What a looooooong day !!

7:00 am Drag myself out of bed to get ready for champagne breakfast and meeting.

8:00 am Get Steven out of bed and dress for our busy day.

8:30 am Leave for Breakfast

9:30 am Go to appointment

1:34 pm Appointment over... sold a house :)

1:35 pm Take client (that just bought the house) out to lunch.

2:30 pm Send Client back to Los Angeles

2:35 pm Decide to buy a car, drive to Visalia Honda

3:00 pm Leave Visalia Honda with 4-letter words dancing in our heads for the sales agent in Visalia Honda.

3:05 pm Decided to drive to Selma (40 min away) to Scott's usual car spot.

7:45 pm Drive away from Selma Honda in our new car.

8:00 pm Ordered dinner as we were starving.

9:37 pm Arrived home, stuck Steven in the shower.

9:42 pm Stuffed tired little man in bed

9:56 pm Checked e-mail and responded accordingly. Started blog this message.

10:15 pm Will go give the car a hug good night, brush my teeth and go to bed.

6:30 am Will get up to get ready to cover the office on 12/31/07, and gain new clients to pay for the new car that I will be driving to work. :)


This was a looooong never ending day for a grown up to deal with and I must brag about our little man. At 8 years old he handled himself better then I have ever seen him handle himself. So he really does listen when I nag about good manners and being respectful of others and picking up after himself etc etc. He earned 4 hours of Wii time tomorrow and my undivided attention with the little plastic army men for 1 hour when I get home from work tomorrow.

Time to shut down and hug the car.

Goodnight

Ahhh the Wii

I am so greatful that the Wii was given to us by Santa. We have had so much fun playing golf, tennis, baseball, bowling, Mario Galaxy, Donkey Kong Blasters, and boxing. I can't wait until we get Dance Dance Revolution. This game has really helped us get our energy out and exhaust ourselves. I will include some video of some of our energetic play.

Today we also went to Walmart with a $300.00 gift card in hand ready to stock up all of our cupboards again. It took 2 hours but we did it, we spent $300.00 and .19. We have very loaded cupboards for months and months of healthy tasty home cooked meals. Putting it away wasn't to bad either cause Blaine and his girlfriend came over and I put them to work. Blaine got a PS3 from Santa and I am excited to see what a Blue Ray disc 1080p on our HDMI tv looks like. (what ever the heck that means.)

We actually had cold weather here the last two days as it has been in the 40's. I got to wear a sweater today, not just any sweater but a sweater I got for Christmas.

Very busy day

Well we made it home yesterday with just enough time to finish up a few last minute things to prepare for the events of today. Our day started early with all of Scott's family coming over to open their gifts. (Scott Steven and I open our gifts on Christmas morning after we check out what Santa brought us.) Since I decided not to cook for everyone this year due to our vacation and the timing of it, I recommended that we go to Big Bubba's Bad BBQ for lunch. The food was beyond excellent and all the kids took turns riding the machanical bull....yes even Steven got to go on it. We are friends with the General Manager and Assistant Manager and they agreed to let Steven go on it and they manually controlled the bull so he couldn't get bucked off. About an hour after they left our close friends Chad, Kathy, Kevin, and Kayla came over to open gifts and Kathy brought lots of appetizer type foods with her so I wouldn't have to cook dinner. Wooohooo. They were awesome. After our friends left at 8:00, Steven and I put out Almonds for the reindeer, peeled an orange for Santa and cleaned up his room in case Santa wanted to come in and give him a kiss and leave him a present.

Here are a few pictures from our day. Unfortunatley I forgot the camera for Big Bubba's so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Gifts brought buy Scott's Family for all of them and us as well. Talk about a lot of gifts, holy cow.

Kevin and Kayla openening the gifts we got for them and us opening the gifts we got from them.

Steven's Christmas Presentation

We had a great time listening to the kids sing and watching Steven introduce himself his friend Aleya and how christmas is celebrated in Sweden. It was a tissue moment..sniff sniff....

tThe 4 2nd grade classes sang a few songs together and then educated us on how different countries celebrate Christmas. It was so well done. Normally the school rents the convention center and all grades perform but they figured this year it would be easier and cheaper to have each class perform seperatly in the school cafeteria, that way the families could enjoy their kids performance for 20 min unstead of 10 min and not have to sit through a 2 hour program that includes all of the classes.

