Congrats to Matt and Katie!!!

Yesterday in the midst of Christmas decorating Matt asked Katie to marry him. She was taken by surprise but of course said YES! The girls and I raced over to see her ring. It is beautiful! He even got the matching wedding band. They are saying they probably won't get married until May of 2010. The girls are very excited to be flower girls and dress up all pretty. We are totally happy and can't wait for babies. We need some babies! Get the show on the road!

Sorry I cut off your head Matt! Katie wants everyone to know she had not showered yet so she doesn't look her best.


There is a diamond in the middle and then diamonds along the white gold band.

New Layout and Beach Trip

I got tired of the layout not working with Firefox and some other web browsers, so I'm using a canned template from blogger again. For some reason it lost my links to other blogs when I did this so if you were listed but now are not on our links list send me an e-mail with your blog URL.

We've had some really nice weather this week and we went to the beach this afternoon to see the boys on the twins b-day.

Sophie is running like the bionic woman.


Will is on a mission to convince everyone it's time to head to the b-ball courts.


Water run to fill up the "sand tub".


She might need some sunglasses.

The building of the sand tub.

She's making her pose look natural. Then she dumped the bucket of water on her own head.

Blue skies and mid 70's today.

In other big news today, our red navel orange tree finally produced something this year. Pretty tasty, as you can tell from Melissa's totally fake excited face.

More Dog Posts Yeah!!!

In case you haven't read Jen's page yet....today we took our pups to this awesome dog park that was about 30 minutes away. It was huge and pretty much like just being out in the open with your dog. Finley and Jazz did great. Bo of course did not come since she is not that social, but I was thinking that it is so open she might do ok. Anyway, the dogs had a great time and came home disgustingly dirty. That is pretty much all I did today. Dog stuff. And try to fix my mom's pool. Mom if you read this, call me I can't get you on your cell.

This is a shot of most of the park.


My dirty boy. He hates the water but he got in up to his belly to chase after those pesky labs.


The sun behind me is washing out the beautiful colors of the cutest dog on Earth. He is nice and clean as I type.


Running after those darn labs again!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

A few pics for those family members far away! We are making sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and apple pie for our part of the dinner. But first we have to watch some of the parade......and learn how to dance like a Rockette (sp?). I think they need some more practice...


My favorite dish, sweet potatoes, being made by the girls. Well, I made them last night and the girls are just putting on the best part...the marshmallow topping! Soph was caught stuffing them in her mouth instead!


I absolutely love watching the parade every year, no matter how boring. I brought the green beans out so we could pick off the ends while we watched. Don't worry, the cat didn't help us!

Edward Loves Melissa

Well, I am a total slacker indeed. Not only do I not blog anymore but Mike and Jen got me addicted to Facebook. So let me just get thru some of our last 2 weeks.....

Here the girls are enjoying their favorite dinner. Plain noodles. Gross. They can't seem to get enough.


It was a long Sunday and we didn't do anything really.


The girls went to a birthday party last Sunday. Here is Paige giving that pinata the what for.


Tire swing action. And no, I don't know what those weird kids in the background were doing at the park in masks. They weren't part of the party.

Pamela, the birthday girl, ordered pizza for her party. It was huge as you can see. And delicious.

Here are most of the party guests. The girls love Andy, the one on the ground. He is the art teacher's son and brother of Sammy from soccer.

Paige and Grace. They are in class at school together.

We brought breakfast to school one morning. The kids enjoyed it in my room before the bell rang.

This is an amazing piece of work from Paige. I think it looks just like her. She did a great job. I was totally amazed. I never had that type of talent. Plus, she has an awesome art teacher.

AAAooooooooo Werewolves and Money!

This weekend we had a visit from Chocolate Chip. He/she is a dwarf rabbit from Sophia's school. This was the first weekend that kids signed up to take it home. I decided to go first and get it over with. Unfortunately, I don't think Choco Chip will come home with us again. The dogs were way too interested in him. Cats too. The girls had fun playing with him all weekend on the porch. Jazz watched on.....and whined and whined and whined.....

He is quite a pretty thing, for a wabbit.


I told the girls there was a reason why a rabbit was the one pet I never asked for as a child. That thing pooped non-stop. At least it went mostly in the litter box. Mostly.


They played with it first thing both mornings.


Jazz eventually weaseled his way out onto the porch when an unsuspecting child opened the door. He's a good boy though, he just sniffed it.

Tricks and Treats

The girls had great costumes again this year. They decided to team up as some of the characters from Alice in Wonderland and Nanny made them these sweet outfits. For Trick or Treating, they met up with a bunch of other kids from their school. Mostly they were kids of some of the other teachers and we met up at one of their houses and started out from there. After that we went up to Tijuana Flats and got some dinner to round out the night. Because I'm lazy, you get the pictures in reverse order.

*** Update: For someone who never blogs, Melissa can be a bit critical. She just HAD to point out that I kept calling Sophie the Mad Hatter when she was obviously the White Rabbit. I think that she's just ecstatic to have caught me on a mistake for the first time since she met me. Anyway, instead of me fixing the whole post, you can mentally replace White Rabbit everywhere I put Mad Hatter. ***

Here are the pumpkins. Karen put most (if not all) of this together. I think she was especially thrilled with her Obama Lantern.


Psychotic Mad Hatter face.


Alice.


And of course, the Queen of Farts. Or Hearts. Whatever.

The hatter scores some candy.

The girls walking with Sammy, a friend from both school and soccer. She's the daughter of the Art teacher at the girls school.

Does this hatter look mad to you?

Alice again, waiting for some teeth to grow in before she gives any good smiles.

The girls and Sammy.

You can kind of see the whole pack of people in this one. And no, that isn't Jesus, Matisyahu, Cat Stevens, or some random rabbi in the middle of the pack. It's just one of the parents...

The Hatter looking a little Madder.

Getting ready to go get some candy!