BRANDON AND RANDOM

10:38 PM Posted In , , Edit This 0 Comments »
This is Brandon, at one of his wrestling meets, waiting for his match.
See how he is preparing? He is trying out his "tough-guy", don't-mess-with-me look. By the way, he pinned his guy in the first period. Happened so fast I didn't get a picture. Guess the look worked.

He developed that wrestling around with Cameron. Who, by the way, we recently discovered has been caught up with in the growing department!
And the randomness of doing absolutely nothing but occasionally moving about the kitchen one lazy weekend afternoon.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FIRSTBORN

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Happy 21st Birthday to Chris. While he is away in Tennessee, we did not get to celebrate in person, but in spirit! This one is for you, Chris, and all you are doing out there in your service to the Lord! We love and miss you, lots!

PUZZLING.........

10:40 PM Posted In , , Edit This 2 Comments »
A winter past time in our family is building jigsaw puzzles.

We usually get at least one new one for Christmas.

This one was 1500 pieces; a piece of cake, right?


Until we had to do the lower part of sunflowers and leaves.

A royal nightmare! But Cameron finished that part up and put in the final piece today!
Dare we do another, or save it for next winter?

Monday Blues......

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I love Sundays. They are a day of worship and a day to forget the cares of the rest of the week. That is how we handle them in our house, relaxing after church and not worrying about the dishes so much, lazy meals, reminders to email Chris, board games, puzzles and general family silliness. I really like Sundays, except for the fact that the next day means Monday.

For some reason, Mondays have a bad rap. But they earn it in our house. Besides back to school and back to work, there are dishes and laundry that somehow managed to pile up on Sunday and now we have to face it all. Usually I am headed to work on Monday morning so there is often a scramble to throw some things in the dishwasher and get it running before heading off to work. When I return home, there are usually more things to organize and clear up. It is kind of a Sunday hangover thing. While we enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere of Sunday, the piper must be paid.

Today I am home on Monday. It is holiday. While our work place is open, it is also payroll Monday. But, since it is a holiday for some businesses, payroll cannot be done. Banks are closed. And so, payroll has to be done tomorrow instead. So, I am home today but will go in tomorrow, my usual day off, and do the payroll then. That means facing the Monday monster head on and digging in and getting some things done right away. But I am thinking of extending my Sunday a little longer and going and working on our family jigsaw puzzle...........................

Cousins

9:26 PM Posted In , Edit This 1 Comment »
I am so happy that Brandon has a cousin, Alex, that is so close in age to him. They are great friends. Alex lives in California and so during school breaks, we do our best to hook them up to hang out together. They make lots of plans texting and talking on the phone and going back and forth on their facebook accounts. They sometimes seem like opposites, and yet it works because they are good buddies. We went to their house for Thanksgiving and they schemed to get back together for Christmas break. They had plans, like two dances to go to and taking Brandon's little pocket bike there to ride in their dirt tracks across the street from their house. So this afternoon we loaded the pocketbike into the back of our car and headed to Blythe, CA, the halfway point between our houses. Sharon, my sister, met us there where we transferred the bike into the trunk of her Toyota Camry. Now that was an impressive trunk because it fit right in with no trouble at all and some room to spare even! I think they are planning on some good fun!

Christmas Day

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Christmas day brought a few raindrops and a sleep in. I remember the days when I barely had the gifts wrapped the night before, dropped into bed, then before I knew it, three little boys were tromping into our room to see if they could go out and see if Santa had paid them a visit. They would climb into our bed and we would read the Christmas story from the scriptures and we would try to begin our day remembering the reason for our celebration. The excitement could barely contain them.
These days, they stay up much, much later than "Santa" and thus often have to be woken to begin the day. I awoke early, in spite of my late night, but allowed myself the luxury of just laying there. Eventually I got up and showered, even getting my hair dried and my makeup on before there were any creatures stirring. (Except Tim who had gotten up soon after I did). Brandon was next, crawling out of bed around 9 AM. He asked if we could wake Cameron. I asked him if he wanted a shower first. Brandon takes lots of showers. ( I am not complaining!) He opted to get his shower done and we finally got Cameron to come out of his room about 9:45.
With a chill in the air and overcast skies, we turned on our Christmas lights and gathered and read the Christmas story.
All of us commented on how different Christmas "feels" these days. I am quite sure some magic is gone when you mature and grow up. You start to realize that the holiday season is less about Santa and gifts and more about love and peace and family and friends. These are the things that bring true joy. As gifts are forgotten over the year, these memories live on.


Thus, it was with happiness, that after a very relaxing day, we were invited to the Gratil's house to share Christmas dinner with them and Susan's parents. It is great to have good friends around when we don't have family to celebrate with. We enjoyed entirely too much food again and learned a new silly card game to play with a large group of people.









