James school choir

James is in his elementary school choir and loves it. He has had two performances so far that we attended. One outside in front of the library, and another at the mall. Here are a few pics and videos of the two.

Here's the one at the mall.

Hedgehog update

Spikey has been loads of fun! He loves to cuddle and it's fun to watch him eat. The other evening, he crawled into my sleeve and fell asleep. That was fun till it was time to stand up and he didn't want to come out. Those spikes don't make it easy to get him out of situations like that!!! I have a few long scratches along my arm now. When he is warm and comfy, he puts his legs spread eagle and goes to sleep. It's really cute. Below are some fun pics of him. Enjoy!!!

Here is some pics of him sleeping in Angelique's hand and another of how he looked getting started awake. He likes to pull his spikes over his eyes.

Hey from Angelique

Yes we got Spikey!! Isn't he adorable! I am enjoying him as much as Matt and have to be careful not to hog him ..... since he is Matt's present and his Christmas gift this year ....

Yesterday morning we woke up early and went to the first showing of Twilight. It was a fun movie and we only had to pay 5 bucks by going to the early showing instead of waiting till later and its almost ten. Then we ran errands and Matt and I watched Napoleon Dynamite in the evening while James watched Twister in the game room. This morning came way to early and Matt had to leave early to practice for choir (which is were he is again right now). James and I got to church about five minutes late but thankfully the song Matt was in was in the middle of church and not the beginning.

This afternoon, Matt installed a fan and I did some spray painting around our fireplace. The handles were gold and I wanted them black. Last night we glued down the thresholds in our kitchen with some liquid nails. Its the transition from our wood flooring to the tile and it popped up. This time we weighted them down with boxes of tiles and stuff so I think the weight glued it down solid now. Anyway - we had all that to clean up and I have been doing laundry and making sure everything is in order for Thursday. We have a bunch of friends coming over for Thanksgiving. Since I cook everything from scratch and work all week except for that day, I want to make sure that I have all day to cook. I am making a turkey and a ham and all the stuff you normally have on Thanksgiving. I am making coleslaw though instead of the traditional salad.

The missionaries stopped by this evening. I am said - one of them is getting transferred to a different area and will miss Thanksgiving with us. We invited them to dinner tomorrow to say goodbye. I am making his favorite banana bread to send with him.

Lentil Soup on the stove right now - its finally getting semi cold over here and I thought it would be fun to make some. I was going to make cornbread but I am out of eggs for the moment and don't want to have to run to the store....

Well that's it for now - I am sure Matt will be posting more pictures of Spikey and I will try to put some up from Thanksgiving.

Bye for now.

Angelique

Our baby hedgehog is here!

We ended up getting Spikey on Friday evening. He is a lot bigger then he was when we saw him the first time. We had to leave him alone for the first while to let him get over the initial stress of leaving home and mother and driving in a car. When we first started trying to pick him up he would ball up and shake and his quills were sticking in every direction. Once he calmed down, he was sniffing all over and was very cute! I am including a few of the pictures we took so you can see what he looks like.

Hi from Angelique

Ok so Matt has posted the last three times so its now my turn to write something. I find it so difficult with work and weekend madness to make time to write anymore. As you can see we have recently acquired some new pets which are tons of fun and keep me busy. A few of our fish died after the first week. I think we had to many in there. The turtles are doing well. Now that its getting cold in the house I have to keep a heat lamp on them. In the beginning I could not get them to eat and found out through some research that if they are not kept warm enough in the winter they will start to hibernate....

We are supposed to get our new baby Hedgehog sometime next week. The babies are almost weened. We were going to visit them this weekend but I forgot the gals phone number at work on Friday....

Lets see - not much going on during the week. Last Saturday we slept in and did laundry and cleaned house. Sunday morning we went to the Sony store at the mall. Matt had an invite through IBM saying they had sales up to 40% off. It was pretty lame - when we got there the only item that was actually that discounted was stupid headphones .... we decided there wasn't really anything we needed there anyway. We left and took James to see Madagascar 2 and had two friends and their families over for dinner. We were up pretty late and I was so tired Monday morning. Work was a long week. I had Tuesday off (Veteran's Day) and Matt and I were going to try to spend some time together but he got a call for work so he took off and I ran errands. I was pretty exhausted all week. Yesterday we stuck around the house. We had a baby sitter come in the evening and Matt and I went out for dinner and a movie. Today we went to church and took James to get a haircut. Matt went to practice choir in the afternoon and we finished cleaning house and doing laundry.

