Happy Halloween!!

We had a really good time last night!  We left the house around 5:45 and picked up Braden and dropped Kyndal off at her friend's.  We went up to church to the Fall Fun Fair.  Dawson took Braden and Kyle.  They just ran around and played games.  Eli and Brynne spent the majority of their night on the inflatable slides.  Brynne did finally play some games, but mostly she just wanted to slide.  Needless-to-say her costume was reduced down to her dress and tights within just a few minutes.  You can't do a proper slide down a 50 foot inflatable with Minnie Mouse ears on!!  Then I took the boys home and dropped Dawson off at the Tibbles' Monster Bash. Matt and Steph dropped him off around 9:30.  Rick had brought Eli and Brynne home while I was dropping everyone off so they could get a head start on trick-or-treating.  I met up with them and we went to some neighbors'.  They really loved that!  Then I raced home so they could trick-or-treat me.  They had a little candy and baths and headed to bed.  Rick went to a party at the Casillas', but I opted for staying home.  Dawson and I curled up on the couch and watched this week's episode of Crusoe.  It's kindof become our "thing" to do one evening a week.  I have no idea how Kyndal's night went.  I think they were going trick-or-treating and then coming back for chili and a movie.  

I tried to put our photos on as soon as we got home, but no luck.  Its now actually Saturday morning and I still can't get anything beyond the first picture to upload.  So, here's Kyndal:

Kyndal as an 80's girl, and with all the proper attitude too!!

I'm going to end this post and try to open up another one and see if it will let me post pictures. If not, I'll try e-mailing.  Urg!!

Up On Time!

You'll be relieved to know that all three of our alarms worked this morning and we actually made it up on time!  My alarm went off, I heard Rick's phone going off a little later and Kyndal had her's set just in case.  I exercised, the kids made the bus and Brynne and Eli were on time for preschool. All is well again.

Oversleeping

We overslept AGAIN!!  Kyndal woke me up at 6:55 a.m. this time, but not in enough time for her to catch the bus.  Rick had to take both of the older kids to school.  I did set my alarm this time for 6:15!  The good news is that if we have anywhere that we need to be at 6:15 this evening then we'll have an alarm reminder!  It sure does help to set it for a.m. when you are needing to get up in the a.m.  I told Kyndal I thought she might want to set a back-up alarm for tomorrow!  

Brynne was up from about 1-3 a.m.  I am sure that contributed to why I was sleeping like a bear this morning!  She has just started this "coming into our room" business in the last couple of nights.  She wants her door left open when she goes to bed, too.  I guess she's scared.  We have successfully never had a kid sleep with us.  I'm not about to start now .. although it's tempting! She must have felt my irritation, because the last time she got up she went to Rick instead of me.

My Little Man and My Little Pumpkin

Brynne wore her pumpkin dress and socks to school today.  Doesn't she look cute?  She doesn't know how to take a picture anymore unless she is posing!

Yesterday was picture day at Eli's school.  I took some shots of him before he left .. isn't he handsome!!

It's Red Ribbon Week at our schools this week and all four kids have all four different dress-up days.  Dawson was dressed like a nerd today.  I didn't get a picture of him, though.  We had to rush to get ready because I forgot to turn on my alarm and Kyndal's friend woke her up with a phone call at 6:50 a.m.  This is the second time I have done this.  I never oversleep!  So, we were really rushing around this morning.  Kyndal was to dress up in her favorite team's attire, so she was decked out in Mizzou clothes.  Eli has pj day today at school, so we went this morning and got him some new Star Wars:  The Clone Wars pjs.  I finished his Kung Fu Panda costume last night.  It's amazing what I can do with hot glue and safety pins!!!  I'm hoping to work on Brynne's Minnie Mouse costume today.

My son, the cow!!

On Friday night Dawson got the opportunity to wear the famous Chik-fil-a cow costume at the Owasso Rams football game.  His Boy Scout troop was helping with Chik-fil-a night.  He was supposed to get to wear it for the entire second half of the game, but ended up only getting to do it for about 15 minutes.  He loved it though!  He said his favorite part was when "little Eli's" came up and hugged him.

Here he is being attacked by some crazy girl!!  Oh, that's Kyndal!

And here's proof that it's really him!  Who would have thought this would be such a big deal!!  Apparently it's an honor, because people were jealous!

Still Lookin' Good After 20 Years!!!

And I'm talking about my husband!!  Rick and the Tulsa Webster Class of 1988 celebrated its 20th high school reunion this weekend.  It's interesting to go to a reunion!  Of course I only knew about 2 tables full of people (and I wonder how many Webster graduates spent the entire evening trying to remember my name!! If you don't know, I graduated in another state!)  It was clear that cliques still unite even after all these years.  There was very little co-mingling between "groups" of people.  And there was that one who "took over" planning the reunion, who was obviously not popular in high school and was dying to be popular last night!  We watched a rolling video from various high school events and they had the usual voting for most changed, best hair, etc.  It was your typical high school reunion.  But, we had a good time!  I didn't know very many of those people, but suffice it to say that Rick was one who had certainly aged the best!  Whoa!  Here are a couple of pics from the night:  


