October 30, 2010

Today Jordan and Peyton had to be at the calhoun church to sing for Bel Canto. They sang 3 songs...Go Down Moses...Once Again...and When he cometh. Mimi and Papa came to church to hear them sing. They did really good...except no one smiles up front and they all look like they are in pain...After church Bel Canto and Pathfinders had a pot luck...the kids were suppose to go can collecting after the potluck ... but we snuck out and got our stuff ready to head to Mimi and Papas house for trick or treating...Uncle Jamie and Aunt Stassey came over too and we all went together. Peyton has decided that she is too grown up to trick or treat...so she stayed at Mimis and helped pass out the candy. Once we finished one neighborhood the kids were ready to quit..but I think that they needed more candy...so Jordan, Greg, and I ran around Mimis neighborhood and got another basketful of goodies.

October 31st...I got up early and headed back to the calhoun church for the Bel Canto yard sale. I got there early so I could help price things and get first pick at all the goodies. Jordan got a bunk bed for her room. Luckily someone was there to deliver it...the hard part was getting it in her room. That afternoon Jordan had her very first piano recital at Shorter College...she did really well...so proud of her!!

POOL Aug8

We had such a busy summer. Started off with camp, then Myrtle Beach, Asheville, Mission Trips, the kids going to their other parents house, etc...but when everything started to slow down...Greg and I realized that it is sooooo hot in Georgia...and we need a pool!!! So we called in the pool guys...weighed how much it would cost vs how much fun we would get out of it and decided to go for it.

Once we agreed on location and started getting permits, we realized our septic system took up most of the back yard...NOT GOOD...luckily...we can still get a pool..it just needs to be perpendicular to the house rather then parrallel...which when it is all said and done...looks just as nice.

So Thursday a guy comes and clears the land and puts up a temporary fence.
Friday he comes back and digs a hole and now we have 2 huge dirt piles in our back yard killing our grass. Monday they put up the walls. Tuesday the cement the bottom of the pool and set up the filter. Wednesday they put in the liner and we start filling it with water...that night Brandon is already swimming. We left the hose running for 2 days to fill the pool...wondering what our water is going to be next month :)

Jordan came home from her dads on Saturday...she was excited to see the pool. We all got in and swam and mimi and papa brought Jackson to swim also. That night 2 of the neighbor girls came over and they all went swimming. All and all I think the pool will be a great invesment!!

Myrtle Beach June 28 thru July 4

VACATION....wooo hoooo!!! Time to head for the beach, but first stop...General Conference in Atlanta...kids didn't think this would be all that fun...till they got lots of free stuff at all the booths...so many pens :) The kids also got a little passport to take to different regions and got a special item at each place...when they finished they each got a book and a weird sailor hat....

Once we got to Myrtle beach we stayed the first 3 nights at the La Quinta...not a bad hotel...except it was 2 blocks from the beach...that kinda sucked....but we still had lots of fun swimming at the beach and at the pool...The last 2 nights we stayed at Palmeto Shores...we had an oceanfront room so that was really cool...Greg and Brandon had a blowup mattress and they slept one night on the balcony. The hotel next door had a lazy river so we floated in that alot..


Went to broadway at the beach and the kids played Magiquest...I took the girls to see Eclipse and the boys went to see prince of persia...Our movie was...AWESOME!! Greg beat the kids in putt putt golf one day.


For the 4th of July we went to MIMI and Papas house and watched fireworks up at the church.

june 13-16

Kids are so lucky these days. When I was a kid for summer vacation we stayed home, went swimming in the lake and played with our friends. I don't remember traveling anywhere...except maybe to Green Bay to visit my grandparents and to camp for a week. My kids summer is so busy that they will hardly get to stay home and play. After they spent a week at camp we went straight to Knoxville so they could spend 3 days with Greg's dad and stepmom. During those 3 days they went to Dollywood twice and splash country once. They had so much fun. Jordan and Peyton each got a necklace with their name written on a grain of rice, and Jordan got a hand painted shirt with a horse on it and her name. On Thursday Jordan went to Ohio to her dads house and Peyton and Brandon went to their moms...which they are leaving to go to Arkansas for a family vacation with their mom and Jordan to Indiana, Michigan, and Canada for vacations with her dad. When they all return home to us in 1 week it will be our turn to take them to Myrtle Beach. Looking forward to that!!

