Before you continue on reading this post, let it be said that the lighting in the Garden Center is bad, awful, appalling, atrocious, terrible, horrible, and dreadful :) You couldn't get a good, quality, properly colored picture in that place if your life depended on it! Anyway..... here are some shots from last night:

A pep talk from one of my peeps....

Mini-Eaglescout

Look at the intense concentration and proper form!

If we could read Kim's thoughts during testing.....

Ryan and Jeff - gettin' it done!

A very ball$y board break by Mr. P.

I wanna be just like him when I grow up!

Jimmy, Ryan and Camron all successfully

met their mid-term requirements!

Oh, and Camron has a wedgie.

Some of the crew. Wendi & I look a little bit like

Christmas with our new belts!

Great job last night, everybody! Let's do it again in January!

My sister called me a few weeks ago with a slight problem. Apparently, she was unable to figure out how to be in two places at once. Levi had a Halloween parade at his school and Savannah had her preschool "unmasking" - where the teacher calls each of the kids up and makes a big "to do" over their outfits - at the same time. So..... I got to be the "mom" of a little girl yesterday! And not just ANY little girl, but a "Snow Princess." She's just too cute :)

Then, last night, I got to go trick-or-treating with the Snow Princess and her Ninja-brother around my neighborhood. They made out with a packed Wal-Mart bag full of candy.... each. Their father couldn't wait to get them home and in bed so he could raid the candy bags - nice, Steve.

This afternoon, some of Jimmy's friends came over to help us chop wood.

Their facial expressions were cracking me up!!!! They're really quite normal looking children. See.

I talked with SC on Sunday - while I was in the process of washing mountainous loads of clothing - and she informed me that plans are being made for a trip to "Penn Hills" (am I correct in assuming that this is Wendi's code name for the place we are going????) She also informed me that I was the only one not cool enough to attend tkd on Saturday morning :( I have a good excuse - other than the fact that I've only ever been to ONE Saturday morning tkd class - and that is that my family, my sister's family, and my mom & dad drove to Ohio to visit my other sister, Lori (not the Lori that comments on my blog though.) Here we are, standing nice and still and not poking each other or giving each other wet-willys long enough for my mom and Dave to have a photo shoot. This is one of the better pictures. I have a bunch of one or more of us in various stages of speaking, pointing, or making a weird face. I have some with 2 of us looking one way and the other one (Danielle) looking the other way - granted, there were two cameras and our photographers were not very clear on who was shooting when...... We're lucky we came up with this picture considering the subjects being photographed :)
In other not so exciting news, Dave went with us to tkd tonight. He decided to take Pixel with him and document the evening. This is Pixel.

He's my/our new Canon Rebel camera. Happy Anniversary to us :) Anyway, Shawn taught, so we all left class sweaty messes. Below are some shots of some of the ways he chose to torture us this evening.

You think they're nothing but innocent pride crushing caterpillars, but they're not! No these caterpillars involve a push-up as well. You can't tell me that Shawn doesn't enjoy this. Just look at his face! He's laughing (not that I blame him.....)

We did sit-ups.... both ways.

Ah, one of my least favorites. The balancing of the pad while doing round kicks. These suckers kill my hip/side butt area. Later we had to do push ups for each pad that fell.... we weren't warned about that little tidbit until after the drill was over.

We round kicked the pads.

We practiced our board break. Here's Cam with the beginning swivel and the break!

Here's my break.

We ended out the evening with some sparring. Here's Ry flying through the air. I don't know about you, but I'd probably give him 3 points for this baby.

And here's my baby.

It was a great class. I love it when Shawn teaches!

Leslie won't be my friend anymore.............

