Lazy

Boy, oh boy, have I been lazy since Jeremy has been gone. If no one keeps track of that it's about 6 months now he been working everywhere but here. My weight as gotten totally out of hand. That definitely doesn't help my blood pressure. I'm hate taking medication for it too. My only other option is to lose weight. I have started exercising again which in turn makes me feel so much better, go figure. :) I got me an American Heart Association cookbook so that I can get back on track in the food department too. Apparently I should be eating fish twice a week for a healthier heart. I am one of those people who form opinions about things, such as fish, by look, smell or sometimes the sheer sliminess of the thing while it's alive. Once I form these opinions I'm pretty well dead set on them whether I have ever tasted any form of the thing or not. Which would explain why I have never so much as tasted a fish that hasn't come from Long John Silver's. So if anyone has any fish wisdom they would be willing to share with me I would greatly appreciate it. :) Now I have to go find some way to make my thighs and bum quit hurting from the afore mentioned exercising.

200 day

Dylan has told numerous people this morning that today is 200 day. It's a very exciting day. My son will today get his 200th Accelerated Reader point. Being the reading love that I am I'm horribly proud of his accomplishment. That's A LOT of books. Most at only 1 point a piece. His teacher has promised to take him out to lunch and I have decided that we will have a celebratory dinner at Abuelo's Mexican Restraunt tonight. He is still has the most points of all 2nd graders. And to brag on the girls, both Chey and Cass are the top girl readers in their class. My kids are such smart cookies. :)

Surprises

The bright side of Jeremy not being here on Valentine's Day? I get people on my doorstep at 5pm bearing beautiful white roses. Good thing there my favorite!

Life is good

Or at least it was this weekend. Jeremy got to come home for a few days and the world was at peace again. Well, ok maybe not the world but our house was. We had fun, I slept well and we spent way too much money. I think Jeremy feels like that makes up some for him being gone. If I ever remember to get stinking batteries I will add some pictures of McSquizy and Alissa's new cowgirl boots. Truely money well spent, for the boots I mean. She wears them everywhere. Her tennis shoes she wanted to kick off as soon as she could and we hardly ever knew where both of them where. Boots are much easier to spot! :)

SO Wishywashy

When I left the house this morning I had every intention of returning with a new microwave. Ours now does some freaky, potentially fire inducing stuff when we use it. :) They had one I wanted on sale at Target. Of course, they didn't have any in stock. So I didn't come home with a new microwave.



I did however come home with this......


Alissa and I decided we would go to the pet store, not PetSmart, and see what they had. We fell in love with this little super-mini sheepdog/taupe cross. We named her Quepi. She's really good with all the kids and might actually end up liking us at some point. We're headed back tomorrow to pick up her(we don't actually know if she's a her but we're calling her that anyway) buddy McSguizy. I didn't want to get more then one until I had everything set up and functioning. The kids all pulled together though, Dylan found $20 laying in the street today and Chey and Cass pitched in, so that they could pay for him themselves. McSquizy is already picked out. He came to the edge of the cage to make friends with Alissa to day. He's so cute and his hair sticks up all over the place just like Alissa's....lol When we get him home and I find the new batteries for my camera I'll add some pictures of him. :)

Rough Week

Last week was one of those weeks I didn't want to get out of bed. I was sick and tired and depressed. It's never fun being sick but was the kind of sick where you don't even want to get out of bed because it would require you to move. I finally started feel better yesterday and all the kids are well so hopefully we got the sickies out of our systems.

There are many things that contributed to my depression. First, missing Jeremy and the daily trials of being alone with 4 kids. Then on the 21st there was a drive by shooting on the other side of town. The first thing of it's sort to happen since we moved here. Some young punks put over 20 bullet holes into a familys home. There were 9 people asleep in that home. Tragically the only person hit by a bullett was a 4 year old girl asleep in her bed in her room in the front of the house. She was killed instantly. She was Alissa's age. This poor baby girl had her life stolen from her by some idiots who "were just tring to scare them". How a tragidy like that could not effect any parent I don't know but it makes me want to cry ever time I think about it. I definanlty hug my babies a little bit tighter now days.

Then Friday I got a call telling me that a very close friend of the family, Jeremy's Grandma's best-friend, had passed away from complications of cancer. Cancer seems to be doing a lot of taking lately. My heart and prayers go out to everyone who has been effected by cancer in any way.