June 6-13

Cohutta Springs Youth Camp

This week Greg is the camp pastor at Cohutta Springs. Jordan is doing gymnastics camp and is in cabin 9a with Hannah Zachrison as her counselor. Brandon is doing wakeboarding and is in cabin 3b with Castwell ? and his counselor. Peyton was too cool to go to camp this year so on Thursday she came down and is staying in our chalet. Each morning after breakfast Greg and I went on a jog then he had worship for the kids. His talks were very interesting and kept the kids attention. After he did his 15 minutes of work we had the rest of the day free....so we rode our bikes...our longest ride was 12 miles..in the heat...one day it started pouring down rain on us and we had to take shelter in someones shed. Greg and I got to do the zipline, blob, slide, went skiing...and I actually got up for about 2 seconds on a wake board. Jordan had so much fun her first year here at camp that she asked to stay another week..but she has to go to her dads so she can't...maybe next year.

May 17th...Monday

Wow...it's the last week of school. Today is field day and the kids didn't have to wear their uniforms and could wear silly hats. Greg had the day off so we both helped. Greg did the water balloon toss and I walked around and took pictures. After school we took the kids to pick strawberries. We got about 3 buckets worth, the strawberries are really big, but not very sweet. The kids each got soft serve strawberry ice cream before we left and after dinner we had strawberry shortcake. We will be eating strawberries with everything the next week or so.

Saturday May 15, 2010

Took the whole family to church in Cartersville today to see Chris Massengil get ordained. It was a very nice service and a good break from GCA. After church we drove to Chattanooga to have lunch with mom and dad. Even though it rained, the kids still jumped in the pool while I took a nap :P For supper we decided to go downtown to the Murder Mystery Dinner Show. We used our coupons from restaurants.com and took mom and dad too. It was Italian night..I thought the food was ok, but the kids didn't care for it much. It was fun to see the actors walk around and talk to you. The show was about a redneck wedding and in the end you had to guess who killed the father in law. The audience would participate and would get up and dance or say things. The girls decided to sleep overnight at mimis house.

April 25--Georgia Renaissance Festival

I remember when I was little, we lived in Wisconsin and my dad was on the volunteer rescue squad. Each year the rescue squad would set up a first aid booth at the Renaissance Festival and family would get to go for free. Most of the time we hung out at the first aid booth helping people, but we would also walk around too. So now that I have my own kids I figured it was time to take them to their first renaissance festival. The kids didn't really know what to expect. I wanted to bring old halloween costumes that we owned, but they didn't want to wear them. Once we were there though I think Jordan wished she'd have worn the outfit. There were alot of people who were dressed up. Jordan ended up buying elf ears for $20.00 and Brandon a knife. The kids liked the jousting the best. This may not be something we do every year, but it sure was a nice walk down memory lane for me.

Joelys Birthday Weekend April 11

HOMELEAVE...this is the best time of the month because Greg doesn't have to work Wednesday-Saturday. So although the kids still had school, we decided to take them out and take a trip to Florida. We had the car all packed and ready to go and left straight from school...of course stopping at our favorite ice cream store Bruster's (lucky for Jordan she didn't have to wear her pj's today to get free icecream). We got to the Huffman's house at 11pm.

The next morning we packed a lunch and drove to New Symrna Beach. We parked our car right on the beach and unloaded. The water was cold, but the kids didn't care, they jumped right it even Greg got in. I just took lots of pics then sat out and read my book. Unfortunately we all got alittle sun burnt. That night Melody had made us dinner and we hung out at her house. Mel and I went to pick up Danielle Muhlenbeck at the airport at 11pm. She flew in for Morgans birthday.

Day two we got up really early and went to Animal Kingdom. Woooo hooooo...we had 5 free tickets. We all made blankets and donated them to the Linus foundation to give to sick kids in the hospital..We also got a 200 dollar gift card to spend at the park when we opened up a disney account so the day was totally free. Brandon and Peytons favorite thing there was the Mt Everest rollercoaster. Jordan said her favorite thing was the safari. We stayed till 30 mins before the park closed.