Leslie is threatening to un-be my friend! "Why???" you may ask.... Apparently, it's all because of this:

We were chatting on the phone this evening, finalizing the plans for our "date" tomorrow morning. Don't be jealous girls, you're not missing anything fun.... we're going to have our blood work done early in the morning :( I can't eat anything else tonight.... I'm not sure I'll make it. I have had an irrational fear of having my blood drawn since I was in the 3rd grade. I was anemic and, according to my mom, it took her and 4 nurses to hold me down in order to get the blood! I guess I was a strong and wiry little thing. I mean, geez, I was 3/4 toothpick legs at the time and a head! I guess this just foretold of my future taekwondo butt-kicking skills (oooh, by the way, Dad... I'm sorry for kicking your glasses off of your face the other night. Please forgive me.) Back to the story... When my sister had to get her blood drawn - and I was quite a bit older - I almost passed out in the waiting room just thinking about what she was going through. When I got pregnant with the boys, I got brave. After all, it wasn't for ME that this was being done; it was for THEM - and I'd do anything for them. The last time I had my blood taken was about 2 years ago. I wasn't freaked out or anything, but I did almost pass out after and they had to give me a pumpkin cookie - how embarrassing :( I'm sure it was the low blood sugar! I told Leslie to have her camera ready tomorrow because heaven only knows what will go down (hopefully not me) and SHE'S driving - then we're going to breakfast. That'll be some fun after getting up at the butt crack of dawn and having a foot long needle plunged into my arm while they drain out 87 tubes of my blood!

Ah, but none of this explains why she's going to un-be my friend. Sorry, I got sidetracked. My sister asked if she could bring her kids trick-or-treating in my neighborhood this year. They live in a cute little town, but there really aren't a LOT of houses - and none that she overly wants to go to. I asked Cam if he wanted to walk around with Levi and Savannah. I told him he could just throw a white sheet over his head and I'd cut some holes in it. I said this as I was on the phone with Leslie. She said something about cutting a lot of holes in it and something about a rock. I had no idea what she was talking about! I admit it. I have never seen Charlie Brown's Halloween Special. There, I said it. I said it to her. She said she wasn't sure she could be my friend. Do the rest of you still like me??????? Please! Now that I have friends, I'd like to keep them......

Really???? You need to warn people of this?

My faithful, trusty curling iron gave up the ghost the other day, and I had to get a new one. Thank heavens this tag was on there or I could have really injured myself.

Seriously, when I saw that bright, shiny curling iron, my first thought was, "I can't wait to fire this baby up and put it near my eyes! I wonder how close I can get it to my eyeball before it starts to feel dry? Woo-hoo, I'll be having fun tonight!" Honestly, what kind of moron would try to curl their eyelashes with a 1 inch diameter curling iron? Duh! In the wise, wise words of Squidward Tentacles, "Everybody's an idiot, except for me!"

My New Favorite Phrase

"You are sassy to me."

Last night, my crazy family came over to celebrate my birthday. Big Sexy made pumpkin pie - with REAL pumpkins, not the stuff from a can - and chocolate cupcakes with white icing and chocolate sprinkles for the kids and Steve :) While I was teaching my 3 taekwondo classes in a row - one of which was an all ranks Tiny Tiger class that was packed - the boys decorated for the party. Here's a pic of Cam's creation... Notice that the streamers & balloon spell MOM. I'm telling ya, the kid's creativity astounds me!

Here we have a lovely picture of me opening one of my gifts. I think we can safely assume that Big Sexy has a knack for snapping a picture right when I have the most retarded expression on my face. Thanks, Honey!!!!!!

Dave and the boys got me all of the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman DVDs. It's okay if you think I'm a dork.... that's a good show!

My favorite little girl in the whole, wide world made me two beautiful pictures and dictated a note to her mom for me. She said, "I want to come to your birthday tomorrow and see you there when I come...." She also said, "I love you steps. They are bu-ee-ful." She's not kidding about the steps. When she's over here, she goes up and down those babies a million and one times! Here's a close-up of the bu-ee-ful little girl.... notice her tat.I'm not going to mention the really nice, sweet, mushy card that my parents gave me. My sister reads my blog and I don't want to bring back the bad memories of what my mom wrote in the card... you know, about me being the favorite and most loved and all :)

My magical friend, Lady Leslie, got me a crazy card, which Cam has made sure I've heard no less than 27 times today, and a beautiful, brushed-steel standy uppy photo album that says "FRIENDS" on the front of it. Her comment that, ".....now that you have some," made me laugh hysterically. My boyfriend, Alex, is all ready to smile for a picture to go in the album the next time I seem him. I suppose this is better than trying to kick me in the backside which is what the ornery little dude was trying to do during his taekwondo class last night!