Good times in Kansas

Zoey and I made it safe and sound back to good 'ol Texas! The trip wasn't too bad and I'm glad I got to visit with everyone! Hopefully I'll get time off in September and Beau will be able to go visit too.

We had such a good time at the Fair. Here's a pic from the top of the Ferris Wheel, which I hate!!! That thing makes me so nervous, but Zoey and the rest of the kids loved it!

The first couple of nights Zoey had fun riding the "kiddie" rides and then we took her on the Tilt-O-Whirl and she looooooved it!!!! She had so much fun and wanted to ride anything that was big or went fast... that girl has no fear!

This is my mom telling Zoey that she absolutely cannot get out of the boats or mess around! She made me nervous on that even! She liked them though...


On Saturday we had the Parade and it made me really miss Beau... last year Zoey and I got to ride with him in the Fire Truck during the parade and it was really special... There's always next year! Zoey had too much fun getting candy while GrannyC helped corral everybody. She made out with quite a bit!

We got all the kids to line up and then of course Meemaw, Nana Kriss, and GrannyC wanted to pose too!

Here's one with Grandpa Von, he handled all the commotion pretty well. Zoey is doing her "Princess" pose, too funny!


And finally one of my favorite pictures of the trip! She's growing up so fast!!!!!

Only a couple more weeks to go before Beau gets home, we are so stinking excited! I can't wait for everything to back to normal again... well, as normal as we ever were I guess!


I'm off to watch The Closer, I love love love that show, she's such a spit-fire...

Parks and Pigs, what fun!

Tuesday evening we had a get together at the South Park for my mom's birthday. It was a lot of fun, everyone came, a friend of my Aunt Cyndee's and a couple of family friends that grew up out by my grandparent's farm. It was so much fun chatting with Heidi and John. Heidi used to be a Fotopoulos and they lived just down the road from my Grandma and Grandpa's farm. I have good memories of her mom Lilly and I found out they all live in Dallas now! We definitely have to get to Dallas and visit everybody, they sure are nice people!

Heidi showed the kids some gymnastic moves, Zoey did a couple somersaults, it really impressed her!

Last night Zoey, Ellie, and Andrew had a slumber party with Cyndee and Dewey. Cyndee has this HUGE pig Susie that we rescued at a gas station in Goodland like 3 years ago. I was pregnant at the time, she was a little tiny baby pig, we think she fell off a pig truck. Well, Cyndee and Dewey kept her and made her a pen and now she is absolutely huge, and soooo cute! She seems to smile, it's weird, and we fed her lots of weeds, she loved them! Zoey didn't know what to think of Susie and she wouldn't get too close. I think she's big, I can't imagine how big she looked from Zoey's point of view!

Tonight's the first night of the Fair. We're excited, Zoey's taking a good nap right now and we'll be ready for lot's of fun! Hope everyone has had a wonderful week!

Kansas fun!

Well, we made it to Kansas!!!! We had a super trip, we only stopped twice and made it in 8 hours and 5 minutes... Zoey and Cupid took the trip pretty well. Haha!

Zoey's having tons of fun with Nana and Papa, plus all of her cousins, Jessie, Chisum, Andrew, Ellie and Savannah! We went out and looked at Tanna's new house and Zoey helped Tanna measure her bathroom for something. Today they did a lot of the electrical work and put the stairs in. It's really an amazing process, I told Tanna she needs to be a master at this so in 20 years when Beau and I want to build a house they can be our mentors!

I lined the kids up, oldest to youngest. This is actually in Tanna's soon to be pantry off of her kitchen!

The girls went with Becky to a wedding so Andrew came over to play and we went to the new South Park. They have added some awesome equipment and put in a frisbee golf course too. I can't believe how nice it is, the whole community has done a lot of work!

Mom's eye is doing pretty good, she had her surgery on Wednesday. She had a Dacryocystorinostomy. Impressive, huh? They created a new tear drain, hers has been blocked for like 10 years. It's black and blue and she said every time she bends over her face might fall off, but not too bad!

She braided my hair the other day, I miss her doing my hair!!! I always had my hair in curlers or braids or something. It was just nice to have her brush it and mess with it... Zoey got some perm rods put in too, she took them out too soon so it didn't curl too much, but it did a little.

Today we got all gussied up for Sunday School and Church. It was really fun, Zoey had a blast singing songs and the sermon was really good. I think it's something we need to continue, we had a good time!

Well, I better go see what Zoey and Papa are up to, Mom just came in and said she was on the floor with the dogs and barking at Papa and he was feeding her chips! Really nice Papa!

