Sadness

Well, living on a farm has its ups & downs. Joy miscarried her baby goat. It was certainly a disappointing thing. I guess something I have to get used to happening because I live on a farm - the circle of life & death. But its not easy, nor do I think I will ever be used to it. Sorry to bear bad news; but it is just another part of life. On the bright side, Pixie is learning to behave. Shelly

Just random things

There are no pictures this time. It's been a long time, and I thought I should post something. We went to Hot Hearts this weekend and it was really cool. Clayton King and Living Illusions were there. To see them go to: claytonking.com and livingillusions.com . They're both really cool. Living Illusions did a full view water torture cell. You know, where they lock them all chained up in water, and they have to escape. It was pretty cool! And Clayton King was pretty amazing, taught me some new lessons, and about 900 people got saved over the weekend. It was awesome!! Another cool thing is that one of our goats, Joy, is, we all think, having her kid/s. We don't know, but we think in the next 24 hours, she'll have it. Kayla is staying out there all the time with her, cause she wants to be a doctor. Erica is on her way to get impressions for braces. She'll get them in a week and 2 days. So yea. When Joy has her kid, which could be today or in 2 weeks, we don't really know, I'll get pictures and show y'all. And this has nothing to do with anything, but I was thinking about it since I saw Living Illusions. Brock Gill is another incredible guy. He does stunts and illusions. You can see him at brockgill.com . Just go to the media section on top, and watch all his really cool videos. Especially the bullet catch, the card trick, and maybe the water coffin or the Freedom Experience part 1. But they're all pretty cool. And on the Living Illusions site, go to the multimedia part to see some neat stuff.

Pixie and other things

KK and Pixie

Pixie is a sweetheart

Gracie and Pixie

Cleo taking a nap with KK

My gorgeous dog!

The family

It's been a while since my last post, but I fugured something should actually happen before I tell you about it. Erica got cellulitus yesterday. We took her to the doctor, got her antibiotics, and she's doing great. I got some new pictures of Pixie. She's gotten so much bigger, is still crazy and hyper, and is still very sweet. She's funny, too. In the mornings, we go out to feed all the animals. She runs around going crazy, and doesn't really want to eat her food. But if she sees another dog's food, boy-howdy, that stuff looks good to her! She loves chasing the turkeys, especially Sawyer. He lets her go underneath him, and chew all his feathers (which really surprises me!). One of her favorite toys is a feather she found. At night she eats great, but is still really hyper. So there you have it. Another interesting thing that's going on is that a little terrier mix stray has been hanging around our house. He apparently took a liking to our dogs, and he accidently got into our backyard for a whole day while we were at Grandma's... so we'll see. KK took a walk today, it followed her, and she managed to get back without him, but he may come back. I don't know. And we went to Grandma's house, along with Dad's sister and brother (my aunt and uncle) and both their families. It was pretty fun. We played dominoes a lot, played tag, football, and went to see a fun place that us kids go to every year. :) And we took a family photo. So there you have it. That's the happenings over here.

Gators vs. Sooners

Well, hey everyone. I just wanted to announce to everyone that... Florida beat Oklahoma!! It was a totally awesome game, and the Sooners never had the lead. The end of the 1st half was 7 to 7. The Sooners had been inside the 5 yard line 3 times (they were about to make a touchdown) but the Gators blocked them twice. It was awesome. The final score was 24 to 14. Tim Tebow did wonderful, and so did Sam, but not as good as he usually does. I have to give credit to the Sooners though. They did play well. The Gators just beat them this time. But if Sam comes back next year, they'll be good again! Colt McCoy so should have gotten the Heisman, but never mind. The Downs came over to watch the game for the first half of the game, then we went to their house (and their awesome HD TV!) to see the second half. It was a lot of fun! So there you have it. The awesome game where the Gators CHOMPED on OU. It was so much fun to watch! I really enjoyed watching it. I love the Gators! And I was pretty upset with the rankings this morning. But FL is number 1! USC shouldn't be so high. We'll see. I really hope that Tim Tebow, Percy Harvin, and Brandon Spikes come back and play again, cause if they do.... they'll be unbeatable! :)

Our MI Christmas

Erica's stocking stuffing (we saved those for Christmas morning)

A present from Jaja and Grandma

Kayla liked the light

Jaja and Grandma

Mom's present from Mrs. Hastings

Mom's present from Jaja and Grandma (the grill set) and Dad (the fish jewelry she's wearing)

The 3 of us with our presents from Jaja and Grandma. Look outside! It's snowing! Can you tell?

