Well, we are sitting in a hotel room in Kansas. Well actually, I am sitting in one hotel room, Gus, Abbi, and Geoffrey are in the adjacent room watching tv, and Aaron and Samantha are down in the laundry room doing laundy. What else would you do in a laundry room? LOL!

Anyway, we left Kingman first thing Saturday morning. Because Aaron had his knee surgery on Thursday, it was decided that I would drive at least the first day. Knowing that Aaron gets motion sickness, we went to Wal-Mart to get some dramamine. Dramamine is a little expensive and when you have three people in the family that get motion sickness, that ends up being a pretty penny. I found this oil that you put behind your ears and it seemed to work pretty well. No one got sick!! Bonus!! I guess they got a little woozy at times, but no one actually threw up.

Aaron was walking pretty well Saturday night, so he drove Sunday. Not sure what the difference was, but poor Samantha left a part of herself in Texas and Kansas. The last time she got out of the van to do her thing, she didn't have much time and pretty much "lost it" as soon as she stepped out of the van. (Thank God!!) However, it was pretty windy and because she didn't get a chance to get her bearings, the poor girl ended up plastered with her own throw up! (I know she is going to kill me for writing this down. )

It took us a little longer to get through Kansas than we expected, and mapquest's and yahoo maps' estimation. There are a lot of little towns along the highway and the speed limit usually slows down to 35 through those towns. We really didn't mind though, it was kind of neat to see those little towns. One of the towns we went through is named Hooker. Of course that caught our attention and we stopped so that Samantha could take a picture of the welcome sign. Unfortunately, we didn't stop again to take a picture of the second welcome sign that said, "Welcome to Hooker, KS! Home of the Horny Toads" How can you not laugh?

Tomorrow is another big driving day. We will be heading to Paducah, Kentucky. I am so excited that it is that close to us. I'm not sure when I will be able to do another update, but I had a moment, so I took advantage of it.

It has been too long since I posted a blog. Sorry! I feel bad about it. There have been so many things going on too. First was my newphew's 1 year annivesary since his accident. I can't believe it has been over a year now. He has some physical reminders of his accident, some scarring, and also a limp. His body lets him know if he sits for too long or works too hard, but otherwise, he really is doing very well.

Our new church is going very well too. Slowly, but surely, we are becoming a part of this church family. Sam and I are a part of the puppet ministry. I now have a secret sister. This is the first time I have ever participated in something like that. I will be participating in a leadership class in January. I have been asked to help plan a luncheon in February to help welcome the new pastor. Also, a couple of other ladies and I are praying about the possibility of doing a women's retreat. So, my feet are wet and I think I need to go get my waders on. I love that!

We got some of the Christmas decorations out today. I got to put the first official Christmas decoration up. My mom made me a wreath to hang on my front door a couple of years ago. I really like it. I think it is very pretty. Sorry about the quality of the picture.

Some other quick things I wanted to mention:

1. I have been playing around with my myspace layout. You can go to coolchaser.com and pick and choose different themes and background pics to make your layout. I think it is kind of fun.

2. My friend Jason is the one that is playing my music. He is one of my myspace friends, but his "band" is stringed melodies. I am loving his music. Although, I am thinking of going and changing it to a Christmas song for the time being. If you don't hear his music, click on his myspace page. I don't think you will be disappointed.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas!

We are back from camping at Cataract Lake in Williams, AZ. We realized that that last time we went camping was two years ago. That was too long. I felt like a novice. I forgot simple things like paper towels or a bucket to wash dishes with. Anyway, I have pics posted below. Some "highlights" of the camping trip. The train! The tracks were about 200 yards away from us and was very loud in the middle of the night. Fishing was fun, but not plentiful. Aaron caught one fish and Sam caught another one. That was it. There was a pair of Bald Eagles across the lake. They were beautiful to watch. Oh and my dad, sister and nephew came up and visited for a day.

These are the pics of Aaron and the kids fishing.

And these are pics of my sister and dad trying to get the toy golf balls out of the tree.

I came home around 11 and the electricity was still out! So I called the electric company again and this time the guy got a hold of me. He said, "Did you check the breaker box?" I told him that my husband had said that he had. So he asked if he had checked the one on the power pole. I told him that I wasn't sure and that I would make sure. So I checked and the main breaker was tripped, so I reset it. UGH!!! Five hours without power!! So, I came back in and turned the A/C back on. Well just the blower motor went on, but the condenser outside didn't turn on.

So, I called dh to tell him he didn't check the right breaker box and that now the blower motor was working but not the condenser. He told me he would look at it when he got home from work - at 5 pm. So, I turned everything back off and pretty much hung out at Wal-Mart and my mom's house.

