Home Sweet Home

We are finally going to have a big girl & boy home! I am so excited! Lonnie and I have been living in what we call the cave for over a year. The cave is actually an apartment that we have above the studio. Don't get me wrong...it is very nice, BUT it has no window's (hence the name "CAVE") The other draw back is that it is in the building that we work in, which for me makes it hard to stop working because I know all that I have to do is walk upstairs. We had been talking about getting a home away from here for about 7 or 8 months. We slowly started looking last summer. At first we were looking for a home on a lake but we decided to  find something a bit more permanent. We drove around several housing additions until we found the one that was perfect for us! And here it is!!

Welcome to Landrun! While driving through this neighbor we found a home that was for sale and we called the number on the sign. The guy gave us the code so that we could go inside and tour the home. I fell in love with the house. The floor plan was perfect! There were a few things that I would have changed if I could have. The house had been on the market for a long time so we did not feel any rush to jump on it. Boy was I wrong! Yep you guessed it...IT SOLD! I was so upset! After a few weeks of being disappointed, Lonnie came to me and told me that the builder had a lot for sale in the same neighborhood that he thinks we would like better and we did! We were SOLD (literally)

We bought the acre lot and are having the exact floor plan built with a few minor changes to suit our liking. 

This is where our new home will be...the corner of Black Bear Trail & Boomer!

We are having the house built at a angel on the lot and hope to have Boomer for our street address!

BOOMER SOONER!

This will be the view from the front of our home.

This will be the back view of our home.

We hope to break ground within the next few weeks. I will keep you posted so stay tuned!

Pain in the Neck!

I am 41 years old and I have never been to the Chiropractor. I have never had the need to. To tell you the truth, I have always been afraid to. If it ain't broke, don't fix it...RIGHT? Well, it finally broke!! I went to bed Wednesday night perfectly fine. When I woke up Thursday I had a slight pain on the right side of my spine, under my sholder blade. I thought nothing about it...I've given birth to a 12 pound kid with no medication... I can handle pain!!Ha Ha...or so I thought! Just a few hours later my pain level was at about a 5. Lonnie had talked about how great going to the Chiropractor is and when I told him I was hurting he asked if I would go. I thought...what the heck. We loaded up and headed out only to get there to find out that they don't open until 4 pm! Oh well...OK, so we came back to the studio. 4 pm rolls around and we are the first one's in the door. The doctor does x-rays and some other test and come to find out I have a pinched nerve and a vertebrae out of place. He said the vertebrae seems to be an old injury. REALLY? I never even knew it! Anyway, he put me on the stim machine for 15 minutes and the adjusted me. I could feel it go into place instantly! It was amazing! I left there feeling so much better. Lonnie had to work an event that night so I stayed at the cave and decided to spring clean! If you know me you know spring clean means cleaning out cabinets, drawers, dressers, closets...etc. By 8 pm I could hardly move!!! My pain was so bad that I even cried!! Lonnie had to help me roll over durning the night and as you can imagine I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. I was suppose to be back in the chiropractor's office at 11 am but Lonnie called them first thing this morning and they told him to bring me in ASAP! They put me on the stim machine again and he adjusted me again but said it was mainly just muscle tension from the pain I was in the day before. He massaged it and sent me back to the cave and made me promise I would NOT do anything today and told me to be back at his office at 4:30 this afternoon! OK...thanks doc!! I did what he said and I do feel a lot better!!! I must say that I had a great experience with my first visit to the chiropractor!!! I hope to be back in the sing of things tomorrow! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mini Vacation

Well Hello Everyone!! Long time no Blog!! What do they say...better late than never. Oh well, I'm blogging again and I hope to do better at it.

Since my last blog...(Halloween), well we have celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas & A New Year. I really don't want to play catch up so I decided just to start my blog with our mini vacation that Lonnie and I took with Kendra and Kaleb this last weekend. 

Kaleb call a couple of weeks ago and invited Lonnie and I to go to Dallas with him. He was in need for a weekend trip and he didn't really want to go by himself. Of course I'm always up for a road trip. I even convinced him to go farther south to Austin. It didn't take much convincing since Kaleb had gone to school just south of Austin from the time he was in the 6th grade till November of his Junior year. He was all excited to be able to visit with some old friends. So it was a done deal. We would leave Thursday night after Lonnie and I got done taking picture's at CLEET  in Ada.