Finally

I just love these plates that Eric gave me for Christmas 15 years ago. They have held up so very well over the years and many moves.

I have finally made the time to post the picture of our special fake tree. I must say in real life it does look good.

It looks like we are on track to sell two more houses this week. (At work the funny is: plan a vacation and you will get real busy all of the sudden.) Soooo true. I see alot more vacations in my future. :)

We leave on Wednesday for our Cancun Vacation....yahoooo. Mom and dad arrived in Cancun today and I am sure it took them all of 20 min to unpack and hit the pool. I plan to take a lot of pictures (not of myself) and I hope that some of them will be blog worthy. I told my boys that I am not wearing make-up,my hair will be in a ponytail the whole time, and I am dressing for comfort rather then style. Scott is very happy about that as long as I shave my legs. hee hee. What a guy. Scott and I have planned out our tours and it appears as though we are going to get a lot of exercise over the next 10 days. eeewwwww.

Anyway I need to get to bed as we have a full day of house tours tomorrow.

Busy week

We had some fun using these nifty holiday plates I got from mom and dad while we put the decorations on the tree. :) Good stuff. This is a most delicious crab cheese ball from Save-Mart. mmm mmmm mmmm.


This has been a great weekend. Steven and I had a good time shopping for toys for tots and our homeless bags.

Steven donated $20.00 of his own money toward the homeless bags, so off Target we went to shop for all sorts of great stuff for the two duffle bags we decided to do this year.

Tonight we will begin our search for a true homeless person to give each bag to. We want to hand them both out before we leave for Cancun.

We told Steven that this year he was to buy a toy for toys for tots with his own money. He chose to buy 4 toys for toys for tots. He bought 4 boy toys so I decided I would by 4 girl toys. We went right to the drop off point and turned in our gifts. Steven felt so good for giving, he decided that he wanted to buy us dinner. So we went to Red Robin at his request. We had a very nice time.

Why does this happen

So yesterday afternoon I was outside stretching out the Christmas lights and creating a scene in my mind. I plugged all of the various outdoor stuff together and I was excited that all lights were lit and accounted for.

Next I unplugged everything and started decorating. I was very excited with how things were just falling into place.As I finished up I started to plan my plug-in stratagy and low and behold, some of the lights had an extra wide side of the plug and they didn't fit into anything else. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. So I had the opportunity to re-arrange things a bit and most of it was able to plug-in. The rest will need to sit in darkness until I can find extension cords that fit the silly ends. Also to my dismay, last night as darkness is creeping up on me, I like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation, call the family out to witness my masterpiece and only a portion of the lights light up. As I grumbled and started shaking the light strands some came back on. Today when I leave the office it looks like I will get to inspect all of the lights again to ensure they light up properly, oh and I get to check each light in the light up snowman to figure out which one is burnt out so the snowman can have his body back. Thank heavens our daytime temps are in the high 60's. Good times I tell ya.

Tonight we are going to Fresno to pick up a sister of a friend at the airport, followed by a quick stop at Maggie Moos, then we will pick up Poker (the chihuahua for those of you that don't know him) and we will take him for a drive around Lemoore to look at the pretty Christmas lights. (spoiled dog).

I am almost done with our Christmas Tree and I will soon post this adventure along with pictures for your reading/viewing pleasure.

World Easiest Quiz

This quiz was sent to us via e-mail from Aunt Tami and Uncle Randy. I thought rather then forward the email, I would just post it on the blog. Don't cheat and read the answers first. Just give the quiz a try and see how you did.

WORLD'S EASIEST QUIZ Passing requires 4 correct answers

1) How long did the Hundred Years' War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat gut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What colour is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) What is the colour of the black box in a commercial airplane?

Remember, you need 4 correct answers to pass. Check your answers below .





ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ
1) How long did the Hundred Years War last? 116 years
2) Which country makes Panama hats? Ecuador
3) From which animal do we get cat gut? Sheep and Horses
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? November
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of? Squirrel fur
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? Dogs
7) What was King George VI's first name? Albert
8) What colour is a purple finch? Crimson
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? New Zealand
10) What is the colour of the black box in a commercial airplane? Orange (of course)


I got 2 correct :(

Have a good day

The Christmas Flower

While at Costco yesterday checking out the fake Christmas Trees, I realized that they were way to heavy for me to lift into the basket and car, so I did other shopping instead. Costco had the poinsettia's available for a great price of $15.99. I love these particular plants and decided that I would get a few after trying to squeeze them in the cart with Steven and his friend Gabe, I decided that we would just get one now and I will get a few more when I bring Scott back to help me with the tree.

