I Wear My Sunglasses at Night (or inside)

I come downstairs this morning at 6am and look who I find in the kitchen, a sharp-dressed man with some cool shades. You know it is so bright in our house in the morning - ha ha What is so funny is that Adam cannot stand when men wear their sunglasses inside, he thinks that they are thinking they look so cool when actually they look so stupid. Whenever he sees Jack Nicholson in a picture sitting inside somewhere with his cool shades on Adam is yelling at him to "Take them off, you look stupid!" (Like he can hear him or something?) So of course I had to take a picture-

First Picture - "Why do you have a camera in my face? Is this for your blog?"

Second Picture - "This is stupid! Don't put this on your blog."

Third Picture - I don't know...I see a resemblance to Jack Nicholson!

Piano Boogie!

Yesterday Zack had his piano recital and I must say he did very well. It made me remember back to the days of my own piano recitals and the nervousness I would feel. My hands would sweat to the point of dripping and my knees would be shaking and knocking together. Oh what fond memories I have, no wonder I still hate to play in front of people. I never got over it. I could see that Zack was starting to feel a bit nervous but he handled himself like a pro and did a good job. His song was called "The Haunted House" and when he plays it he has a way of really getting into it by moving to the beat. The man sitting next to me at the recital says that Zack was the most entertaining. He really gets into his music. Great job Zack!

The Best Neighbors Ever!

We are lucky to have nice neighbors but our favorite neighbors live directly across the street from us. They have a little girl (15 months) Kayla that is so adorable! Well the other day they gave me the privilege to watch her for the afternoon. And I am not kidding when I say it was a privilege. First of all, I miss my boys being that age, she is a girl (I don't have one of those) and she is really a good little girl so I love being with her. I had alot of fun!

The next night our neighbor brought us over dinner to thank me for my service. Which like I mentioned before it was not a service but a free meal, sure we will take that. That was really nice of them. I had to take a picture of the meal they brought for it was beautiful and VERY delicious!! The picture doesn't do it justice, it was huge! I definitely need to get the recipe...it was wonderful! We are so lucky to have great neighbors! Yum!

Happy Belated Birthday Michele!

I just wanted to wish my mother-in-law a very happy belated birthday!

A beautiful lady with a beautiful heart! Thanks for being a kind mother to

Adam and a loving Grammy to Matthew and Zack. I am so lucky to have a

good mother-in-law. We love you!!

Rockets Flying

Zack hates this picture so of course being the kind mother that I am I just had to post it. He thinks he looks like such a dork. He always makes goofy faces for every picture but now that I blog maybe he will start to pose normally. Wishful thinking!

Last night they had the Cub Scout Space Derby and Zack actually took 3rd place. Not too bad since his ship (or whatever it is) broke three times. It is amazing what boys are entertained by!

Friendly Competition?

OK, so Saturday night we had Adam's sister and her family over to play games. We love to play games but unfortunately it seems as though we always play the SAME games. Please if any of you have any suggestions for some fun games please let me know. We are desperate! Anyways about Saturday night, Adam decides that we are going to play Cranium. Not one of my favorites but it can be fun- Matthew and I end up being a team and I thought "Great, we are so going to win. Matthew will know all the word stuff and trivia and I can draw, know my songs and my celebrities. No problem, this win is in the bag!" OK, well that was my first problem I started off too confident. Can I tell you that I absolutely STINK at this game. Matthew came through for us on alot of the trivia stuff except for the ones we missed because I insisted it was another answer. (I should keep my mouth shut and have more faith in Matthew's knowledge) The worse was when Matthew pulled a humdinger card that is where you have to hum or whistle a song and your team needs to guess what song it is. OK no problem I know my songs, this will be a cinch. So Matthew starts humming and right away I go "Oh Yeah that's "Up on the Housetop". Matthew shakes his head no. I listen even more attentively....nope that is "Up on the Housetop" or at least that is all that I can hear. Adam's sister tells Matthew that he should hum the chorus for me because then for sure I would know it because by this time everyone else has it figured out. Our time is almost up and I just cannot get it. The other teams are feeling sorry for me because I am obviously so stupid that they even give me a hint by telling me who sings it, the Beach Boys. Still nothing- I felt like a complete idiot! So to say the least we were in last place the whole night and I don't think that Matthew ever wants to be my partner again, even though he is so sweet and would never tell me that. The song by the way that I swore was "Up on the Housetop" was actually "Good Vibrations". Duh! Next time we are playing a different game-

Neglected House

Last week on my way to taking Zack to piano I noticed that our old house that we had owned was up for sale in the Texas tract. That was the first house we had bought and we loved it! Not only do we have alot of wonderful memories there but I really did love the house itself. It was small but it had personality. The living area had a bright, roomy feeling and we had plenty of parties there. The back yard had a great patio, large grass area and a fenced in pool (real pool). We loved it and we have always regretted saling it and we wish we would have kept it and rented it out when we moved into our current house.

So to see it for sale you could imagine my eagerness to see it and see how much they were saling it for at the chance we could repurchase it. Now home prices are dropping here but this has dropped quite a considerable amount. I found out it was in foreclosure, already vacated and was saling for the price of $415,000 so we just had to go by and take a look at it. What a depressing thing that was. The house was totally neglected. The front and back yards were just a sea of weeds and totally thrashed. As we let oursleves into the side gate..yes we were trespassing...we were shocked that it was even the same place that we had lived. I can't even describe the mess and we didn't look under the huge wood cover they had covering the pool. I can only imagine what we would find. To our surprise the back door was unlocked so we continued into the house. The kitchen was totally stripped of any of its appliances and the place was just a pit. I seriously felt like crying and felt as though we had let our poor little house down. How could we sale it to people that could not take care of it or take any pride in it. It was so depressing! It was amazing to me to see that neglecting a house can seriously turn a beautiful home into a huge dump!

Adam still was thinking that maybe for the right price we could purchase it and put money into it and then rent it out. We went back the next day with our camera to take some pics but found the side gate locked. (Someone probably reported the trespassers the day before-oops!) We called the realtor to see if he could show us but he informed us that it had been sold already. I am sure the buyer is planning on coming in and clearing it out and cleaning it up hopefully to what it once was. We loved our little house and it will always be dear to us and I will always try to remember how it was when we lived there. Such great memories!