Monday Kendra came and spent the night with us since she was working in Prague and told me that she was going to be able to go! I WAS SUPER EXCITED!! A mini vacation with 2 of my kids!! YES!!

So Thursday night at about 7:30 p.m. we were southbound to Texas!

Kaleb & Kendra

 Since we got such a late start we decided to only drive to Denton and we got rooms there. Friday morning we all got around and grabbed breakfast in the car and headed to Sam Moon in Dallas. I just love this place...if you are a girl and you have been there you know exactly what I mean. Kendra and Kaleb made it in the store before I did but as soon as I walked in I couldn't help but laugh because Kendra was like a kid in a candy shop. She was smiling from ear to ear and she already had her hands full of goodies.

One of Kaleb's requests while in Dallas was to go to Stroker's also known as Ma's Roadhouse. It's the bar site of a mini reality show.

Kaleb & Kendra at Stroker's Dallas

Lonnie & Me 

Kaleb and Ma

We went in and bellied up to the bar and ordered a few drinks.

Kaleb & Kendra

What is a bar experience without a game of pool. So we put the quarter's up and Lonnie and Kaleb decided what they were gonna bet and it was game on!!

Kaleb

Lonnie

And the winner is...KALEB!!

After a few game's of pool we decided to go over to the gift shop so the kids could get a t-shirt and koozie's and look who we found hanging out! Yep it was Bart Simpson! How could we resist?

Kendra & Bart

Lonnie, Bart & Me

Kaleb

After stopping by Stroker's we stopped for fuel before heading farther south and this is what Kaleb came out of the quick stop with for me.

What a Mama's boy. I love this kid!

We made it into Austin early evening. Downtown 6th street was our goal for the evening. Kaleb had been talking with a couple of his buddies that he had gone to school with while we lived there. They agreed to meet us at a restaurant on 6th street for dinner. The only picture's I got of all of them together was on Kaleb's phone so I don't have any to share with you. After dinner we all walked around for a while but Kendra was nursing an ear infection and Lonnie and I ...well Lonnie & I are just plain OLD so we left Kaleb with his friends and we went back to the room to call it a night.

The next day we headed to eat at one of our favorite places when we lived there. Mammacita's Mexican Restaurant. Then it was on to another on of our favorite places while we lived there...The San Marcos Outlet Mall!! We spent several hours there shopping. We bought so much stuff that I wasn't sure how we were gonna get it all in the car, but since I am the organizing queen, we managed just fine.

That evening Wade Bowen was playing at Gruene Hall in Gruene Texas. 

If you have never been to Gruene Texas it is a must! It is so beautiful and peaceful. And how lucky could we get that Wade was playing at the Hall that night! SCORE!! 

The kids had never been there before so we went into the town as soon as we got there and checked it out. Kendra and Kaleb have been interested in wine lately, so we stopped at a winery for some wine tasting. Then it was time to go get our rooms and get all prettied up for the concert. The evening was a total blast. The concert was great, the company was awesome and who can complain about Gruene Hall. Again all the picture's from that night are on Kaleb's phone. I totally failed with the camera job this weekend. Oh well lesson learned.

The next day it was back to Gruene for some lunch and shopping before heading home. And what a way to start a day...with Mimosa's.

Kendra, Kaleb, Me & Lonnie at the Gristmill

Kaleb, Kendra & Me

Lonnie & Me in front of Gruene Hall

Kendra's shopping fun!

Kaleb & Lonnie's shopping fun!

Our final must have stop was to H-E-B Grocery for some Julio's chips and Salsa!!

Our family mini vacation was a SUCCESS! I had such a blast with Lonnie and my kiddo's...I just wish we could have stayed a few more days. I hope everyone had a blessed weekend like I did.

Halloween 2011

Fall has always been my favorite time of the year. The weather is perfect and the colors of fall are the best! Halloween is no exception. I use to love to dress up when I was little and when I became a mom I loved to dress my kids up and take them around town Trick-or-Treating! Heck, I would even dress up with them.

A Halloween tradition that I started when the kids were very little was that I would put on a pot of homemade chili and make cinnamon rolls! Every year they would always look forward to eating before heading out for a night full of Trick-or-Treating. Since I moved to Norman I guess my kiddo's thought the tradition would be broken. Not only could I not break our tradition, I could not go without handing out candy to the little kids. Since we had nothing on the schedule Lonnie and I decided to head to Medford to continue the tradition. Kendra started texting me the day before Halloween saying how much she was going to miss it. Even though my kids are 22, 21 & 19 I just could not disappoint.

