New Year New Me

Today I did something really good for me and my family.  I finished signing up for school and I am ready.  I turned 35 yesterday and I feel like this will be my year!  It has to be.  Last year sucked. Too much crap went wrong this year has to go right.  I have a big plan.  I wrote out our Christmas letter on how 2012 went and how it will be going!!!! So hopefully as a family we can pull it together and make it all happen.

I was feeling pretty down since I was seeing all these posts on Facebook where my friends and family getting their bachelors and here I am working for very little pay.  blah blah blah. Anyway here I was feeling sorry for myself and my brother helped me out by finding the college that I will be attending.  I didn't want to do the typical University of Phoenix thing and then have it cost 3x as much and some places around here don't really view it as a real degree.  So I will be able to take all my courses online at home after work.  Scary but neat how we can do almost everything online.

Thank heaven for the crappy year last year though so I can appreciate how wonderful this year will be.  I already want to sign up for my summer courses but I have to wait until I'm a Texas resident.  In exactly 6 weeks I get to go down with our power bill and prove we have lived here for a year.  I can't believe we have been here for a year almost.  It really is starting to grow on me.  I love the immediate people I work with and our ward is amazing.

Oh and I have started working out with a friend so hopefully I really will have a good time doing this and get my fat booty in shape this time. 

Thanksgiving

Every year for Thanksgiving we go over to the in-law's house so that we can have pie and then the sister-in-laws and plot our siege on the stores for Black Friday.  I miss the time with them. We plot out which stores we need to get what we want, what time they open, what departments we need to be at. Cell phones in hand and we head out around 10p.m. Thanksgiving eve.  After shopping all night we hit a fast food place to revamp for the morning assault and go until 8 for me and the rest of them sometimes until 10 or 11. Then I sleep the rest of the day while the boys go do something with their dad.
This year however with us being so very far away it was just our family of 4.  I love spending the day cooking and making my house smell like the holidays!  This year because we dont have family around I kind of went overboard. For breakfast I usually make pancakes and bacon but this year I made these amazing biscuits from Allrecipes.com J.P.'s Big Daddy Biscuits with sausage gravy!    

Then after watching the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade (which every year gets more and more strange) the boys sat down to watch football games.  Since I was going overboard already, I made the men-folk chicken wings, motzorella sticks, veggie sticks with ranch, little smokies, deviled eggs, and of course stuffed mushrooms just for me. ;)

After we had our fill of snacks we then of course had dinner. A lovely array of different traditional treats.  A few of my friends here in the south said they have some different treats like maccaroni and cheese but we prefer the more traditional northern route of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce and jello salad.

The kids said it was the best T-day ever and that's what matters. I'm a little weepy about not having family near but we seem to be getting in our groove of being without family. 

All and all it was a good day and I didn't even mind that I had to go to work the next day and not shopping with the fun girls. Well I did mind, but it didn't ruin my day. At least I had fun with some people at work and got to leave early to go home and spend time with the kids. 



Sometimes I swear

Jarod came home, ate dinner, went to bed around 7:30. I couldn't take the snoring anymore by 2:30 and was up. Then just as his snoring went to a tolerable level Colby got up around 4:15 and wanted to talk, off to bed kid. Just as I thought I would get back to sleep Chloe found the new pop bottle we gave her and started chewing it. Got up and took that. A little before 5 I caught Cam trying to get the laptop in his room to take notes.  What kind of notes and on what at 5 in the morning?! Back to bed kid. A little after 5 Colby was trying to make something with Jarod's tools. Back to bed again kid. Then promptly at 6 Chloe threw up the pop bottle lid that she was chewing earlier. And of course with the unnatural ability to sleep through anything; Jarod did. Now I'm off to get ready for work.

Halloween traditions

Yesterday would be the day where I would have the cousins over and we would make a mess of my kitchen making cookies.  So here in good ole' Texas we did our part to maintain.  Made cookies..... too many cookies. But thank heaven we had the trunk-or-treat and promised some to some people.  We gave some to my new friend who is awesome and some to the missionaries. They of course loved them and my friend got the recipe for her cookie exchange. 

I'm really trying to throw myself into being part of the community here. Going to church, going to church events, school events and joining organizations. I tried to join the Decatur Women's Junior League but they don't have nominations until March and the gal told me to call her then so I could be nominated.  Also the Wise Women's Republican club will be getting back to me soon. PTO and other such things should keep us busy and feeling like we're doing something. ;) Next weekend we have a ward part where there will be a turkey shoot, bbq, horseshoe competition and some other stuff. I signed up to make my rolls so that way I can't just say "eh, I don't feel like going". 

My club meetings are on 1 Monday a month, Wednesday is my calling night so we have scouts, once a month I go to ladies night Karaoke on Thursdays and church on Sundays.  Basketball will be starting up for Colby.  Cam decided not to do anything except football, soccer & baseball when it's the season.  He literally threw a fit not to do basketball.  Weird cuz he's tall for his friends. 

Anyway, Jarod might be home soon so I'm off to clean up the house and do all the fun stuff. Hope you all are good!