Archive for the 'Julie' Category



16
Jul
10

flashback friday-camp edition

Growing up, I had the privilege of attending a Christian-based camp each summer (really all throughout the year!) at Forest Home in California.  Some of my best memories come from camp.  I went to mother/daughter, father/daughter, family camp, jr. high camp, high school camp, winter camp, and I worked as a childcare assistant one summer.  It has always been my dream since we had kids to provide that same camp experience for my kids. 

On Sunday, we leave with 5 other families from our church to go to Pine Cove for family camp!  (Well, for us it really is ‘almost’ family camp.  We opted not to take Asher this year due to his age.) 

So, in honor of us going to camp I’m posting a few pics from my camp days!

Mud pit!  (arrow is pointing to me)  This is probably from freshmen year of high school.
That is me flying off of ‘the blob’ at the lake.  If you got a fat man launching you, prepare

to rocket!  Fun times!  I even bought a shirt at camp that said, “I survived the blob”

me sliding down the tall slide. 
paddleboating with my dad, brother, and a friend
That is me in the innertube sledding down at winter camp
my mom and me in front of our cabin (did I have shorts on?)
horseback riding on one of the trails
10
Jul
10

“why do you hate God’s creation?”

I don’t know what is up with all the critters in our house as of late, but I’m getting sick of it!  (mouse in the kitchen in May(didn’t blog that), snake last week, and now…)  

So before I tell you what happened this morning, I have to tell you what happened last night. 

While I was cooking dinner on the stove, I turned on the overhead stove fan and I heard thumpity thump thump!  First thought was that the fan was broken.  Second thought was there was a dead mouse up there, and my third thought was a bird.  I had remembered hearing faint chirping noises in the vent last week.  

Now if you know me, you know I loathe birds. This happened to me a year and a half ago and I still get chills thinking about it.  So anyway, I tell James I think our fan is broken or there is an animal up there and so he turns it on and of course, it works fine. 

This morning James wants to make breakfast on the stove.  He turns the fan on and the thumpity thump thump happens and my first words were “I told you so!”  (I love saying that a little too much.)  He turns the fan off and on again and no noise.  “I’ll deal with it later” is James’ response.  Now I’m cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast and I see a bird’s head peeking at me from the vent!!!! (Bird must of used his beak to pry open the vent a little.)

bird’s eye and beak creepily looking at me in the upper left hand corner of vent

So of course I immediately scream bloody murder but James is outside and can’t hear me. But all the kids can and Asher and Ella immediately start crying. Rilyn comes running in the kitchen and I am yelling “There’s a bird in there! I hate birds!” and more screaming ensues from me. Rilyn looks at me and asks, “Why do you hate God’s creation?”
Ouch. That one hurt, but have no time to deal with my sinful state because THERE’S A BIRD IN MY HOUSE! (God understands me.)
So, I calm down enough to take a picture for the blog, (your welcome), and James comes in and I tell him he will get the bird NOW.
Here is James brainstorming.

“Maybe I can catch the bird in the bag?!?”

So James decides the bag probably won’t work and he goes into the garage to think of something else to do. Meanwhile, THE BIRD FLIES OUT OF THE VENT INTO MY LIVING ROOM!!! At this point I lose it and start screaming again (but still remain cool enough to take a picture-give me some credit!).

The bird perches on top of the middle curtain rod. 

James comes running in from the garage to find this:

rilyn
ella (with some MAJOR bed head)
asher

So you can safely say that I’ve managed to make sure that all three of my kids will be scared to death of birds for the rest of their life. At least they can look back on this blog and find the exact incident where mommy screwed them up and not have to go to a psychiatrist for it.
So James gets a broom and after about 5 minutes gets the bird to fly out of our house via the back door. I grabbed the kids and put them in their room like it was a scene from the Panic Room. 

James now has a new honey-do list and you can bet the first item is “go into attic and do what needs to be done.”