Proud Momma

The kids got their report cards yesterday. Dylan had all A's and B's, he let his spelling grade slip this 6's weeks or it would have been all A's as usual. Cass had all A's and B's also except in PE where she got an L which means limited progress. I always knew she wasn't my jock. :) The best part though was Cheyenne's report card. She has struggled so much with her spelling since we moved here, it wasn't stressed at their school in Amarillo. Finally for the first time this year she got it above a C. An 86 to be exact. That's a high B! I am so proud of her! Then theirs the little pat on the back for me. I knew my kids had not missed very many days of school but had thought they had each missed between 2-3 due to illness. Not so, Dylan and Cass have only missed one day of school this year! Chey did miss 3 because she had some mystery illness back around her birthday that lingered forever. Anyway, the fact that I have been up and gotten my kids out of the house, none of them have missed the same day, every single day of this school year makes me feel pretty good about the job I'm doing going it alone. Add to that how good their grades are and that makes me one very proud Momma!

Got pictures?

I do! Not many but I have some. I only got a few christmas pics and somehow I didn't end up with even one that has Cheyenne in it. Bad Mother, I know!

This is my new (and only) permanant body (lower back) art! It was my 10th anniversary gift from Jeremy. The best part about the whole thing? Jeremy and I had 3 glorious kid free hours.

So it's over....

After all the stress about Christmas shopping it's all over now. We had a really nice Christmas. Jeremy got home on Christmas Eve EVE so the kids said. I made a pretty good meal if I do say so myself. The kids got more presents then they could ever need. Then we spent Christmas day driving to Amarillo because Jeremy had to be back to work that day. We saw parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We have thrown a 10th anniversary in their (I'll post more about that when I can add the pictures of the crazy thing I did). We are staying in a hotel in Amarillo so that we can spend sometime with Jeremy before the kids have to be back to school on Jan. 9th. We even got to experience our first ice storm in almost 2 years. I'm not sure when we will be heading home but when we get their I have Christmas pictures to post too. I know your just dying from anticipation! Hope you all had a very nice holiday and have the very best New Year!

Whew

It's official! I am totally and completely finished with all of my Christmas shopping and baking! Well, we do have Christmas dinner to make and cookies for Santa but other then that I'm done. Maybe now I can finally start enjoying the holiday. Every year just seems to get a little more stressful and less magical. Of course, I don't think we have had one Christmas since I have been an adult without some issue to deal with. It's either that we don't have much money, we're dealing with the loss of a loved one, last year was a little bit of all of all that and, as you all know, much more. This year it's that for all intents and purpose I have been pretty much a single parent for the last 3.5 months. It so sucks! It's also made it that much harder to get into the Christmas spirit. It's much easier when you have someone to share your stress with at the end of the day. And sometimes the phone just doesn't cut it. I have so much more respect for my Mother now. Not because she ever had to be a single parent but because I now know what all she had to do to make my childhood so magical and special. Wouldn't it be nice to be a kid again just for a day or two? Just long enough to remember what it feels like to be innocent and stressfree and not feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Can I make that my Christmas wish?

And we baked...

Not very well but we did. We spent today making these http://http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/05/cocoa-tassies-with-peppermint-creme.html although we used brownie and ours were no where near as pretty because the icing never set. We also made these http://http://foodgoodness.blogspot.com/2005/11/buckeyes.html but they didn't turn out very pretty either. Could have been the four sets of extra hands. Then I also made some fudge. Since I did that alone it looks a little better. Then tomorrow we are making chocolate covered popcorn and chocolate dipped pretzel sticks for the kids teachers Christmas presents. Hopefully we can get them to look edible. :) The kids did enjoy helping and eating our near disasters though so I guess we can still count today a success.

ISO: Babysitter

Anyone game?! We now officially have less then 2 weeks till christmas. I can't even begin to finish my shopping until the 15th. Since my shooping to date has been minimual I still have a lot of shopping to do. Jeremy is hoping to make it home this weekend before they send him back to Amarillo Sunday evening. If only we had a babysitter we could get a huge majority of our christmas shopping done and I wouldn't have to do it alone! So who has a weekend free to come to good ole' Abilene to watch my kids? I'm sure I could throw in a nice meal or something. Just name your terms. :)

New hair

Sunday we took Chey and Dyl to get hair cuts.

We also got 3 Angel's off the Salvation Army Angel Tree so we ran all over town looking for coats and toys for these 3 less fortunate children. The kids are very excited about the idea of getting to be Santa for others.

Christmas picture

We took the kids to the Mall this weekend to have their picture taken with Santa so we can send them out with our christmas cards. Yes my children believe in Santa (except Chey she says she's too old) and yes we think it's a great thing that they do! SANTA ROCKS!!!!!

As an aside, can you tell that Alissa is about 2 feet in front of everyone else or that she was terrified of being that close to Santa?