Not much else is going on - this week will be back to work. I cant wait until Thanksgiving - we are having some friends over for dinner. I cant take any time off work until December so I will only be off Thanksgiving Day.

We are looking forward to next month - the kids will be here and we cant wait to spend Christmas with them. I am working on getting my Christmas card done this week.

Well enough for now - expect not to hear from me until next weekend.

Space derby!

We didn't have a pinewood derby in scouts for James this year. We are in a new church building and since they weren't sure if they would have what they needed for the usual pinewood derby, they found a different activity that could be more improvised. A space derby. James got the kit, which was the usual block of wood, though with a big hole through the center. Once the rocket is shaped, there is rubber bands through the hole hooked to a propeller. You twist the rubber bands and let the rocket loose down a line. Here are some pics and videos of the derby.

James made it to the final round and got second place in his final round. He was very excited and got an award for best use of color.

More pets

We have spent a little time adding to our list of pets. We already had the two dogs, a crocodile gecko, and we had some hermit crabs. Since then we got a fish tank from someone Angelique works with (he didn't want it anymore so he just gave it to us) and a bunch of fish, a couple water frogs, snails, and ghost shrimp. We went last weekend to a huge swap meet in Canton, TX. It is over a 100 acres of shopping. They also have one huge area that is just animals, anything from farm animals to house pets. We looked at hundreds of puppies, but what we were trying to find was hedgehogs. As you can see from the last post, we found somewhere else to get one because we couldn't find one in Canton. We did, however, find some baby turtles that were very cute. We bought 2! :) The hedgehog we looked at should be weened by around Thanksgiving or a little before so we are looking forward to adding him to the group! We will add more pics of the hedgehog when it gets closer. For now, I will put some pics of the turtles and fish below. Hope you enjoy! :)

Hedgehog

I have thought about getting a Hedgehog for a long time and we started looking into them and found a local breeder who is a kindergarten teacher near us. We went and looked at her baby hedgehogs the other night and here is a picture of one of them. I have got to get one!!! :)

Feeling lazy

Ugh I feel so tired! Life has been so busy since I started back to work. I feel like a barely have time to finish my weekend chores....we have been so busy lately.

Lets see - I need to post the pictures from the air show. Not this last weekend, but the weekend before, we went to an air show and poor Matt got so baked that he was beet (in the real sense of the word) sunburned! He was sitting in my shadow by the end of the day and I tried so hard to get him to leave but he wanted to finish the air show. We got there about 9 am and left about 3 pm. I forget to think about sun block since James and I really don't need it. Needless to say, the next day (Sunday) he was in bed until about three o clock from the intense pain and rubbed so much aloe vera on his face for about a week that his face was just caked in the stuff. It did keep him from peeling though ..... he is going to KILL me for posting this picture of him. Maybe he wont see it ...

This last Saturday, James Matt and I went with a bunch of people from Cap one that met at a Haunted House. Only you pay to get in and there were a total of six haunted houses. It was a lot of fun except towards the end. We had to stand in line over an hour for each one, and we didn't leave till close to 2 am. We didn't get home until three. We all slept in the next day (Sunday) until close to eleven. Then we got up and I made turkey bacon and pancakes for breakfast while Matt and I got the house ready for the next week and the laundry done.... In the evening we went shopping for groceries and some new fish. Oh yeah - one of the guys on my team wanted to get rid of a fish tank so he gave it to us. Matt spent about an hour the Sunday prior scrubbing the green moss out of the thing while I mowed the lawn (so he would not get even more sunburned) Then we went to Walmart and bought new gravel for the fish. Its actually looking pretty good. No salt water fish or anything but we have some snails, a frog, some fish and some ghost shrimp. I cant wait for the reaction on Colin's face when he sees them =)

Now I am getting ready for Christmas. I actually have a lot of my shopping done already. I want to have the tree up by Thanksgiving. Looks like we are going to have a huge crowd over our house that day! I am so excited to cook.