09
Jul
10

flashback friday-cow appreciation day

I walk into Chick-fil-A today and I am bombarded with cows!  What the heck?  Apparently it is Cow Appreciation Day and if you dress like a cow you get a free meal!  I saw little boys with udders on-(eww).  I saw moms who drew black spots all over their babies.  Grown men with horns and moms with tails.  Entire daycares came dressed as cows.  There were cow balloons, cow bells, their cow mascot taking pictures…  It was a zoo farm!  (I was a little peeved at the people I saw that walked in with a white t-shirt and black sharpie spots they just drew in the car.  They should only get a free drink.)
But that is why everyone loves Chick-fil-A.  They are so kind and always tell me “it’s my pleasure” when serving me with a smile.  They take my meal to my table and refill my diet coke.  They have a playground!  They close on Sundays so their employees can go to church.  Their fries feel healthier to me than McDonalds, (please don’t tell me if they are or aren’t, I don’t care, I just said “feel healthier”.)  So I will always sing Chick-fil-A’s praises!

Umm, do you think I could of got a free meal today if I pulled out my 1980’s cow shirt?  😉

What?!? You don’t think I could get away with wearing biker shorts and purple socks with black shoes?!?
(As you can tell, I don’t mind humiliating myself on the internet. Laughter is the best medicine!)

06
Jul
10

fireworks!

We had a great July 4th weekend celebrating at my parent’s new (tree)house in College Station on their 14 acres.  This house is 10 feet off the ground on stilts!  (I will post pics another day.)  The kids had their first experience with sparklers and Rilyn even lit fireworks(with daddy supervising)!  Asher was freaked out and Ella didn’t like the noise.  Rilyn proved to be the family pyro along with James!

sisters
Ella’s first sparkler
Had to include this picture since it looks like Rilyn is lighting James bottom!
Asher getting some sparkler action
watching our own private fireworks show!
love Rilyn’s face in this one
Asher and Ella losing it with Grandma and Rilyn showing her pyro spirit
James living out his boyhood!  He could of played all night with the fireworks.
Rilyn getting brave and lighting the ‘big’ fireworks!
trying to write letters
showing off
we watched George Bush library firework show afterwards
Too loud for Ella!
Here is our attempt at a ‘cute’ family shot.  You can see Asher doesn’t want to be

tickled!  Oh well, we tried! 

screaming “Happy July 4th!”
30
Jun
10

california

Saturday evening was my cousin John’s wedding.  It was beautiful and so much fun to see all of my extended family again!

John’s wedding day
my cousins (there are 5 of us in this picture), and significant others

From L to R:  Diane(c), Amanda, Matt(c), Alexis, John(c), Bryan, Shannon(c), me, and James

Here is me with John circa 1990.  You like the custom puffy painted shirts I made

for all of us?  We were on a road trip from CA to MN and stopped at this Flintstone park!

Shannon and Diane, John’s sisters, are next to him.  My brother and sister are below me.

On Sunday, we drove back to Huntington Beach where my grandpa lives and James went golfing with the guys. On Monday, before we flew home, James and I went to Huntington Beach to take pictures (again with the beach pictures!). James really wished he could of gone swimming in the ocean, but there just wasn’t enough time. This was the beach I grew up going to. I have fond memories of taking the OC Transit when I was a jr. higher and tanning all day at the beach with my friends. 🙂

This is me underneath the pier at the beach
James wishing he was surfing out there…
That red roofed restaurant at the end of the pier was

where we were supposed to eat on Thursday night

to watch the sunset.  Boo.

You don’t see this everyday in Texas!
29
Jun
10

our little “getaway”

James and I flew to southern California last Thursday for my cousin’s wedding in Paso Robles.  We wanted to make it a long weekend so we could call it our ‘getaway’ trip for the year and relax together.

