February Fun

I had to clear off my camera's memory card, and I thought I would share some pictures of the kids taken during the month. Hope you enjoy!!



We all know Kayla is always being silly and loves wearing silly outfits, so of course we had another one to add to the collection of her crazy choices of what to wear!!!






Then, there's Hayden!! My sister-in-law just did a post a few days ago about her little girl (who is Hayden's age) always telling her to take a picture of her. So, it must be a phase that they all go through, and it must hit about the time they are 5. Because Hayden does that a lot too!! And there were several of these "Take my picture" pictures on my camera from this month.

He just happen to be playing with his lion (which he got for his first Christmas and still LOVES to play with) and decided he wanted his picture taken!!



We, also, all know that another one of Kayla's "hobbies" is to make a MESS!!!! And her latest favorite thing to say when you find her and her mess is to say "Sorry, mom." -- Then, I'll tell her something like - Kayla if you ever do that again.... or If you don't leave that alone... Her response to these statements are always "O-tay, mom!" --(Oh, and of course, she doesn't have any clothes on either, and we all know she loves to go without clothes too!!)

So when I was taking a picture of the mess that Kayla made with the popcorn, Hayden decided he needed his picture taken too!! This is what he decided to do. Don't ask what he was doing, I have no idea!!!

This is how she fell asleep one night during the month. She had about 10 books, (none of which she wanted me to read, but she had to have them). My kids couldn't be more different--when Hayden was her age, we had to read about that many books every night before bed. Kayla won't sit still long enough to read even one page, she's too busy making one more mess before the end of the day!!

In this one, Hayden was doing his favorite thing, watching cartoons. He was sitting in the box with the pillow, then he wanted a blanket to cover up with. I was telling him how silly he was, and so of course, next thing he says is "Take my picture!!"

BCHS '97

1. Did you marry someone from your high school? No

2. Did you car pool to school? No

3. What kind of car did you have? I don't remember the year - Chevrolet Corsica

4. What kind of car do you drive now? 2005 Dodge Durango (yeah, it's got a Hemi!!)

5. It's Friday night, where are you then? Probably "cruising" around Waycross with friends, or at a movie with friends

6. It's Friday night, where are you now? At home with the kids

7. What kind of job did you have in high school? My senior year I did work-release and worked in the afternoon as the secretary at the Bus Garage for Brantley County Schools (It was actually a really fun job!! All of the bus drivers were hilarious!!)

8. What do you do now? Stay-at-home Mom

9. Were you a party animal? I went to some parties, but I never "partied", I was always the "DD"

10. Were you considered a flirt? Maybe!!

11. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? No, have you ever heard me sing!! And my ability to learn to play an instrument is about as good as my singing ability!!

12. Did you get suspended/expelled? No, but there was this one girl that had started talking trash about me and my ex-boyfriend (who she was dating) and I had had enough. I confronted her and was ready to fight, but some of my friends kept me from fighting her by calming me down and telling me she just wasn't worth the fight. --There was a rule our senior year that if we got in trouble with fighting, skipping schools, etc. that we would not be able to participate in a lot of the senior activities, plus if you went without missing more than 3 days of a school you didn't have to take your finals for that semester. So, consequently if you got in a fight, you got suspended and had to take finals.

13. Can you sing the fight song? What? We had a fight song!!

14. Who was your favorite teacher? That's a hard one, there were several - Mr. Jacob's, Coach Smith (it was an Economics class, which we never discussed), Ms. Laura, and Mrs. Thrift

15. Where did you sit during lunch? In the lunchroom (we had a closed-campus). Usually sat with the same group of friends everyday, we all left after lunch on the work-release program or if I didn't eat would just hang out on the "court" until it was time to go to work.

16. What was your school's full name? Brantley County High School

17. What was your school mascot? O.k. don't laugh at this one!! It was a Heron!! We were known as the Brantley County Herons (or as some people called us "Pond-Scoggins") Maybe that's why our football team was never very fierce like the Gators, Bulldogs, Bears, and Pirates because we were a BIRD!!

18. If you could go back and do it again, would you? No, thank you!! I had some good/fun times in high school, but not enough to want to do it again!! Plus, that would mean I would have to be a teenager again!! Too Much Drama!!

19. What do you remember about graduation? It had rained for a few days prior to graduation night, and they had thought about moving it indoors to the gym which would have meant that each graduate would have only been given so many tickets for family members to attend. And it would've been really crowded (my brother's graduation ended up that way, and it was packed shoulder-to shoulder), so we didn't want that to happen to US!! The rain held off the day of graduation, so they went ahead with plans to have it outside at the football field (remember the south is football country, so we had more seating than Centauri's field does)!! Anyhow, it ended up raining again, it would sprinkle, then stop, then pour, then sprinkle, then stop, and so on during the whole graduation.

20. Are you planning on going to your 20 year class reunion? Not sure! I had thought about going to my 10 year, but it wasn't where I could go when they had it. I had already made one trip back to GA that year. So, I don't know, I may decide to try to get to my 20 year.

