SWEET 16

Nikole is not yet 16, but we had a full day of partying today. When considering the date for the celebrating we came to the conclusion that today would be the best chance of getting people to attend.
At 9:00 this morning we had arranged for the young women group to all meet at a local McDonalds for a birthday breakfast. Both Nikole and another young women named Mary turn(ed) 16 this month so we did a combined party. Not great attendance at this one, but the few that did show up had a good time.
Later in the day we had planned a party for Nikole and her school friends. Better attendance at this one. About 15 friends showed up. Nikole didn't know where this one was, but we decided to indulge her by having it at her favorite restaurant. Meganne had planned out and ordered the decorations which looked AWESOME!!! She had a great time planning it all and Nikole had a great time celebrating. And the whole time I sat wondering where all the years had gone. And why they went so fast.
Nikole got quite spoiled today as you can see with the picture of the "loot". Also, notice how the cake resembles the napkins--thank you awesome cake lady at WalMart. Notice also the birthday girl's hair--2 hours to accomplish this, but well worth it because she just looked so darn cute!!!
Here are some pictures from the night party. Enjoy.

Nikole's Cake, Meganne's Cake, Mom's Mess

""MOM--I'M BORED". The all too often uttered words of kids out of school for the summer. The mom's challenge--(1) to avoid the ever popular "go clean your room" response (2) to come up with something that does not involve turning off the brain and on the electronics and (3) make it worth the investment to do an activity. Our latest and greatest was trying the kids hands at decorating a cake. We have a friend, Carrie Crow (thechocolatedelilah.com) that makes phenomenal chocolates and cakes that "offered" to help the kids with some techniques in return for letting her 2 year old run through our leaky world. So, with her help and guidence they learned some basic star patterns, some borders, some swirly lines and some writing. It was a fun activity for them all and then of course, we all had to go cool off. I think it is something that our kids will have some fun with on birthdays and special occasions. I see a few more cakes in our future.

What happens when the world springs a leak?

So, a recent acquisition of ours for our summer fun was a blow-up world sprinkler. We thank our geographer for it. It is a very fun sprinkler (as you can tell) to try and help us beat the 100+ weather we have been having. As you can see, the kids really enjoy it. Many jokes come out of having the world in our back yard...you can come up with your own and pass them on if you would like...and yes, the song "Got the whole world in my hands" has been sung once or twice.

For all you Techies

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate

———————

Dear Desperate,

First, keep in mind that Boyfriend 5.0 is an entertainment package while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter the command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html, download Tears 6.2 and be sure to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If those applications work as designed Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, please remember that overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (It runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0-program. This is an unsupported application and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck!
Tech Support

(…just a little marriage fun for ya!)

~Unknown Author

More Beauty

I couldn't fit all of the balloon pictures that I wanted to on one blog, so here are some more. The alien over the balloon is just for Donele. And if you notice one of the balloon baskets has a black banner hanging over the edge...yea, it was a marriage proposal. Cool huh..
Enjoy Again

6:00a.m on a Saturday--what were we thinking????

So for all of the week of getting up between 5:30 and 6:00 you would wonder what would make us sacrifice a Saturday sleep in chance--these beautiful hot air balloons. There is an event here called "The Old Timers Balloon Festival". There are an average of 40-50 hot air balloons that come to Roswell. And on a Saturday and Sunday morning they launch their balloons. We very much enjoy seeing them all because they are all soooo cool. We went in 2008 and one of the pilots came looking for volunteers to help them get their balloon launched and in return he took us all up with him. Not all at the same time, but it was still a super-fun experience. By the time we got there this morning though, all the balloon teams already had their volunteers so we missed out on that chance again. Oh well, it was still really fun to go and watch them. We like it because we can walk around very close to where they set up--like feel the heat from the burner close. It is fun to watch the process of them filling and launching the balloons. So, here are some of the pictures that we took. If you want more, let me know and I will e-mail some more to you. Enjoy.

