The 4 J's Halloween

I'm a bit behind here getting my Halloween pics up, but wait no more, here they are! Our astronaut, cowgirl, nice witch (no mean ones allowed), and Lightning McQueen Pit Crew dude had a great time trick-or-treating into the night. We've got more candy left than we really know what to do with, even though we recycled some of it right back out the door as it came in. Some folks in our neighborhood gave out beads, little packs of markers, stickers, etc and I think that's a great idea and may do the same next year. Who on earth needs all this candy?!?! Not us! We already contribute generously to our dentists' retirement funds without the help of all this extra sugar.

They weren't too thrilled with the photography portion of the evening (as you can tell by the looks on some of their faces), so I had to click quick and then put the camera away so they could get on with their fun.




Checking out the spookyness in the neighbor's yard. Note the absence of the witch in this one? She wouldn't go anywhere near this thing, she's never been a fan of the scary part of Halloween, thus the "nice witch" costume.

And here we have the oh-so cooperative 3 year old.

Me and my girls. Meow.


Hope all of you had a safe and happy Halloween, too!

Buddy Walk '09

The Buddy Walk turned out to be a huge success, despite the fact that the venue had to be changed just TWO DAYS ago because the original location had flooded. Luckily, the Texas Rangers stepped up the plate (heh, I crack myself up sometimes) and provided us with a pavilion and wonderful space for the event. Our team raised over $2000 and we would like to thank everyone who donated and/or came out today to support Jakob and our local Down syndrome organizations.

Our crew

Catching a lift from Uncle Don

Checking out his picture that was on the course

Hanging with Mimi


Happy weekend everyone!!!

Eighteen.

Me and my Marine, 18 years ago today. What a lucky gal I am, I still don't know what I did to deserve such, but I am so thankful. And I look forward to seeing what the next 18 will bring.

These gorgeous flowers arrived a little while ago too, see what I mean?
How lucky am I?

Thanks babe, not just for the flowers today, but for everything you do every day. I love you.

Jakob's been busy...

Jakob had a fun field trip this week and I got to tag along. It was cool and damp, which is not normally Jakob's "thing" but he enjoyed the activities so much that the weather didn't bother him one bit. We went to the local pumpkin farm (which is also a Christmas tree farm, which he was pretty excited about), got to build a scarecrow, roast marshmallows and go on a hayride.

His first question about roasting marshmallows was "Where's the chocolate?!?!"

An overwhelming array of pumpkins to choose from!

His pick


Then this morning he finally got to play in his first tee ball game of the season. His first game was rained out and he was sick for the second, so he was thrilled to be out there today. Oh, and Daddy is thrilled that he finally gets to be a CUBBIE this year! Wahoo!! It was an absolutely beautiful morning, and we all enjoyed being out in the sunshine.


Pure joy

Cheesing it up for me on base



I also realized at the field trip that his new transitions glasses (they automatically turn dark when he's outside) are really going to make it hard to get good pictures of him. Thank goodness I noticed when I did because I was able to order him a plain pair just in time for our family pictures next weekend. Whew!

Oh, and about those watermarks. I'll try to make a long story short, but a very good bloggy friend of mine had her pictures swiped right off her blog and claimed by a crazy person on Flickr. Said crazy person was dumb enough to add my friend as a contact, so she noticed them immediately and had them removed but STILL, it was creepy. The worst part was that her pictures were watermarked but the watermark was in such a place that it could be cropped off so that's exactly what the crazy person did. I know that we all take this chance in having public blogs, and I don't really want to have to go private, but I am going to try to discourage the weirdos out there from taking my kids' pictures and claiming them as their own. How people have enough time and why they go to the effort to do such things is beyond me. So anyhoo, that's why you see the big ole "Life with 4 J's" stamped on my pics now.

Happy weekend all!

Sunday bullets

Catching up here a bit!  

• The girls are well into soccer season, but unfortunately have missed several games due to rain.  We did have a nice sunny day a few weeks ago and got a few pics of them in action.  Note the obnoxious watermarks?  More on that in a later post...

• Derek and I went to a fancy dinner/fundraiser last night and had to get all gussied up for it.  It was a work function and the target audience for their fundraising were folks who play in quite a different financial ballpark than we do, so I didn't get to bid on the $64,000 diamond earrings, darn it.  It was fun to pretend I was fancy-schmancy for the night though.  

