Happy New Year!

Vacation Part 3

These next few pictures were taken at Give Kids the World Village. Travis and Andrea thought this huge strawberry looked so neat and wanted their picture taken by it.

Tyler and Alex by a water fountain.

They have the most awseome chapel at the village. On Sunday before we left our family went in there and Troy read some scripture and we had prayer together thanking God for letting us all be together still. Of course I couldn't keep the tears back! Andrea was mesmerized by this beautiful stained glass and I thought this picture is priceless.

Tyler, Andrea, and Travis with "Manny".

We were able to get in on a special trip to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the Blue Angels practice for an airshow they were putting on there. After their practice the pilots came over and talked with us and signed stuff for the kids. We found out that their group is supposed to be coming to Cape next year! They are an incredible group of pilots!! There was so much to see at the space center and so little time. Troy and I decided that this is a place we would love to come back and spend a few days at !

This space guy was out by our bus so we snapped this picture really quick before we loaded up.

Every Thursday night at the Village is "Christmas"! They play Christmas music all day, serve Turkey and the works for supper and then have a huge Christmas party that night along with; Santa, presents, face painting, a parade, sugar cookie decorating and much more! Alex, Andrea and I are setting her waiting to take a carriage ride.

Lauren's masterpiece sugar cookie that she decorated!

This picture is a classic!! Take notice that the only two people who are looking at the camera are Luke and Tyler! Lauren and I got so tickled when we got to looking at this! We didn't get one picture with Travis looking...he was totally amazed at Santa and his big white beard!

Well I'm off to do school and then I'll try get some pictures uploaded. I'm going to have to get a major move on it if I get caught up by Christmas!!!

Vacation Part 2

I'm finally back. Our week isn't going to great with Andrea. She has been really sick so everything has kind of been put on the back burner around here. Thanks Brittney for sharing Picnik! I am addicted now!:) Here goes the next part of our vacation...
Andrea's main wish was to get to meet Cinderella. She got sick the first day we were able to go to the Magic Kingdom so we weren't sure how it was all going to work out. When we arrived at the princesses castle they thought Cinderella was gone for the day. By some miracle they found her and Andrea's dream came true. She was in shock and didn't know what to do or say. Andrea got to meet Belle and Sleeping Beauty as well. I don't think she will ever forget this day!




Cindrella gave Andrea a kiss on the cheek. She kept this kiss for several days without it getting washed off.

The famous tea cup ride...only those who are not weak of stomach can ride this!

This was the gazebo in the back of Minnie Mouse's house.

Andrea in Minnie's house.

Troy and the kids riding the "Barn Stormer". They rode it about 6 or 7 times in a row.

By the early afternoon Andrea had all she could take and fell sound asleep. Thankfully we had Alexs' stroller, a double stroller and a wheelchair. So Troy sat in the wheelchair and held Andrea. He was thankful for a place to rest as well!:)

At GKTW where we stayed they have a whole park that is decorated like the Candy Land game with a soft rubber base which Alex loved crawling around on! We spent one afternoon there playing around.

Tyler and Troy trying to catch their breath after a wild game of freeze tag!

This is only a few pictures of the first CD out of three that I have from our trip. I think I took around 1500 pics! Slowly but surely I'm getting them loaded on my computer. Hopefully I can finish up soon so I can move on to current events! One of these days I need to change my blog look but I have forgotten how and since Christmas is so close I am thinking about just going with the "winter" look!

Vacation Part 1

When we first found out we were going on vacation Lauren made this sign and hung it on the side of the refrigerator. It was a race every day to see who could change the number first!



The van is all packed and we are ready to go!!



The kids in front of our villa and by the welcome sign in our yard at Give Kids the World Village.



One of our favorite things to do was to ride the carosel which was open first thing in the morning until around 9 pm. It was right by the Gingerbread house resteraunt and we had to stop and ride before we could go in and eat. ~ Troy and Travis~

Me and Alex

Andrea

GKTW ( Give Kids the World) is one of the most amazing places you could ever imagine! They have it decorated just for kids. There was; the Gingerbread house which served us breakfast and supper, The Ice Cream Parlor which was open from 7:30am until 9:30pm so you could eat ice cream all day long, the Ice Cream Parlor also served sandwiches and chips for lunch, Miss Merry's pizza parlor was open from 4:30pm until 9:30pm and we could call from our villa anytime and have pizza and soda delivered to our front door, there is a castle that is a huge building with every toy and craft stuff imaginable, a chapel that would make you cry, a huge building called Amberville that had one of the biggest train sets I have ever seen, all kinds of games to play, A putt, putt golf and I could keep on going!! Our villa was right behind all of these buildings so we were able to walk anywhere we wanted to go which made it really nice!

This is the Theatre.

The kids in front of Amberville

The 2nd night we were there Ms Merry ( "Mayor Clayton's" wife ) came by and tucked all of the kids in bed. Since Lauren and Andrea were sleeping in the living room on the sofa bed, she just tucked them all in here. It was one of the things they will always remeber. She tickled them and played with them and we all had a great time laughing!
This is just the beginning but I have to leave in a few minutes to take Andrea up to St Louis for her chemo treatment. Hopefully I can work on it some more this evening. I would love to join in on the days of Christmas with some of you ....I'll have to see what I can do!

We are still alive!

