How to have fun with kids

Bored with your kids? Try this as a way to add some excitement to the mundane:



My brother Chris is what they call "overly strong". Amongst the madness of our family Christmas party he decided he would start throwing children. Let me tell you, they loved it. He was really getting some air on some of these. The second picture is a 9 year old. The Christmas tree in the background is probably a good 10 footer so you can get an idea of the height involved. And the winner in air time is:

Don't worry, he caught him. 3 year olds love that sort of thing.

Family Christmas party

Last Friday my sister Amy hosted a family Christmas party. My family is not going to be able to get together on Christmas this year so we did our celebration a few days early. It was a lot of fun. We had good food, fun games, great company, and my favorite part, an ugly sweater competition. I thought JR and I were doing good with ours until I got to the party and realized there are some pretty ugly sweaters out there.
JR and I had a good time at D.I. picking out our sweater treasures.
Mom and Pops (I'm pretty sure my dad secretly liked his sweater and we may or may not see him wear it at future events):

My sister Lyndee and her husband Rob:

The host and hostess, sister Amy and her husband Matt:

Sister Emily and husband TJ:

And the winner of the ugly Christmas sweater competition by a large margin was my brother Chris. Let me explain. Chris actually pieced his ugly sweater together himself with yarn. He collected a hodge podge of clothing and cut and sewed it all together. In case you are wondering, yes that is leopard print lingerie at the bottom, and yes, those are dangly beads with his name on it hanging from his chest. I just with you could see it with better detail. The sleeves are puffy lace. The beauty is lost in photography. Way to create your own ugly sweater Chris, you deserved the title of ugly Christmas sweater winner.

The prize? A nutcracker complete with walnuts. Oh the glory of it all! Sweet victory.

Pretty awesome looking crew if you ask me:

That's a wrap

What did I do at work on Friday?



Yep, I played kickball. Well, sort of. Today was my first day back to work after being sick and in bed for 3 days so I didn't "play" kickball per say as much as I sat in the dugout and half watched half dozed for a couple hours. What a week. Work a day, lay in bed 3 days, go back to work and work 4 hours then get paid to go and watch kickball and end up going home at 3. Now that is a good work week...minus the wanting to tear my throat out part. Speaking of which, I am feeling much better. I went back to Urgent Care on Thursday because I wasn't getting better and they gave me an extra shot of antibiotics (hadn't had a shot in the bum bum in awhile) and some pain killers. Things started to pick up after that. I'm glad to be back to my normal self!

Ah man

Today I am home sick. Blah. I went to work yesterday having a sore throat and started feeling pretty horrible around 10. I recognized the awful feeling right away as strep throat since I've had it like 167 time in my life. Sure enough, Urgent Care confirmed strep throat. I have to say out of the past 167 times #168 is by far the worst case I've had. I cannot swallow without excrutianting pain. Because of this I do not want to eat even though I am starving. Perhaps that is why I almost passed out in the shower today. Seriously, I had to sit down in the tub and turn off the water for fear that I would drown if I lost it in the shower. All I have to say is that I hope these antibiotics kick in VERY SOON. On the bright side, the body aches have gone away! Woo hoo!

The Bandwagon

Well, I've joined the masses and have been reading the Twilight series. I just had to see what all the fuss was about. I'll admit it, these books do grab your attention once you get started. I have decided to blame my lack of blogginess lately to the fact that my nose is always in one of the Twilight books. I've just started #3and while I really enjoy reading them I'm going to be glad when I'm done so I know how it all turns out and I can stop feeling so addicted to something. There hasn't been much news on our front lately. I can pretty much say that all my Christmas shopping is done now. I feel pretty good about that. I feel especially grateful that I won't have to return to any more crazy stores with their non existent parking. I went out today and spent like 10 minutes just trying to find a spot. Madness I tell you!
A few years ago my family decided that rather than choosing names and buying gifts that we would all scrapbook the events of the past year and make color copies of our pages for all the siblings, parents, and grandparents. We then exchange scrapbook pages as our gifts and have an awesome family album with what everyone has been up to. I'm happy to say that my pages are done and copied! I'd post pictures but then I'd be ruining the Christmas surprise for my family. Perhaps another time. Anyways, that's what's been taking up my time lately. As for J.R., he's still researching grad schools. His application is in to West Virginia but there are still many schools to go.

