We celebrated Thanksgiving with my side of the family on Sunday and will be heading to OKC to have Thanksgiving with Ken’s side of the family on the actual day.  Mum did a wonderful job cooking the turkey even though she doesn’t eat meat and we all managed to squeeze around two tables.  I’m so thankful for having so many blessings in my life!

See, we all fit!  8 adults and 8 children.

Taylor and Zach specifically asked for the legs!

. . . his trumpet, that is!  On Tuesday we attended his 7th grade band concert and I must admit, they sure have come a loooonnnngggg way since this time last year when he was first beginning to play!  Taylor looked so handsome in his tux shirt with bowtie.  Unfortunately we had to sit quite a ways back so some of my pictures were a little fuzzy.  The 1st trumpets got to do a little solo together during one of their songs.  Taylor’s a little hard to see but he’s the third one in.  He played very well and I’m so proud of how far he’s come already!  He is indeed a talented musician.

]]> http://tjwsmum.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/taylor-tootin/feed/ 0 tjwsmum band 1 band 4 band 3 http://tjwsmum.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/a-lott-of-fun-in-ok/ http://tjwsmum.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/a-lott-of-fun-in-ok/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:03:37 +0000 tjwsmum http://tjwsmum.wordpress.com/?p=981 ]]>

Last weekend we had the opportunity to visit our really good friends the Lott’s.  We headed out Saturday morning to Pauls Valley, OK to visit the Toy and Action Figure Museum, the only one of its kind in the world.  We headed to the train depot afterward to go through the little museum they had there.  We had a great time!

As we walked into the museum you see this huge display of what would have been a collector’s bedroom. There were toys everywhere!  Right:  Audrey and Jocelyn mock a fight in front of a cool wall.

Ken doing his photo thing and Wesley dressed up as Captain America.

Harrison and Taylor crunched themselves into a little car. Right: the 6 children being their normal selves by the train station!

Left: in the middle brick it said “center of the universe”! The kids were fighting over who was going to stand on it, of course!  Right: Harrison and Taylor in the train depot.

Audrey and Jocelyn; Wesley and Owen in the train depot.

Skeleton Wesley and Witch Jocelyn are ready to go trick-or-treating!  Ken, Taylor and Dad went to the Orpheum to see The Shining since Taylor’s too big to go out anymore. I took Jocelyn and Wesley around our neighborhood but they were fed up quickly so we headed back home.  Surprisingly, few houses were participating!

Jocelyn and Wesley look forward to some of the events at school.  This week they’re raising money for United Way.  They chose how they wanted their hair done and tomorrow they’ll be wearing pajamas to school!

This week my school has been doing a focus on reading with D.E.A.R. time (drop everything and read) once a day planned by different levels, today we had a RIF (Reading Is Fundamental through our Rotary Club) reader come to our class and gave books to the students.  Another fun thing we did was a door contest.  My students narrowed down their choice to Captain Underpants and then we had everyone participating in some way to develop our door.  We didn’t win but we had a great time putting it together and working as a team!  Here’s a pic of our finished product.  Don’t you just love the colorful underwear?

Ken is a *HUGE* fan of U2 so when the news came out in summer that they were going to be performing in Norman, OK, it was a no-brainer that Ken was going to go.  He sent out a tweet on Twitter to round up a bunch of other friends and it came down to us two and four others.  We left Sunday afternoon and headed south on what should have been a 3-hour drive.  We stopped at the Rib Crib in Edmond for an early dinner and then drove the final leg of the journey.  Problem was, the traffic was extremely bad.  There was road construction and apparently a wreck of some kind that made us late for the opening act.  We paid $30 to park the van and headed to the OU arena.  We ran into another snag there – lack of signing for our section.  Even after asking 3 different times where our section was (even being told she wasn’t sure it even existed!?), it took us 45 minutes to find our seats.  Yup, Blackeyed Peas (the opening act) was now over.  That’s okay, we were mainly there for U2.  The concert was TOTALLY AWESOME and they obliged by coming out for two encores with a couple of songs each time.  There was probably about 50,000+ attendees that were flooding out of the stadium by that time.  It took us an hour just to get out of Norman and it took us another 3 hours to drive home.  We got home at 4am.  Ken had fortunately taken the day off work but I had an 8 am start time and so did some of the others in our group!

Our group: back row, Josh, Ken, Darrin and Sarah with me and Amy in the front.

The awesome stage with moving bridges, changing lights, and retractable high-def screen. Sweet!

Taylor valiantly completed his first cross country season this past week.  Despite the threat of bad weather, the morning of his meet turned out sunny but unfortunately the wind picked up.  The All-City meet is supposed to be the meet of the entire season.  Taylor not only placed 29th out of 100+ boys, he also earned a medal and a personal best time.  I am SO proud of him for doing so well this season, not only for trying cross country, but also doing his best on the team, on his soccer intramurals that coincided for two weeks during his season, AND keeping his grades up.  Way to go, Taylor!

Taylor shaking hands with one of the athletic head honchos from the school district while being awarded his medal.  Just about all of the 30 7th grade boy medalists.  Taylor came in 29th!

Proud (yet possessed looking) Taylor with his medal and special cross country t-shirt.

I feel that the past few weeks, no, probably the whole entire month of September and even into August has been a blur. Starting school and getting a routine down has been enough of a challenge while adjusting to a new team and a new class of students on top of it at work has been even harder.  And then my allergies kicked in. Yuck. Turns out my usual allergy medicine didn’t help so I was desperately trying new things to help me sleep and more importantly – breathe! Well, I managed to get a viral infection of some kind (not a big surprise, really, since my school ended up with the first “official” case of H1N1 flu) then went into a sinus infection. I eventually broke down and went to the doctor who prescribed antibiotics and gave me a steroid shot. On top of that I needed to do my neti pot sinus washes and take a nasal spray.  I am so incredibly worn down but I’m now looking forward to a great October with wonderfully cool fall weather. Ahhhh, take a deep breath. . .

Taylor decided he wanted to run cross country this year now that he was in 7th grade.  Ken and I supported him wholeheartedly and Ken even changed his work schedule to get him to practice at 6am.  Today was his first meet.  Wow, did it ever bring back memories of running cross country in high school!  Taylor did well for his first meet.  The weather was perfect, cloudy and cool(ish).  He placed 23rd (too bad there were only 20 medals) and had ran his best time of 6:39 for the one mile.  I am so proud of him!  He’s excited for his next race next weekend!  (me too!)

Typical goofy Taylor!   ~~~ At the starting line.  It was a 1 mile race.

Nearly to the finish line!  ~~~ At the awards ceremony following the races.