• It is still raining here and now it's chilly, too!  I see that people are getting snow already.  Global warming, huh?  Pfffft.  Tell that to the photography clients that I keep having to reschedule due to unseasonably crazy Texas weather.

• I made Lisa's apple cake  yesterday and it is super YUMMY.  This cooler weather is definitely making it feel like fall so let the baking begin!  I'm already starting to dream about Thanksgiving dinner, is that weird?

• Here we are, just 20 days from Halloween and only one costume is purchased so far.  Guess I'd better get on that STAT.  I can't believe how quickly this year is flying!  It'll be Christmas before we know it, are you ready for the holidays?  

• Happy Columbus Day, the kids are out of school here so we get a long weekend, wahoo!  Happy Sunday all!

My how time flies...

4 years ago today, Derek, my mom and I met our Ling Ling for the first time at the Civil Affairs Bureau in Nanning, Guangxi. She looked absolutely gorgeous, and as it turned out, had lost her first tooth just that morning. We missed a lot of her firsts, since she was over 5 1/2 when we met her, but we're thankful that we haven't missed a thing since then. Happy Family Day to our sweet Jacey, we are so lucky that you're ours!

Click here to read about our first day with Jacey.

Hello out there!

Ahem, I've received a few emails/Facebook messages lately saying things to the effect of "Girl, where the heck are you?" so I thought I'd better post and let everyone know that we are still alive! This is a very busy month for us, I have my charity golf tournament on Monday for the Down Syndrome Partnership, the Tarrant County Buddy Walk is coming up later in the month, and between homework and sports, the kids are swamped, too. The girls finally got to play soccer last weekend and I do have some pics from their games to post soon. Jaden has missed school all week this week due to a yucky fever virus and now Jakob has it too, so that's thrown a wrinkle into our already crazy schedule. There are TONS of kids sick around here, it took the doctor's office 6 1/2 hours to call me back yesterday so I can only imagine what their office must be like in person. Luckily, they agreed to just send notes for the kids to take to school and didn't want to actually see us, so I didn't have to expose them to anything worse than what they've already got.

I promise to get back to regularly scheduled programming soon, not that I'm that regular with posting, but I think I can do better than once every two weeks. I'm dreadfully behind on visiting my bloggy friends too and hope to get around to all of you soon, forgive me for not commenting much lately. Hope everyone is staying well and Happy Fall Y'all!

PS- Thanks Missy for already joining our Buddy Walk team! You're quick, girl! :)

Does this help?

Tuesday bullets and some ink

Yep, there's more ink to report! No, not on me (yet), but Derek finally got one that he and I have been talking about for a while. Bet you can guess what it means.



Pretty cool, eh? I plan to get it too, just a little smaller and on my back. The girls think it will be a fun place to play some tic-tac-toe. :)

Now on to the bullets, nothing exciting folks, just a few random things.

• I'm addicted to a stupid game on Face*book called Mafia*Wars. I can't wait to get up in the morning to do the jobs (that's how you earn money) and whack some mobsters. The kids looked at me a little sideways today when I asked Derek if he had any illegal transaction records or untraceable cell phones he could give me. Heh.



• We're getting healthier around here and have made some major changes in our pantry and fridge. We're getting organic as often as possible, are juicing daily, and have cut WAY back on caffeine. We've always tried to be fairly healthy in our eating, especially for the kids, but we've really decided it's time to get more serious about it. I've had more fruits and veggies in the last 3 weeks than I'd probably had all year, and I'm feeling great.



• Question for people who have lots of kids who play sports. How do you keep it all straight who has to be where and when?!?! Only 3 of my 4 play, but I had to make a freaking spreadsheet of their game schedules to hang on the wall and we'll be doing quite a bit of "divide and conquer" to get them all where they need to be. How on earth will we do it when they're all 4 playing something?!



• We have had a crap ton of rain here over the past 6 days. If this is what the Northwest is like all the time, I don't know how people live there. UGH. I need sun and blue skies. Finally, this evening, we saw the sun peek through and I was so excited I had to grab the camera and get outside.

Happy Tuesday, folks!

3 Word Sunday

The man cave saw it's first official football action of the season today with a Cowboys win. I was hoping to have some first soccer game pics to post too, but since it's been raining NONSTOP since Thursday, that was a big fat no-go. Hopefully next week we'll dry out and the J's can get their seasons underway. Happy weekend all!

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