Phonetics

A few things to report before I go into my story.

1. First, Dawson is potty trained. Pause with me for a minute as we let that news sink in. Do you understand how great this is for the environment? And my psyche? He's been potty trained for over a week. And he's been waking up with a dry pull-up because we put one on him at bedtime just in case. All before he turned 4 years old. And I thought it was going to be closer to 15.

2. I got my two bottom wisdom teeth taken out yesterday. I was born with only 2 bottom wisdom teeth. None on top. It only took about 20 minutes to pull them both and I was drugged and quite happy. It's a good thing I'm not typing this blog while on Vicadin. It's not pretty. The dentist said the teeth were easy to pull and I should heal quickly which is what I'm really hoping for because my office gave each of a tin of chocolates for Christmas yesterday at our Christmas party and it's killing me to not eat them. I may need to put one in the food processor.

The final story is from work. One of my responsibilities is to make sure churches that have loans with us have insurance policies. I made a phone call to an insurance agency regarding a church that I needed a policy on. The lady on the phone had asked me to give her my email address. Easy enough. However, you know how you spell out letters and then give the name of an item representing that letter? For instance, "C as in cat, A as in apple" etc... well at this particular moment I was describing the domain name of my email address which is adf-inc.com. My description of that was this: "A as in alpha, D as in...(slight pause while I pick through my nimble mind full of great items that begin with the letter D) D as in Dork, F as in Frank. Yeah, I came up with the word DORK to represent the letter D. Thankfully, the very professional woman I was speaking with on the phone burst out laughing and said it was the best laugh she'd had all day. All of you out there who use the word DOG to represent the letter D should change.your.ways.

Do You Know?

How does one recover from a youth retreat? Is there anyone out there with the wisdom of one thousand monks that can answer this thought provoking question?

Last weekend Jason and I took our youth group on the Church of God State youth retreat at the YMCA of the Rockies. Beautiful location.

I got no sleep.

Among the highlights of this very sleep deprived trip:

1. Amy's brother Ryan dared her to eat a piece of bread soaked in hot sauce.

2. Jason started to get a cold which grew increasingly worse, eventually rendering him unable to speak by the end of the trip.

3. I got an infection in my wisdom tooth which caused me so much pain I was taking about 5 ibuprofen every few hours to keep from punching something. Or someone.

4. During free time I got to take a couple of girls on a hike. It was freezing outside but the view was worth it. Eventually we got to a point of the hike where we couldn't go any further because we couldn't see which way the trail lead. The ground was covered in snow. This highlight has pictures to accompany it:

We decided to take the hike to Bible Point.

I even had a little map to follow and didn't get us lost! Oh the wildlife we saw.

One deer.

One rabbit. One mouse. And one Sasquatch footprint.

Along the way we also came across a dilapidated bird house with an interesting message:

Awesome views:

Now, because the girls did not come prepared to hike in snow (go figure) I had one hiking in converse, and Vicki and I were hiking in tennis shoes. Vicki and Savannah could not seem to keep from falling. I, on the other hand, did very well despite the circumstances. On the way down the mountain they asked me to simulate a fall. For memories sake.

My butt was frozen after this shot. Better a numb butt than numb feet.

Jason took the rest of the crew swimming. Yes. inside! Geez.

5. Bonding

The girls and I had some great discussions. I hope they took some lessons home with them to build a foundation on. We talked about the importance of obeying parents without attitude. We talked about boys. And I taught them all how to perfect the messy bun.

2 of our boys stayed mesmerized by video games.

I put this guy in timeout for being anti-social. (not really!)

We still haven't recovered. I get my 2 bottom wisdom teeth extracted next Friday.

All in a day's work.

Being Thankful

I love Thanksgiving. Not as much as I love Christmas, but who doesn't love food?

I would love to hear a story of a family Thanksgiving that something didn't go wrong..

Are you with me?

We had planned on eating at 1:30. We ate at 2:30. Is there any family out there that plans on eating at a certain time and actually does? Send me a comment. I want to know.

We had a problem turkey.

I do deserve to be proud over that nice looking green bean casserole though, don't I?

In the meantime, I discovered that Jenessa and I had the same pair of socks on, only reversed. Obviously that was an important picture moment.

