Frankie and family

We had a great time seeing Rachel and the kids...oh and Frankie too! From L-R Sophia -9, Mariam 6.5, Kayla 11, Luke 12.5, Josh 4.5, and Nate 7.

Not sure what Nate and Josh were doing here....that Josh is so hilarious though! So glad they only live 4 hours away!

Ahhhh! It's snow!

We went to visit my brother and his family in Knoxville TN last weekend and woke up Sunday morning to about 1/2 inch of snow!! Sophia was in HEAVEN! Her older cousins just rolled over in bed wishing her squeals hadn't woken them up!! She promptly went outside in her PJs ( which is just a T-shirt and thin pants)to play. About 5 minutes later she came in to get on a jacket, hat and gloves. This time Mariam(6 yo cousin) joined her.

Nate wasn't that interested!:)

Photo Tag....

Here is a tag from Shanna that sounded like a good way to put off my chores!

Here are the official rules:
1. Go to my documents/pictures.
2. Go to my 6th file folder.
3. Go to my 6th picture.
4. Blog about it.
5. Tag 6 people to do the same.

I wasn't real sure where to find the answer to #1(yes...I am that illerateraresrte and I can't spell) since I use Kodak and Picasa for my pictures so I looked around and found these 2....

I think I might have ended up in "my documents" and this is the 6th pic of the 6th folder. This is Richard's parents on their wedding day. We are visiting the Philippines this summer and Cleofe is going with us! I love pictures like this and am looking forward to seeing more in 3 months!
here is the 6th picture of the 6th folder in my Kodak Gallery

We had just gotten our camera and were testing it out. This is a sign in Athens, AL just before the Super Wal-Mart. If you turn left it will take you to Calhoun Community College where I got my associates degree.

I tag everyone who reads this. It was fun to see what pictures were in the 6th folder!

Christmas Wii Tournament

(i am finally getting around to finishing up my posts from our Christmas holiday...I will move this post to the correct date before I print those posts in our next blogbook but am leaving it here for all to read;) aren't you lucky!

Earlier in '08 we visited Richard's brother in SC and had fun playing with their Wii...specifically the ski jump game. We talked about having a ski-jump tournament at Christmastime when we all got together at our house. So Richard and I started to think how we could make this a fun 'event'. We toyed around with the idea of getting t-shirts printed with team names with the families but couldn't come up with a cost-effective(CHEAP) way of doing this! I thought the teams could be named after the towns/states where we reside but that would require some software to reverse the letters before printing them off onto the iron-on paper(remember the Jonas Brothers boo-boo?). While I was google-ing all this trying to get options I came across a site where you can print off a lot of different characters so we decided to be these teams....

Pikachu

Mr. Happy

Shrek(can you see the excitement in his face!)

and team Spongebob

These pictures don't do the teams or shirts justice but I didn't get good pictures of all the shirts so these will have to do!

We didn't have a set time to have this tournament(who likes a schedule at family events!!!) so when it was 10pm on our last night together and we had not fit it in... Richard decided to just pass out the shirts and tell them what we had planned. Well... that got everyone excited and we decided to play anyway! We put on our shirts and started the tournament(decided on bowling though so everyone could play). Some teams even had a cheer. It was a late night for the kids but a lot of fun!

Blog Book

I had been wanting to print my blog for a long time and was sorely disappointed when the sight I found to use (blurb.com) was no longer compatible to blogger….whatever that means! Well…what it meant was I needed to find something else! i did some google searches and didn’t come up with much but did find this sight….sharedbook.com. It was one of those websites that doesn’t come up first in your search and you kinda stumble onto it…and if you don’t bookmark it you won’t find it again??? Yea…I didn’t bookmark it but thankfully my friend Elaine used the same website to print her blog so I found it again. It was surprisingly easy and I am glad I used this instead of something like blurb.com…..now the ones on blurb look like the photo books and you could rearrange the pictures and text…but could you imagine how much time that would take??? I was a little sad that i would not have more creative freedom but that quickly went away when I experienced how EASY it was to download and print the blog!

All I did was indicate the dates I wanted printed, give the password to my blog and push “GO” or start or continue….whatever. In about 5 minutes there it was! I could flip through the pages and when it met my approval(now I couldn’t go in and rearrange anything ) I put in my credit card info and VOILA! It was done! Oh…and it was FREE Shipping!

This is the front cover. I could choose the picture for this and could write a "dedication" on the front page.

I think it was about 48 pages?? I couldn't chose how many pages I wanted but it did have a limit on how many pictures could be in it...although it didn't say how many...I just know this because I put in a date range that had too many pictures and it said I had too many:) kinda wordy, huh!

I don't know if you can see the little conversation bubble beside the title of the post....but it has a number beside it. In the back of the book are all the comments. The number beside the bubble

is the comment number in the back.....make any sense?

It even tells you who/where the comment came from...although it had "Janet H" as the author of a lot of my mom's comments....thought that was odd!

Now there are a few things I wish I could have done like keep the comments with the original post and had all the pictures for one post on the same page…..BUT that all is OK with how simple this was. I did take a survey about my experience using their website and they had a question on what would make the site better. The choices you could pick were all the ones I mentioned and some others….so maybe they are looking to add more perks to their blogbook-creating sophistication???? I chose the paperback version because it was $10 cheaper and we don’t have little hands that might rip the cover. The cover is made from laminated cardstock....more sturdy than a regular paperback book. Oh....and the whole thing was under $25!

Gentlemen....and Pixies....start up your engines!

Isn't he just so handsome in his Cub Scout uniform!!??!! He was trying to smile but didn't really want to but at least we got this smirk out of him!! Much better than what he does for school pictures!

This was our first experience with the Pinewood derby. The pack leaders were more than helpful in getting our cars cut out. Nate went for the simple approach. The original design was a tank....but he didn't want to add the dowel to make the "gun" part nor did he want to paint any thing on it to resemble a tank. We kept asking if he wanted to put some embelishments on there....but nope! When we got to the meeting he had to weigh his car. Ooops....it was about 7 grams too heavy. But we didn't know what to do. He didn't have any weights on it to take off. What made it too heavy was the block of wood on the top and the only way to make that part lighter was to drill holes in the car....so we found a nice gentleman with a drill. Each hole took off 1/2 gram....so about 14 holes later he was ready to race!! And that succor got 2nd place!!!!!!!! He was so proud and I was estactic that he got this trophy!!! This does wonders for Nate!

A cool thing about this pack(and maybe all of them??) is they include the little sisters of the scouts. They call them Pixies. They each got to make and race their own car. Sophia's didn't do so well but she did get the "Sportsmanship" award because she was always cheering for everyone even when she lost!