When I took the wrapper off of the Giant flower I realized just how big it is. This picture can't really capture the size of the beast but I asked Steven to pose next to it a few different ways to help you picture in your mind how huge it is. Steven is 51 inches tall. The table you see to the right is actually our computer desk for our home office.

I have made the executive decision not to purchase anymore of these big guys this year. Perhaps when we purchase our home we will have room to accommodate a few more. :)

We did purchase a fake tree and I will right about that adventure later.

Did you brave the crowds on black Friday?

Thanksgiving was a fun day for us. We got up early, put the turkey in the oven and the prime rib on the bbq. Steven and I went to get our Starbucks drinks followed by a little last minute grocery shopping. I see that I am training Steven right as myself and one lady cashier were the only women in the very crowded Save-Mart (aka former Albertsons). We had a great time and found some good deals on stuff.

We got home around 9:00ish only to be told by Scott that our guests were on their way. I know that we said come on over around 12:00, I guess I forgot to say 12:oo pacific time. hee hee. I didn't mind that they cam over early, we had lots of good veggies and stuff to snack on while we waited for the good stuff. Speaking of good stuff I must brag about the prime rib, it was amazing!!! I have never bbq'd one before and I must say I did lose sleep worrying about it.
Our morning/afternoon visitors consisted of Scott's father two of his brothers, his neice, soon to be sister in law, and her daughter. We enjoyed the heck out of visiting with them and I was reminded that way way way back when I was a little girl living at the Kettleman Plant, all the employees kids would go to the clubhouse to wait for Santa to come give presents and talk and stuff. I remember sitting on the floor waiting for what seemed like hours for the jolly old fella to show up. I found out that the jolly old fella was actually Scott's dad. Apparently he dressed up as Santa for several years running for the company. How cool is that........Santa is my father in law. ahhh good times. Later in the evening we were joined by our dear friends Chad, Kathy, Kevin and Kayla. They helped us polish off the left overs (yahoo, no wasted food) and we watched Santa Clause 3.

I considered black Friday shopping, then changed my mind. We normally buy the stuff for our homeless bags on this day because there are so many buy one get two free items but I did not see any in the paper this year so I decided to take down the fall decor and deep clean the house. This took ALL DAY!!!! I hurt today!!! Scott took pity on me being the sweetie that he is hauled in the 12 Christmas storage boxes so I can begin the holiday decorating when my floor duty ends at the office today. We hope to start the outside decor this evening, if I can get my muscles to stop yelling at me, otherwise we will do them later in the week.

I have decided that since we will be leaving the country on Steven's birthday and returning on Dec 23rd that we will not buy a real Christmas tree. I always always have a real tree and it pains me to get a fake one, but I will do my best to get over it. So after I leave the office today I am off to Costco to see if they have the only tree I actually like still in stock, if so then I will buy it and get it put up as quick as possible so I don't change my mind.

Mom and Dad called my a few times during their exciting shopping adventure yesterday, sounds like they had a great time and I think they were going to visit my favorite store Kohls. Last year I went there on black friday and wow did I have a great time buying, buying, buying.


Scott was in Lemoore yesterday so I was very excited to tell him when he got home last night that I saved our family $1,000.00 or more buy staying home. Scott was so excited to here of our savings that he has agreed to take us to Fresno for a little Maggie Moos. Yahoo, it's been almost a year since we have had the good stuff and I can't wait to dig in.

Two more sold

We have been very busy this past week. While fighting the cold virus from you know where, we were running around like wild agents closing one deal and securing another awesome deal for another client. This week looks to be just as busy so please forgive us if we don't post until the end of the week.




We found this awesome brand new home for our friends Rick and Norma, work was completed last Wednesday, final walk through inspection was Thursday, deed recorded friday and we are excited to say that they moved in Saturday and Sunday. This one happened pretty quick once it got started. We hope to move into or around this area when we purchase our home. Congrats Rick and Norma (and thank you for letting us represent and protect your interests with this purchase).

