Hi, we've had snow twice this year, so I wanted to post a few of my many pictures that I have taken. I posted this before and messed up and erased all my work. Boo to me. Anyway, I'm trying again. This is the kids playground at school. Needless to say, they were not allowed outside to play. I doubt the teachers would have enjoyed wet kids.

This is a park near our house that just looked so beautiful coated in a blanket of snow. Snow makes everything so magicial. That is until your cleaning up wet winter wear from your kids and your entry way is wet.

Just home from school and ready to play. Homework first. The kids loved the snow so much. I really didn't mind the mess.

I was happy to see the sun again after we had enjoyed the snow.

The view from our front porch.

Winter fun. It was soooo cold this night and we were getting ready to take a boat ride on the Pecos River to see the christmas lights. Awesome is all I can say, and we did have fun. Cold noses and all.

It was still snowing pretty hard, but that didn't phase Cody. He was ready to play.

We loved the icicles that grew from the eaves of our house. We would watch them get longer and longer till we had to break then off for safety reasons.

Our backyard was a winter wonderland.

A discarded toy of summer beneath a coat of white snow. For some reason, I just really love this picture.

Another picture of our street as the snow continued to fall and get thicker.

Pretty trees.

Ok, so this is the second time doing this entry. The first one I did, I hit a wrong button and deleted everything. So bummed. Anyway , this is the first snow we have had since we moved here. The kids were so excited to have snow at their own house. Cody just had to go out and stand in it and feel it land on him. It was awesome.

My beautiful photographer. She also loved the snow and took lots of photos for me.

A nice amount of snow and there was still more to come.

Yes, it was very cold. All ready to go to school. They had a two hour delay, so the roads would be better.

Playing in the snow before they had to head to school.

One of the monuments in our town looking amazing.

This was the view from my living room that I would sit and enjoy. Never in my life has it snowed where I lived. I've been to the snow a lot. Been in a rented cabin in the snow, but so much more special when you are looking out your own window.

Loved all the icicles that hung from our eaves.

Alas, it was really nice when the sun came out again. Yes it melted the snow. But we so enjoyed it while it was here and turned our world white for a few days. As I sit here writing three plus weeks llater, it is snowing again. Can't wait to wake up in the morning and see how much we get. The kids can't wait to wake up and play in it. Better get the hot chocolate and marshmallows ready for the thawing out time.

Shaun's Thanksgiving Day Play

Shaun and two friends

Shaun and three friends

Shaun and four friends. The group kept growing.

This is Shaun and Jonah. I read with him almost every day, and he is a really sweet kid, and turning in to a really good reader.

Shaun was the second first grader to reach his AR goal in the whole school for this nine weeks. If you can't tell, he was very proud.

The turkey from the alphabet play they did.

We have had quite a few busy days this past month. One I'm going to share right now is the Thanksgiving Day play Shaun's class did for all the families right before Thanksgiving vacation. It was so cute. Shaun was a little pilgrim, and a right good one. They did an alphabet Thanksgiving and sang 3 songs, then all the kids served us family members pumpkin roll and lemonade. Enjoy the pics and hopefully I'll figure out how to post videos.

Most of you know that New Mexico is known for its Hatch Green Chilies. Now I am no expert on the varieties, but I do know they have a mild, medium, and hot(which is very hot according to Bill). So trying to be good citizens :-), we bought a bushel of the mild green chilies and a few pounds of the hot chilies.

Now to tell you how much this is the thing to do, every store, roadside vendor and the very few fruit and vege stands around here have their own roasters( I should have taken a picture). Including Wal-Mart.

Back to my story. We bought a whole bushel of mild chilies and decided to save money and roast them ourselves on our barbque. It took forever. We took 2 and a half days to do it, since it took awhile to roast, bag, and seal them. Now when you bags them(as we were told to do), you don't take off the skins. You wait till your ready to use them. It is a lot easier to remove the skins that way. So now we have a freezer full of green chilies that should last us the whole year. But the way we put them in everything, I'm not so sure. So I'm going to start posting a few recipes for awhile that were sucesses with the chilies. This was a huge favorite with our family. Enjoy!