Well by for now, this weekend our community is having a garage sale so we are looking forward to getting rid of some stuff. Saturday evening we are going to the movies and Sunday we are probably going over a friend of Matt's who is about to have a baby to help her get the baby's room ready. More later... out

Our family

My best friend just sent me some additional family pictures she took of us while she was here for the wedding in June. I wanted to post just a few of the incredibly cute ones! Enjoy

The Stars Game!

Last saturday a new Best Buy opened right by our house. Since I am a member of thier "Rewards Zone" program, I got a special invite to attend a pre grand opening Thursday night. I entered into a drawing for two tickets to a Stars game and WHEW!! I WON!! I was so suprised - I never win anything! It was so much fine. Matt and I left James with my friend Evelyn and her husband Jason on Sunday night and headed to Fort Worth. It was great. I havent been to a Hockey game since a Capital One team outing back in Boise. Matt and I had a nice time together and it was so nice to get away alone for a little while.Anyway - hope you enjoy the pictures and the video.BTW - the Stars lost.

My Birthday

September 27th - My Birthday

Our trip to the Dallas Arboreaum.....

I know full well its been way to long since I posted but being back to work has taken up so much of my time!! Between that and being a full time mom and a wife, it seems I hardly have time for anything else. I am going to do my best though and post more often because I want to keep in touch with everyone and post all the pictures we take every weekend of the stuff we do together.

Lets see where do I begin?? Saturday the 20th of September, Matt James and I all took a trip to the Dallas Arboreum. It was a lot of fun. We have an annual membership there, so it doesnt cost us anything. We took James to see the Pumpkin Festival they had going on.

Here is James and Matt attempting to till the soil with old farmers tools....

Work

James started his first day of school today!! Yay!! He did so well and he was so cute! Neither of us slept much last night at all. I for fear that I would miss my alarm, and James thought he would miss the time he needed to wake up to go to school. We woke up about 6 am and got ready, got to the school about 7:30 am. I had to re register him since he missed the first week of school, they actually dis-enrolled him.

I don't have any system access set up for me so it looks like I will be about a week before they do. I just sat and did side by sides all day. It was fun. I feel rusty since I haven't done this for six months but it sure feels good to be back.

Bye for now

Tommorrow

Well today was rough. It's been an adjustment getting home and trying to get everything done before the big day tomorrow!! James' first day back to school and mine to work. Its been odd not working for six months and I am so excited to be back but a little scared I may have forgotten some stuff. I will have to touch base tomorrow evening to let you know how it went...

Oh so sleepy. Six am will be here way to soon!!

Back home!!

Yay!! We finally made it home!! James and I got home last night (Saturday) a little after 6pm. Matt had to work all day so he was rushing to pick us up. I was disappointed that he wasn't there to meet us as we arrived, but James and I were able to collect our luggage and about five minutes after we got to the curb he was there!! It was soo good to see Matt again - I missed him so much. It was nice to be home and sleep in my own bed again. Matt and I both had back aches this morning from sleeping wrapped around each other and on top of each other all night!! It was nice to cuddle again. I am so thankful every day for the wonderful husband I have!!

We slept in until noon, skipped church, and went grocery shopping around 2pm. At 5pm we went over our friends house and ate and hung out. Our friends Julie and Arie were there with their son Caleb. We went over Tony and Nora's house. They are the ones who painted our home and have actually become good friends. Nora is Philippino. She made the BEST food!! It was so good! We came home about nine and we unpacked most of the luggage and worked on laundry so that tomorrow we can kick back a bit before work and school on Tuesday! I miss my family but its wonderful to be home!!

Our visit with Ann

This evening we got to visit and have dinner with Ann!! James' Auntie!! We had a lot of fun!! Here is a picture from our visit.

San Diego Zoo

Our Trip to the Zoo yesterday!!

More pictures of my family