for that:)!

This was the first I saw of the Cherry Blossoms! WOW! That is all I can say about those. They were so gorgeous! The first 3 pics are of that, but have the Capitol in the background. After that I have a ton of pictures of the Capitol and added all the Cherry Blossoms I could to the scenery of the Capitol. I loved seeing the Capitol. It was really amazing! We didn't get to tour it this day because it was closed on Sundays, but we got to later on.

This was the photographer that was hired to follow us around the whole trip. The guys weren't too happy with him by mid-day, but I am sure we will all appreciate his work later. We should recieve his pictures in a few weeks.

Here is a view of the Washington Monument from the Capitol steps! I thought it was just gorgeous! The day was perfect for all these pictures too!

While we were walking between the Monument and the Capitol I got a couple back shots of the whole gang! From the left is Cooper from North Carolina (SrA), Courtney n Heath Temple from Alaska(TSgt), in between them and the next person is our AFA (Air Force Association) Rep. Shane, our guide is not seen but he is right beside Shane whom is called "Scoop" by everyone but his name is (SMSgt) Cob, then there is Jazmine from Utah (also a SrA), she brought her supervisor because they told her she had to have a baby-sitter:) his name is (SSgt) Wilham, after him is Gus from Germany (SMSgt), and on the right hand corner you can see Phillip's sleeve, but you can see him in the second picture!

This was the Reflection Pool behind the Capitol along with some statues. It was gorgeous. Way more to the scenery than what I could get into a picture, but at least this gives me memories!

After the Capitol and Monument walking around we did they took us to the Air and Space Smithsonian. My Dad would absolutely just love this place. I'm not sure we would ever get him out of there actually:)!! It was full of plane models, astronaut stuff, and so many other interesting things.

Now this was the first motorcycle that was made. It went 135mph. It used an airplane engine and that's how they tested the first airplane engines. Quite impressive I thought!

All plane models.
This caught my attention because of the bike and plane put together. It was very interesting!

Here is an idea of something that could possibly fly.

If I am not mistaking this was just an idea as well or model of an idea of how to make something fly. I thought it looked so awesome I had to have the picture. This was my favorite thing in the Smithsonian.

This was a neat looking shuttle, but couldn't get any other shots of it because there was too many people around it.

These represent the planets and I thought they looked neat because they were so large. I was glad a kid was there to show how big they were, but still in real life they were way bigger than the picture shows of course.

Here's a robot they took to Mars.

This is the first non-stop plane that flew over the Atlantic. I thought that was cool!

This is all astronaunt stuff inside the Smithsonian.

The next thing we toured was the Museum of Art. I honestly thought this was boring! It wasn't bad just wasn't the funnest thing we did in my opinion. All the pictures were beautiful, but that was it! The picture of us together is actually inside the museum. That scenery was really nice to me!

This is the National Archives. We didn't go inside, but I liked all the architech so I took pictures of everything!

Right outside the National Archives was this HUGE metal spider built right in the middle of the Botanical Garden. We had lunch close by and when we walked by this spider I was blown away. It had to be anywhere from 8-10ft tall. It was really cool! And if you look close there is a bird's nest right in one of the legs of the spider. I thought that was neato!!

This is the House of Treasury. It is practically right beside the White House.

We were not able to visit or tour the White House, but we got close enough to get a couple pictures. Boy was it amazing to even be that close to it! I told everyone it looked like Phillip and me were photo-shopped in with the White House:)!! I still like these pictures though!

The Vietnam Memorial was chilling to me. You start at one end and it is shorter than your foot, but as you walk towards the middle it grows as much as 8ft or so according to Phillip. Each name has a diamond at the front of it or a cross sign or they might have a diamond with a cross in it. The diamond means they were found. The cross means they were MIA. And both means they were MIA at one time, but were found later after the war. Isn't that interesting! We overheard another guide saying all this.

This was the end of our touring for Sunday. This is the best shot I could get of the Lincoln Memorial. We did not get very close so I did my best and still wanted to show it off!