Tulsa Webster Class of 1988



Marty, Kristi, Brooke and Rick

Immune Booster

As most of you know, from around October to March Eli is sick almost constantly! He has a very weak respiratory and immune system, so if someone brings home a cold his turns into something horrible. He has coughing spells that last weeks, several times a year, and typically gets pneumonia at least twice. When Brynne and I each had the flu last year for about 3 days, Eli had it for well over a week and was on antibiotics to prevent a secondary infection from winding him up in the hospital like the year before. My mom suggested I start giving him a vitamin that has an immune booster in it. The kids take a regular multi-vitamin, but I thought it sure couldn't hurt. Starting this week I have been giving him the recommended dosage of 2 L'il Critter Immune C Plus Zinc & Echinacea Immune Booster supplements. I am just bound and determined to do everything I can to help this child not get sick everytime he gets around someone with a cold, especially since he is now in preschool everyday with 25 kids. I do think his immune system has strengthened over the past year naturally, because we haven't noticed near as many coughing bouts this summer as he normally has. So far he hasn't caught anything this fall. So, I just wanted to document what I am doing so I can look back and see if it "worked". Has anybody had any experience with this supplement? Let me know if you have. The reviews I have read online have all positive things to say. I'll let you know in April if I think it was worth it.

Windsor Day 4

Our last day in Windsor was on Sunday. We had an O'Neal family reunion scheduled in Leeton. So, we loaded up the car so we could leave from there. I typically dread these reunions because each family unit tends to just sit in their own group and there's not mingling anyway. But the food it always awesome! And, this was no exception! We had a great lunch, and actually saw people we hadn't seen in many years (and lots of people I swear I have never seen!!) It was fun for some of my older, second cousins to see my kids and comment on them. Of course what everybody said most was that Brynne looks just like I did when I was little.

After lunch we started the long trip home. We got home around 5:30 and basically just collapsed from our relaxing vacation.

Meme

I think this is fun .. I guess in the blogging world people will do a "Meme" to someone else who is a blogger. I don't really understand it all, but I guess you sort of "dare" them to do something on their blog. The one I read was to go to your photo files, choose the 6th picture in the 6th folder, post it and tell about it. So, here's mine:



Eli and Brynne LOVE the outdoors at our house! They spend every decent day out there playing. Our house sits on an acre, with our house on the far side of it which leaves a full 1/2 acre of tree'd playspace. Rick has spent countless hours making a rock creek (called Eli's Creek) and it goes around a large tree (at Brynne's Island). They love to play in those rocks. As you can see, sometimes they like to just sit and hang out.

I know that most of you who read this blog are not bloggers yourselves. So, if you want to participate then look in your photo folders and e-mail out your 6th photo in the 6th folder. It's fun! YOU HAVE BEEN MEME'd!!!!

Windsor Day 3 -- Dawson's 12th Birthday !!

We celebrated Dawson's 12th birthday while on our Windsor trip. He wanted to open his gifts immediately upon waking up. He received lots of money from relatives, an art kit, new sketch book, portfolio for his drawings and two movies he wanted (Doogal and The Ant Bully). He set to drawing first thing. We had plans to go to Warrensburg to Cornerstone Park, which is an indoor "park". It didn't really look that exciting for a 12 year old, but we wanted to do SOMETHING for his birthday. He invited Kyle, a friend from Windsor, and we set off. We took two cars because there was Aunt Kristen, Rylee, Kyndal, Dawson, Kyle, Aunt Rhonda, grandma, Eli, Brynne and me. We were really going to go because we figured the little guys would have fun on the play structures and there was a nerf gun room that we thought the older kids would enjoy. When we got there, they told us that all rooms were closed but the main room. All it had was a play structure, a baby play structure and a basketball court. Everyone was disappointed (could they not have posted that on their website before we drove 30 miles?) But we had already told Eli and Brynne about it, so we couldn't just leave! So we paid $20 for 5 of them to play, and Dawson immediately went to pouting. He was disappointed and it really was a worthless place. He got over that (after a little conference with me) and ran around playing tag with the older kids for a while. The little kids were having a great time! Aunt Kristen decided to take the older kids to Wal-Mart so off they went. We stuck around a little longer. Dawson chose to eat lunch at Pizza Hut so we met back up there. When did pizza become so expensive? We only ordered two large pizzas for $58 ???!!! I guess I am so used to the $6 take-and-bake pizzas from Papa Murphy's, which are tons better by the way. It was our audacity to have some to drink that did us in!! Oh well.

Our next stop was the movie theatre. We had made plans to go see "City of Ember". Aunt Kristen, grandma and Aunt Rhonda took Eli and Brynne home and I took the older kids. We rant to Wal-Mart to get snacks and then headed to the theatre for the ADVERTISED 1:45 p.m. movie. When we got there, however, we were told that this movie was sharing a theatre with another one and wouldn't be showing until 4:30 p.m. I was livid by this point! (Again, could they not post that on their website???) We couldn't stick around for another 3 hours with nothing to do, and we were having a family dinner back in WIndsor at 6:00 p.m. So, in another disappointing moment, we turned and left. Poor Dawson! I felt so bad that I suggested we go to Hastings, right next door, and get a new Nintendo DS game. They had "buy two used games, get one for 1 cent", so we took advantage of that. The movie for all of us would have ended up costing about that much anyway.

We took our games, and a couple of packs of Mad Libs to do in the car on the way home, and headed back. We had a nice dinner with family that evening. When Dawson was getting ready for bed he told me that the day had turned out pretty good. When I asked him "why?" he said that if all of those bad things hadn't have happened that he wouldn't have gotten his DS games and he did get his art supplies and movies. And, he said, "I am just grateful." That's what it's all about, folks!

Here's to another year, buddy! May it not be as frustrating as the first day of it!