So sorry for the long delay in posting! While we were away on vacation I had no internet access. Then when we got home last week I was trying to get everything back in order, start school and get ready for company. I about had it all together and Monday morning Andrea woke up with a high fever which means an immediate trip to St Louis for us. We thought it would be a quick visit and we would head home, but...... we should know by now! :) It is Wednesday and only by a miracle of having a Dr who really trusts us we will get to go home tonight! Andrea's blood counts are only 26 and they should be over 500 at the very least. A normal persons is between 7500 and 15000! So she will not be going anywhere and we will be sterilizing everything that isn't alive...I guess we will be sanitizing all things that are alive as well!! :) I am just overjoyed at getting to go home especially since my sis and her family all arrived at our house last night! This is the first time we have gotten to have Thanksgiving together in about 6 years so we have really looked forward to it! Hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and I am hoping to post pictures of vacation next week!

The Rally!

I think I have recovered enough sleep to be able to talk half-way intelligently! What a week!

My mom, sister, brother -in-law, Lauren, Luke, Tyler and Travis all arrived to wait in line to see Sarah Palin at 1:45am on Thursday morning. When they got there only 8 people were ahead of them. Andrea and I arrived to join them a few minutes after 3am. It was soooooo cold! We parked my moms van really close to where we were standing and kept Andrea in there until around 6am. Troy arrived around 5:30....he doesn't do mornings very well! :) By the time the doors opened at 7am were all frozen solid! Because we were some of the first people we got to stand right at the edge of the platform where Sarah was going to stand on to speak. This was awesome to be so close but it also meant another 3 1/2 hours of standing!!! By this time Andrea was so tired she was nearly histerical so we piled coats on the floor and she laid down and promtly went to sleep. Everyone started crowding in so Troy, Andrea, Lauren, Josh Boardman and myself got pushed back quite a ways. The rest of our group got to stay right up front which turned out to be really great! I can't describe the enthusiasim that was in that building !! Imagine around 10,000 people all cheering and shouting for the USA!! I am encouraged that there are still a lot of good people who believe in good morals still around! When Sarah and her husband arrived it was wild!! She couldn't even speak for about 5 minutes for the cheering! I think she was pretty amazed. She is a really good speaker. Usually I don't enjoy hearing political speaches but she was very down to earth and to the point. When she was finished she down to where we were standing and started shaking hands. My mom, Toya (my brother - in - law), Luke, Tyler, and Ben Boardman all got to shake her and Todd's hand. She even talked to Luke and Tyler for a second. They were pumped to say the least!! It was a great experience and well worth the lost sleep and freezing weather! My kids will never forget it, and I'm sure we won't either! If you ever have a chance to go to a rally like this....do it!!

By the way I changed my comment format because the new one was not working!

Look how happy we are at 4:30 in the morning!

Sooooooo COLD!

Toya, my mom and our friend, Sherry

Andrea sleepin on her bed of coats.

Travis couldn't stay awake any more!

Tyler crashed too!

Mrs Sarah Palin

Shaking hands with the front row.

New Camera!

I am so excited! I have been really dissapointed in the camera I have for a long time. It is just a point and shoot. The pictures are often blurry or dark, the red eye is horrible and I have had a lot of trouble with grainy pics. I started researching SLR camera's several weeks ago and finally found the one I thought would be best for what I want to do. It has been so much fun playing with it this afternoon. I am doubly excited because Sarah Palin is going to be here tomorrow morning and we are going to the rally!!!! They are letting us bring our camera's so watch out, here I come! We are going to be at the rally site at 4:30am in the morning. The doors open at 6:30am and she will be there at 8:30am. Our whole family is going so this should be an experience!! My kids are overjoyed that they get to go as well! They made a sign for our front yard last night since the Republican Headquarters here are out of everything! I think ours is much prettier! :) I'll include a few pics I took with my new toy! More to follow sometime tomorrow or the next day, when I get caught up on some sleep!

Lauren and Andrea sharing a secret.

My beautiful view from my kitchen window.

View two

Travis and his jump shot!

Our creativity at work!

Girlscouts

Andrea and Emily became official Girlscouts this past Thursday. Heidi was out of town taking the young people to Youth Challenge so I took the girls to their meeting. They had a really fun ceremony and each of them got to light a candle and then get their pin which is a gold daisy. There are three groups in our troop, the Juniors , the Brownies, and the Daises. Emily and Andrea are in the Daisy group. They have such a fun time, especially during craft time! They made scrapbook albums this week out of brown lunch sacks. They are going to keep the pictures from this first year in their scrapbooks. I also enjoy going because I have met a lot of new people and that is not something that is easy for me to do! It's good for me to move out of my "comfort zone" see whats going on outside the 4 walls in my house! :)

Emily and Andrea getting ready for the special ceremony to make them Daisies!

Emily lighting her candle

Andrea lighting her candle. She was a little unsure about this because fire is a big "no, no" at our

house!

Emily getting her pin.

Andrea gettting her pin.

Getting ready for craft time.

Two happy little daises!

Scrapbooking!

Our friends the Snodgrasses were with us this past weekend. The guys had a canoe trip planned for Monday so Connie and I decided this would be a great day to scrapbook!! Did we ever had a great time! The hardest part is getting all of the supplies drug out and situated. One of these days I hope to have a room that I can set up in and not have to worry about putting it all away! Alex cooperated and took a 4 hour nap which made this mom very happy. I got 4 pages done on Monday and 2 pages done yesterday. I know I didn't set any world records but I also have all of my papers sorted and organized as well as all of my tools. I hope to get my stickers and embellishments done today. This should make it a lot easier to pull out and do a page or two when I have a little spare time..:) What on earth is spare time anyway?!!

Our guys had a lot of fun on their canoe trip but I would say us girls had the better end of the deal!

We look pretty happy about what we are doing!

This is what happens when you try to bake and scrapbook at the same time! :(

This is what happens to poor little guys when mom is to busy to put you to bed! You just have to find a spot and put yourself to sleep!