After all the touring we had about a half an hour break to decompress in our rooms before we had to meet the driver to take all of us to Chief McKinley's house on Andrew AFB for a "Social" he puts together every year for the award recipiants. Chefs fight for the opportunity to cook for this dinner and then whomever is chosen, which is more than one, has this competition going on while they cook to see who can make the best food! Well, I'll tell ya it was all just absolutely delicious and the setup was incredible. They actually decorated everything with training munitions or bombs. It looked great. Those that did not come from EOD that were there thought it was the oddest decor, but we all loved it! All the guys went around telling others what each thing was. That dinner was one of my favorite outtings of the trip.

Monday morning we had a tour of the Pentagon. We were there most of the day practically. They even had lunch for us in the Pentagon. We were allowed to tour parts of the Pentagon that is not open to the public so it was very interesting to say the least!

Finally we were given a 2-3hour break between the Pentagon and the ceremony being held that night in order to dress in formal business atire. We went back to our rooms and I realized that the outside view of our window was different than when I took pictures before so I got another picture of the Washington Monument. Isn't it just beautiful!
Okay I have to say I was so impressed with the mac/cheese deal they were doing in the back at the Ceremony that was held for the 5-EOD techs being awarded. It was so impressive. They had every topping you could imagine and they cooked it right there for ya and poured it into a martini glass. Boy was it fancy! The taste and flavor was out of this world!! It was fantastic!

After the General took our mac/cheese pic he passed the camera over and took a shot with us and then told that General to pass it over again and made that General come up and take a shot with us. The last guy to recieve our camera was also a General, he was the 2-star Chaplain, which we had met the night before at the Social. We really liked him and his wife a lot. They are A/G which was so unbelievable. You do not hear of an actual A/G chaplain in the military that often. Anyway, we ended up having 3 Generals at our attention all at once because of some mac/cheese!!

Phillip just recieved his award for "Team of the Year" here. Then I got a good shot of all 5 recipients together. All 5 were really great individuals and their families and guests were a blast! We all got along so well.

At the end of the evening I asked Col. Welch, Phillip's Commander at Tyndall in Panama City whom flew in just for the ceremony and flew out the very next day, if he would take pic. with Phillip. Then someone grabbed my camera from me and told me to join them!

On Tuesday I took pictures of everyone while we were sitting around in the lobby waiting to leave for our first tour of the day. The only one missing is Gus which is the guy from Germany. The schedule was changed verbally, not on paper, so he didn't hear it the night before. It was no biggy though. He came right down when he was called.
Starting on the left is Jazmine's supervisor Wilham (never did get his first name I don't think), Scoop our guide, Shane our AFA (Air Force Association) guide, and another AFA representative. We really didn't get to know the other AFA rep. She was only there for the one tour to the Capitol to help take us to our different Congressmen's offices. That didn't go so well. Our individual congressmen were not there since it was recess week. The staff was not that interested in us. The rest of the trip was really great though.
This is Jazmine standing and talking. You can see Heath in the back corner. I didn't get a good shot of him in this setting for some reason.
In this picture you can see Heath and Courtney, then Chief Hodges and his wife Margaret. The Chief is the "big guy" for the EOD career field. He and his wife are really nice. We enjoyed their company.

Here I got one of the other wives to take a shot of us while the metro was behind us. You can't see it too well, but I know it's there! This was an experience to say the least!

Our first tour of the day was at the Arlington Cemetary. The guys found 3-EOD guys that are there and we went and looked at each grave. On each one of the graves the guys laid an EOD badge from thier blue shirts (since they are invisable with their jackets/blue blouses on). It was very touching to watch!

I had to take pictures of the chocolates that were made to look just like the dome on the top of the Capitol and chocolates made to look like the Washington Monument! We recieved these as part of our gifts from a luncheon that was put together at the Capitol Club Hotel. O that meal was absolutely wonderful and so fancy. The 4-star General Eulburg was the speaker and he did an excellent job, very funny too:)!!

This is the last thing Phillip and I did right before we flew out of D.C. on Wednesday afternoon. Phillip got us a cab and took me down to the Jefferson Memorial to see the Cherry Blossoms. I wanted to go the whole week we were there, but we never had the time to do it. I was so grateful and pleased that Phillip took me! It was absolutely beautiful!

Here are some of the ducks in the water that I thought Meme would like to see. I also like the one where the Cherry Blossoms look like they were kissing the water!

I took this picture of the ground because I wanted to show how much the wind had blown. It had blown so hard that it blew off most of the cherry blossoms so the trees were not fully bloomed. I can't imagine how gorgeous they looked before the wind got a hold of them!

