Happy Anniversary to SC and CTP!!! :)

WARNING!!!!!!!

The persons depicted in the photos below are all way cool.

I've never been part of the "cool" crowd before............... I guess some things never change!!! Just kidding - I love you guys!!!! :) And, LL, I don't have any recent pictures of you - how can this be????? I have the picture from ages ago at Cozumel's. You and BS need to start being in more pictures - you two are always the picture takers! Send me a new one and I'll put it on here :)

Tonight, I hobbled down to the basement and worked out with Big Sexy for the first time in forever. We used to go to the gym every single evening; then the boys started tkd and that totally messed up our schedule. And then, as BS would say, I sold my soul to tkd and have been getting weak and flabby ever since - although, now I can kick him in the head when he says that! I'm determined to keep it up, but sometimes it's just so hard. After all, it's a lot easier to sit on the couch and watch tv snuggled under a blanket than it is to lift weights. What's even sadder is how weak you get if you don't keep up with it. I used to squat more than I weigh - ha! If I tried that now I'd be looking at a hernia for sure!

I want to scrapbook but am having trouble getting started. Anybody up for a scrapbook evening?????

Today was a crazy day weather-wise. One minute it was sunny, the next it was sunny and snowing, and the next it was dark, dreary and snowing a LOT. Luckily, none of it has really stuck. Unluckily, it's still freakin' cold outside and there is more winter to come. I cannot express quite strongly enough how much I HATE winter. I hate the cold, I hate the wind - the piercing, biting, bitter wind -, I hate the snow, I hate the dirty snow, I hate how nasty cars look from driving in the slushy, dirty snow, I hate that the trees don't have any leaves and look all pathetic and cold, I hate that it's pitch black outside at 4:30. I believe I suffer from seasonal affective disorder/winter depression. I firmly believe that I should move somewhere tropical each winter to combat this issue :) Seriously......

I'm pretty sure that I finally - completely - broke my toe at taekwondo last night. It hasn't been right since I front kicked that board for pre-testing 2-ish cycles ago. I suppose there's no point in going and having it x-rayed as they'll just tape it up, right????? It's a lovely light purplish/green color and all swollen. I'm limping and hopping around - but I'll probably go to class on Thursday anyway...... :)

The kids' Christmas present has arrived a month and a half early. Meet "Big Bertha".

Not only does she have the awesome ice/water hickey on the front, but she also required some home renovation to be done before she'd fit in the kitchen. Out of the 50 refrigerators at Lowe's, only one - and it was an UGLY one at that - refrigerator would have fit under the cupboards that were hanging on the wall. Big Sexy chopped the cupboards off the wall. Of course, then he had to go to Sears to buy a circular hand saw to cut the cupboards down to the right size. After the cupboards were resized, the cupboard doors needed to be resized. This required a fourth trip to Lowe's to by the proper router bit so that the cupboard doors could be reshaped properly. After a weekend of tireless effort on BS's part, the cupboards are now done and rehung! He's so awesome!

Of course, now we have to paint them, and the kitchen walls, and while we're at it, we may as well redo the ridiculously ugly floor, and put a backsplash on the wall by the stove, and buy an above-the-stove microwave....... It never ends......

And finally, to put us all in the mood for Christmas..............

Answers to Wendi's Friday Fill-ins

1. Please feel free to come to my house and fix the cabinets that previously resided over my refrigerator - the one that died. After you've scaled them down to fit above Big Bertha, please rehang them in the gaping, empty space on the wall. Oh, and if you want to paint the kitchen, that'd be nice too................

2. When I buy a new book, I can't help sniffing it occasionally.

3. My favorite thing to cook is - I don't cook :)

4. Spending time with my family is something I can't get enough of (except when I've had enough - you all know what I mean!!!!)

5. He makes me laugh, he rubs my feet, and he watched 2 Dr. Quinn episodes with me, That's the thing I love most about Dave tonight.

6. Watching some people doing their form always makes me think to myself, what the heck!!!!!!!!!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to taking a shower and going to bed, tomorrow my plans include giving my boys a big hug when they get home from their sleepover at Meem & Beeb's house, and Sunday, I want to relax and get my school stuff ready for Monday!

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!