Jason mashed our potatoes:

And Dawson kept us entertained:

Soon the table was set and I snuck a roll with butter because I was starved.

We put all the food on the table. I loved that feeling. Back when I lived in Indiana we used to have my whole extended on my mom's side have Thanksgiving together and we had to get in line for the food set out like a smorgasbord. Nice, but not homey. I like homey.

I like to eat. Before: Clean Plate

After:

Yeah, I know how to clean a plate!

Grammy G had a little story to read to us about corn and Dawson got to interact by holding up a piece of candy corn and then eating it. I don't like that profile shot of my nose.

Dawson made that hat in daycare.

And we all know what happens once the triptophan kicks in:

Yay.

Yes, this is the new and improved me. I gave the blog a facelift. I nipped and tucked. The blog screamed and begged for anesthesia. I gave it a shot of Christmas spirit and Voila!

Soon, I'll be back to my regularly scheduled program. Which was really not regularly scheduled at all, now was it?

This is what you get, don't throw your fit!

That is the chant that Dawson came home with from daycare this week. Man I love his dayare. How did they know that he throws a fit when he doesn't get what he wants? It's almost like they live with me. Now, on to more important stuff like my massive bicep in the picture to the right. Yeah, I know you were all checking that out. This was the first time Dawson had ever fallen asleep in a chair. Not that I was squishing him or anything. He looks perfectly comfortable. I, on the other hand, had a butt digging into my hip bone, and my red pants were screaming for oxygen. But Dawson sure looked cute all curled up. I'm not quite sure why I have a look of absolute disgust on my face. It's not like I was able to use Dawson for an arm rest or anything. I kinda feel bad for having Jason take this picture now. Poor Dawson, he probably woke up with a headache and a pain in his neck. Oh well, I still think he looks cute.
Moving on.
Jason and I recently discovered something that Dawson does when he colors and we got video of it to share with all of you. Happy Day.

A Boy and His Pumpkin

Don't Bet On It.

Last weekend was sunny, here in Colorado Springs. So we decided to take off on a road trip. I just accidentally wrote the word "tirp" for trip and I thought it was funny. Maybe that will be the name of our next kid, "Tirp Wilkins" only it sounds like a bully. And it's too close to the word twerp.

Now, I love ghost towns, so I wanted to visit this little town called Victor. However, in order to get to Victor, you have to go through this town called Cripple Creek.

Everyone in this town is crippled. Not really. And that was an awful joke. For real though, Cripple Creek is a famous gambling town. Actually, if you are reading this right now and you are a recovering gambling addict, don't go to Cripple Creek. Although you'll be pleasantly surprised at your winnings. So, we decided to stop in Cripple Creek because we were starving and I had to pee like nobodies business. We had Dawson with us, so we were trying to find the first family friendly place to enter and get food and pee without getting Dawson arrested for underage gambling. We stopped in this little restaurant called "Parrot Dice Grill" and there were teenagers working the grill. That's the first red flag for me. No offense teenagers who cook. But these were all guys. Next, I couldn't see a bathroom because directly attached to this restaurant was a casino. A gentleman who was seated must have noticed my discomfort (I think I was standing with my legs crossed, bouncing up and down) and came over to me to ask me if he could help me find anything. So I told him I needed a restroom. Pronto. He pointed to the restrooms which I would to get to by walking through the casino. Then he asked me if I was 21. I said "I'm 32, thank you very much!" Only, I didn't have my driver's license on me, because I didn't bring my purse. I was willing to be arrested for the sake of my bladder. I ran to the bathroom which was guarded by a security guard. Took care of business and walked out and we left. I'm gonna bet you were all hoping that I was going to gamble and tell this great story about how I dropped a quarter in the slot machine and won hundreds, and then got arrested by the security guard because I didn't have my license. And now, I'm really wishing I could tell that story. I did gamble on our cruise way back in 2004 and won $50.00 even though I started out with $11.00 in quarters. And then I lost it all because I thought the slot machines were so cute. And that is the true story of our stop in Cripple Creek.

The drive to Victor is pretty scenic:

On the way I found my first ghost town representative:

Jason and I both noticed a house we love:

This shot is mainly to give you a glimpse of the awesome scenery we'd have. Now I'll zoom in so that you can get a good look at the house:

I'm fairly certain it's a repo so we should get a good deal on it. I have so much vision to make this a home.

