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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Years Eve

(Posting by Jes)
It's New Years Eve...about 10:40PM and everyone's asleep...pretty typical New Years for us. I'm the only one up...
We did light a fire in the backyard tonight, make smores, light some fireworks, and Wendy and her family came over. That was fun. But once 10PM hit...it was lights out for everyone (except me).

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!







At first Mason was scared and ran from the sparkler I lit; however, he eventually came around and had fun!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Pictures in no particular order

The little boy table on Christmas eve! They had the cutest conversation going!

Jumping on the new tramp Santa brought with Daddy

Here is the next segment of "that's what he said"
After jumping with Daddy for about an hour Mason came in and sat down to play a game. After a minute or two he said...
"I think our house is bouncing!"

Daddy helping Victoria open her presents.



yay! I got cute boots!






Christmas!!!! YAHOO!

Here are a few pics from our Christmas eve party last night, and some of today. Merry Christmas!
Crazy fun party!

Christmas Jammies!



Mason got a computer game from Grandma and Grandpa Springer! He loves it!












Monday, December 22, 2008

Goodbye Old Friend...


(Posting by Jes)



I guess I'm a big traditionalist. I love Christmas, and with Christmas comes many of the favorite things (mostly food) I remember about growing up... This was food you didn't normally eat the rest of the year: The Lifesavers book, tin(s) of Danish short-bread, peanut brittle, fudge, popcorn balls, and of course egg nog.


As I get older, some of these traditions have had to stop, such as the Lifesavers book. The last time I ate some Lifesavers, I had to follow them with half a bottle of Tums. Short-bread doesn't last long between myself and Mason, and the peanut brittle, fudge, and popcorn balls have slowly diminshed after we left Utah (too hard to ship). But egg nog? I'm certainly not going to give up one of my FAVORITE holiday joys?!? No way. I love it and I'll continue to drink it like water from Thanksgiving to Christmas day... Or so I thought....


It's now December 22nd and the only egg nog I've had this season was a thimble cup sample at Costco (and it was excellent!). While I almost bought the 5 gallon container of it, thankfully I had just sampled the cheesecake, truffles, muffins, chocolate cake, and some weird chicken roll...so I didn't...


I've worked hard over the past 6 months to lose about 25 pounds. My goal was to simply maintain my weight during the holidays and so far I've been successful. So each time I go to reach for that wonderful glass of egg delight, I stop. And I keep thinking, "I'll have some tomorrow." With only 3 days left and the holiday treats appearing like fire-ants after a rain (Texas joke), I fear I'll have a hard time justifying drinking 1 cup of egg nog at 400 calories (and who can simply have 1 measured cup?) when I can eat 2-3 times the amount of the other cookies, candy, cake, popcorn, etc while breaking about even in the calorie count?


So, I guess this is goodbye old friend. We shall meet again next year.


(by the way, yes, in Mason's stocking this year will be a Lifesavers book, Danish cookies, and other "traditional" treats that I remember growing up).

Thursday, December 18, 2008

That's what he said... sorry Meghan!

So, My friend Meghan had this great idea to post the funny things her son says each week. I thought this was a great idea, since Mason says the funniest, weirdest things daily!!! This way I will be able to look back and remember the funny things and laugh all over again! I hope you get a laugh out of it too. I am going to title these segments "that's what he said". Sorry to steal your idea Meg!

So, first post of That's what he said... story courtesy of Jes...

Jes was giving Mason a bath last night and Mason was playing around. He was lying flat on his belly and lifted his arms and legs up into the air, kind of like superman. He excitedly exclaimed
"DADDY, I'M STANDING ON MY PENIS!!!"

Monday, December 15, 2008

Old Faithful

(Posting by Jes)
Two comments to put this story in perspective. First, on our property we have a second house (our guest house) that we've rented. Currently, a woman and her daughter live there.
Second, we have a nifty little contraption called a septic tank that breaks down all the waste from the house, chlorinates it, and waters the lawn with it. I used to think this was cool...

Why do bad things always happen on weekends? Saturday night, we returned from shopping to find our renters standing outside. The mom approached me and explained that sewage had backed up and overflown from the shower and toilet and ran all over the guest house main floor. (Luckily, it's all tile). I won't explain what I saw on my first inspection...

Since BOTH the shower and the toilet were full of ...well, sewage, I decided the source of the problem must be outside. Armed with a flashlight, I approached the relief valve between the house and the septic tank. Now...are you familiar with movies involving water and the ominious scenes where little streams of water are shooting from the cracks? Obviously that means there is a large build-up of pressure and you SHOULDN'T open it, right? Well, I had to. The result? Old Faithful in our backyard! I've been to Yellowstone Park before and I probably would have appreciated the scene a bit more had I not been running for cover from flying...well, sewage.

