More holiday cheer.....

What do you get when you take a silly girl.....

                     add some of this.......

                                                     
 
                  and some of this.......

 

                                              

                           You get this!

 
     

                              And you get a happy kid!

 Then you take your happy kid to look at Christmas lights!

 

                                

   Happy Holidays!!                                  

Holiday Cheer...

Welcome to December!
It's the most wonderful time of the year, and my favorite as well.......Christmas time.
With the Christmas tree up and the stocking hung above the fireplace, I can't believe that it's almost Christmas time. Soon this year will be gone and the start of a new one.
I hope that everyone takes the time to enjoy this holiday season and take some extra time to be thankful for all the things that you have been blessed with this past year.
I will probably wait until the last minute to finish my shopping and wrapping gifts, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I hope that everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday season this year. I've got alot of things on my list for what's left of this year and I hope that I can manage to get them all done, and I will make some time to share them with you as well.
So I will start off with this.......
Maddie wouldn't sit on Santa's lap, so this was better than nothing!

Picture Day.....

I have a picture that I want to share, but first there is a story that goes along with it, so happy reading!

Just to let everyone know, this story has been in the making for over two months now. That's how long I've been waiting on this photo. But I guess it was worth the wait. Did you already scroll down to see what the picture is before reading my story? Well if you did I don't blame you.
I thought I'd had it all planned out, but here's what I get for planning. At my job, I was handed this piece of paper with a women's name on it and phone number. I was to call her and schedule a time to have my picture taken for work. The picture is going to be used on our website and also be displayed in the front lobby. No problem. Well, if we wanted to we could have a pet in the picture as well.
I was up for that.
We have two dogs, Ruger and Captian. Both brothers and both males. They don't always get along with each other, so I knew that trying to wrangle both of them for this photo op was NOT going to happen. So I choose to just take Ruger instead.
I had my appointment time scheduled with the photographer and had it planned out that I would take Ruger to work with me the morning of our photo shoot and give him a bath and make him smell pretty. He's an outdoor dog 24/7. He's needed a spa day.
So the morning came, and I dropped Maddie of at school, headed home to pick up my furry friend. So far everything was going smooth as butter. That's what I thought.
I get over to the dog kennels to go get Ruger. He comes running up to me, and instantly I was saying....."oh you stinkin' dog." He was partly covered with the wonderful aroma of a SKUNK!
That's where my perfect planned picture day went out the window.
So I loaded up my stinky pooch and headed to work, and gave him not one skunk bath, but two. He could have used one more, but I was running out of time.
Then later I found out that the pictures where going to be taken at the photographer's house. My dog is NOT house trained by any means. This is a dog who has gone for a swim in our lagoon. Then I started to sweat a little. We arrive at our destination, and I made sure that Ruger hike his leg on some bushes before I stepped into this lady's nice home.
We get inside and I forewarned her that my dog was not an indoor dog. She didn't seem too worried about it. Hey I warned the lady.
She takes towards the back of the room, and says "Everything is set up down stairs." I thought, oh this ain't gonna happen. My country dog doesn't even know what stairs are lady. All I could think was I'm NOT holding this 50lb dog down some stairs.
So she asks, "will he go down the stairs?" I was like "He's not used to stairs, but we can try."
My dog looked at me and took one step back and put on the brakes. He wasn't going for that.
So she says "Oh no problem, I have an elevator, will he go on that ok?"
I about said "holy crap, I love this house."  So we hopped in the little elevator and took it to the basement.
I bribed Ruger with treats and begged him, please oh please don't you pee in here.
In the end Ruger was so good for me. I was so happy it turned out great. I know Ruger won't be around forever, but I will have a perfect picture to remember him by.

                                     

Happy Fall

Oh man, am I behind or what?
I knew it had been a while since my last post, but I didn't think it had been that long.
Here's what's been going on in our world.

Since the fall season began, a.k.a allergy season at our house, we've been lucky so far. I only lost my voice once due to allergies and Maddie had one bought with bronchitis. Stu's been the lucky one and hasn't managed to get sick. We had  to get a new washing machine. Our old washer kicked the bucket, so we broke down and got a new set. And I LOVE them! I actually look forward to doing the laundry. I never thought I'd ever say that. Went to the State Fair, we took a trip to the pumpkin patch, which was crazy busy that day, but NO RAIN! Then Stu & I took a trip to the dunes in Oklahoma, and we celebrated Halloween! Wheeeew.  That gets me caught up until the holiday's!

Here are a few pictures from our wonderful adventures!

Good picture huh? I cut the top of Stu's head off!

Stu and Maddie jumping around at the Pumpkin Patch!



She loved her little pumpkin she found.



  



Happy Halloween from our little Cheerleader!



Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Labor Day weekend.....