Thanksgiving

What, Thanksgiving was a week ago you say? That may be true but I just got around to uploading our pictures so today I post! We had a great trip to Colorado Springs. I have to say the 13 hour drive was a bit crowded as I shared half of the middle seat in the middle row with luggage while I squished JR up to the window. Luckily we had a dvd player so things went by faster than I anticipated. My older brother Chris and his son Rylee (who is almost 3) shared the back seat. I did not enjoy watching Barney, Jay Jay the plane and other assortments of baby movies. Rylee was a real trooper though and didn't complain or cry or anything. His dad was more trouble than he was. Here we are during the short time that JR got to drive. Can I just say that it's a miracle, MIRACLE that my dad is sitting in the back like that. Please feel free to print this picture and put it in your journal to document.

JR got a good taste of my family over the 6 days that we were there. We stayed half our time with my brother Dave and his fam and the other half with my brother Mark and his fam. It was so good to see that part of the family. It really is amazing how kids change in a year.
Thanksgiving day was so much fun. We had my dads brother and his family over for dinner and we played a bunch of games afterwards and things were getting crazy. You may recognize such classic games as "Beware of the Scare of the Ricky Ticky Bear", "Big Booty", and the Sign game. Plenty of fun went around.


On Thanksgiving it started to snow. We actually got quite a bit of snow. As much as I hate the cold I have to say it was nice to get some different weather and to spend some time with my hubby walking in the snow.


Other events included Bowling:





By the way, I have never bowled so much in my life. 5 games! That has to be some sort of a record.

Shopping:



Rylee, you're so pretty!

And my favorite event, having a blowout on the highway outside of Holbrook on our way home at 7 o'clock at night. What a great way to end an amazing trip!

What have I done?

Up until this point in my life I have been a firm believer that Christmas music and decorations, etc. should not be put up until Dec. 1st. I was never even an after Thanksgiving Christmas enthusiast. This year my decorations went up last night. November 23rd, a new record. JR was wanting to put the tree up and I gave in. I really enjoyed it too. I made cookies, we had eggnog, and we even got a fire going in our fireplace (thanks Duralog!). It was a very pleasant evening to say the least. So what if our tree is missing a leg on it's stand and we had to rig it up with books and it'll probably fall over? So what if my decorations are out of date? So what if you can see the metal pole that is it's trunk? I still love our little tree!


Thanks to our friend Kellyn for making our stockings. I love them!

Christmas in November, huh, who would've guessed?

Slacking

I have been so bad about posting lately. I just haven't had time at work to do it because I've been doing school work on my lunch and what not. That is over on Monday though so blogging should come back full force! However, we are going to Colorado for Thanksgiving to see my brothers who live there. I'll be gone so maybe forget what I just said about blogging coming back. I'm really excited to get away. We are driving up with my parents, my brother Chris, and his little boy Rylee. Should be a pretty awesome road trip. Road trips with my dad are pretty hilarious strictly for that fact that my dad is so quirky that you just never can tell what he's going to do. One of our favorites is when he starts biting off his arm hair. Yep, sure is weird. I'm kind of exited for JR to experience that one. Or perhaps Chris and I will revert back to pulling feathers out of our pillows and placing them standing straight up in our parents hair and then making Indian calls. I still don't think they knew what we were doing when we started making random Indian noises. Sometimes those feathers would stay in through a couple of gas stops. Good times.

The GEN/300 blues

A little over 4 weeks ago I started my very first class at the University of Phoenix, GEN/300. After 4 years of working here and 6 years of being out of school I finally gave in and decided I'd give it a try. The result? I want my old life back! I feel like all I ever do is go to work, do homework on my lunch break, come home, do homework at home and then start it all over again. I want to be able to play again!
On another note, the online class setting here is actually pretty cool and I've learned more than I thought I would. I just don't want to do homework. It's only a five week course so It'll be over soon enough. I think I'm going to make it!

Time Out

This last weekend JR and I met up with my family at the Phoenix Civic center to take part in Time Out for Couples. My mom and sisters and I usually do Time Out for Women but it didn't come this year so we decided to switch it up and drag our significant others along with us. It was really good. I still don't know how the guys felt about it but I think they were at least Semi-entertained. For those of you not familiar with the "Time Out" system it's basically church conferences (and JR would have me say that it is not put on by the church) for different audiences. They have Time Out for Women, Girls, Singles, Couples, you name it. This year they had President Hinckley's daughter and her husband hosting. Music from Peter Brienholt (sp?, the guy who put together the Reflections of Christ pictures (so good, if you haven't seen the slide show you can see it here.), then there was a marriage counselor who came and spoke. Good times were had.

