My three blessings!

As I have a little time to reflect over the last year I am reminded of my three blessings (which are sometimes in disguise as whirling dervish's). They are healthy, smart, talented, sweet, sincere, caring, and all boy! I am one lucky Mom!

The Christmas Program!

Jacks class was so cute!!!! The kindergarten class sang "Must Be Santa" and had such cute expressions and actions. The were not shy at all, especially not Jack!

Drew's 3rd grade class sang "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" and I am not sure why but it was like he was putting on a show of his own over there on the side! He was darling, you could see his big dimples all the way up on stage!

Max's 5th grade class sang "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and they really rocked out and danced around on stage! It was so nice to have a school that was not afraid to have an actual "Christmas" program with real "Christmas" songs in it. The kids had so much fun being on stage and were real hams! Surprise, surprise! They even had their own duet! Yes, Max and Drew sang "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" together! It was really cute, they even had to audition to get to do it!

Christmas Decorations make me happy!

I have a confession to make.......multi-colored lights, Christmas decorations, and Christmas cards make me happy! These are some of our new decorations this year. Grandma Terry passed down her Annalee dolls to me and we just love them! Jack likes to re-arrange them in different ways throughout the house! I needed new outside lights lights this year and I went on quite a hunt for just the perfect ones. I was looking for something a little different ( the pictures don't do it justice) and I found multi-colored garland lights! Yay ! I get happy every night at dusk when they automatically flick on! AH, the simple things in life.

We found Ichabod!

As many of you know, Max got a corn snake for his 11th birthday. Well after about a whole month with Ichabod (the snake), "someone" left the lid open and there was a full on melt down one morning after noticing he had escaped! Oh crap! My Mom was coming to visit and she is not fond of any animal (except or dog O'Neal), and my Grandma Terry who is TERRIFIED of snakes, she wont even look at the rubber ones! Anyhow, we made it through my Mom's visit without incident...no snakes in shoes, drawers, sheets etc...Thank goodness but Grandma Terry was still coming and she has a pacemaker to keep her heart going. I thought to myself "Great, it has been almost a month and now the snake is either dead or he might end up slithering across the floor in front of Grandma and she is going to have a heart attack, her pacemaker will not be able to keep up and I'll get blamed for Grandma dying!"
This was until...The night before Grandma arrives we are sitting outside in the jacuzzi and Jack says "I found Max's snake", as he picks the snake off of the ground outside by the pool! He said the snake fell out of his swim shorts! Max it thrilled and he is much more careful to shut the lid all the way! Oh by the way...Grandma is fine;)

Guys Night

The other day I received an email from a friend that simply said "Lakers" in the subject line. When I opened it up it was a very simple email that said "Gabby, would Mike be interested in 4 VIP tickets to the Lakers opening game against Portland? " UH.........Yeah!!! I could not believe it! So Mike took Papa (a.k.a Bill), Mason Waite(my brother), and a friend Mark Thompson. They had such a great time eating in the VIP resturant watching warm-up's and having an entire evening of fabulous Laker basket ball. They did have some celebrity sightings as well. Of course Jack Nicholson was there front and center, Denzel Washington, Anthony Kedis, and Leonardo DiCaprio! How cool! So a special thank you to Janice and Kristopher Williams for a night Mike wont forget!

Mike the Real Estate Agent!

Mike has passed his Real Estate Exam! After months of studying and waiting ( the test is a nightmare!), Mike is a licenced Real Estate Agent and ready to help anyone who is looking to buy or list a home. He has joined family friends, Miguel & Gina Pomar, who have been in the business for many years and even helped us purchase our home. We were so impressed with Miguel & Gina's style and knowledge that Mike felt prompted to become an agent himself. They were so encouraging and supportive. We are grateful and blessed to have them as friends and partners. If anyone you know is looking for Real Estate services, please send them Mike's way (he can even handle foreclosures and short sales and in fact is specializing in this area). This is truly a word of mouth business and relies heavily on referral, so any word of mouth would be hugely appreciated!! Give him a call 951-907-5580.

Halloween 2008

O.K. , So according to my darling sister in law Amanda, I need to start blogging! So here it goes if anyone is interested!

Halloween was highly anticipated in our house for weeks! Max has this new obsession with Japanese anime (animation) and wanted to be a character (Lelouch) from a Japanese cartoon called Code Geass. This posed a particularly difficult task in finding any sort of costume, but being the devoted mother that I am, I decided I could make something that would match. After many hours of searching and hot gluing, I finally produced something that slightly resembled this fictional character. He was happy and that is really all that mattered, he could've cared less if anyone knew what he was supposed to be, he knew. Drew was satisfied with being some black grim reapper ....the exact same thing from last year (I wasn't about to complain), this saved me time and money! But Jack made up for it. He wanted to be Master Chief ( a character from the popular video game Halo). After going to school as Master Chief on Thursday, he didn't want to be that any more so we had to go find something else. I wasn't about to spend a lot of money so we went to Big Lots and found this Jail house Zombie costume on clearance. He was so excited to be able to scare people. We have three pillowcases full of candy that I need to just throw in the trash!!!