The 3 women cooking, from left to right: Grandma, Mrs. Grace, Mom

We had tons of these little guys.

This is the Colt's stadium. It was one of our stops on the way home.

The first thing I'm gonna say is, Texas beat Ohio St!! It was a great game! I was freaked out a lot. I missed the first half because I was at MAZI, a girls' bible study, but I got to watch the last half. It was scary. Dad really liked James Laurinaitus. He had Galations 2:20 on his face. If there was a tackle, he was like, "Was that Laurinaitus?" It was great! But he definitely loved it (all of us did!!) when Cosby made that last touchdown! It was awesome! That was the fun! But the new fun will be on thursday when Florida beats Oklahoma. Because of their defense. It's better then OU. Tim and Sam will be great to watch! But now for Christmas, which is probably why y'all are reading this entry. We had fun on Christmas. We opened presents, goofed off for a while, then Mr. John and Mrs. Grace Tornga came over for lunch and cards. It was fun. Us girls didn't play cards cause the game they played was for 6 people only. So we watched a Land Before Time movie. Those were our favorites when we went up there a long time ago. So there you have it. Our Christmas. I loved it. We had a lot of little bunnies all the time. They were really cute, and they liked the bird food. Our little stop in Indianapolis was fun, also. We stopped by Starbucks and asked for directions, then drove around for a while. We stopped there last time, and it was a new stadium this time, so that was fun. I think that's everything. Oh, and the shirt Erica has in the pic says "Show me the Zhooniyah!" which means money. We all got one. It was pretty funny!

Some of the Michigan pics

Kayla trying to sled

Jaja and Grandma's house covered in snow

Erica skiing!

Dad on the left, and Kayla on the right. I don't know who the person in the background is.

Erica and Kayla making a gingerbread house

Dad and Kayla

There's us trying to glue the house together. Jaja is on the right.

Happy New Year!! Here's half of the MI entry. Kayla tried to sled like we did when we were young, but she was just to heavy. I tried pulling her a little, but it didn't work at all. In the pic, she's trying to do it herself, but she's stuck. It was funny! :) There was a lot of snow! About 3 feet. It was beautiful, and it snowed almost every day! I loved it. Erica was quite the photographer on the trip. She went out and took a lot of pictures, so I'll try to put some on here when I post the Christmas pics. Skiing was so much fun!! It was also freezing! It was around 20 when we went, and it was snowing and very windy. But it was fun! We went inside and drank hot cocoa a lot! We also tried some harder slopes then we did last time. They were pretty scary, but Dad, Erica, and Kayla were the experts! It was Mom's first time skiing!! She picked it up really well, and did good. She kept up with us, and enjoyed herself. The hardest part for her, I think, was getting off the ski lift. :) The reason there aren't more pics of us is because we didn't take any more. We were all so busy skiing, we forgot. And on Christmas Eve, we all made a gingerbread house. It was fun to glue together and put stuff on it! But it didn't taste very good. And later that night, we watched the movie, "We're No Angels". This movie is hilarious!! And I think that's everything for now. I'll try to put the Christmas and snow pics on here tomorrow. Oh, Dad and Mom are on date night right now! We're going to watch Nancy Drew when I'm done cleaning the kitchen. :)

At Grandma Graves

This is the beautiful sunrise we saw on the way to Grandma Graves' house

We bundled up to go outside. It was freezing! Literally!

Kayla doing a little craft

Erica painting an ornament. That's why we went outside earlier

The road on the way to MI. The white you see is ice.

This is the THULE that we used to have, but froze, then broke.

Well, as you can see we had a wonderful time at Grandma Graves'! It was a lot of fun, but the temperature all day was 0 degrees, and the wind chill was around -25 degrees. It was freezing! You couldn't breathe outside almost, and everything was so icy! We had fun staying inside, though. :) We played a bunch of card games, Erica and I painted some wooden ornaments, and Kayla made a thing that I don't know how to pronounce or spell, but looks cool. She had fun making it. We all had fun there, and Grandma had really good food!! It was yummy! Grandma and PawPaw also have two little sweet dogs named Annie and Guy. They are so cute and sweet! And for the THULE. We were driving along and then Mom heard a thump on the roof of the van. Dad pulls over and we see that the THULE had broken off and so it had opened. So we had to pile everything into the van. It was really crowded! But that's all for now.