Day 3 The Huffmans took us, Danielle, Denise, and Julie on the boat. The kids rode the tube pretty much the entire day. I even got on..which suprised me because their could be alligators in the water. It was such a beautiful day and it was so nice just to hang out with everyone. That night we went the the comedy club sax where Melody surprised Morgan...she had the actors do a skit called slice of life...all about Morgan. It was so funny!! Morgan is turning 16 this month. That night Melody and Danielle bought me a cake and sang happy birthday to me. I didn't realize it, but last year I spent my birthday at Melodys also...so we decided to make it a yearly thing :)

Gregs Birthday Weekend March 20

Well today is Saturday and it is Greg's 37th birthday. He had to preach today and I don't remember what exactly the sermon was about except he did go on about Poop. It was very funny for all of us to listen to him say Poop really loud up front. After church we drove over to Bruster's for free ice cream. Today at Bruster's if you wore you pjs you got free ice cream. The kids weren't to happy about this, especially Jordan. Peyton and Brandon slipped their pj's on over their clothes...Jordan on the other hand I only brought along her footed pj's...she was so embarrassed I almost had to drag her out of the car. But, we all got 5 free waffle cones and they were good!!

We drove to Sevierville to use the 4 zipline tickets Greg and I had gotten free after our honeymoon. We only got 4 tickets, so since the last time we tried to get Jordan to go on the zipline at cohutta she wouldn't do it...so I didn't know how it would be at this place. The tickets were 89 dollars a piece so since we only had 4 I was going to sit out. We got lucky though because since it was Greg's actual birthday he got to go free...so now we all had a ticket. Jordan didn't fuss at all and did all 6 lines. They all loved it. It was really cool at this zipline because they let you spin or hang upside down or do whatever you wanted.


Then we went to MagiQuest. The kids all had their own wand and got to run around waving their wands and find certain items to complete their quest. Seemed a bit weird to me, but it entertained the kids.


Slept over at Greg's brother's house. Then got up in the morning to go skiing. None of the kids had ever been skiing, so this was very interesting. It was hard trying to teach the kids how to snowplow and stop. I don't think they ever really got it. Brandon was the first to just take off and go down the hill. He only had one big wipe out. Peyton learned how to slow down and turn. I tried to teach Jordan how to snowplow by skiing behind her and holding on to her...bad idea..we both wiped out. By the end of the day everyone was able to get on the chair lift and go down the hill without help. Next time maybe we'll go skiing during the winter :)

January 10

For the GCA Christmas party we went to the church for pizza and salad, then to the roller rink to go skating...Brandon hates to skate and was begging to stay home, but the girls enjoyed it. They played 4th of July music though which the girls didn't like...but all in all they had a good time.

January 2010

Had a great Christmas this year. Jordan found out that there is no Santa. Peyton and Brandon already knew. Mimi Marge and Papa Buz spent the night and I had to work 3-11pm on Christmas eve. Mimi put the Turkey in the oven and it wasn't done until 2am so I stayed up with her watching Christmas movies...Then Jordan woke up at 4am ready to open presents...we made her go back to bed till 8...Peyton got a clock/radio for her ipod, clothes, pjs, books...Brandon got 5 airsoft guns, pjs, books, falcons jersey...Jordan got clothes, and art set, books. Greg got a firepit, clothes, and a wallet..I got a tripod and zebra printed dansko shoes. Papa got a firepit and Mimi got a digital picture frame. Went to Mimi and Papas for supper and Jamie and Stassey came P & B went to their moms. Went to Knoxville on Sunday and had brunch with the Hudsons at the lakeside tavern..mom and dad came too. Then drove Jordan to her dads.

New years p & b were back with us and we went over to the Cusicks house till 10ish then came home and watched dick clark and the ball drop...dick clark looks like a wax person. Then got a phone call at 5am and asked if I would work...which I did until 3 then met Greg and the kids and went and saw Avatar in 3D.