Family Literacy Night

Last night was Family Literacy Night at Ryan's School. It is a night where local celebrities, community leaders, teachers and students read books to groups of kids and parents at the school. It is a great event and all of the kids love it. They get to see their friends, hear some great books being read and even take home a book. There are so many cool books being read by so many cool people, but only 5 or 6 sessions in which to hear them.

Ryan and Meg got see a Mad Scientist preform some experiments, a Veterinarian read a book about puppies, a puppet show by the music teacher, and a St. Jude Research Scientist read about The Blood Hungry Spleen. But the kids absolute favorite session was the Memphis Football players reading the book Rat and the Tiger. They sat in amazement while they read, and ran up to them afterwards for pictures and autographs. The players were wonderful. They did a great job reading and were amazing with the kids. Ryan just kept telling them, "You Rock!!", "My daddy loves you!", and "We are HUGE Tiger fans!".....Daddy was really glad he took off early for literacy promotion :)

Bobby is not a liar...

After a VERY long Friday night that included three hours of PTA report writing, Bobby and I headed to bed early. While crawling into bed, Bobby mentioned something about getting a couple of inches of snow on Saturday. I laughed.

"It is not going to snow," I told him and he looked at me quite offended.
"It is too," he repeated emphatically.

You see I am usually pretty up on the weather, especially snow. But I must admit I have been so busy lately that I had missed the forecast for several days. At this point I still thought Bobby was teasing me, but he was getting angry!

"Are you calling me a liar?!?!" he asked.

I didn't answer this question, but looked at him unbelieving and flew to the living room where the 10 o' clock news was Tivoed. Ten minutes later I crawled back in bed and said, "I guess you were right." Bobby was not satisfied with this pitiful admission of wrongness. So in order to prove that my husband is not a liar, I shall post the following pictures....

By the way, he was WAY off on the number of inches:)

Ask Allie about the big blue box:)

Long time, No write!

Go ahead, slap my hand. I have been a very bad blogger. I could go on and on and tell you what has been consuming my free hours, but I will spare you. Instead I will do a photo recap of the past two months and try to do better. I know I am leaving out tons of family events, but I didn't want to overwhelm anyone :)

First we have New Years...this is a picture of the kids watching grown men attempt to blow themselves up with explosives (aka fireworks).

Next we have our first snow, Ryan was still casted at this point so we didn't get to play too much.


This is a picture of Ryan's second cast. The first stayed on for three weeks and this one stayed on for two additional weeks. Ryan opted out of signatures this time and let Daddy decorate it with Sharpies.
I had to include these next photos just to prove that cameras should not be allowed in the room while you play the Wii. We are too cheap to buy our own Wii, so we just go over to Mom and Dad's to play. Here Daddy and I are getting "Fit".

Snow #2. We had more snow this time, but it stopped falling before the kids woke up. This go 'round we wrapped the cast really well and let Ryan loose.

Meg was convinced that she wanted Momsie to teach her how to knit. The lesson lasted about 5 minutes and Meg decided that it wasn't her thing. Maybe we should learn how to tie our shoes first???

Valentine slumber party at our house! We had fondue, watched movies, made donuts and generally had a blast!!

You made this a Christmas to remember...

Remember that super cool trampoline Mommy and Daddy got the kids for Christmas???

Well two days after Christmas was a beautiful warm day here in our fair city, so we took the kids out to enjoy their new gift. Both kids jumped until Meg was tired, but Ryan was still going strong so he wanted Mommy and Daddy to jump with him. Mom was first. We played Crack the Egg (that name sounds so cruel now) and Mommy saw how high she could bounce her 40 lb. boy. Then it was Daddy's turn. They were having so much fun so I turned around to go get my camera. I hadn't taken two steps away from the trampoline when I hear "OWW!!", "Are you OK little man?" I turned around to find Ryan sitting on the trampoline and Bobby hovered over him. Ryan wasn't crying but he was holding his arm and his hand was hanging funny. It turns out that the boys were jumping pretty high and the last time Ryan came down he didn't land on his feet. He broke his fall with his hand and face.

Well it was pretty evident that something was wrong so we threw the kids in the car, took Meg to Mom's and Ryan to the ER. He never did cry and after a while he was playing his DS and saying his arm felt better, but we stuck around anyway to get the x-ray just in case. After the x-ray he went back to playing his DS. The doctor came back and watched Ryan on the DS with amazement, he was moving his wrist and arm with no problem. The doctor asked us to follow him to look at the x-rays. Then we saw them, two clean breaks...Ryan had broken both his bones in his lower arm about two inches above his wrist. The doctor said that Ryan must have an amazing pain tolerance to have never cried and be able to move the arm without pain. They put on a temporary cast and gave us a referral to an orthopedic.