Cookie Decorating Party

All decorating sugar cookies

Alissa & Erica made scary cookies :)

Kayla, Kalley & Karley

Jayme & Kayla cutting out more shapes

Playing "apples to apples" afterwards

Well, tonight was the cookie decorating party. It was lots of fun for the mom as well as the girls. lol We had 11 friends come over. There were lots of creative & fun cookies to see, the different tips give more freedom for how a cookie can look - before you eat it! It is always interesting to see the creative side of other people. My fav was a purple & gold LSU cookie!! Thanks everyone for coming over & having fun with us. Happy New Year!
Shelly

Our early Christmas

KK loved the shirt and socks! She changed into them right after she opened them!

These presents are from the Hastings! Not the hat. I love them!!

This picture was taken before she had the bow in her hair! :)

KK is taller then Mom. Kayla is thrilled!

This was taken before we opened any presents. Mom really likes it.

We gave Dad the Longhorn hat.

I got new books and a really cool duffle bag.

Kayla got her puppy

And Erica got her phone

Here is part of the entries I needed to do. The others are of when we went to Grandma Graves' house, and the other is of Michigan and Christmas and skiing. But here's the scoop. We opened all of our presents before we left for Indiana and MI, so that we wouldn't have to haul all of it up. I'm really glad we did, because I think I used every single present on the trip. I think all of us did. It was really fun. Merry late Christmas! But, it was actually early for us. We all had a lot of fun, and then we left for Indiana later that night. It was hard to go to sleep for a while!

SNOW!!!

I'm pretty sure Cleo posed for the camera. Above: my beautiful dog. She loved the snow!

Cleo was frisky all morning

Kayla in the snow

Mom got this good one of Erica on her way out to take pictures

Cookie, the other goat. Yes, they're home.

Out in the back part of our pasture

A pretty pic of our neighbor's yard

Our house covered in snow!

Well, here it is. The long awaited blog on snow. We literally took 400 pictures. I had a hard time deciding which pictures to put on here. I almost put another one of Philly on here, but I didn't. I might later, though. :) It snowed last Wednesday night. A week ago today, it was freezing outside and was about to snow. Everybody loved the snow. The only ones who didn't was the chickens. They wouldn't touch it. Erica woke me up around 2:30 and told me to look outside, and it was snowing, but it hadn't much. Kayla woke me up around 6 and brought me outside. It was done snowing, but we got 4 1/2 inches! It was awesome! So we played outside in it for about an hour, and then we all got too cold and went inside. We got some pics, but they're too dark. All these were taken when we went back outside later. Cleo liked it a lot, as you can see. The funny thing she kept doing was pawing the ground to look for grass. But she posed all morning for the camera! I'm surprised I only did 2 pics of her. Cleo really enjoyed herself in all the snow. Philly and Gracie had an absolute ball in all the snow! Philly loved the cold. Grace found Brutus and chased him all over the place. It was funny. So they loved it. The goats could care less whether it snowed or not... all they wanted was food. They were jumping up on the trees to eat the leaves. The turkeys didn't really like it, but they are social birds, so they followed us around anyway. The cows didn't really care about the snow either. They were all wet, but they didn't mind. And the chickens. Kayla wanted Erica to get a pic of Blondie (our mini chicken) in the snow. So KK carries her out and drops her into the snow. Well, Blondie didn't really like it, so she flew all the way back to the coop without ever touching the ground. We let all of the chickens out of the coop, and they rush out, look at the snow, and they all rushed back in! It was hilarious! :) We made snow angels, and Erica made a little lopsided snow man. We threw snowballs around, and Erica couldn't really aim, but it got better. (She told me to tell you that!) It was funny. And here's a sidenote: all the pictures that you see where taken by Erica. Every single one. (Well, except for the one of her.) Aren't they great?!
Here's something that doesn't have to do with snow: we're going to Michigan for Christmas! We're going to leave on Saturday night (Friday night?) and get back the next Monday. I think that means we'll be gone for 9 days. I'm really excited about going! We're going to ski, and have a white Christmas! Yea! :) Hey, guess what? My best friend Maryanna Emily has a new baby sister! She is so cute!! And her name is Christia Elise. I wanted to tell everyone. Oh, and Sam Bradford got the Heisman. But the Gators are still going to win the BCS! hehe.