And this was the Jefferson Memorial. It was impressive!

We flew out of D.C. Wednesday afternoon and were home that evening. The flight wasn't too bad. I was NOT ready to be home, but couldn't wait to see my babies (the pups)!

This trip was a very memorable adventure for both of us and we were so honored that the military did this for us. I myself am more proud of Phillip than he will ever imagine:)!!

Explaination

2009-04-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

I was asked the other day what PugsRN means. So I thought I might go ahead and put the meaning on my blog to help out in this area! PugsRN = "Pugs are in" is all it means. I saw the RN used before and thought it was cute so that's what I decided to do since pugs are my favorite and we have 2 wild ones around here! It describes us in a nutshell practically. We love playing with our pugs and doing stuff with them and we treat them like they are our kids. Which in all honesty they are! They are spoiled, but trained as well. They are so loveable and fun! We enjoy them so much.

Anyway, just wanted to post my meaning of my blog title. Hope it makes sense now.

Jonathan's Graduation

2009-03-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

Well, this is where it mostly begins. This is Wednesday afternoon and we had all stopped along the way for lunch at this nice Italian resteraunt. It was very good and the resteraunt was really impressive. I am in none of the pictures because I was so sick at this point that I refused to have my picture taken. And if you notice a extra person that is Rox's pastor's wife whom has become a great friend to Rox. Her name is Laurie and her daughter lives in Austin, TX and so we offered her to ride with us to go visit her daughter while we were at the graduation. She jumped on the opportunity! Her daughter picked her up in San Antonio that night. We drove through Austin to pick her up on our way back. It wasn't that far out of the way at all really. We had a really good trip all in all.

At 7:30am on Thursday morning we are all sitting around waiting for the briefing to start that will tell us all about what BMT or Basic Military Training is all about, what it's like, and what is expected of us while we are there. And yes I was up and ready on time even though I am a well-known night owl:)!!

Thursday afternoon we are sitting outside on very cold bleachers with the wind blowing and it's raining. We are waiting for the coin ceremony to start. We have not seen Jonathan at all at this point. So we can't wait for it to get started.

This is Jonathan's flight. He was in the band playing the trumpet. He plays very well and we were thrilled to hear he joined the band. He was able to play along with the band of course all the patriotic music for the coin ceremony. It made all of us very teary eyed!

This was the first time we got to actually hug and talk to Jonathan. You could tell he was so proud to have all of us there to see him go through the graduation. It was a real honor. We were all just so proud and felt so boastful of him as we watched him.

Checking out Jonathan's coin he just recieved was pretty neat. Phillip has a ton of coins and so now my own brother will be collecting them as well. They are a huge thing in the military. And if one of the guys asks everyone if they have their coin on them and someone doesn't that person owes everyone a drink. Phillip always gave cokes. Jonathan asked me if I had mine and I did, but it was in my truck so I owed him an ice cream cause that's what we were wanting at the time:)! I think I still owe him that ice cream though now that I think about it!

We all went to the base buffet for lunch after the coin ceremony. I actually fell asleep sitting there after my tummy was full! The waitress came by to take my tray and I was dead asleep. It was just a little embarrasing! Fortunately, everyone said I didn't snore:)!! The food was good and filling!

We went bowling several times throughout our time in TX. It was one of the only things to do when we were stuck on base with Jonathan. He is stealing my food in the first picture:)!! Actually I had bought enough for everyone to snack on while they played. The snack bar in the bowling ally was my favorite as far as food goes. They made good food and made it fresh when you ordered it. They had the best corndog, YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY!! No one was allowed to touch that:)!

Jonathan had to march in formation with as many comrades that were around in order to get back to his dorm. They could not just walk, no no no! They always had to march. Doesn't he look so sharp!

