Silver Dollar City Season Pass

Well, I bought a season pass to Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO. I got one in Mark's name. When you get a season pass, you get 4 free passes for a guest, so I figure that I can go as Mark's guest. Kasey will get in free, so if Mark wants to go with him this summer they can go together. It's pretty cheap entertainment for the year. I love going during their Christmas season, they always have a ton of Christmas lights and it's always so festive.

Christmas was good this year! We had a lot of fun. Kasey told Santa he wanted socks for Christmas. He kept saying it all the time and even told Santa that at Pre-School. Christmas morning, he opened 2 packages of socks and ran to put them in his drawer in the bedroom. After opening 2 more packages of socks, he muttered, "no more socks, no more socks". It was really funny. I am sure he won't ask for socks next year.

Hard to believe that it's going to be 2009 in a few days. Where did the year go?

My Dad Knows Everything!

Yes, I know, as much as I hate to admit it, he usually does know everything, or at least quite a bit. I asked him about the big airplane wings I saw on my trip to Chicago. He said they are the blades on a windmill. Apparently, they are building big windmill fields in Michigan.

So I did a search on it, and found this youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-7VCH6Ah2w

Here is an other interesting article. http://www.leelanau.com/nmj/community/industry.html

Travel to Chicago

Today, I drove to Chicago, it's about 8 hours. When I left home, it was about 40 degrees. As I got closer to St. Louis, it had warmed up to about 48 degrees, was nice and sunny. Then at about Bloomington, IL, I started seeing this snow on the ground and it was about 35 degrees!

I have seen this house a lot on my trips to Chicago, I just think it's really beautiful. I wonder who lived here? It's out in the middle of no where, with nothing around it.


And then I started seeing these trucks with escorts in front and back. It seems like I saw 10 of them. They look like airplane wings to me. I am sure my dad will know and he will comment on here what they are - dad?



Here I got a close up picture.

Here was another one pulled off the side of the road, see how long it is?

You can always tell when you are getting close to Chicago, about 2 hours out of Chicago, you start seeing trash trucks leaving then city and heading back in. I must have passed a hundred of them.

Traffic jam! I am glad it was on the other side and not my side.

Snow in Chicago.

I got gas in Joliet, IL and they had this TV screen on the gas pump, now how cool is that? They just played a lot of commercials, but it was really neat.

I made it to my room, they are calling for rain and snow tonight, so we'll see. They have about 6" of snow on the ground now, but nothing on the roads at all. I should be heading home Friday. I don't like being away from everyone, but I'll be home soon!

Kelly

What are you thankful for at Thanksgiving?

This was the question that was asked at Kasey's preschool on Friday. Most of the kids said things like Mommy or Daddy. I tried to train Kasey to say Momma. We talked about it all the way over to school. So when they asked Kasey what he was thankful for, he said OBAMA. Now, I didn't coach him to say that. We asked him again because we weren't sure what he said and he again said OBAMA. We died laughing and the instructor said (who is a HUGE Republican, by the way), Kasey is thankful for our future President Obama. It was really funny.

Don't You Love a Parade?

Here is Kasey and his cousin Connor. Connor was in shorts as he was heading to basketball practice. He got pretty cold. (This is what I picked him up wearing, so it wasn't my fault.. :) )

The parade was an hour and a half and was really good. The kids loved getting all the candy. We took home a huge bag!

This is the float that Mark's Skills USA class did. I didn't get a good full picture of the entire train, but it was over 90 feet long, had an engine, 2 people cars, and a caboose in the back. They did a good job and won first place in the youth division and earned the Mayor's choice award.



This is Kasey's preschool's class float. I didn't want to ride on it with Kasey (I was lazy), but I thought they did a great job.



And, yes, it was hard to believe but they had this big MONSTER truck in the parade. It would take a ladder to get up in that silly thing. :)

So after the parade, I took Connor to basketball practice and then asked Kasey if he wanted to go to McDonald's or Grandma's. He said GRANDMA's. So we headed over there and mom made us grilled cheese sandwiches.