We found this awesome brand new home for my hair stylist and her husband last Thursday morning and due to a fabulous lender we should be able to close this deal within 7 days. How cool is that? We are very happy for Justin and Melanie, (Congrats and thank you extending us the opportunity to be your agents).

Candy Day

So Halloween was pretty fun even though the school wouldn't allow the kids to dress up this year. The weather was warm -upper 70's all day and low 70's for the trick or treating adventure. We had a taco fiest prepared buy Scotti too hottie and we were joined by Scott's brother Danny, Niece Cheyenne, friends Chad and Kathy and their two children Kevin and Kayla. Sunset was at 6:03 so we made sure our bellies were full and our tennies were securely fastened for our journey. Chad and Danny stayed behind to hand out candy ( they said we had a couple hundred young ones come to the door while we were gone. Kathy ,Scotti too hottie, the kids and I braved the busy streets. I kid you not, the streets in the neighborhood we went trick or treating in, had a minimum of 150 kids at any given time, it was down right crazy. I took a ton of pictures but the 3 you see are the three that turned out. Anyway a great time was had by all.






Steven (army dude) Cheyenne (witch), and Kayla (spy).

This is a picture of a really cool house we trick or treated. They did such a great job, I am disappointed with the blurry pictures but you can kinda get the idea.

Happy Birthday Grandma

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Grandma
Happy Birthday to you.


Steven made a card for you however it won't scan correctly so I will explain:

Red construction paper folded in half twice creating 4 squares total, below is what Steven wrote to you in your card in very hard to read writing due to lack of finger spaces:


You're cool gramaw........................ . You are great
oh yes you are . .................................You are a good
I love you . .........................................gramaw
Steven .


You are . ...........................................Oh yes you are.
OSUM (awesome) . .........................I love you
gramaw........................................... . love you
........................................................... love you

Happy Birthday Love Steven

Pictures of our mountains.

Here is one of the grape farms near our home. They have been harvested for the year and they will start cutting them back in preperation for winter.


I was out taking picures of a new property we listed and I actually had some battery left so it worked out well to take some pictures near home. We have a clear view of the Sequoia mountains near our home and I figured I would capture a few pictures yesterday, we can clearly see snow on the very tops of them. . I hope we can make a quick day trip up there and capture some pictures of the redwoods to post on here. I will try to capture some fall foliage to post in the up coming days. It's hard to do as everything is so green and flowers are still blooming here. We had unusually warm weather here last week. We were in the high 80's. Now are back to the normal 70's during the day. Shorts in October.....what's that about seriously.

Sweet Jimmy Dog

Sorry for the delay in sharing, we have been very busy. For those of you in Spokane, do you remember our amazing, large, and loud cat Jimmy.

When we moved to California we asked our dear friend Suzy to take him in and love him. It sure wasn't difficult for her and her family to fall in love with that big fuz ball and he fit right in.
I loved calling over and visiting with her when she was at home because she would always put the phone next to Jimmy so he could hear me talk to him and I could here him purr back.

Well our beloved Jimmy Dog is in a new home in heaven teaching all the other cats his pizza eating habits. The vet discovered bone cancer and we chose not to have him suffer anymore. I don't know who took it harder me or Suzy. True friendship is the willingness to take your friends beloved pet to the vet for the last time. Thank you Suzy for being such a great mommy to our Jim Jim.

Moon Sand Creations

Those cute kids did it again. Steven and Kayla spent a solid 45 minutes working hard on this awesome moonsand wedding cake.

It would be multi colored, however Steven has a tendency to mix all of the colors together rather then keep them seperate. There is lots of glitter sand mixed in and it created a lovely sparkle effect on this masterpiece.

Great job kids.

Finally, Here are some Halloween Pics

It took longer to load the dang pictures on here then it did to decorate and take pictures. Sheesh I need to learn how to do a layout and then just attach the layout. Someday it will happen. Anyway here are a few pictures form around the house. The little purple bags in the first picture are not for the trick or treaters, they are actually goodie bags for Steven's class mates. I spared all of you the hang with tape decor that Steven was in charge of. He gets better every year................. but needs a little more development in that area.

Here is our pet Swimmy, I think he likes the spider as he keeps going over to check it out.