Big G's

Last night Priscilla and Landon, Nicole and Jackson, and Zoey and I headed to Tuscola, TX, population 714, to eat the most amazing hamburgers ever! When Nicole was telling us about Big G's she said that when we got there we couldn't look around too much and we would forget how it looked when we got our food. Needless to say, I think Priscilla and I were like what the heck kind of place is this! It was packed, with a couple of window air conditioners to cool the place and we got a table waaaay in the back corner. Next thing we knew, the people sitting next to us started smoking!!!! I think this is like the last place in the United States that you can still smoke indoors! It was really hot and the smoke was getting bad so when I took Zoey to the potty I saw there was a big table up front out of the smoke, I asked the waitress if we could move and they said sure! It was sooo much better after that and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Jackson and I had to take a picture because we had matching shirts!

We had burgers and some really good pie, they looked so good I wanted to take them all home!

Here's a link from a newspaper article they did on it, it's a really cute place! I recommend it if anyone is in our neck of the woods!

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/nov/25/thats-good-eatin-1/

There was a shark hanging from the ceiling with a hand in it's mouth and Zoey wasn't really to sure what to think of it. She told me this morning that the shark shouldn't have had a hand in it's mouth it was mean... it's so funny what she remembers sometimes!

We headed back to good ol Abilene, it's only like 10 minutes away from Tuscola, and stopped at Priscilla's house and let the kids play on the swing set for a while then we headed home. After I got home my neighbor Ashley and I sat on the porch and visited and had a great time!

The other day I got Zoey a cheap princess set at K-Mart, came with a crown, necklace, clip-on earrings, and a ring. She looooves it! She's been wearing it all the time when we are at home and just acts like such a princess! I accidentally stepped on her ring the other day and broke it and she got very very upset with me! She huffed and puffed around and frowned at me and kept telling me, "Mommy, I'm very mad at you!" Then she'd walk out of the room and come back and huff and say, "Oh look at my ring, it's broken!" She was pretty ticked and she still talks to me about how I broke her ring. After a while I convinced her it was an accident and she's not mad anymore, but it was so hard not to laugh at her, she was really mad!

Well, we're going to maybe go swimming with the Hopper's again this afternoon and I've been working on Farmtown, my new addiction! It's so dumb, but so fun to play! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Happy 4th of July!

Well, we're coming to the end of our lovely 4-day weekend, it was a much needed break and we had lots of fun! Saturday we headed to some friends of Nicole's family, Amber and Ivan. They have a beautiful house with this awesome back porch and a huge yard for the kids to play in. They had make brisket that was out of this world and lots of other goodies. Zoey and Jackson had fun running around, playing with the horseshoes, and playing with the other kids.We all had matching shirts on, we didn't realize it untill we were headed to Nicole's house. Gotta love those Wal-Mart specials haha!

Nicole's dad got the kids some sparklers and Zoey did surprisingly well! I figured she wouldn't want to hold it or anything, but she had a lot of fun! She just wanted to keep lighting the ground on fire with it...

By the time the fireworks started, everyone was pretty wound up so getting them to sit still took a bit and then Zoey wanted nothing to do with them! She kept holding her hands over ears and telling me they were too loud. They were set off sporatically so they were big gaps between fireworks and she'd think it was safe and start to walk to go do something then another one would go off and she'd run as fast as her little legs could take her under the porch! It was so funny! She didn't really watch too many of them, just mostly sat on the porch and ate some cake... oh well, there's always next year!

Today Priscilla and Landon helped me take my car to the mechanics to get looked at. The first step in getting ready for our big trip to Kansas coming up, we're sooooo excited!! We dropped it off then went to K-Mart where of course they were having sales all over the store! I got Zoey a really cute dress for $4.00 and a couple other things. I wish K-Mart was closer to me I would go there all the time, I love that store! After that was Chinese that really hit the spot and then back home. Now I'm just waiting on a call back to see what they're going to do with the car, I've tried calling like 4 times and nobody has called me back. It's so frustrating!

I'm going to finish up some laundry and get everything ready to get back in the swing of things tomorrow. We should have 4-day weekends waaaaay more often! Happy 4th everyone!

Finally!

Alrighty, it's been a while, I think I'm a little out of practice! Things have been going great here, I've been keeping super busy, all my friends have been keeping me on my toes, thanks guys!!! Almost every Saturday we go swimming with my neighbor Ashley and her baby Sarah, her blog is on my page, go check it out! We've been hanging out with my friend Nicole and her son Jackson quite a bit, she has a kiddie pool and the kids love it! I told her the other day I should just get one here for the house and she said I couldn't because I wouldn't come over any more!

