Thanksgiving/Black Friday

This year I talked Brad out of spending Thanksgiving with his family and we headed north for some Gilman Family time. Okay, it was just one other Gilman, but it was way worth it! We made it to Denver Wednesday night and then the eating began. We ate, and ate and ate.
All fueled up, my sis and I woke up at 3:00AM and headed off to do some Black Friday shopping. We stayed up until midnight planning our morning and I am proud to say that although I only got 2-3 hours of sleep, CHRISTMAS IS DONE!! I've done Black Friday before, by myself, and have always pooped out after a couple of stores. It was great to have a partner who also knew what I wanted and was willing to fight for it! Luckily, we didn't have to do any fighting. People were very friendly and it was fun to be out!
I did have one mishap at the first store, that almost ruined the rest of the day for me... After waiting in line for too long, we finally got to the check out. I swiped my debit card and quickly entered my pin. The machine didn't pick up all the numbers in my pin and so the cashier offered to run it as a credit card to be faster. I thought that would be fine, until my "credit" card was denied. I couldn't hardly bear the embarrassment! She ran it again as a debit, but it was too late, the bank had put a hold on my card. Again, a good reason to bring a partner... my sis handed them her credit card and we were on our way.
Finally after spending 30 minutes on the phone at 5:00 AM my bank cleared my card for use once again. Apparently, the large dollar amount, out of state, middle of the night spending was suspicious to my bank and when I didn't get the pin right they shut me down. I am grateful that they are paying attention to these things, but this almost ruined my Christmas! Not really, but it would have been very sad to me that I got up so early, just to leave it all behind!
Here are some pics from Thanksgiving. Great times! Love spending time with family (mine especially!)

More Birthdays...

My two 3 year olds, for just one day! And, yes, we did get sucked in... those are Pillow Pets!

Celebrating at the Zoo playground. With shadows, we are all 9 in the picture! Lovely warm day at the end of November!

The "Pokemon Battle Cake"---Someone needs to break this Pokemon Cake Cycle! Eric is next and I'm not holding my breath. Maybe Brad will request something different! Oh well, they are easy to make!


Stephen and Samuel turned 4 and 3 this weekend. When I asked them what they wanted to do for their birthdays they told me that they wanted to go to China and get the "Hippo Hippo" Game (Hungry Hungry Hippos}. We discussed that it would be difficult to go to China for their Birthdays so we settled for a Chinese Buffet and "Kung Foo Panda". It was a fabulous weekend and I can't believe how big they have gotten.

Halloween Fun

Last year when Lulu joined the family in October I thought, "we should be Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs for Halloween". With just 2 1/2 weeks until Halloween that idea came and went and so did the holiday. So this year as I thought about Halloween again, I figured this may be my last chance to talk the kids into humoring me with a group costume.
Audrey was the one who really resisted this whole idea. She just couldn't understand why I wouldn't let her be Snow White. She finally conceded, and agreed to be a Dwarf if she didn't have to wear a beard. So, she got to be Dopey. Here is the breakdown of Dwarfs:
Doc

Sneezy

Dopey (Ears added as a last minute project--see group picture)

Bashful

Happy

Grumpy

Sleepy


We had our Branch Trunk or Treat last night. We had so much fun getting ready for this! We decorated the back of our van like the Dwarf Mine. If you look close at this picture you can see jewels sparkling in the back of the mine. We also made a treasure chest to put our jewels in and handed out Ring Pops.


Here we are: Everyone but the unnamed Prince (he was in Chicago) It worked out better that way because then I could sing "I'm waiting... for the one I love" all evening. (I just love singing soprano!)

The best part of this whole thing was how much fun I had with my children. There were many nights that we were gathered around the computer watching Youtube clips of the "heigh Ho" song (they were very concerned about marching in the correct order)and other Snow White clips. Eric even learned to whistle this month with this as his motivation!
Having 7 little children is at times so challenging that I don't know what to do with myself, or them, but at the same time we are so blessed to have them all so close! They were all so excited to be doing this together! I also realized just how often I kiss my baby, she had lipstick(which I never wear) all over her face by the end of the night! Good Times!

Baby turns 1!

Well the day came and went with our camera hidden in Brad's car. We did get some footage with the old video camera, but when I say "old" I mean "old" and it may take a long time and some new gadget to get it on to the computer. She was of course, adorable, and thoroughly enjoyed her ladybug cake! She also decided that she would no longer like to be a crawler, now that she is 1 and has switched her classification to Bi-ped.
Here's a pic we took today, right after we found the camera in the bug! Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

New Adventure!

Today, we finish our second full week of busines ownership. Brad and a partner have purchased a computer company in Plainview, TX. They are one of two companies in Plainview that do computer repair and sales, and they will also be providing Voice Over IP phone systems and networking solutions. We feel like the market is really ideal for success, and Brad is already busier than he wants to be and that is with a full time employee already working for them. He will still be working for the hospital on a contract basis, and we are excited about beginning this new chapter in our lives! Of course, I thought that the reason we moved closer to the hospital was so that we can spend more time with Brad. Well, I guess the reason was to have him spend most of his time yet another 30 miles South of here. This is also where we go to church, so we are there a lot anyway, and 30 is definitely better than 60! Again, we feel like the Lord is blessing us and leading us to where we need to be and what we need to be doing.