I found these cool jars at Michaels last year and just had to get them. "Fillet of Snake" , "Spider Juice", "Skin of Toad", and "Lizard's Legs".

I just love these spider candle holders !!!

This little guy is supposed to light up.
This one is supposed to light up also. They did for about 15 minutes.

This picture is of a punch bowl set I got several years ago. The picture just wouldn't stop blurring on me so my apologies for it being hard on the eyes.

I have not done all of the cobwebs yet, much to Steven's dismay. We will work on that project this week sometime and see if we can't make the house look really freaky. If it works I will post the pics. If not......well then you will know they just didn't look that good.

Almost made it.

What a weekend we had. First and foremost I must say that Scott is and always will be my hero !!!! He searched and researched and searched some more (in case all of you have forgotten, Scott has extreme OCD) and researched some more for the "correct" inverter to allow Steven the opportunity to play his PS2 in the car for our 17 hours in the car this weekend. It worked like a charm and he was one very happy boy. Happy boy = happy mom, happy mom = happy everyone else. :) Although we are exhausted the trip went well, traffic was better then we anticipated and the fall foliage was amazing !!! NO Animals though and that was a bummmer because as Steven put it we had our "deer eyes on".

It was very interesting meeting Scott's family. Such a diverse group of people. I am sorry that I did not get to meet the deceased Aunt/Cousin Louise (don't ask as I cannot even begin to explain it) as she sounded like one heck of a lady. Steven did a great job keeping up with the events of the day. I was concerned about how he would handle a funeral so I decided to give him the task of modeling proper memorial behavior for a 3 year old that he just adored. As it turned out, it was a grave side memorial so we were in a beautiful old cemetery on a nice cool afternoon with fantastic fall colors bursting around us and I was so proud of Steven for being such a good "big brother" for little Aliyah. He stood still and quiet and held her hand and shook his head no to her every time she started to speak, she listened to him and tried her best to copy his good behavior, it was great. As the final "amen" was said, everyone began to break up into groups to talk before heading over to "cousin Charles' house for food and bonding.

That's when it happened.....the questions from our little man:

1. Are they going to go get the body so they can drop it in the hole now ?
A. Oh honey she, the body is already here and they will bury her soon .

2. What are they gonna do with the box, do they stick her in there?
A. Sweetie she is already in the box, so when everyone leaves, the box will be lowered into the hole and dirt will be placed over it.

3. Okay, I get that, where are they gonna get the dirt, and why are the leaving her in the box? wouldn't it be easier and faster to just bury the body.
A. Okay Steven look, the dirt is next to the hole right there under the tarp, that is what came out of the hole and that is what goes back in. People are buried in boxes called caskets and that is how it is done, it is how we respect the "dead". Now let's get going we have a long drive.

4. Okay mama, but we need to recycle so why don't we just use the the same box over and over again....seriously mom the body wouldn't know.
A. Alright buddy, get in the car we need to go. We will talk about this more when you are a little older.

Fine sheesh don't get mad, I was just saying we need to be recycling.

I don't know if anyone over heard our conversation as Steven is rather loud (especially since he has a cold right now and his ears are plugged.) because all I could hear was the little voice in my head saying.... "Almost made it".

"oh mama.....I just feel horrible... I just can't go on...

I receive a call from the school today letting me know that Steven was in the office 6 times today with various ailments in an attempt to come home from school sick. His sick act didn't work with me this morning before school and to his dismay it did not work during school either, so he decided to give it one last try so he could get out of having to go to the office with me this afternoon. "oh mama....I just feel horrible...I just can't go on... I better just go home and stay in bed and play video games while you go to the office.

Little did Steven know I saw a student's parants carrying a large tray of cupcakes and a big box of Capri Sun juice into his class. I assumed that since he was soooo sick he wouldn't eat the cupcake and he would bring it out to me after school so I could enjoy it.............. I guess I was wrong.

Being the mom that I am, I did not let on that I knew he ate the cupcake and I let him go on and on and on and on and on during our drive to work. I then confirmed that he was soooo sick that he just couldn't enjoy his day or even eat the cupcake at the end of class, I told him I was very sorry his was sick then I ask that he go into the bathroom and wash up. Needless to say, he came out of the bathroom with a very clean face and a few excuses as to why his face was blue, none of which revealed that he ate the cupcake. AAHHHH parenthood :)