Obama Wins

Kasey loves to go vote with us. He likes to put the ballot in the machine and watch it go through. The election was a historic moment in American History. It is amazing that we live in a country where a black man can be elected President of the United States and I am sure that in the not so distant future, we will have a woman be President of the United States. We've come a long way, baby!

I am certainly glad the election is over though. I am tired of all the phone calls and the negative ads. I hope my family will start talking to me now. :) Just kidding, Grandpa Bob! I know you still love me.

Halloween & Superman

Here's Kasey at Halloween at Grandma's house. He had one of those lighted up necklaces on.
Superman!!!

Playing around the pole at Grandpa Bob's.


This is at Grandpa Bob's house. Kasey took almost all of their candy. They didn't care though... But Daddy ate most of it.




All in all, Halloween was a pretty good night.

Ha Ha Tonka Trip this weekend

Last weekend, we went to Ha Ha Tonka, it's a state park in Camdenton. It's a castle that burned down in 1942 and only the remains are left. It was such a beautiful day. Here are Kasey and I.

Here's a view from the top of the castle, looking down toward Lake of the Ozarks.

This is the river that runs from the Spring. The water was really pretty. We walked from the Spring to the castle, which seemed liked 2 miles, but it wasn't. There were about 300 uphill steps. Wheh!

Here's another view from the top of the castle.

Here's where we parked.


This is the castle walls.



Here's Nicky and Kasey on the window of part of the castle.

Another picture of the castle walls.


The water tower.

Golfing Today, Mark's Birthday

Today was Mark's birthday. We have all been sick this week with the creepy-crud-nose-throat- stuffy-head-sore-throat thing... Not really sure what else to call it, but I bet everybody knows what I am talking about. The kind of sickness where you aren't really out of it and can't function, but you don't feel that great. Anyway, I told Mark we were going to have a surprise day today, so we went to Marshfield, which is about 30 miles away to eat at the Rib Crib (Mark's favorite restaurant) and then went golfing. What a great day it was! It was warm out, but not too warm and the leaves were starting to turn colors and the air smelled like fresh mowed grass. It was so nice to be outside.


Kasey had great time, his favorite thing was to collect broken tees off the tee box. It worked out really good because while we were waiting for the people in front of us to get done so we could hit, Kasey would clean up the tee box for us of all the broken tees and put them in the cart. We had a whole collection of them when we were done.



All cleaned up Mom!



Broken tees are all over the place!



Here's another one. So you wondering why he doesn't have any shoes on? Well, when I hit at the tee box and have my flip flops on, I decided to try barefoot. I actually hit better without my shoes on. I know, you're supposed to wear golf shoes, but that tells you how serious we are about golfing! Anyway, when I got back in the cart with Kasey, he had taken his shoes off too.


Any hole that had a sand trap around it, he went right for. Yeah! I love these big sandboxes...




Here he is putting his broken tees back in the cart.


This was the start of the collection after about 3 holes. I should have taken a picture after to show how many he got. He had so much fun. It didn't take him long to konk out on the way home.


Sure was a nice day.

Ran Out of Gas

Last week Mark was mowing the yard and Kasey and I were sitting on the porch talking politics (just kidding...). Mark ran out of gas on the lawn mower, and Kasey ran around the house to the shed and came back lugging this gas can. It was almost empty, but he was really working on getting it to the lawn mower.







He knew exactly where the gas went, at the back of the mower.




Mark helped him up on the mower, he took the gas cap off and started pouring the gas in.



When he was done, he put the lid back on the gas tank. I know, this seems silly to post on this blog, but he was just so cute and the gas can was almost bigger than he is. He's going to be such a good helper I think.

Chalk Outlines

Kasey loves playing with chalk. We thought it would be fun to outline his body on the concrete.

I hope this picture shows up ok, by the grass is Kasey in one pose, then he rolled over and posed again and toward the front he is curled up a little with his hands by his head. We got our cat to lay down too and took her picture.

Kasey talked his daddy into doing it too, so we outlined him.

Isn't that the cutest thing? I am so glad I took a picture of this.

Kasey went to Cricket preschool this week. He cried when I left him but he did really good after I left. My little boy is growing up...