Let me make one thing clear before I go on, that IS NOT dandriff on my jacket that is RAIN!! Yes it was raining everyday we were there. I was bundled up as much as I could be. I had been so sick throughout the week and I was freezing. The temp was at 38 degrees. And this was the day for the graduation. It was Friday and we drove on base, but then had to ride a bus that transported us to the dorms for the ceremony. They usually do them on the parade grounds, but with the rain that wasn't possible. It was still held outside, but under a metal roof that was attached to the dorms. Each flight had their own ceremony at their dorms because of the weather. So it made it a lot more intimate than what Phillip's was 8 years ago.
It was finally time for the graduation. After the bus ride and sitting in a classroom for a very long time it had seemed like forever that we had waited for it to begin. Boy was it worth the wait though. It was an incredible show of patriotism.
Jonathan is swearing in for the military here. What an awesome feeling inside when sitting through this part. They also sung the Air Force song for us as well. That was really impressive.
After the ceremony we were all invited to go up to Jonathan's dorm and check it out. I have never seen him have anything so clean for as long as I have known him:)!! Michael even tried to do the quarter drop on the bed to see if it bounced. It didn't do that big of a bounce, but it was cool to watch. Jonathan's drawer space and closet space was emaculant! He had done a good job.
Okay here is Jonathan wearing his "BCGs" which stands for Birth Control Glasses. If you wear glasses this is what you get in basic. Trust me there is no attraction at all when wearing these! I think we should put this on Jonathan's groom's cake when he gets married, hehehe!!
Phillip called me while we were looking at Jonathan's dorm and so he got a chance to talk to Jonathan. We all thought we would never get them off the phone. They talked forever. Phillip was so disappointed he wasn't able to go. He was on TDY and missed it. But I think Jonathan was able to update him on just about everything with that phone call:)!!

Here's Meme at her favorite part of the whole trip, the Alamo! She really loved this place. She got a lot out of it and I think even bought a video of it. I didn't think we would get her out of there!

This is part of the Riverwalk. Rox and Jonathan took a good picture here. I liked the whole thing except for the "walk" part, hehehe:)!! I was exhausted from being sick so the walking was not helping! It was still really neat to see though. Below is a picture of Michael and Jonathan. Jonathan is trying so hard to be serious and Michael is having fun!! They crack me up! This was at the Riverwalk as well.

We all went to Chili's in the mall for supper. It was the first off base resteraunt that Jonathan had been too. He seemed to have really enjoyed it. The mall is right on the Riverwalk so we could look out at it when around windows.

This was the night that if Jonathan signed up to go to the local Hockey game he could stay out longer. So of course he signed up for it. Their original curfew was at 7:30pm, but if they went to the game they could stay out til it was over. The game was really interesting. I had never been to one before and so it was a real eye opener. They beat the snot out of each other literally! We all enjoyed a very yummy Mrs. Fields ice cream while watching too:)!! We all enjoyed it and the game ended around 10 or so.

For Saturday Jonathan and Michael wanted to go to the resteraunt that Bobby Flay (however spelled) had a throw down with the "Puffy Tacos" for lunch. They had pictures all over the place of this guy. So we went and had our puffy tacos and boy I was not ready for TexMex food. I am use to my Floridian Mex food:)!! I didn't eat hardly any of mine. But it was worth going just to say we were there. Then everyone, but me went to the Gueniss Book of World Records while Meme toured the Alamo again since it was across the street. I just sat outside and relaxed while everyone did their touring. I was still not feeling the best and was ready to just enjoy the scenery. After that we got on a computer to watch Jonathan's DVD they made for his 8 weeks of training. It was very interesting especially when we saw him:)!! Later on we played some more bowling and eventually it was time for Jonathan to go back to his dorm. It was a nice day, but couldn't do a whole lot because of the weather. Jonathan wanted to go to Six Flags, but 38 degrees and raining there was no way.

On Sunday we all went to church with Jonathan on base. The service was really good and so was the praise/worship. We really enjoyed it. and man if you could see how many guys went up to the alter when the call was made you would be amazed. There had to be at least 50 military people up there. It made me tear up. The chaplain was a female and she just did an excellent job. She used the Anapolis movie for part of her illustration. Anyway these pictures are of all of us when the service was over.

This was our last meal together at the food court in the BX on base. We all had Subway and I just thought this was the cutest picture of Meme with the boys.
This is where the trip ended. Everyone saying their goodbyes. Isn't this a sweet picture of Rox and Jonathan hugging goodbye!

Awards Banquet

2009-02-21T15:39:00.000-08:00

This was our first picture we recieved from Phillip's banquet. It's a nice one, but not the best one. The background they chose was not my favorite. I would never pick a white sheet. The light bounced off it too much. A matted white background might have worked, but not a sheet.

