Thanksgiving Wisdom from RJ

After taking a look at the raw Thanksgiving turkey, RJ asked, "After you cook it, does it turn into a Chicken?"...hmmm

All meats in our house turn into chicken once they are placed onto RJ's plate - he is convinced that chicken is the only meat he likes. The entire family can be eating steak for dinner and his looks just like ours but we call it chicken. Whatever works!

Thankful for...

God's grace and love in my life. Thank you for my loving husband and my 3 amazing boys, our home and the food in our cupboards. Thanks for our families and great friends. Thank you for sending your son, and remind us all that he should be the focus of this season!

My Aunt sent this to me and a friend helped me figure out how to post it. It is called cardboard testimonies and is worth the 8 minutes to view. It seems right now that there are so many struggling in our world with money, relationships, material possessions, and so many other things that have become our focus. I just wanted to take a minute to remind all of us that God never leaves us and he can free anyone from anything. God loves us all regardless of how worthy we are or (MOSTLY) aren't!

Treasure Island

D auditioned for some one act plays at school and was chosen to be in Treasure Island. He was Ben Gunn - the crazy island hermit. The video is not the best, but not too shabby for a digital camera that fits in my purse! Take a look at our crazy island hermit...

After two nights of pirate plays, RJ was transformed into a wee little pirate we eventually became annoyed with. He must have sung "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" about 500 times that night! The first version being - T, you will love this - "yo ho ho and a bottom of bung"! We have tried to work with him to help him learn the correct words and here is the latest version...

Thanks to our 3 Day Supporters!

This is the Tig-O-Bitties "bra"! I am not sure my sons would appreciate being referred to as a bra, but those are the breaks when you get involved in the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk. This crew consists of all of our hubbies, kids and our friend Hueso. Getting our children involved was very important so they could have a sense of the community and know a little bit more about why mom has been spending so much time training and fundraising. Many of our fellow walkers were jealous of our bra (two Expeditions, windows painted in pink and a tiny Toyota bearing signs like "don't slack - check your rack!") followed us daily and met us at our pit stops. While we stood in the potty lines at the pit stop, our hubbies were refilling our water and Gatorade - what a godsend! Our bra not only supported us, but they supported all walkers with Popsicles, ice, water and of course cheering. At one point, we texted our boys to let them know that we would love to have some visene and I kid you not, they pulled up 5 minutes later with two kinds of visene! I don't think the 3 of us could have asked for any more support from our families during our walk. They were thoughtful with roses, Popsicles, toilet seat covers, ice and even beer at the finish. A thousand thank yous to our wonderful "bra". Love you guys & gal!



I also want to mention the support we received from family, friends and co-workers attending our functions and bidding on silent auction items. Financial support is one of the most important aspects of the 3 Day. Thanks to Jen for selling our cards for us at her office and to MJ for selling over $2oo of our handmade cards to her co-workers in Montana!



I will leave you with one last pic of our friend Hueso in her day 3 support getup. At least she color coordinated with us!

We Did It!

Here we are at the opening ceremony - looking all fresh and ready to go! It was an amazing 3 days filled with tons of emotion, tears, memories, glide and a few blisters - but all 3 of us managed every step of the 60 miles with smiles on our faces (mostly!). I took yesterday to reflect and decide how I wanted to record my memories of this event here in my blog and I decided that I should do a few different posts about different aspects of my 3 Day walk experience. In this post I am going to focus on my team of friends and what I learned about them during our 3 days of walking and camping in tiny pink tents!

What I learned about Sand that I didn't already know...well for starters, she is blind as a bat! This was the source of much laughter in our tent especially when she was trying to find the zippered entrance to our tent using the braille method! Second...She is the strong silent type. While walking last year, Sand had heat exhaustion walking through Papago Park, so she was none too happy to see it on our route this year. This year I could tell she was tired and hurting but she quietly powered on in Papago Park until she announced to us that she was out of water! We eventually came across some 3 Day walk supporters with an extra water bottle so all was well. This year, even though it was on day 3, Sand conquered the beast known to her as Papago Park! Congratulations on taking every step and for not killing your crazy tent mate - ME!

What I learned about T that I didn't already know...hmmm, I just can't come up with anything! I already knew she has a good heart as she demonstrated on day 2 by giving her extra pair of socks to a lady we were walking behind. This lady (a breast cancer survivor) kept reaching down to pull her socks up as they would work their way back down into her shoes. T decided that this lady couldn't go the rest of the day pulling at her socks every 2o steps, so T insisted that the lady take her extra socks that she had been planning on changing into at lunch. I never got her name, but the lady was extremely grateful and T never thought twice about doing it. I also already knew that T is one tough chick! She walked a good portion of the 60 miles with a silver dollar sized blister on one of her heels and a good quarter sized area of missing skin on the top of her foot - the result of an allergic reaction to some tape she was using to protect the giant blister on her heel. Congrats on proving to yourself that you could do it again - this time in much more pain than the last!

Thanks to T and Sand for making my first 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk a fun memory filled time that I will never forget. Thank you ladies for all of your encouraging words and for putting up with my long legs keeping me a few steps ahead of you but never bagging on me for it! Thanks for helping me through the surprise attack I suffered during the first hour of the walk and for answering my hundreds of questions about what to expect during the walk with seemingly little annoyance. We worked with and worried about each other as a team and we started and finished as a team. Thanks for the memories - and helping me through my first 3 Day Walk! You guys are the best!

Here we are at the closing ceremony looking pretty darn happy!

Motivation

Here is our 3 Day Team - Team Tig-O-Bitties!

That is me on the left, Sand in the middle and T on the right. It was Sand's idea to pose like we were at glamor shots! Aren't we cute. We did our last long training walk this past Saturday. During our walk, a jogger approached us and told us "good job ladies" and she was applauding for us! We thanked her and asked her if she was also doing the 3 day walk. She told us that she was not but she had just wanted to stop and take a moment to personally thank us. She then went on to tell us that she would not be alive if not for the Susan G. Komen foundation! WOW!!! Goosebumps and tear city. That was a true motivator and now I have something to answer the question - WHY? - with when people ask me about the $2200 and the 60 miles and all the training time. You don't have to personally know a WHY to support this cause - over 182,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and over 40,000 women will die of breast cancer in 2008. This statistic does not take into account any men that will be diagnosed or die from breast cancer in 2008. Much has been made of the fact that breast cancer gets a lot of attention, possibly at the expense of other causes, but the fact is that breast cancer touches all of us in some way or another eventually. But I pray it doesn't...

A 5 Year Old's Fashion Tips and Daily Wisdom

Here is RJ's first choice for an ensemble yesterday morning. I did let him wear it long enough to take G Man to school and then I convinced him it was time for some pants! He did keep the boots as his choice for shoes for the day until he decided they were "so sweaty".

Then, while eating breakfast RJ told me that you should never say that you hate Christmas. I asked him what made him say that and he informed me that if you say you hate Christmas then Santa Clause will bring you a Barbie doll! And he said the words Barbie doll as though he was talking about Santa bringing him green beans!!!

I am thankful every day that I get to stay home with RJ and that I get to be the benefactor of his sweet and sometimes twisted wisdom. Have a great day and be nice to Jesus!

Trick or Treat

Just a couple of pictures from our Halloween fun. We talked D into trick or treating for the first time in a couple of years! We had to pull a last minute costume out of the bag in the garage so he settled for the plastic Elvis hair and a pair of his own Levi's. Several friends joined us at our house and we had a really fun evening. We have better pics of the adults on Halloween - but they paid me handsomely not to publish them! Thanks to all our friends for hanging out with us.