Sissy can be mean to Kasey sometimes, I think she really wanted a little baby sister. She put his hair up in a barrette. He wasn't real impressed. I think his expression is really cute... :)

Nicky's Friend Meagan Had A Car Wreck

So tonight, Nicky called her friend Meagan to ask her about something and Meagan said, "I'll have to call you back, I just had a wreck on Fremont." So Nicky raced out of the house and went down to the road to check on her best friend. Here's a picture of Meagan's little VW Bug (I loved her car). I guess Meagan was getting ready to turn onto our road and pulled in front of another car. Her car circled around and landed up on this stop sign.



















Here's Meagan standing next to her car, Nicky to the left and Meagan's dad heading toward them. You can see Kasey in the stroller. I walked down the street to check on them.














Here's her car once they got it out of the ditch and off the stop sign to tow it away. Thank goodness no one was riding with her because I am not sure they would have come out of it in very good shape. And the crazy thing was that Meagan wasn't wearing her seat belt. Can you believe that? I think Meagan almost always wears her seat belt, but the one time she probably didn't, she had a wreck. I understand that completely because the one time I had a wreck and totalled my car, I wasn't wearing my seat belt either. I almost always wore mine also except for that one time.















We are so lucky that she wasn't hurt. This could have been a very sad story. Meagan and Nicky are both seniors this year.

New Keurig Coffee Pot

Here's the new Keurig Coffee Pot I have been wanting. It is the coolest thing around. I got the carousel to go with it and a separate filter in case I don't want to use the pods that came with the coffee pot. I have tried a couple of them and I think I may have to acquire a taste for them. They are slightly stronger than what I typically like, but if you put a lot of cream in it, then it is better!!

I had enough points on my Master Card to buy this directly from them, but I shopped around and found I could use the same number of points toward an Amazon card and buy the pot, the carousel, the filter and another 50 coffee pods. I thought that was a pretty smart move on my part! I especially liked it that I didn't have to spend any money for it.

I put my Longaberger Coffee Mug under it too. I thought it looked really good. Who doesn't love Longaberger pottery? I got this as a $5 surprise treasure. I bought 2 of them and wished I had bought 4. You never know what you are going to get so you hate to buy too many of them.

Just Turn Your Back for a Minute!

My new coffee pot arrived and I set it up yesterday. This morning, I had some stuff out on the counter top, include a small container of sugar. I went in the other room for a minute, came back in and Kasey was on the counter top and had poured the sugar all over the counter and was stomping his feet in it.

I told him he was bad and shouldn't do that, but then I wanted him to pose for a picture, so I sent a mixed message to him, but I thought he was really cute. At least he didn't throw it all over the floor, that would have been a mess.

His shirt came from Nicky, when she went to Jamaica. I don't really like it because the neck is all stretched out on it. It will end up in a t-shirt quilt someday for him.

My Prizes Arrived

I got my first Blog contest prizes in the mail yesterday! It was so exciting, I got these from Kristie, who had a contest on her blog not too long ago and I won!! It was really fun to get her package. So thank you Kristie!!!
I love seasons, so this book was really neat.
While I was taking pictures, I was thinking about my poor camera. I bought it back in April and it is really, really small. I just love how it fits in my purse or in my pocket (which is not a good idea sometimes!). When we went to Texas, a piece on the top of the camera came off that holds the button in, I was able to find it, but put a bandaid on it because that is all I had in the car and it was too little to put somewhere because I didn't want to lose it again. The bandaid worked so well, I have just left it on there.

So when I had my scooter wreck, I had my camera in my pocket, because you never know when you will have a spot you want to take a picture, right? Well, that is exactly the side I landed on and it cracked my screen. I was able to get a good picture of it with my old camera.

That is so sad, but I am AMAZED that it didn't damage it anymore. I can still see the pictures and it didn't hurt the quality of the pictures any.

Tomorrow I am getting a new coffee pot from Amazon.com. It's Keurig, one pot coffee maker. I can't wait!!! I have been wanting one ever since the Pioneer Woman posted a giveaway on her blog and told about how much she loved hers. So I finally cashed in some points on my MasterCard and ordered it...