Halloween

This year for Halloween we had a big party at work. My team went all out trying to decorate for the party. We taped up black garbage bags between our cubicles so we ended up with a "haunted hall". The haunted hall was equip with 2 strobe lights, hanging spider and skeleton head rings, napkin ghosts, bucket of dry ice, scary music, and crinkled paper. Ok so we had a bit of a ghetto haunted hall. How else you do decorate cubicles though? Just like this:
There was a good turn out for the party but without kids it was kind of boring. Cute to see all the costumes though! My friend Heather showed up with her little chicken! That was fun!
What am I you ask? Well the idea was to be a space girl but apparently I looked more like a tella tubby. You decide.
Halloween night we met up with my sister Amy and went trick or treating with her kids. I actually really enjoyed it. It was fun to see little kids trick or treating. It'd been awhile since I'd done any traditional Halloween stuff. Years past were spent at singles parties. I think I liked this better!

JR was a "Newsie" And might I add a hot one at that?

Want some cute stuff?

My friend Kellyn is taking part in a boutique happening Nov. 8th. Thought I would pass the word along because it looks super cute...if you are in to super cute stuff...which I am. Anyways here is the info for anyone living in the area.

The Tattered Trunk Boutique

The Boutique will take place on Saturday, November 8th from 9 am - 4 pm at DW Higgins Institute (DWHI), a charter school, which is on the SE corner of McClintock & Elliot next to Tempe Cinemas. We have 40+ vendors. You won't want to miss this event where you will find one of kind gifts for the Holiday season!

Click here to see more

Since I'm sure you're all dying to know

JR is done with the GRE. As he puts it, he did better than he had been doing on the practice tests, not as well as he wanted, but good enough to get into grad school! We are just so happy that he won't have to take it again! Hooray for no more studying for the stupid GRE. Now he just has to get his purpose statement and his 3 letters of reference and he can actually start applying.. The list is of schools is down to 9 now!
Here is a little something that I put together for JR before he got home from the test.

In other news, we dog sat this weekend. Let's just say I don't think we're ready for a dog. The word from the owners was that he would be really good. I think he was really out of his element though cause he was doing all sorts of things that he was trained not to do. There was a bit of howling, a lot of chewing, and a couple of poops that were not so pleasant. He did have a cone on his head though so that was pretty entertaining. He actually broke his cone the first night in a moment of extreme spastic wonder as he ran into the couch a couple times. How did we cope? Same way you cope with many broken things, we duct taped it! And not just any duct tape, it was red. I'm sure they were wondering what in the world we did to their dog when they got home last night. Don't worry about it, we just turned him in to white trash. Meet Toby

GRE

The week has come. JR is scheduled to take the GRE on Friday in the morning so if you could all please keep him in your prayers so that he may have extra brain power that day we would appreciate it. He certainly has been studying like a mad man and I've been very proud of him. We are both getting anxious for him to be done with this dang test!

Genius

Friday we got invited to a Halloween party where costumes were recommended. Friday came around and we were still not sure what we were going to go as. JR came out the champ though and came up with a very creative idea for costumes. The best part? We didn't spend a dime. You may have to think awhile before you figure out the significance of our costumes but without further delay I submit to you:
Tah Dah- THE "PAYNE'S" Ha ha, cracks me up. Nicely done JR. Those who didn't get it or who didn't know our last name were probably really confused trying to figure our costumes out. We didn't get it in the picture but JR had a knee brace and we both had big foot braces on too. Thanks to all who contributed.
Our friends the Carpenter's also had a great costume. They were dressed as Fed Ex and UPS and looked liked they had been brawling. The best part had to be the fed ex box that was cut and placed in just a way to make it look like UPS had used that box as toilet paper on the Fed Ex guy. See for yourself.