They could not wait for the pool to fill up but they were both great listeners and didn't mess with the hose...

Zoey rode around on Jackson's back for a while then he took a turn on hers. It was funny she never said a word when he rode on her but he said she was heavy right off the bat. Nicole laughed and said, "Oh he's such a man, already complaining!" Made me laugh, they had such a good time.

She got a bigger pool and last weekend we let the kids play for a while then put them down for a nap and we hopped in! All we could really do was sit, but sit we did, it was soooo nice and cool.

The other day Zoey brought home her first piece of homework, crazy! Her teacher sent her home with a stuffed monkey, a journal, and the book 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. We kept him over the weekend and we had to write in the journal with a few pictures about what we did with the monkey. It was really fun thinking of things to do with him, we decided to write about how Mr. Monkey helped us... He helped us be safe...

He helped us share with friends...

He helped when we were sad...Helped us have fun on the trampoline...and helped us read the book!

I really enjoyed doing this with Zoey and she still talks about the monkey!

The other night while getting Zoey ready for bed I discovered her closet was full of water!!!! AAAAHHHH!!!! I kept hearing at work about when your husbands get deployed, whatever can go wrong, will. Oh I freaked out but I ran and got my neighbor Cody and he came to the rescue!!! Turns out the run-off for the Air Conditioner unit had some build-up and it was leaking underneath and then went into Zoey's closet. He blew it out with an over-sized turkey baster and everything came out fine... except the monster that was living underneath my air conditioner!!!!!

I was completely embarrassed to see how filthy it was under there! I had to take some pictures, we cleaned it all out I think it's better now, hopefully!

Blech, it was gross! Thanks sooooo much Cody and Ashley, you guys have helped me out more than you realize!!!!!

We hung out at Priscilla's a couple times too and swam in her shark pool, the kids always have so much fun when they get together! They're on vacation, lucky, so they've been busy this past week but we hung out and had a looooong overdue wine night! It's so nice to relax and chat and let the kids play!

Well, I wanted to get some pics up, I'll try to keep up with this thing since we've been doing so much lately. Beau's been doing ok, his computer broke so he was kinda bummed but he had another one ordered and on it's way and it has a webcam on it! We went and got a camera for our computer here yesterday and set up Skype so we can video chat, I'm so excited!!!! If anyone has Skype let me know we can chat!

I have a ton of ham roll-ups to make for a work pot luck tomorrow so I better get busy. After tomorrow we have a 4 day weekend, yay!!!! We are spending 4th of July with Nicole and her family, I'm excited! Hope everyone is well!

More to come...

We've been keeping busy this week. Beau made it to his final destination safely, his living situation is a little better than he thought, but he just keeps telling me it's really really hot. I've been able to talk to him almost every day so that's been good, plus e-mail. He had his first fire today, the landfill on base was on fire, he said it took 2 hours and around 11,000 gallons of water to put it out. It was 120 degrees today so he said between that and wearing full gear, plus the fire it was scorching! He said he's never drank so much water in his life!

Right now I'm printing off our pay slips because one of the gals at the CDC accidentally shredded Zoey's file by mistake! Haha... I just have to get her shot record faxed over tomorrow and it will be ok.

Here's some pics of Beau leaving the other morning, it was so sad! It feels like a month has passed instead of a week.

We had a busy weekend with supper over at the Hopper's, thanks again guys! On Saturday Zo-Zo and I went shopping with Priscilla and Landon. We got a Children's Place in town, yay!, so we went and checked that out. I really like that store, they have good quality, cute clothes at pretty good prices. Zoey needed a pair of close-toes water shoes for their splash day at school so I got her a really cute pair. Priscilla got matching flip-flops for the kids, no more fighting over the shark shoes!!! Best idea ever!

After that we went to Jason's Deli for lunch, so good, the kids loved their pizza! We headed home for naps then went to Ashley's aunt and uncle's house to go swim!!!! First time of the summer! She has all the pictures on her camera so I will have to post those later. We had a blast and baby Sarah loved it! It was so much fun, we got invited to go back this Saturday so I'm hoping the weather works out!

Here's a pic of the Smith kids and Zoey at the Fire Station... we had such a great time and Zoey loves the card we got in the mail from them.

Well, it's raining and windy out right now so I better hop off and turn off the computer. I don't have to work till 7:30 tomorrow so we get an extra hour to sleep in! Yippee!