Dh came home and double checked my double check of the breaker box, noticed a few things out of place, put those things back into place, and the next thing I knew there were four switches and not three for the A/C unit. So, now the A/C unit is working. We have gone without electricity for over five hours and A/C for eleven. So, we are sitting here waiting for the house to finish cooling down.

Anyway, our Safeway had a re-grand opening today. The store was giving away 200 Ipods. Well, my mom won one. Do you remember back in February when Sam had her MP3 player stolen from a church event? Well, she has been babysitting and helping me with my Avon to earn money to buy herself another one. My mom gave Sam that IPod.

I'm so excited and I just can't hide it! I found it, I found, I found it! Woo Hoo!! Alright, I'll quit dancing around, but I am so excited! Yes, I found my book, my The High School Handbook by Mary Schofield. I was at the point where I was looking online to find a good price so I could buy myself another one. Like I said, I didn't think I had lent it to anyone, but then I thought about one friend in particular. She has a son the same age as Sam. I called her and asked her if she remembered it and she was able to go right to it. Woo Hoo!! I have my book back, I have my book back!!!

As you can see from the above pic too, I got my hair cut. Yes, that is my natural color. I do have a perm, but I do have naturally wavy hair too. I can't believe how many compliments I have received on my new "do." That just tells me how bad it was!

So what else is going on? We have officially being doing school for about two weeks now. The kids are getting back into the swing of things, but more importantly, I am. The other thing that has me all excited is our new homeschool support group; CHEER. The ladies are great and the kids are great too. We have been able to meet several times already and everybody it getting along very well.

Hmm, the work on the house isn't progressing very well, but we have been pretty busy again. I have two things on Saturday and then nothing else is planned for the rest of the weekend, and that includes Monday. I'm not gonna push for anything to be done either because we do need a weekend where we just don't have much going on.

Anyway, we have officially started a new homeschool support group. It is called CHEER, which stands for Christian Home Educators Eclectic and Relaxed. Before you ask, Eclectic means that you take a little bit of this and a little bit of that to make up your own curriculum. Of course that is my definition of ecletic! I'm excited about this. It is a very good group of ladies that just want to get together and get some adult time. Oh, and the kids get along great too.

Anyway, tonight is the first official meeting. We will be voting on the by-laws, the officers, and signing people up as members. We should have 7 or 8 families there. I think that is a pretty good start, don't you?

In similar news, we have officially started our school year. Samantha is officially high school ( & ) now. Several years ago, I bought a book by Mary Schofield called The High School Handbook. It is such a great resource on how to plan the high school years, and now I can not find it! I so want my book back! I am racking my brain trying to figure out what I did with this book. I don't remember lending it to anyone, I have gone through all the books I have packed up and can't find it there. I've looked in places where I would never put it, but just on the off-chance that I did. I can not find this book and it is such an invaluable resource to me. It was this book that made me realize that I could homeschool through high school. If it comes down too it, I will buy another one, but I really don't want it to come down to that.

I am also looking for some other paperwork, so if y'all could be prayin' for me, I would greatly appreciate it! I think I'm loosing my mind!

Oh, and have a great day!

We got back from the convention last night about 9:30. That wasn't too bad for us, but our friends Kim and Alethea still had to get back to Las Vegas. I got an email from Kim about one this morning letting us know that they were both home safe and sound. No, I didn't wait around for that email. I got it when I got up this morning.

The convention was great this year, as always. I think I enjoyed it more this year though because of the people that went. Aaron was able to go this year, but like I mentioned above, Kim and Alethea were able to go too. Alethea is exploring the options of homeschooling. She is very open to the idea and I think she feels more capable now. The nice thing for her though is that she does not have to make a decision soon. Her oldest is two and her next one is still cooking.

My niece-in-law, Shari, is a manager for a La Quinta Inn and was great and hooked us up with a special deal for our local support group that wanted to go to the convention. She saved us a lot money and we are so thankful that she was able to do that for us. Anyway, that was nice to be at the same place with other people from the group. We did take some time on Friday night and went bowling with Shari and Brandon. That was a lot of fun.

Today has been really nice so far too. Aaron and I slept till about 7ish, and the kids slept in from 8:30 to 9:30. We are just holed in the house right now, relaxing. I am looking forward to taking some time and going through the new stuff I bought. I will start planning the next school year soon too.

Oh, btw, that money I had mentioned earlier in the blog, I used it to buy curriculum. We did get some fun things for the kids with it.

Just wanted to do a quick blog to let everyone know we are alive and well. It has been a very busy couple of weeks with a lot going on. Maybe someday I can catch you all up on it.

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July.

Creative Spiritz

Creative Spiritz

Creative Spiritz