Needless to say, it worked....

To make a long-story short, the septic tank was clogged and full. I opened up both relief valves for the main house and the guest house to get us by until Monday morning. Yep...that means everytime we used the shower, the toilet, the dishwasher, etc...it sprayed into the yard. Just the sight of it made Ashlee gag and we had to keep Mason inside (likes to run through sprinklers).

It's all fixed now, but now I need to clean-up the yard. Hopefully it will rain today. Maybe I'll just plant some bushes there. They'll probably grow really good!

Consider this before ever becoming a land-lord.

Victoria


Here is another of the cute pictures Kathy took while she was here! I am so lucky to have a photographer for a Mother in Law!!!

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Christmas Pictures

Here...we'll let the general population vote on our Christmas picture this year...
Thanks to Kathy for taking these while here for Thanksgiving!!!
Picture 1


Picture 2


Other

Picture 3

Cozumel, Mexico Cruise

Yesterday, we returned from our cruise to Cozumel, Mexico. Believe it or not...we didn't take any pictures. So, you'll have to use your imagination!!! A special thanks to Brandi and Morgan that flew to Texas to stay with Mason and Tori while we were gone!

Here are the highlights of the days:
Thursday Night- We wandered around for a little while, trying to see all there was to offer, but ended up in the gym (a great start for non-stop eating!). There was a storm in Galveston that night, so the boat was rocking pretty bad. Turns out, running on a treadmill while on a rocking boat is NOT a good idea. It has a tendency to throw you off the treadmill. Dinner was GREAT! Ashlee was in bed by 8PM. I guess with a 6 month old at home, she thinks vacation means sleep. Of course...the rocking of the boat started to get to Jes and he stumbled into bed, a little sea sick, around 10PM.
Friday - When did we become the "old" couple? Complaining about how LOUDLY the music was at the pool, Jes overheard two middle age (but certainly older than us) women talk about how they were up until 2:30AM the night before. Reality set in. We were being out partied by all these OLD people!!! In an effort to keep up, Jes did the water slide. Ashlee wouldn't. We got sunburns. Jes went to gym. Dinner was GREAT! Ashlee in bed by 8:30PM. Jes refused...stayed up until 2:30AM (gambling)...
Saturday - Cozumel! We shopped. Nothing exciting, but beautiful island. Had we taken any pictures...they would have looked like this...



Saturday night, Ashlee actually decides to stay up after dinner. We saw the comedian, did some more shopping, watched a movie, then Jes taught Ashlee how to play Blackjack.... BAD IDEA. Before he knew it, she was the party at the table, yelling, screaming, making large bets, throwing chips, yelling at waiters...it was crazy. Well...that may be a little exaggeration... Jes tries midnight Mexican buffet....BAD IDEA.
Sunday - A little cold, Ashlee refused to let it ruin her tanning time. Jes goes to gym. Ashlee gets a massage. Jes goes to casino to try to pay for the massage....he should have just got a massage instead. We see a really lame Christmas show.
Monday - Drive home....
Left out was the tons and tons of food we ate, the funny drunk people Jes made friends with, the old lady that wanted to disco dance with Jes, when Ashlee screamed out loud on her first blackjack, the crazy table-mates during dinner, the funny towel creatures, the games we played, etc...
We had a great time, can't wait for the next one!!!
Thanks to Katie for watching Abby for us! Hopefully she was nice...

Monday, December 1, 2008

More video from Children's Museum and San Antonio

Shopping!

San Antonio Boat Parade

San Antonio Boat Parade

The Friday after Thanksgiving, we drove to San Antonio to see the light parade on the riverwalk! Luckily we had reserved seats as there were SOOOO many people and half of San Antonio seemed to be shut down. Luckily we went early and went to the Children's museum (so we missed the traffic). We were going to eat on the river and watch the show, but since you couldn't get anywhere without a ticket (and ours were at will-call), we had to walk a few blocks to get our tickets. I held Tori and Jes had Mason on his shoulders. We finally got our tickets, but by then, it was too crazy to get anything to eat. Mason had to go potty, so Jes took him to find a porta-potty (Masons first experience) and they ended up getting gettingMcDonalds while I fed the baby on the river. Poor Jes was trying to wade through all these people with Mason on his shoulders and holding all of our food, and he dropped my Dr. Pepper! It went everyone and Jes was getting really mad, but he said it was hard to get too upset as he dealt with the crowd because Mason was on his shoulders singing "Old McDonald" as loud as he could. After dropping off the food, Jes was nice enough to go BACK to McDonalds and get me a drink. He said the line was out the door, so he walked up to the first person in line, gave them $3.00 and said, "keep the change, just get me a drink". They did.
The parade was a lot of fun!