Wednesday night, Ella came down with a bad fever.  We were already at James’ parents house so I slept with her, and needless to say, I didn’t get any sleep.  I’m exhausted on Thursday when we get to the DFW airport.  Our flight kept getting bumped and finally got cancelled on Thursday.  We scramble to get a new flight and can’t get one until late so we miss our plans of a sunset dinner at the beach.  😦  Tired and frustrated, we have to fly to Phoenix first (our cancelled flight was direct).  It is 111 degrees when we fly in and we have to take a bus to get to our gate.  Wouldn’t you know it, but our bus’ air conditioning was broken!  So, we were driving around in a sauna.  We finally get on the plane that will fly us into LAX.  When we board though, the airplane’s air conditioning is broken and it feels like everyone is sitting in a baked potato!  The pilot apologizes and we sit there extra so that they can ‘fix it’.  The plane didn’t cool off until about 45 minutes into the flight.  That was fun.  The guy next to me had sweat dripping down the side of his face.  We finally hit our bed at my grandpa’s house in southern CA at 11 p.m.  (1 a.m. Texas time).  We were supposed to arrive at 8:30 p.m.  Sigh. 

The next morning we have to leave at 8 a.m. to drive up 4 1/2 hours to Paso Robles.  We ride up with my cousin and her finance.  We are driving on the 405 for like 30 minutes and we get sideswiped in the HOV lane!  (I’m telling you, don’t travel with us, we are bad luck!)  The guy who hit us started evading us and darting in and out of the 6 lanes.  He exits but we get his license plate number.  So now we have been sideswiped and hit and run.  Lovely.  CHIPS came out and took all of our info. and later in the day he actually called us to tell us he caught the guy! 

The rest of the day was calmer and we went to my cousin’s rehearsal dinner and had a great time.  The next morning, we drove to Cambria, which is a cute little beach town by Paso Robles.  James agreed to take pictures on the beach as long as he could watch the U.S.A. play in the World Cup at a local restaurant.

at the rehearsal dinner
Cambria
 
picture taken by my cousin’s wife
18
Jun
10

flashback friday-father edition

Happy Father’s Day weekend!!!

me and my dad circa 1985 (6 years old?)
James and his dad circa 1980
Daddy with Rilyn (notice the spit up!) 2004
daddy with newborn Ella-2006
daddy with newborn Asher making the same face and both showing their Agge pride!
13
Jun
10

$4000

What’s that floating in our kiddie pool?

Oh, it’s just a $500 Walmart gift card I received yesterday in the mail from my online offers! 🙂 I’m at a grand total now of $4,000 in gift cards/gifts on my little hobby! 😉 This offer was my fastest one yet. I started in mid April, and so it took a little under 2 months AND I only spent about $40 to get it!
If you are interested in how I do these offers, please click here. (Or ask me!)

11
Jun
10

flashback friday-bad sweater edition

Prepare yourself…I had some really bad sweater days.  And sometimes it’s fun to laugh at yourself, so here you go! 

We will start with the worst offender.  (You may also remember this picture, another example of some great fashion sense.)  This picture was taken with my aunt and my cousins.  I’m almost surprised that we didn’t have the boys in matching sweaters with mint pants.

I’m not sure why my mom thought pastel sweaters was

a good color for Christmas (let alone any time!)  And yes,

I had a bad home-done perm for about 3 years of my

awkward preteen years…sigh.

Again, excuse the perm.  I totally remember loving

this sweater that I got for Christmas.  The squiggles

were ‘raised up’ too, which added to the cool factor. 

just another bad sweater day
It’s not so much the sweater in this picture.  I think the

pants speak for themselves.  I couldn’t even include my

face in this picture it was that bad.

And finally, let’s not forget to give our proper respect to the puffy-painted sweater. I had lots of these, but the picture I found today was the lucky Christmas lights one.  Look how I rocked the Christmas present earrings!

I can’t claim I was talented enough to make this sweater.

My best friend’s mother did the honors-thanks Linda!

30
May
10

dancing and sunsets

We had a great weekend with family here to see the girls’ dance recital yesterday.
Here is James and Rilyn’s dance to Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire. This was the finale and it did not disappoint! We will post later some of Ella’s dances that were really cute (mainly because she was bossing girls around the stage!).

our family

Later that evening, we went to the Oasis to celebrate James’ mom’s birthday!

James’ family
sunset capital of Texas

I had fun taking pictures of the girls that night!

ella’s freckles!
brown eyed girl

And this is what I caught Rilyn doing on one of the decks at the Oasis. A true girly girl who was probably wishing on a star and dreaming…