Quincenara

So, a week ago and yes, I am slow, one of Nikole's friends named China had her Quincenara (keen-sen-yara). It is like the Mexican/Catholic celebration of a girls 15th birthday. It is the way they celebrate the transformation from young girl to womanhood. It was a good experience for us to all have. It gave us another look into a different culture and its traditions. The first part of the ceremony takes place in a church and the girl has a court that preceedes her. Typically it is 7 girls and 7 boys (plus her equals 15). She is escorted in and presented to the congregation. There are presentations of gifts--a kneeling pillow to remind her to pray always for guidance--a tiara to remind her that she is a princess in the sight of her Lord--a necklace, bracelet, and earrings to symbolize womanhood--and a last doll to symbolize the last gift of childhood. There were some other things, but I can't remember what all they were for. The birthday girl also wears in flats, and someone (usually the father) will change her flats for heels---leaving behind the childhood and going into adulthood.
After the religous part of the Quince' there is a migration to a different building where the "celebration" part of it takes place. Here there is a meal served and a cake cut. There is also a dance if the family so chooses.
The whole thing very closely resembled a wedding/type event without the groom. Like I said, it was a fun experience for us to have. Anyway, here are some pictures of it.

The After Photos - Part 1

Here are some photos of the work we have done to our house. We will post more as we get those areas cleaned and get images.

This is the entry way - changed the color to a light gray but it looks more blue.














We don't have a before of this one. But it was painted the same as the entry (both before and after) and the cabinet at the end was re-stained. The old stain looked similar to the door on the left in the entry.








This is a close up of the cabinet. Trying to show the trim.

The Gardens

Here are the pictures of the Botanical Gardens. We spent most of our time in the Japanese Gardens. There was also an awesome zen garden. Gave us some ideas for our back yard...Enjoy...I had to throw in the picture of Nikole because it is just so darn beautiful!!

ITS OFFICIAL

Philip, Nikole, Meganne and I took our last Sierra Middle School field trip on Wednesday. We went with Meganne's M.E.S.A group--the whole club, not just her windmill team. There were about 33 kids that went and the 3 advisors. We went to the Albuquerque zoo, the M.E.S.A group then went to the aquarium and Nikole, Philip and I went to the Botanical Gardens. The zoo was really fun because the weather was cool enough that the animals were active. Polar bears playing with big blue balls, elephants rolling tires...actually, I have got to tell you about the polar bears. One of them was playing with the ball the majority of the time. He would be on a rock and put the ball in the water then attempt to belly plop onto the ball. It would go shooting up and the bear would go down into the water. Funny funny. Then he decided he needed to get the ball to the top of the exhibit so he rolled it up the little ramp, waterfall thing they have. When he got it to the top he was joined by the other bear. Then he worked the ball up the wall and pushed it off to the outside of the exhibit. He stood there looking over the wall and then the other one went and looked over the wall as well as if to say "huh, guess I shouldn't have done that" to which the other one replies "ya think"!! It was hilarious!!!
Anyway, here are some pictures taken by our future zoologist/wildlife photograper (Nikole). After we were done there, we went to this HUGE pizza/arcade place called IT'Z. It was an awesome place. Anyway, it was a good ending of an era...onto high school :)

FINALLY!!!

For those out there wanting to see pictures of the house--too bad--just kidding. These are some that we took before we moved in. I will get after pictures on soon. We have since changed the dark brown entry way to a slate blue. The pantry is not pink anymore. We did it a dark brown and dark tan color. We haven't really done much to the kitchen (replaced the cooktop) or the living room or the "bonus" room. We are in the process of getting some grass in our back yard. The renters grew a really good crop of weeds and goatheads--I hate goatheads!!! We basically doubled our square footage from our previous place so furniture is a bit scarce, but we are slowly getting there. Updates to come.....
Sorry it took so long--I was STRONGLY encouraged to keep up the blog, so I will try and do better.

What- - January so soon??

Hi all,
So what is the purpose of having a blog? Keeping people up on the happenings? Oh, that is a good idea!!
Well, there isn't a whole lot of new in our lives, but I have high hopes so keep checking back.
The kids are back into school full swing which means that Mom's taxi is back in service. Activity of some kind every day except Friday. It's all good though. There is time to sleep in the summer. Just wanted to update and let everyone know that all is good here in Roswell. Hopefully I will be a bit more vigilant in the updates.
Later......