A scam I tell you...or maybe I'm just ignorant

This past week I got really excited because a friend told me about how Fry's is doing triple coupons right now and is matching competitors coupons as well. Sadly, I don't think I've ever used a coupon but I decided that I need to start being more thrifty and industrious and figured this was a good week to start. I knew JR would be really proud because he is already thrify and has tried to pass that on to me so I was so excited to share with him my great idea. So I gathered a bunch of coupons from sights online and was all ready to go into Fry's and spend like 20 bucks on loads of groceries....not exactly. I loaded up my cart and headed to the check out. The cashier pulls out my first coupon which just happened to be a buy $30 worth of groceries and get $6 off coupon from Fresh n' Easy. Sweet! Well the cashier looks smugly at it and then at me and gave this little hmf noise and an "ohhhhkkkay". Whatever that was about. Anyways, she rings everything up and gives me the total...$102.43?!!! Excuse me? I did my research and I would like you do reduce my bill down to $20 please, is what I'm thinking. I then ask her about the triple coupon thing and she gave me a little laugh as if to say "you are retarded" and then says in a somewhat rude manner "Sweetie, we only triple them on coupons that are $.33 or less" Well, that's news to me and since almost all of my coupons were for over 50 cents I didn't really reap the benefits of triple coupons at all. I really wanted to tell her to take everything back. I didn't though and just decided I would chalk it up to a learning experience. Needless to say, JR is returning a few of those things today, I can get them much cheaper at Wal-Mart even without coupons. Gosh, I was so disappointed, I went in there so proud of myself and came out with a bunch of stuff that we probably could have done without and $100 dollars poorer.

School of the day

Good news, JR's grad school list is down to 27! The school of the day is Ithaca College located in Ithaca New York.
Ithaca is about 4 hours away from New York City and 2 hours from Palmyra. Population is about 29,000. What do I think of Ithaca? It looks very beautiful.






I was a little concerned when I read the following excerpt on Wikipedia:
"In its earliest years during frontier days, what is now Ithaca was briefly known by the names "The Flats" and "Sodom," the name of the Biblical city of sin, due to its reputation as a town of "notorious immorality", because of its reputation as a place of horse racing, gambling, profanity, Sabbath breaking, and readily available liquor...That early reputation for immorality, together with its more recent reputation as having a left-leaning population, has once again made Ithaca mildly infamous in some circles as the "City of Evil," due to a satirical campaign by members of a politically conservative online discussion board. Some Ithacans have embraced the label. This idea is further buoyed by Cornell University's early nickname, "the godless university" which came about due to their lack of affiliation with any organized religion."
Hmmm...when I brought this up to JR his response was "Perhaps we are called to serve there as phenomenal ward missionaries, thrashing that nation by the power of God's Spirit!" The man may have a point. I guess I shouldn't judge Ithaca. I like the idea of living in New York much more than anywhere in the Mid West.
As stated before though, still 27 schools to sort through. Some day we'll figure it out. By the way 10 days and counting until JR takes the GRE. Yikes!

"Team Builder"

Last Friday we had another team builder at work. Our division is doing a big kick to make work more fun so every month we get to have a 4 hour team builder. We decided to do a BBQ at Tempe Town lakes and play a little volleyball. We all got to log out at noon and head over to the park. I really just can't complain about getting paid to eat BBQ and play games. It was a good time. After a couple rousing games of volleyball we walked around Mill Ave. then headed home for the weekend. That's what I call a good day at work!
This next one is a pretty great action shot, don't mind me just standing there in the background while everyone else is making a mad rush for the ball.

I didn't get tagged but...

I'm having a hard time this week thinking of things to post so I'm stealing a tag from my friends page to get the juices rolling. Thanks Sara!
The rules:

Go to your picture files.
Pick the 4th file, and the 4th picture in it.
Tell a little about the picture.

This picture was taken while JR and I were still dating. He was working as a counselor at EFY in Flagstaff and I went up to visit him on the weekend. This is one picture out of a series. JR hates hates hates to take pictures (but is getting better) so the series is of my friend Ellie trying to get a normal picture out of him. The funniest thing about this picture though is JR's shirt. We had gone to American Eagle earlier that day and I picked that shirt out for him. He wore it a couple times up at EFY and I got a text from him later in the week asking if I had read what the shirt said on it. I had no idea. Turns out the caption on the shirt read "Clothing Optional Beyond This Point" Ha! Needless to say he has not worn it since unless it's underneath something. Whoops, my bad. Guess I should pay more attention. Also, this picture kind of makes me miss my long hair. *sigh*

More attempts just for fun. And by the way I can count at least 12 of these!