Finally we got some more pictures of the banquet. This is not all of them still, but we're getting closer I guess:)!! One is of both of us with the General and Command Chief of the base and the other is Phillip with both men again excepting his award. I am so proud of him.

AL Christmas Get-Together

2009-01-16T12:46:00.000-08:00

I finally found my disc of the AL Christmas Get-Together. I had taken it with us when we went to FWB last time to share with my sister, but could not remember where I had laid it when we got back home. Phillip found it in the cracks of the truck. I knew he was good for something, hehehe!! He always finds whatever I am missing it seems and most of the time I can do the same for him. It's interesting how that happens.

Enjoy the pics.

Other than the wedding pics this is about as updated a pic of Phillip and me as it gets. And in all honesty I didn't care for how my hair got fixed for the wedding. I liked how the back looked, but the front was not my favorite, but I thought no one will pay attention to me cause this is all about Michael and Ashley. So I didn't make a fuss over it. It wasn't bad, but just not my style. I think it made me look bigger. Anyway, hopefully I will have more pics of the wedding soon.

I thought my mom would enjoy these 2 pics with Grandmother and then one of me and Crystal. They turned out really nice.

I absolutely love this picture of Crystal and her son, Josiah. They take really good pics!

Test Run

2009-01-14T11:27:00.001-08:00

Christmas decorations are a favorite around this house. Phillip and I love putting them up. Taking them down is actually faster than putting them up so it's no big deal to put away either. Then on Christmas Day my family came to our house in Panama City. I got a great shot of most of the guys playing poker I think, Grandaddy, my adopted brother Gabe, and my dad. Later I got a good shot of Josiah opening his presents from Uncle Phillip and Aunt Deedle. One of the puppies decided to help too:)!!

The day after Christmas we let Gabe play with his new skates we got him on our driveway. Phillip and I both got out our skates as well. We had lots of fun. And then we took him to the park with Grandma. Grandma and Phillip played Cribbage while I swung Gabe around on the playground toys.

January 1st was when Crystal and I threw a Bach. Party for Ashley, our new sister-in-law. The 2 of us actually made the cake. It was french Vanilla with Crystal's own recipe for icing, very yummy:)!! I made one of the mini glasses look like it was spilling out onto the cake. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it.

The wedding of the new year finally happened on Jan. 3rd. I don't have all the pics downloaded as of yet, but my Meme, stepmom's mom, gave me a few and I scanned them to share. She got one of Phillip's Parents, the Hendersons, and me in my bridesmaid dress. The wedding was absolutely beautiful!

Blog Newbies

2009-01-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

These are our babies Sadie, Tucker, and Regan. The 2 pups are Chinese Pugs and the bigger one is a lab/retriever mix. They are so much fun! They keep us busy and keep me company when my hubby is deployed, on TDY, or training trips. Regan, bigger doggy, is almost 12 years old. The pugs are almost a year old. We dressed them up for Chirstmas. Sadie was the elf, Regan the reigndeer, and Tucker was Santa:)!!

This is my sister, Crystal, and her son, Josiah.

This is a picture of me and my very cute nephew, Josiah. He is only 2 and a half, but looks like he is going on 5 or so.

This is one of my 3 brothers, Michael, and his new wife, Ashley. The picture is from when they were dating. I think it is from before they even got engaged. They got married Jan. 3rd. We all love her to death. They are a perfect match for each other. When I get pictures downloaded from the wedding I will post them. It was gorgeous!

Phillip, my hubby, just got a major award for the military. He made NCO (Non Commissioned Officer) of the Year for his squadrin as well. Now he is going up for NCO of the Year for the Group, then it goes up to the Wing and so on. I am so proud of him. This is a major honor. It takes a lot of work and diligence to recieve this award. He joined the Air Force in Dec. of 2000 and he joined the EOD career field, which stands for Explosive Ordinence Disposal. That is the Bomb Squad for the Military. He loves it. He is a Staff Sgt as of right now, but is going up for Tech Sgt. next month, very exciting time for us.

Well, this is not all of my family, but don't have any more pictures at this moment. Lost a lot of pics from my old computer crashing. Will add more of them when I get them though.