21. Do you still talk to people from high school? Well, I keep in touch with some through myspace and facebook. I have been able to find some that I haven't seen since high school. It's kind of neat to find people and see how they are doing.

Our Valentine's Day

We had a nice Valentine's this year. The kids each got a new shirt from us: Hayden's has a snowboarder on it, and Kayla's has a gingerbread girl, cupcake, and candies with the saying "Too Sweet". Then they were excited to get a package from Papa Mike and Nana with a Cars lunchbox/toolbox (Hayden has turned it into his "secret box" and you have to earn "coins" in order to look in it), a "rabbit" (actually a puppy, but Kayla thought it was a rabbit when she first saw it in the package), and some candy.--I never could get Kayla to just be nice and smile, she was laughing in this one after she had burped. She's such a lady!!!

Waylen and I decided to forgo getting each other anything, and went out on a date. I would have to say that was much better than any gift we could have gotten each other. We went to the early movie on Saturday night and saw:

It was a great movie, the best movie I've seen in a long time. Then after the movie, we went and had dinner. We wanted to try out a new restaurant called the Thai House, but they were packed. We were told it would only be a 15 minute wait, but there were at least 4 other groups/couples ahead of us. Then one guy came in and asked how much longer it would be for him, and they told him about 15 more minutes. He said he had already been there for about 20 minutes. --So with not knowing how long we would have to wait to be seated, then who knows how long to get our food, we decided to go down the street and eat at: We were able to get a table right away, and the service and food was great. Although, both the sandwiches we had wanted are available only from 11-5 each day. So, we both decided to get the Steak Mazaliant (sp?), which was really good.

And of course, anytime we go to Alamosa, we have to go by the grocery store and take advantage of the weekly sales. And this week the trip was to:They were having a "Buy 2, Get 3 Free" sale on their Betty Crocker cake mixes, cookie mixes and frosting. So, we were able to get 10 items for about .84 cents each. Plus, I had a few coupons for some of the items too, so we got some of the cookie mixes and frosting for less than that!! Yeah!! --We had to get a few other things (the basics-milk, orange juice, and eggs) and a few other items that were on sale. In the end we saved more than we spent!!

So, that wraps up our Valentine's Day date. We had a lot of fun, and it was nice to get out for a nice evening without the kiddos, who were still wide awake when we got home around 9:30!!

Our work in progress!!

A few months ago, Waylen asked why I hadn't blogged about the store room that he built for us in the garage. I guess I just never thought about it, or I didn't want to post pictures of a pretty empty room. But the shelves are starting to fill up and I'm sure one day we'll be wondering where to put everything. So this blog is for my very talented and hard-working handyman.

Waylen built some rolling shelves for some of the canned foods: We would like to get enough of the blue water storage containers to store our water. They are 7 gallons each and so we would need at least 8 to store the recommended 56 gallons for a 2 week supply for our family of 4. But the thing is- we don't even have water in the 2 containers that we have. Pretty bad, huh?

The shelves on the back wall are really nice deep shelves and the drawer storage containers (which contain pasta) fit on there perfectly. But as we get more pasta we have room under the shelves for nice large storage containers.

And yes, those are all boxes of cereal - Cereal is the main breakfast meal around our house, and so I like to stock up when they are on sale (and having coupons helps too!!)--One morning, Hayden wanted a certain kind cereal that we didn't have in the house, and he thought it was pretty cool when I came back in from the store room with just the kind he wanted.

Waylen decided to build a nice counter to the left of the doorway. It still doesn't have a counter top, but it is nice to have some place to put bags and boxes of items purchased until they can be put away!! Plus, we have lots of storage space under the counter for large containers. This will probably come in handy with the 25 pounds of beans, 50 pounds of oats, 75 pounds of rice, and 100 pounds of wheat that we just ordered from the LDS cannery.

So, that's our work in progress!! It has come a long way in just a few short months and it is exciting to see our food storage starting to fill up the shelves!! --I forgot to mention that Waylen tiled the floor himself with leftover tiles that he got from several people. They don't all match, but it is much nicer than having just a concrete floor. Plus, he did a great job, but would you expect anything different than that from Waylen!! He's the best!!

How long could you survive trapped in your home?

The other day as I was looking at some websites on food storage I found this little quiz on how long you could survive being trapped in your home. It asks you to enter the amount of pounds of non-perishable food (such as your canned foods and cereal) you have in your home. When I entered just canned foods and cereal the answer was 153 days. However, I'm sure we could live at least another week, maybe two, on the food that we have in our kitchen cabinets (which wasn't counted). Anyway, I was curious to see what the difference would be when I added in the total pounds of spaghetti, macaroni, rice, oats, etc. that we have in our food storage. And the result was:So, all of that would help us survive 3 more months. Although, the problem we would have with all the noodles, rice, and oats would be that we wouldn't have enough water to cook it all -that's assuming we would be trapped without any water supply. That is one thing I really need to start storing more of in our food storage. --As I said in the previous post, it's all a work in progress!! And as one of the articles in the March issue of the Ensign points out: "The first step is to begin. The second is to continue. It doesn't matter how fast we get there so much as that we begin and continue according to our abilities."