All too soon we found ourselves watching the clock, waiting to for 6:45 to come so that we could receive our phone call from Chris from Kentucky. Since we knew he would call while we were at the Gratil's house, we planned for his call to come on Tim's cell phone and await we did. He said he would be calling at 8:45 his time. I have been waaaaay off with time zones these days and thought there was two hours difference and there was only one. So, we waited, and waited, for an entire hour and at 7:45 on the dot, Chris made his call home. The part of Kentucky he was in was only an hour's difference! We had all been sitting waiting and he was right on time! We passed the phone around and had lots of laughs as we listened to Chris' stories and his southern twang. He sounds just like his uncle Dave from Houston!

Thanks for the great family, friends, and food that made this holiday a special event in our lives!

Pinching Packages

4:32 PM Posted In , , Edit This 1 Comment »
Is Brandon trying to disguise his presents by writing in German, hoping we cannot figure out who they are for, and thus not be able to guess what they are? Here is one of his gifts he placed under the tree. Who do you think it is for?

Tough Competition

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We all have our games, the ones we are good at. This game goes to Tim, who seemed to keep on winning! Cameron consistently wins at "Trouble"! I remember when he liked to play that and the game "Sorry". Wonder why?







A Little Package Arrived

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Yesterday, I opened my mailbox. Here in AZ, we have pods of mailboxes. Prior to moving to AZ, I was used to a box at the end of your driveway, no lock, and when you had outgoing mail, you raised a little red flag and the delivery person knew to take mail out for before putting yours in.
It was a simple and workable process.
Now our boxes are at the end of our street, a whole group of them, with little locks on them. Underneath the individual mailboxes are some larger boxes. When you get a package in the mail, and it is too big for your box but small enough for the larger ones, the mailperson (ours is a woman, I think) leaves a key in your box to open the larger box to get your package. This is what happened yesterday. I opened the bigger box and I discovered a box from Tim's parents. I had my suspicions as to the content of the box so I went home and quickly put the box in the refrigerator, assuming it to be something perishable. When Brandon got home from school, he wanted to know why a cardboard box was in our refrigerator. I said it was a package from Grandma and Grandpa Cox whereupon he immediately got a grin on his face and knew there was Oberle Dog sausage in the box! We opened it to confirm and when Cameron got home and discovered the sausage, he said, "Now that's what I'm talking about!!!" as his eyes lit up!
Thank-you for the sausage, Grandma and Grandpa! And I know somewhere in Murray, KY, Chris is enjoying it as well!

Counting Down

8:06 AM Posted In Edit This 2 Comments »

Do you see all the countdowns I have posted? Ridiculous, isn't it? It looks like I am counting down my life away! Really, I am not, we just happen to be at THAT time of the year! I wanted to point out Chris' countdown, however, because it was a disappointment. I had been using a different counter previous to yesterday. Then, yesterday, I got an email from Chris and he said his day of release would be Aug 12. Well, that is quite a bit later than I anticipated. He went there on Aug 8 so I though for sure at least no later than that. It is all in the timing of their six week transfer blocks and all. Anyway, he did say he would be able to get that moved a little earlier for school timing and getting to cross paths with Cameron. But, since he gave me a more "official" date than the one I had set on the calendar, I decided to change out the counter to the correct date in order to have the most accurate possible countdown for now. At the time I believe there were about 230 or so days left. Upon changing the counter, it went to only 19 days left. I fiddled and fiddled with it and the counter would not move off of 19 days left, even when I took it back to the original date! So, rather than really mislead you, or cause you all to wonder if he was going to be home by Christmas, I had to delete that counter. I put a new one up, with the Aug 12 date, and it took that time to 267 days (yesterday)! Well, that was a significantly bigger amount of days than the previous counter at around 230 days so then I went through and actually counted them out, and the new counter is the accurate one, bummer! I have been falsely led all along. But this one is right as well as the 36 days left until Christmas!


Are you ready?

DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.....

2:01 PM Posted In Edit This 3 Comments »

Wow, I never, no never, thought I would hear these words from one of my son's mouths. I think finally I have made progress in the whole phrase about "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!" In these times of throwaway and disposable everything, I see some thriftiness in my youngest son. Today being a holiday of sorts, Veteran's Day, where we honor those that serve our country and kids are free from the confines of school, Brandon decided to go with one of his friends and check out the new ice rink that has just opened near our house. He is a thrifty sort and recognizes the value of a dollar and asked me where those old ice skates of mine, which had actually been my mother's, were stored so he could use them. I let him know that not only would they be too small for him, but, they were women's ice skates! And do you know what he said, who cares? They are white, so what. I can save $3.50 on rental so it is worth it! Now I thought that was funny! Clearly, that $3.50 is more precious to him than his ego and he was willing to wear them to save a buck. I love it. I am a proud mother. I mean, fashion has been so much more important for his brothers. It was heartwarming to see where he placed his value. Thanks Brandon! And thanks to all those that serve or have served our country to keep it free!
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