Honesty!

Don't you love it when your kids tell you the truth?

L: Mom tomorrow can we have McDonalds for breakfast before the zoo?
Me: Yes, if your good.
L: Oh...wait, like good tomorrow, or, good tonight And tomorrow?
Me: Good tonight and tomorrow!

Groan, roll of the eyes, flop on the couch...

L: But I can't be good that long, its too hard!
Me: Why is it too hard?
L: I might do something bad tonight.
Me: Like what?
L: I might kick R's butt!

I couldn't help it, I just cracked up! I did tell him that he was just going to have to try hard and be good to get his special breakfast. So far he's doing the impossible and has Not kicked his brothers butt!

Pink!

I love the Funhouse album by Pink
One of my favorite songs on it is 'Glitter in the Air'
Pink performed this at tonight's Grammy's
I think she did a pretty cool performance!

Grades!

I finished up business law and social science-interdisciplinary approach to the 1960's last week.
I received my grade rather quickly from the social science class: 100% A+
I have done this one other time in my college career, it feels pretty good to pass a class without any deductions!
It took awhile for my other professor to finish up all her grading.
For Business Law I received: A-

I was a little apprehensive about my business class, for so long it looked as though I wouldn't break my B I had in there. I write well, however, I have some difficulties taking tests. There were weekly tests and the final was one giant test. I pulled through and am very happy with my A-!

So now my quarter GPA is: 3.85
I have earned 56 cumulative credits and my cumulative GPA is: 3.76
I am very happy with these numbers!

I have treated myself to a break. I am taking just over 2 months off from school. This is helping me tremendously while J is out on deployment.

Movies!

When J is deployed I try to stay on track with normal life. I also love to do fun things with the boys. J says he wants us to have fun while he's away so we won't get too sad (he's an awesome man!) I also tell the boys we have to have fun and do cool things so we have great interesting things to tell Daddy when he gets back!

One thing I do more when J is away than when he's home is take the boys to the movies. The boys seem to enjoy this activity almost as much as I do :-)
We have seen The Spy Next Door and The Tooth Fairy.
Both had some very funny parts, and while watching we stuffed ourselves with popcorn, candy, and soda.
Each boy had their favorites from the movies that they think their Dad will like when he gets home. I have to say that they both do very well with deployments. I love how understanding and loving they are and that they can be open minded during these times. I love my family!

January!

January is flying by! This month has been full of a few sickies, playtime, baseball practice, homework, rain, and projects!
I have been terrible about taking pics, but here is a few I managed to get. The boys playing with Christmas clay and making a SpongeBob underwater replica, L playing spy/ninja outside and keeping us safe from bad guys, and my first attempt at making a 'fancy' cake for my best friend for her birthday.

Christmas 2009!

The boys made Christmas cookies for Santa, they were delicious! L had a great idea to add sprinkles before baking, tasty!


Christmas was great fun this year. J had duty on Christmas Eve (left 5am on the 24th and got home about 10am on the 25th) so the boys and I saw Alvin and The Chipmunks the Squequil Then had Taco Bell for lunch and got the house ready for Christmas and fell asleep watching 'The Santa Clause' while waiting for Santa.

Fun gifts this year were:

R's gifts: PJ's, Archery set, Cirque Du Freak books, 'The Name of This Book is Secret', DS games Pokemon and Drawn 2 Life, Bendaroo's, school accordion-file, legos, and clothes, movies Aliens in the Attic and Harry Potter 6.

L's gifts: PJ's, McD's credit card, DS game Drawn 2 Life, clothes, bendaroos, clay, legos, bacugon, BB gun, Wii game Raging Rabbits, 2 footballs.

Bonster's gifts:

Glee 2 CD, clothes, wireless printer, 'And Another Thing' by Eoin Colfer, lotion, travel scrabble.

JRod's gifts:

Memory quilt, smoked salmon, complete series of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Seahawks towel.

Everyone loved their presents and the boys got what they asked for from Santa, all the little fun gifts and candy in the stockings were a hit and were fun to play with while waiting for J to get home to open the rest of the gifts.

My favorite reaction was when R opened his archery set and says, "I'm literally speechless!" Then L opens his BB gun and says, "R I'm speechless too! Am I old enough for this thing?"

We had a great dinner with some great friends to end off the evening.

Date Night!

Our best friends watched the boys so J and I could go on a date before he headed out on his next deployment.
We headed to see Avatar in RealD at 6:30pm. We got in 20min early but the only seats left inside were the 1st two rows! So we traded our tickets for the next showing and got there early enough to get good seats. It was crazy out there, it was like Black Friday for going out!
Avatar was a good movie, it was a great night, and I can't wait for J to get back and go on more dates just like this one.

I Found it!

I've learned to check pockets when doing laundry.

The boys' pockets have been great hide-a-ways for tissue, markers, pens, gum, candy, wrappers, toys, rocks, homework...but this morning I found something completely unexpected.

L's rain jacket has been in the laundry room the past week and I finally got around to washing it this morning.
I'm not always diligent at checking pockets, but I'm glad I checked his this morning.

I found a chicken egg in his pocket!

Have no idea how long its been in there, so glad it hadn't broke, and that I didn't throw it in the wash, don't think it would have held up in the spin cycle!

It's Beginning to Taste...

A Lot Like Christmas!

I only make these for Christmas:

Mexican Wedding Cakes a.k.a. Russian Tea Cakes

2 C. Flour
1 C. Powder Sugar
1/4 tsp. Salt
1 C. Butter
1 T. Vanilla
1 C. Finely Chopped almonds (optional)
Extra Powder Sugar

Heat oven 325. Mix together Flour, 1 C. powder sugar, and salt. Using a fork cut in butter until coarse crumbs. Add vanilla, and nuts (if using). Knead by hand til smooth dough. Roll into tsp. size balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes, Do Not Brown. Roll in powder sugar twice.

My kids could eat these til they pop! I remember my Mom and my Grandma making these for the holiday's, I love them...and the cookies :0)

Learning!

Here are the boys doing some homework, they look so cute studying together!

This weekend R wanted to learn how to make a PowerPoint presentation. So I showed him where it was on the computer and all the ideas came flooding out of him. His topic was Pokemon, it has 11 slides, and each slide has music! He made it for his best friend who is also into Pokemon. It is a Christmas surprise, he wrote his friend a Christmas card that says her gift is on her Mom's computer. We emailed the presentation to her Mom and she is saving it til Christmas for us. Way Cool!

When I was in 5th grade I had a super nice teacher who had fun ways to help us practice our spelling words. One of them was shaving cream. Spray some foam cream on the table and you can draw anything in it, lasts a nice long time and it wipes up clean. I let the boys try this out. L especially loved it! (He smells pretty good by the time he's done!)