House hunting

Really it's not all it's cracked up to be. We have been half-heartedly house hunting with the thought that in the near future we would like to purchase a home in our current area. We love the kids school and don't want to have to move them to a new one. We have seen a lot of nice houses but all of them have been 3 bedrooms. We really need at least a 4 bedroom because Dylan will no longer be able to share a room with Alissa soon and 3 girls in one room is just something I don't want to have to endure. Most of the houses in our area have 2 car garages so we entertained the idea of enclosing one side for a bedroom. But really when would we ever actually get that done. Last night we drove by a 2 story house that looked very nice on the outside. Jeremy called the realtor, yes it was 8pm because Jeremy had surprised us with an overnight visit. He agreed to meet us at the house since Jeremy had to leave again this morning. This house has 5 bedrooms and is only $100,000. A huge steal in this area. The upstairs is not so bad. It looks very newly remodeled. I absolutely LOVE the kitchen. Their is a deck of the kitchen with stairs, because it's the second story, that lead into the backyard which is huge and the kids loved. The living room was a bit small but workable. It has 3 bathrooms. The kicker there is that only one of them has a bathtub. The other 2 bathrooms only have a toilet and a sink. No way would that work for a family of 6. We would have to add a bathtub upstairs and a shower downstairs. The downstairs is partially underground so it's pretty much a finished basement. It has 2 bedrooms that I would want to re-carpet, a large laundry room that we would probably have to downsize to enlarge the bathroom and a huge den area. It would make a great media area. The problem there? It has old formica tiles that I would want covered with carpet or hardwood flooring. All in all it doesn't sound like a lot of work but with Jeremy being gone so much I don't know that I'm up to dealing with it. That is if we could afford to have the work done rather then do it ourselves. The then their the issue of getting financed and coming up with a down payment. We had decided we would get through Christmas and then start saving for a down payment on a house with the intention of buying this summer. The thing is it's hard to pass up a 5 bedroom house in this area! It's the first house we have seen with more then 3. Sometimes I hate being the adult! :)

My favorite time of year!

We spent our weekend loading up on cool outside Christmas decorations and pain stakingly placing them in the yard. We were in a hurry to get it all done before Jeremy left for Big Spring Wednesday morning. This is what we got.

Alissa had to have this.

Jeremy had to have these

That's Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy decorating a tree

Then the kids and I spent yesterday after school and today (because they cancelled school due to our big snow) decorating the inside of the house.

I LOVE having a fireplace

We'll have to retire our tree after this year

This is my new Disney village...I've always wanted a christmas village

Snow

I know it's not much but we were all very excited. We didn't even see so much as one flake of snow last year. Us Panhandle Texans sure have been missing the snow. It never accumulated enough to play in but it sure was pretty to watch falling outside the window.

First haircut

Yes I know Alissa is four years old but until Tuesday she had never had a haircut. It took forever for her hair to grow. The lady didn't cut much off. Just evened out the back and got all the fuzzy baby hair cut off. We took her to Cool Cuts for Kids. She got to set in a firetruck and watch The Care Bears movie. She though it was very cool.

Our Travels

Alissa and Travis

Lillypad aka. Thelma Renee

All 6 Cumming's Great-Grandkids

We went to both Oklahoma and Borger to visit family over Thanksgiving. Alissa spent her time in Oklahoma with her buddy Baby Travis. He even cried when we left because he wanted to come home with us. In Borger we spent our time snuggling up to Lillypad, yes I nicknamed her. All 4 kids watched her like a hawk. Dylan kept telling me he just couldn't help himself because she was too cute. :) Dyl also played with his 2 year old cousin Caleb(a boy...YAY!). Then in Oklahoma he had his best buddies, who he misses terribly, Ryan, Calan and Canton. He soaked up as much boy time as he could while we were gone! Cass enjoyed her time with another girlie girl, her cousin Erica. They did hair and nails. Chey was caught somewhere in the middle but she stayed busy.

My boy

He's too cool!

This is the Yankee hat Mrs. Garrett, his teacher last year, bought him for his birthday.

My little man turned 8 yesterday! I can't believe so much time has gone by. He seems so grown up in the last 2 days. He had a nice party at the nickle arcade on Sunday and had a blast. Yesterday we took him out of school at lunch and took him to his favorite restaurant. Last night he helped his Dad put Christmas lights on the house. Really where does all the time go? I called him "Baby Boy" tonight and he had a fit. "I'm not a baby!" I had to explain that no matter how old he got he would always be my baby and so will his sisters. It's amazing to see him growing into a handsome young man. I just hope I'm doing a good job of it. In a short 10 years this same boy will be graduating from high school. As fast as the last eight have flown by I'm afraid to blink!