Happy Father's Day!

I may not have a dad to call, but I did call my Grandpa. He's an awesome man. He wished me and Shannon a lot of luck for our new jobs (which start tomorrow) and our new home. I believe we need to find a way to get him out here to see it and us!

It's Time...

I set a goal for myself while in Garden this break. I decided that I could and would beat DDR Hottest Party before school started again. The last thing to do was to beat a boss in a battle. I had to get 3 or fewer boo's on basic or higher. The song was a 6 (out of 10) flame song. I had not done great.

Being the dork I am, I kept track of my number of boo's the last few time I tried to play. I got 28, 14, 6, 20, 9, 7, 6, 11, 11, 9, 22, 7, 8 14, and 16. Not good enough. So today I played some more. I got 6, 10, 11, and 2! Woo hoo! Low enough.

But my score didn't beat his. So sad. But, not a quitter I tried again.

Again 2 boo's! And this time I was good enough! Woo hoo! I got the credits, I beat the game!

Christmas Part 2

While in GC, we didn't take many pictures. We had a great time with extended family. Christmas was fun at Rhonda's. Then we headed to Grandma Fuller's for lunch and family. There was ham loaf, rumors of undercooked ham loaf, doodle bears, Wii, dog piles and more!


The kids are all getting so big. It's fun to talk to them and watch them play. The next day we went to Bobbie and Jeff's for some chili and some more games. There were many games to be had in Garden, on the Wii and off.

We left of Friday and headed to Wichita for one last Christmas celebration with my mom and sister this time. Oh, I almost forgot!! For the Christmas Eve service, Shannon wore his black suit from Rhonda and Dave's wedding. He hasn't worn it in a while so, we checked to make sure it still fit.

It did.

Christmas 07 Number 1

Colorado was our first stop for Christmas fun this year. We decided to go there first because last year the weather was too bad to travel that far so we didn't go. You may recall some ice and power-outs.


Well, we did some shopping at Centerra (above), Estes Park, and Boulder. We ate a lot of gelato. We had it from about 4 different places. Well, maybe only 3. But still, it was a lot of gelato and it was all good. :)


Saturday, our last day in Colorado, we had a big ol' family get together at Linda's. There were a lot of people. Me and Shannon, Jenette, and Chris, Michelle, Gary, Linda, Grandma and Grandpa Dick, Randy, Nancy, Wes, Jennifer, Suzanne, Emily, Amy, and Jonathan, Lindee, Terry, Katrina, Adam, and Dakota, Jerry and Cindy, and some of Linda's neighbors stopped by. So, 25-ish. Plus there were 4 dogs, Shadow (a German Sheppard), Libby (a terrier), Major (a beagle), and Jake (a poodle?). Not all of them are pictured above. But Major is below and he is a very cute and smart little puppy!!


This video is of Dakota playing Wii boxing with Emily. I don't know if Cody actually won.

It was busy. But fun.

From Halloween

Here are some pictures from my weekend visit to Wichita a week back.


These are Matt's dogs. Cajun in the red lab. She is about 3 I think. Zeus is the white lab puppy. He is very young. About 2 months old.


He is a huge puppy, and adorable. Around the table are some of the party goer's. Jessica is one of Jayme's good friends. She is also dressed as a witch and about 4 or 5 months (?) pregnant.


After almost everyone left, we played some Wii. Here is Jayme and Lianna playing boxing. Lianna beat Jayme. It was entertaining. You can see my cute little niece examining something.

Halloween Party

On Saturday the 27th, I went to Wichita for Jayme's tuba recital. She did a very good job. I'm really glad I got to go. That evening, her and Mom had a Halloween Party at Mom's house. People from their work came. Most of them with kids and almost everyone (adult and child alike) was in a costume. Above is Oliva. She went all out and even put in fake piercings! It was quite cool.

Another noteable thing is that Shannon and I found 5 Wii's at Best Buy. So we called my mom and decided to pick her up one. So I took it down with me, along with DDR: Hottest Party and our 2 dance pads. It was really fun to watch everyone play! Above is Lianna (?) and Taly (?), Jayme's friend Jessica's, daughter and sister. It was cute.

Essences

In My Sims you build houses and furniture and then paint them with essences. Essences are things that you shake off trees, fish for, get from people, prospect, and the such. When prospecting, you walk around with a little detector and it beeps, you stop and dig and the essences pop up and you collect them like coins. One of the essences is purple crayon. So when I was walking with Shannon and happened upon this generic purple crayon, or essence, I thought it worth sharing.

Food and Games

Shannon has been giving me many fun things for my birthday week. So far I've gotten nifty-gifty "The Office" pens, Big Brain Academy, blueberry almond oatmeal, yellow curry rice mix, asparagus risotto mix, My Sims, dark angels green paint, and a garlic press.

Now some of it is just stuff we needed/ran out of. But some of it is purely fun! The two games are very fun to play and I have put in about about 11 hours between the two since Monday evening.

School on the other hand, has been rather hard. We have a really nasty STAT 860 test on Wednesday that was last Wednesday moved to Friday moved to Monday moved to Wednesday. Jeepers. I just want to get it over with.

Oh, and the weather has been real nice lately. It's cooling off and raining a bunch. We have finally had reasons to make soup and our new Hot Apple Cider Tea. That stuff is good.

A New Holy Baby Part 1

This weekend was quite nice. Shannon and I went to Wichita with Maria and Nic. My two aunts and my grandpa flew in from New Jersey Thursday to spend a long weekend with us. We got there Friday night. It was supposed to be all icy, but luckily, it stopped early enough for the roaded to be cleared and we had no problems. G-paps had cooked up some yummy dinner for us. Yay Grandpa's food!

Isn't she cute!

Saturday we all kinda chilled. We did a lot of preparations for the next day's party and also played the Wii. Aunt Diana and Aunt Margie both made mii's. Then, Maria helped make my Grandpa a mii. It was sooo cute! G-paps gladly let us take his picture with it.

We took some video's of my aunt's boxing. It's odd, they looked a lot like my mom boxing...

Yep, still cute.

And then they sneezed.

After Wichita, we went to good ol' GC. Shannon and the boys Wii'ed it up. It was pretty fun to watch them play. Its always fun to watch people play for the first time.


Before we opened gifts, the kids sang us a song and posed for some pictures. From left to right we have, Brooke, Macy, Tate, Morgan, Brendan, Trevor, Cortez, Adam, Jevon. Macy, Brendan, and Trevor are siblings, then the other 6 are Steve and Margo's children. They are all quite fun to watch and talk to.


Christmas at Rhondas was pretty fun too. Shannon and I got pirate cards. See?


Thursday was the Texas Bowl, K-State versus Rutgers. We went to Andy's to watch it (he has NFL Network). K-State started out okay, then totally sucked it up. We lost. But an interesting note is I have some family friends who went to Rutgers in NJ.

Oh, the black outs. We had approximately 13 too many hours of no power in Garden. It was officially declared a disaster area (not just Garden, but most of that part of KS). Garden didn't have it as bad as other areas either I don't think. Despite that we did have over 1/2 inch of ice on everything. Then some snow to seal it in. It was pretty, but sucky at the same time.

How big should my ribs be?

Other Christmas things included...

A hybrid recipe shrimp scampi. We combined Mom's recipe and Shannon's. It was good.


The traditional crab sauce.


Yummy Ceasar Salad with Panera bread.


And everyone playing the Wii!!