I Love Texas!

Saturday, we had a beautiful drizzly morning that left me missing Washington State. As I was daydreaming about moving there and enjoying this type of weather more regularly I sped past a policeman and, of course, he pulled me over. He was very nice and even asked me if I "wasn't from around here". He could tell because of my "accent". (I didn't know that I had one--I thought I had the opposite problem!) Anyway, he was very pleasant and let me off with a warning. A I drove away I looked at the warning slip to see the name of this nice keeper of the law.

My dream come true. To get pulled over by the real Walker, Texas Ranger.


Later that night I got to appreciate another great thing about Texas: High School Football!

Football is huge here and no one grows out of High School Football. My brother-in-law plays semi-professional football, but this night he organized an alumni football game for his high school. It was quite the event! It was fun to see a bunch of old, out of shape guys run around (not my brother-in-law of course!)

Here he is with his son after the game. I don't know if I love football, but I do love this player! (oh, they won by the way!)

I did it!

I'm offically 35! I have had one kid per 5 years of my life.
I was dreading turning 35 for some reason, but once again the anticipation was way worse than the reality! I had a great day, and can't wait to start tomorrow!

Happy Birthday, Jacob!

I've always told my kids that 9 is the most awkward age for boys. Ben just got out of being 9 in June and now we have a new 9 year old in our midst. He is determined not to be awkward, but I don't know, I guess I kind of like awkward boys now.
On the day of his birthday we had 4 dentist appointments in two different cities, two soccer team pictures to be taken, a soccer game and a soccer practice, so we celebrated the day before.


His best friend from Amarillo came down to surprise him and play for the afternoon and we had yet another Pokemon cake.

We got him a new bike, that he has been wanting, but the real excitement of the party was the gifts from his friend. Air Soft guns! I think I'm going to start giving guns to all my friends kids on their birthdays. (Thanks, Jana :)) While Mom was a little nervous, Dad and boys couldn't wait to start shooting things, including each other. After they each got one welt on their backs


(and Brad got one on the side of his head),

they just stuck to shooting empty pop bottles. Now that we have some rules in place we are feeling a lot more comfortable with them, and I guess with 5 boys, I couldn't keep guns out of the house forever. Can't complain, I'd rather have soft plastic beads than bb's or real guns around. Oh, and for the record, I was the one who told the friend's mom that it would be okay to give them as presents! So, I have no one to blame but myself!

Labor Day!

We decided to invite the branch over for a barbecue tonight. We had 50 people and a lot of fun! It is so nice to get to know people away from church. We are all so busy at church that there is no time to just enjoy one another!
This was our first big get together in our new house and it was great to have the motivation to do some needed yard work and get the house ready!

Pulling a trailer, a dog, and my mother-in-law...

Does this sound like the ideal vacation to you? Well, I forgot to add in that we went over 4000 miles. Okay, now that's perfect!
We actually had a fabulous time! The pulling the trailer was not fun, but it was nice to have a place to stay along the way! (It just took a lot longer and a lot more gas!)
Here's some highlights of the trip:
Girls weekend with all my sisters, sister-in-law, niece and my mother-in-law. We got a couple condos at Seaside, OR and had a fabulous time together. We have never just done the girls only and now we are hoping to do it as often as we can!






We went camping at Fort Stevens with my parents and my nephew before we headed home. It was great to let the kids play on the beach! We had so much fun! (Apparently, we had so much fun that we didn't take time to take any photos!)




The best part was just hanging out and enjoying the family! And the nice weather!

Piano, Soccer, Haircuts, etc

The end of summer and the beginning of school! The 3 big kids took piano lessons this summer from a neighbor of ours home for the summer. We have wanted to put them in lessons for a while, but haven't been able to figure out how to make it work. So when our neighbor offered to teach them for the summer we thought it would be a good trial run. The kids loved it and they did great! They even had a recital at the end. We will hopefully be starting with a new teacher in Mid-September.
Just as piano ended we started the 4 big kids in soccer. Unfortunately, none of them are in the same age bracket this time, so we have 4 different teams to keep up with. The nice thing is that we now live in a small town and everything is very close and convenient, oh, and reasonably priced!





If you have been around my girl in the past few months and you are a woman, she has probably asked your opinion on whether or not she should cut her bangs. She has been noticing others bangs recently and as much as I've tried to talk her out of them, she finally decided that she wanted them cut and she wanted me to do it. Against my better judgment I did it. We cut some off last Friday night (before the soccer picture) and then she came to me Saturday and said that she really wanted them to be thicker. She really loves them, and although they are not perfect, I think she looks cute. This was very hard for me to do. I grew my bangs out in the 8th grade and swore I would never again have them. (Can that have really been over 20 years ago? Maybe I should get bangs... what do you think?)