Monday we went to see Big Rich (aka Dr. Ennis) and he and Willie (the cast put-er-oner) and Ryan was fitted with his real cast. He has been doing great and has even figured out how to play his DS with his cast arm. Although he doesn't think he will be able to write when school starts back ;)These have nothing to do with the broken arm but are post Christmas get-togethers with friends. I got to hang out with Nessa and Sarah the day after Christmas at Starbucks. Erin was supposed to join us but she was sick. Jolene couldn't join us because she had a baby two days earlier and plus she lives in Scotland, .....details, details.

On the 29th we went over to Laurie and Jay's and had a Halford/Rye Christmas. The kids had a great time playing together. We opened gifts, played Wii and ate pizza. Of course there is the obligatory pyramid picture...please excuse our dorkiness.

I think that is it.....until New Years....

Christmas Marathon

Here are pics from our Christmas celebrations...try to keep up.....

Christmas Eve started with not one, but two Christmas Eve services. We would have liked to have attended a third, but until they can figure out that whole space-time continuum thing, it just ain't possible.

After the services we went over to Nana and Poppa's and celebrated with Nana, Poppa, Momsie and Popsie. The kids were so sweet and possibly have careers in Hollywood. You know how kids usually open clothes at Christmas??? Well I knew Nana had gotten the kids TONS of much needed clothes. They also were each receiving one toy that they really wanted. So Bobby and I prepared the kids in the car.

Mom: "Kids, what do we do when someone is sweet enough to get us clothes for Christmas?"
Kids: "We say Thank You"
Mom: "That's good, but also remember to be excited and tell them what you like about the clothes"

This was pretty much the extent of the conversation, but my children took this advice and ran with it. They tore into those clothes boxes with fervor and shrieked with joy and every shirt, dress and pair of pants. "This is my favorite color!!!!", "This is just my size!!!!, "I will look great in this!!!" I'm telling you the kids deserved Academy Awards. Of course Nana and Poppa were tickled with their reactions. Along with the clothes Ryan received his much wanted Ultimate Lightsaber Kit and Meg got a baby doll which she named Badashala (we are still trying to figure that one out).

After Nana's, we came home, the kids hit the hay to prepare for the big day and Bobby and I opened our presents from each other at midnight. Bobby got a flash drive, a laptop mouse, and some other goodies. Bobby spoiled me with a new lens for my camera which you can appreciate below.

Of course Christmas morning started out seeing what Santa brought and opening presents from Mommy and Daddy. Meg was super excited about Biscuit the dog (which she told everyone and their brother, that it was only thing she really wanted). Ryan was stoked about his Nintendo DS and his Bakugans. Then they opened their presents from Mommy and Daddy. They were a little disappointed that the gifts only contained index cards with words on them. That was until they put them together to see the sentence "LOOK IN THE BACKYARD." That was where they found the trampoline (cue the eerie foreshadowing music). They were pumped and we went out and jumped in our PJs in the freezing cold.

Then it was over to Maw Maw's where the kids made out like toy bandits and we got to watch David experience his first Christmas. Dad got a Wii and Bobby got Heeley's and many emergency room jokes were made (oh, if we only knew).

Then it was over to Georgia's for a Walker Christmas. Sorry I don't have more pics, but I was just sitting and enjoying family. Sometimes even Susie Kodak needs a break:)

Then it was into the car and off to Lexington. The kids took advantage of the two hour drive and took a good nap; Bobby and I were not as lucky:) We had a wonderful time and got to see lots of family that we don't get to see very often. Bobby's gramma was in very good spirits and we also got to see a little of Baby Mikey's first Christmas.

and next comes the exciting post.......

Bring on Chirstmas

aka. ..December pictures part one:)

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted pictures, but as you will see we have been quite busy. I decided to break this down into a few posts so that I don't have 20 pictures in one.

So are you ready for Christmas '08???

Ok, so these aren't Christmas pictures, but I wanted to include them. Meg takes ballet, jazz and tap once a week and a few weeks ago parents were allowed to come and view a class. Bobby had been before so he graciously allowed my Mom to go. She behaved in normal Meg fashion, and my mother drew many similarities between Meg's dancing my gymnastic days, but we had fun snickering in the back of the room. (shh... don't tell Meg)

These pictures are from Christmas in Mississippi. We went to Ms. Barbee's, ate lunch, hung out with friends, heard the Christmas story and saw Santa.

Here is Ryan's Field Trip to IMAX, Pink Palace and the Enchanted Forest. He thought the animal animatronics in the Forest were creepy and was not fond of the dummies in the Museum, but had a great time anyway:)

This was our Christmas family night a few days before Christmas. We made homemade gingerbread men and Christmas crafts. Don't ask me for the gingerbread recipe, it was a pain in the rear!

More to come.....