Man am I ready for the weekend. The Kansas State Fair starts this weekend and I am ready to sink my teeth into a Pronto Pup! If you've never had one, it's a corn dog on steroids and it's gooood.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend last week. We had a busy one.
Here's how it went down.....
Saturday morning.....work, came home ate lunch, get all gussied up, iron clothes, send Maddie to her Grammy's, attend a wedding in the evening. Watched a huge thunder cloud creep up on the outdoor wedding ceremony. With just a couple minutes to spare, they finished the vows and made it to the reception area, and it didn't take long before the wind was blowing and it was pouring rain. Then the rain cleared away and it was gorgeous outside. The wedding was beautiful. It was at Walter's Farm in Burns, Ks. It's also known as Walter's Pumpkin Patch. It is really beautiful when they have all the pumpkins out. We will be making a trip there sometime next month.
Sunday.....Clean house, laundry, and got ready for a special little girl's 1st Birthday party. Our good friends Dana and Kate had a wonderful party for their sweet, beautiful daughter Emery. Check out some cute pictures of the birthday girl on the KDKG blog!
Monday (Labor Day).....I cleaned the living room up, cleaned the refrigerator, cleaned out our closet and after all of that I was done.

 The happy couple. Congratulations Matt and Nicole!

The birthday girl wasn't too happy in the begining...

 Kate had lots of extra helpers with opening the gifts.

Hope everyone has a good weekend ahead! 

Getting caught up......

I'm so behind that I think if I stand still I can run circles around myself.
I made a list of things to get done tonight before I hit my pillow, and making a blog post was one of them. So here it is.
First day of Kindergarten. (which was like 2 and 1/2 weeks ago, but hey better late then never)
Maddison loves school, so far. She will ask, "Do I have school tomorrow?" "Yes sweetie you do."
Then she might moan or say "aahhh man."

We are ready to head to school.

 Here she is with her teacher Ms. Haney.

 Every morning they meet in the gym and line up with their classroom. On the first day, the look on my child's face was priceless. She was in shock by all the kids that were there.

I don't know about the rest of ya'll, but I am ready for this summer to be OVER!
We have had one crazy year with our summer weather. We even managed to break a summer heat wave record. This summer we had 51 days that were above 100 degrees. It was miserable.
Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Growing up......

I don't even know where to begin. We've been staying busy around here. Mostly trying to stay cool from this awful summer heat we've had. I am ready for it to be over. Bring on Fall weather.
This week is going to be a BIG week at our house. Maddison starts Kindergarten this Wednesday. She's growing up so fast. It still hasn't really hit me yet. I am so excited for her and sad at the same time. I know she is going to do great.
It's hard to believe that my little girl, and I mean little, is going to be in Kindergarten.


Me circa 1985, Kindergarten. Yes Maddie gets one thing from me. The hair!


She had her check-up exam and immunizations at the doctor a couple of weeks ago. That was a fun day. She did better than I expected. She was fine with everything until she saw that she was getting shots too. Any one want to guess what her height and weight were?
She's probably going to be just like her mama was in school. One of the smallest kids in class. She weighed in at a whopping 35.2lbs and is 39 1/4inches tall.
It's no shock to me, since I can still pick her up. But her size doesn't stop her. She can go allllllllll day long.
Stay tuned.....there will be more to come.

Crispy critters........

What a summer this has been. Ugh.
102,104,103,104,106.......those are just some of the numbers. No they aren't my pick for a winning lottery ticket. That's what some of the daily temperatures have been around here. This summer has been hot and dry. One Sunday the heat index managed to reach 111. We broke a record with that one.
We need some rain and bad, but I don't think it's coming any time soon.
Our poor yard looks awful in some spots. Some spots are green, but other places it's fried. And it makes this awful crunching sound when you step on it.


I do have a good helper to help water the flowers.

And I don't even want to look at my flowers. Most of them are toasted. I even lost a few of them. Some of them look like they might make it, and others look like they won't. But I haven't given up hope.


I potted some Petunia's on the front porch....and they almost burnt to a crisp. I've been giving them a good drink about every night this week, so I'm hopeful that maybe they will pull through. I hope. They were looking so good until the heat wave came.



Hope everyone else is staying cool out there! Try to enjoy the rest of the summer.

I'm so behind.......

WOW! I'm really behind. I need to get my butt in gear. Well, maybe.
Anyhoo....here are some pictures from the 4th. I'm only a week late, but here they are.
We didn't do anything exciting. We stayed home and had a laid back celebration. I went and bought Maddie a few small fireworks. Nothing too loud and big.
I bought a bunch of Sparklers thinking that would be the perfect thing for her. Not so much. She wouldn't even hold one. She was afraid she was going to catch on fire. Her words not mine. I promised her she wasn't going to catch on fire. Either way she wasn't having it. But it was still fun for Stu and I.







Meanwhile Stu and I also celebrated another year of marriage last Friday.(7/8/11)
6 years and counting! Sometimes it feels like it's been longer. My how time flies.

I spent the morning at the doctor's office with Maddison. She had started to develop bronchitis. Her Doctor said we caught it in time before it got really bad, but she still had a heck of a nasty cough. Today she is feeling much better. I'm glad too, because I am ready to hit the pool next weekend. It's been way too hot to do anything else! Hope everyone is having a good summer.