Happy Trails....

As most of you who read this blog know, we are getting older. It's true! We have now officially been out of High School for 10 years. We can actually use the number instead of spelling out because it is such a large number! It makes me feel very old to think that it was that long ago I sang at our graduation with Mckenzie Wilson and Dani Sorenson. Ahhh memories! I remember being so happy that I didn't have to sit all the way back with the 'S's' in order to graduate and I got to sit up front since I was singing. :)

This year we are celebrating our 10 years with the traditional reunion and I never thought I'd be this excited about it. To be honest I always actually vowed to NOT return for my reunion because I thought, the people I was friends with would keep in contact and I didn't necessarily care about seeing everyone else. Then I had three kids and I feel grown up and now I want to see how everyone else has grown up.

Facebook has become a huge deal in my life as I have noticed everyone else's too. A good deal of people have recently joined facebook as a way to reconnect with our old classmates and friends and I think it helps build the excitement for the upcoming reunion.

Tony and I have decided to make a vacation out of the whole trip because my boys have never been to Northern Wyoming or sight seeing in South Dakota. They have never seen the things that were a part of my growing up like Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills and the Badlands. My family moved out of Gillette almost five years ago now, so I have not been back since Jan. 2003!!! I am SOOO excited to go back to my old stomping grounds and see how it has changed and show my family where I grew up. Most likely it will rekindle my love for Wyoming and flare up my desire to move back, which will annoy Tony for awhile until the flame burns down a little.

So our family vacation will look like this. We are going to tour the badlands, black hills, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer, and Devils Tower on our way to Gillette. We are planning on camping a couple of nights in the Black Hills too. Then we will head to Gillette where we are going to be staying the night that Friday in the Hampton Inn (since we have no family there anymore). Then hopefully all of my friends will be having a picnic with their families that they have been talking about and then we will head to Cheyenne to visit my sister and stay a couple of nights and take in a rodeo with the boys at Frontier days. Yeeehaw! I am so excited. It will be so much fun and the boys will love every minute of it! It is planned and reservations are officially made. So look out Wyoming and South Dakota, here we come!! :)

Too Busy...

Owen March 2008 and Feb. 2009

I Love to be busy. It makes me feel like I am getting things done if I have a project going most all of the time. Lately though I've been getting more and more tired and just don't feel as "young" as I used to - HA! Seriously though, I just can't take on as much as I used to and it's not because I can't but because my precious time is being spent with my precious children and I am so mad at myself for taking classes this last year off and on that I have missed this precious time.

Raymond March 2008 and Feb. 2009

They will not always be at home, they are growing up fast. For crying out loud, my baby is going to be 1 in a week!!! How did that happen? Owen starts Kindergarten next year and I can't believe that this is my last year at home with him. They are growing up in leaps and bounds and I don't want to miss ANY of it. So I have vowed to never tell them I am too busy to play with them again. I almost burst into tears a couple of months ago when I overheard Raymond asking Owen for help to get a toy, and Owen said that he was too busy. I asked him where he had heard that before and he said from me. How sad is that! I have pumped the boys up about how much I am going to play with them when this quarter was done at school, and it ended on Thursday. I can't even explain how much they talked about what we were going to play and how excited they were about actually having their mommy play with them so much! It melts my heart.

Judd March 2008 and Feb. 2009

I want to remember every hug, every kiss, every word they said and everything they did (good and bad). I don't want to ever forget the way my babies were and how they grew up! They will be my most treasured memories!

I love my family:).

My boys...

Here are just a few updated pictures of the boys. I gave them haircuts this last weekend (minus Judd, he doesn't get his first one until after his first birthday. It's my rule) Also, Uncle Nate came to visit last week so we were excited to see him, and Judd was excited to meet him for the first time! So enjoy!

Is it Winter or Spring?? I'm so confused!

Here are a few pictures of the boys playing outside. These pictures are taken two days apart. The first set of pictures was taken on Thursday when it was 62 degrees outside and the next pictures were taken today, when we have 8 inches of snow and it's 30 degrees outside. The blizzard started at 8:30 am and stopped snowing about 3:00pm, and we accumulated about 8 inches. Crazy! But it's the perfect snow for building a snowman, so that is on my agenda with the boys tomorrow! All winter it's either been too crunchy or too powdery to build one, and the boys have wanted to everytime it has snowed. We can build an 8 foot snowman now with all of the snow we got today!! So below are some pictures of our outside play time.

Raymond the bicycle man. "Can I put air in your tires sir?" That's what he was saying. :)

Owen being silly on Raymond's old tricycle.

Owen and Judd in the wagon.

This picture cracks me up! Raymond on his old tricycle that is too small, wearing Owen's bicycle helmet that is too big.

Judd playing basketball in the wagon.

Owen swinging at the park with daycare kids.

Raymond at the playground on Tuesday.

All of my boys playing in the snow!

Judd's first playing in the snow experience!

Memories....

So last night on a whim and out of pure boredom I begin to plug in old teachers names into Google search and see what I came up with. I typed in my all time favorite teachers name from ninth grade English, Mrs. Shepherd. I put in her name, then English teacher, then Indiana, because I remembered that she had moved there and to my amazement it took me straight to a High School website where a teacher with the same name was teaching ninth grade English!!!
I thought that this was pretty good odds, so I e-mailed this random Mrs. Shepherd and asked if she was the one I remembered and LOW AND BEHOLD, she is one and the same!!!
Needless to say I was elated and excited and shocked when I opened my e-mail this morning to find a response from her and that it was in fact the same!

I'm sure everyone has had that one teacher that has changed your life in some way or done something to help you and you will be forever grateful, she is that teacher to me! I was very shy in public and hated doing class presentations and being in the spotlight (did that change) until her class. She made everything fun and encouraged everyone to be as creative as possible! I remember laughing hysterically in her class it seems like everyday. I used to be so excited for my other classes to get over so I could go to her class. That is where I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" for the first time, which is now my all-time favorite book, where I did a presentation on Jim Henson, and became 'Stacey' a talk show host that interviewed Juliet and Romeo!! That was also the year that her student teacher, Mrs. Schultz, directed the play 'Zartan the Grape Man' and I won the leading role of bad girl pirate 'Tetrina the Terrible!' Aargh. Where ninth grade might be an awkward year for a lot of other people, that was the year that I blossomed and came out of my shell!

Thank you Mrs. Shepherd, you will always be my greatest influence!