2 skips and hop... and we're in Victor.

I will say Jason wouldn't let me out of the car in Victor to take pictures because he feels this town is ghetto so I had to do drive by shooting. Get it?!

I love this old truck. It reminds me of Tuh-Mater without the "tuh".

And look at this quaint old church:

Not very ghost-townish, but very haunting. If I were a gambling addict, I'd go to church there.

And that ends our non-gambling, ghost town road trip we took last weekend.

Now I'll leave you with a few pictures I took just this morning of Dawson:

He received these green teeth at his daycare yesterday. He tells me "Mommy, they're not scary, they're just real!

And check out this bling:

A spider ring. I told him it'd save him a ton of money to hold on to that and use it for an engagement ring someday

Daycare and stuff.

Dawson started his first day of daycare today, since living in Colorado Springs. Up until now, he has been a member of Daddy daycare.

I made Jason drop him off this morning on his way in to work, because even though Dawson is now 3, I still couldn't handle the idea of him getting teary eyed or crying and wanting to go home.

On the contrary, what does my little man do? According to Jason, Dawson walked right into his new environment and made some friends!

Of course, we're talking about a kid who walks up to every kid at the park playground and says "hey, will you be my friend?" I'm not sure where he gets that from. I'm certainly more selective with my friends... (I would never publicly ask on Facebook for anyone to be my friend just so I could reach the 200 friend mark, I mean seriously people!)

When I came to pick Dawson up on my way home from work this afternoon, he was playing outside and seemed as happy as can be.

And now for the "stuff" part.

This has nothing to do with anything, which makes it blog worthy.

My sister watched Dawson for us on a Saturday afternoon before we moved so that we could be efficient packers. Any of you who have ever tried packing up a house with children in it know what I mean. One of the activities they did at her house was make sugar cookies.

My little man got selected to smash the cookies down. Here he is showing off this acquired skill:

The next order of business was to go ride the 4wheeler (which Dawson will not be allowed to see this picture for another 10 or more years, because if he sees it, he will beg for one for Christmas. And right now, the only thing he's getting is a Larry Boy car courtesy of our friend Jess. (Thank you Jess, remind me of what Clayton likes to eat!)

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And as you can plainly see by the picture, the reason we do not want him getting one of these for Christmas is because Jason will want to ride it and Dawson will cry to me that he doesn't ever get a turn.

The end.

Deliroius? Wooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We went to the Delirious? farewell concert last night. In Colorado Springs. Where we LIVE! Do you know how incredibly awesome that makes us sound?

I am the biggest Delirious? fan ever. All day I was like a giddy school girl waiting to go to the concert. The concert was held at a church near us, and we took the youth with us. They got to see me in rare form.

Here we are, at the church ready to carpool to the concert:

The youth group has actually doubled in size since we started. Our first day we had 4. We're good ay?

When we got to the church where the concert was being held I was quite excited because the sanctuary itself is not that huge. I could probably go up on stage! It was first come first serve seating so we got as close as we could, which really was not that far away.

Here we are waiting for the concert to commence:

Alas, it was time for the concert to begin. This guy who was opening for Delirious? was not that great. So I sat in eager, giddy school girl anticipation.

And then...

THEY came onto the stage!

And I peed my pants.

Actually there were 3 things I noticed immediately:

#1. Martin Smith has beady eyes

#2. He is also a skinny punk.

#3. They were all wearing suits.

(this was going to be a classy deal indeed)

This is the best I could do in the way of pictures.

So I screamed and jumped and sang my lungs out all night long. Here is some illegal video I captured:

After about the first 3 songs I realized they could wear suits because they hardly moved. But then again, they didn't have much room. So if you are ever thinking of becoming famous, and singing on a very small stage.. you can sacrifice mobility for fashion. Just remember that I taught you that and pay me.

I'm sad to say farewell to one of my most favorite bands of all time. But I'm grateful that I got to see them in concert before they said good-bye.

One last thing I'd like to mention. There is something about seeing people like Delirious? in concert, or Beth Moore teaching her heart out, or Gene Edwards who is able to pen words on a page that makes me so happy for Jesus. Happy that he has people like these who truly enjoy Him.