Green Chilie Potat0 Cheese Soup

1 lb. bacon

1 onion

6 to 8 potatos

2 lb box velveeta cheese

6 to 8 roasted green chilies-skins off, deseeded, chopped

1 qt. half and half

2 to 3 tsp. chicken bullioun

salt and pepper to taste

Saute bacon( use however much u want to.), and 1 onion till done. Set aside

Dice up small 6 to 8 potatos. Boil in just enough water to cover and add some chicken bollioun to the water. Cook till soft. I take a little bit of the water out, but not to much. Mash lightly. You still want some small chuncks, but the potatos help thicken the soup. Add 1 quart of half and half. Then add 2 lbs. Velveeta cheese that has been cubed to help it melt faster. At this time also add the bacon and onion mixture. At this time also add 6 to 8 fresh skinned,seeded,and chopped Hatch Green Chilies. Keep stirring until the cheese is all melted. At this time add salt and pepper to taste, and if you feel it is a little thin, you can add some cornstarch. Now go get a bowl and enjoy.

As you can probaly tell, we had a great weekend in our little town of Artesia. They held a Balloons and Bluegrass festival. It was so much fun. It started out on Friday when two balloons were launched in the morning from our boys elementary school. It was awesome, since they were able to be so close as they got ready to launch, and then took off. All the kids were so excited. Also Mikayla got to come see them since the junior high principal told any teachers who wanted could come see them. Mikaylas class was one who came. So fun for all.

Saturday we all got up early to go watch them take off from really near our house. Well it turned out to be too windy, so none of the balloons took off. We ended up just going out to breakfast. Later in the morning, we went to the bluegrass part of the festival. They had some really good groups singing. Very enjoyable. There was also a glass blower there who was able to fix my broken cake top and the glass flower Bill bought me on our honeymoon. Needless to say, I was a very happy camper.

Sunday with the time change, we slept in and were still able to go and see the balloons take off. This time the weather was perfect and all the balloons were able to take off. There were about 20 of them and it was so beautiful. Shaun comment was, "this is so cool". I totally agreed.

This brought back some great memories since many years ago, dad and I took a hotair balloon trip down in San Diego. We saw the ocean at sunset. It was such a peaceful flight. It is something I have never forgotten and would love to do again someday.

Well I hope you all enjoyed the pictures as much as I did. If you would like to see the many more pics I took, look me up on picasa.

Well, we had to give Mikayla a haircut. Won't go into details but it was the only thing to do.

She does look really cute though. We had lots of tears

after the haircut was done. She's good now.

Dig the pigtails.

How many ponytails can we make?

Sept. and Oct. 2011

Well here I am back again... finally. Yes it has been awhile, but I have been busy but not with picture type things. Just life. Well lets see. School has been going well. All the kids are doing well and Cody seems to be slowly making advances. He still has a long way to go, but we are so proud of him. He has been a lot less frustrated and more willing to learn. Shaun has been getting awards in reading and one for perfect attendance for the first 9 weeks of school.

Both boys wanted to play football this year, so Bill ended up coaching Shaun's team. They were the Greyhounds. Cody's team was called the Ducks. They both did so well. Cody did really well. He really enjoyed playing.

Mikayla loves to play sports but is not on a team, but loves to get out and play with her brothers. She still enjoys singing and loves being in choir. She is in the process of auditioning for a solo. Not sure she will get it since the teacher is partial of giving the solos to the 9th graders no matter what their talent is. But that is ok. The practice of aditioning is good for her.

It sounds like I'm going to get the job I applied for to work in a church nursery. The guy called me yesterday and said they want me, but they still have to call a coulple of my references. Unless someone of those I wrote down don't like me any more, it should be no problem. I'm supposed to go in Wednesday.

Mikayla's foot surgery went well. But we didn't get a good report from the pathologist. Instead of the things they took out being cysts, they were rhumatoid nodules. We've done blood work and are waiting for the results and praying for good news.

Not much else to talk about now. Enjoying living here. The weather has cooled down, so we are enjoying the beatiful weather.