We Do Have a Life, other than grocery shopping!!

I realized, last night, that I haven't blogged lately about the other things we do in our lives besides grocery shopping ... like live.

Let's see. The day after Christmas we headed to Missouri, bright and early, to stay with mom and dad for a few days. The older two kids immediately went with their dad, and the rest of us launched into the annual Extended Family Christmas Dinner Marathon. One year we counted all of the different people who had been in and our of my parents' house in a three-day period. I believe it was 101.

We started on Saturday with a trip out of town to visit my Grandma Joan and other family. Here are most of the grandkids and great-grandkids with Grandma. We're missing a few, but this is a lot at one time.

Jordan, Eli, me, Grandma, Chandler, Hayden, Rylee, Kristen, Brynne, Ryan

Then on Saturday night we had the Armstrong dinner. It's always alot of fun, because they are a WILD family! Our Cousin Charla, aka "Sarge", is in charge of the festivities. She likes to think she is grooming me to take over someday. In all seriousness, I probably do take after her quite a bit in my personality. If that's the case, then I also take after her mom, Mildred, who is the classiest mid-80's woman I know!!

Here is a picture of many of my favorite women. The three ladies in the front are all in their mid-80's. The other two are Charla and my favorite aunt, Rhonda.

Aunt Louise, Aunt Mildred, Charla, Rhonda, my Grandma Alice

Here we are at the Armstrong dinner playing "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" and "Scattergories". Cousin Charla always has an enthralling game planned for us. You are ordered to play!!!

On Sunday we had the O'Neal family dinner. By the end of this day, Brynne and I were just tired!!

Seriously, we were asleep here!!

One of the highlights of our trip home, especially the kids', was to get to see my brother, Tim, and his wife, Shawna. We don't get to see them very often because they live in Portland, Oregon, and even when they are here they have to spread themselves between lots of family and friends. It's always so great to "catch up" though.


On Monday we just did some serious vegging to get ready for our return trip to Oklahoma on Tuesday. We did go bowling as a family on Monday night, which has now become a family tradition. My goal was to beat Rylee .. it didn't happen. She beat me two games to one .. however, technically, I beat her in total score !!! I'll give her the win, though!!


Then on Tuesday we headed home .. back to life.

We arrived to a home with no signs of Christmas (which is always so nice of Rick to do when we head to Missouri after Christmas!!) The decorations were away and life was "back to normal". Well, not quite yet. We still had another week home for Christmas break.

For the life of me I can't think of a thing we did this whole past week! Isn't that a change???

We did go bowling with the kids on New Year's Eve, with our church youth group. Then the older two continued their party, and Rick and I went to the Breese's for their annual party. This year, however, we had the kids. We got there at 9:00 ... Eli was ready to go home by 9:15 ... and we left, maybe, around 9:45. Rick stayed so that he could pick Dawson up from his party. I went to bed by about 10:30 ... Happy New Year!!!

Of course I took tons of pictures on New Year's Eve, but not one really represented the whole night. I did think this one was kindof funny, and typical!!

One of Brynne's many ways of watching to see if her ball managed
to knock down even one pin!

On New Year's Day we cleaned up the house a bit and then spent a quiet day with the Thomasons eating chili and cookies. The adults SAT on the couch and watched football and talked while the kids enjoyed the nice day outside. It was a great way to start the new year!

On this past Friday night we all sat together, as a family, and watched one of the Star Wars movies. We never all sit together to watch anything ... we're just so diverse in our ages and tastes. But, it was really nice to be getting to a place in our lives where we can do that. I look forward to more nights like that, even game nights, etc.

On Saturday night Rick and I took off for a while and went to Brookside for dinner on the patio at The Garlic Rose. We were hopping Tommy Trippelhorn would be playing his piano, but no such luck. But, the dinner was nice and it's a neat place with lots of atmosphere. It was nice to be able to sit and talk and eat with no interruptions or noise! The kids begged us to stay gone longer, although we didn't have anything to do, so we browsed through Target and Kirkland's. We were still home by 8 p.m. ... LAME, I know. But, that's what you do when you're on a strict budget!!

And, it all comes full circle ... back to the budget ....