Halloween morning I was off for a Wal-Mart run to get everything that I needed for the meal & of course a few bags of candy so that I could hand some out, even though I knew mom would have some. I got the chili in the crock pot and I put the cinnamon rolls on a cookie sheet to rise. At around 3:00 we headed to Medford! 

When I got to mom's I plugged in the chili and popped the rolls in the oven.  

Kendra was a Happy Camper!

It wasn't long after we arrived that the Trick-or-Treater's started arriving.

My mom with my Lil cousin's Brayden & Cayden.

Tommy the cat was not sure about all this Halloween Business!

After the Trick & Treating died down Heidi brought the girls back over and Aunt B came over for some good family time.

Me and my Ky Ky!

We even did a little dancing!

Ky wanted to fly so everyone pitched in to help her out.

Kaleb decided to eat all the leftover candy. I guess you're never to old for Halloween.

I hope everyone had a Happy & Safe Halloween!

Part 2

Ok now for part two of vacation 2011.

After a full day at The Grand Canyon we decided to take a tour of the small town of Williams Arizona. It was such a fun little town full of cool little restaurant's and shops. As we were walking around the town a crowd began to form because they were fixing to have a gun fight in the street. Here are some of the character's that were in the skit.

 What was funny is that when the skit started one of the men was trying to set the scene for all of us..."It was a blistery hot summer day in Williams Arizona in 1834..." then his cell phone rang!!! It was hilarious!

You can see the phone in his hand! It was so funny!

We went on to have dinner and had a few drinks at the bar before calling it a night! 

The next morning it was on to LAS VEGAS!! I had never been there in my 40 years of life. I was super excited to be going. We made absolutely zero reservations for this trip. We just figured that we would go with the flow...Well guess what? The flow was in Las Vegas for Memorial Day weekend! We could not find a room anywhere on the strip:( We finally got a room off the strip that had a shuttle that would take us to the strip for free.

 This was our view from our room...I think the look on my face says it all!

Oh well we had a lot of fun!

There were a lot of first for me on this trip including my first cab ride. 

 The shuttle from the hotel would only take us to the main strip, so in order to go to Freemont Street we had to get a cab. 

I would have to say that my favorite thing about Vegas was the Show's and Freemont Street!

We spent most of our first night on Freemont Street!

 DAY 2 - LAS VEGAS

We decided that since we spent so much time in old Vegas the night before that we would start on the strip on day 2!

This was the largest wine cooler I had ever seen!

And this is what happens when people think that they have the right-of-way!

POOR LONNIE...THAT IS A BIG TIME PARTY FOUL!!!

Ok stay tuned for the rest of my Vegas Trip there is more to come!!

Lost and Found!

Hello all!! I know, I know in my last post I said that I was back in the swing of things and would be back to posting again. Well I'm sorry that seems to have been a little fib. My life is so much different these days. What have I been up to? Well, where do I begin? I got the apartment organized and settled and I love it. Sorry I don't have pictures. Work has been crazy. For those of you who don't know what it is that we do let me inform you. We take picture's! We do weddings, Senior settings, Family session's, & events. Our main focus is on school's. We go to the schools and do their yearbook photo's and class photo's, but we also take Santa with us in the winter and in the Spring we do Spring Pic's. We currently have around 25 - 30 schools so this keeps us very busy. On top of pictures we also do Trophies, T-shirt's and this year was the first year to do our own Yearbooks. Now that school is out we can re-group, get organized again for the fall. This is what I have been doing with my time. Being the organizer that I am my talents are greatly appreciated here not to mention greatly needed. Last night we did pictures for a Daddy/Daughter dance in Moore. Today we did picture's at a golf tournament and tonight we have 2 class reunion's scheduled. Business is Good!!

We decided that as soon as school was out it would be a good time to schedule our vacation. We loaded up in the tahoe on May 25th and headed for Vegas. We just kinda took our time getting there. We spent our first night in Texas.

 The next day it was off to New Mexico and Arizona!

We spent the night in Williams Arizona. The next morning it was up early to catch a train to the Grand Canyon. 

The Train ride was so much fun. They had singing cowboys to keep us entertained and on the ride home we even got robbed by some outlaws. If you have never seen the Grand Canyon you need to at least one time. It is amazing.

Just kidding!!!

 For the sake of a lengthy post I am going to split our vacation up into several posts. Stay tuned for the rest of our trip!