Get to bed early little boys and girls...Rudolph and I are on the way!!!

The RCA Dome was imploded this morning! Implosions are cool!

Holy cow!! Is that snow in my blog's header?

Do you want it to snow on your blog too? Just click here to get the widget!

Happy winter time!

Now you can own your very own piece of the Roloff's farm! Do you watch Little People Big World? Have you always wanted dirt from their farm! Well your dream has come true!

For a mere $8.00, you, too, can own some Country Style Dirt, straight from the Roloff's land!

Wooowhooo!

Wondering Who Got Your Name in the Cousin Drawing?
Can't Remember Who You Need to Buy For?
Here's the List!

Rich got Aaron
Aaron got John
Liz got Rich
Ryan got Liz
Chad got Ryan
Andrea got Chad
Jenny got Andrea
Sarah got Jenny
Rosie got Sarah
Allison got Rosie
Craig got Allison
John got Craig

What a surprise! We got up this morning and it snowed overnight! Hello Old Man Winter! Rich raced out and built his first snowman for Winter 2008!

I went out the door behind him to snap a few shot of the blessed event! Rich blew all the leaves out of our yard a week ago...but more fell since then. Who cares! Made for a good photo op!

As you can see, we still have our "Fall" decorations out...we usually leave them up through Thanksgiving. They got the shock of their lives too!

Time to put the Christmas lights up!!!

Evidently Dr. Pepper never thought Guns & Roses new album would hit the streets. Back in March they said they would give a free Dr. Pepper to everyone in America if the new G&R album was released in 2008.

Well guess what. The album hits the streets on Sunday. Wishing they had kept their "pepper" where their money is - ol Dr. Pepper is going to make good on their promise. Free DP for everyone! All you have to do is wait until 12:01am on Sunday, then go to the DP site and there will be a coupon available for your free 20 oz Dr Pepper (valid thru the end of Feb 09). Yummo!

Well, Dr. Pepper. That'll learn ya!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN!!!

WHAT ABOUT BOB PARTY 2008

Last night we had our What About Bob party at Jan & Cliff's. We had lots of fun and some good food too! I only got a couple of pics of the group so here we go! Sarah came up with a great What About Bob version of Pictionary and TEAM 1 (Allison, Ryan, Jenny, Cliff, Rich and Me) ROCKED the WIN!!! Rich and I came up with a bunch of trivia questions. We tried to make it into a DVD game but couldn't get the the DVD burnt in time for the party! So watch out, we just might bring it to Thanksgiving! We had lots of fun last night! Hope all of you did too!

Dr. Leo Marvin:

Group Shot!

It's Christmas time...What Are You Talking About?!?

We haven't even had Thanksgiving yet and there's already been a ceremonious "Christmas Tree Lighting" at one of the area shopping malls. Huh? It's 3 weeks before Thanksgiving! Guess I can't blame retailers, it's been a tough year! I started Christmas shopping WEEKS ago so how can I fault them for wanting to cash in on Christmas early?

Couple this with a blog series we're writing at work about "Black Friday" and how to boost sales in your online stores...all this talk of Christmas and shopping has me thinking about the fun Rich and I had on Black Friday last year. So I started researching info for the blog post I have to write for work and found a bunch of retailers have already released their black friday ads! Thought you might want to get a sneak peek and start planning your early morning shopping spree along with me!

Here are some sites that have Black Friday ads posted:

• BlackFriday.com
  
• Black Friday 2008
• BlackFriday.info

Get ready! Brush up on the trivia!!!!

Happy Halloween Y'all! Already! Seems like it was just spring. Oh well, time flies, right?

So in traditional style, my dear sweetheart decked our house out in Halloween madness. He's started making gravestones with sayings on them that mean nothing to other people but crack us up! They are either sayings from movies that we constantly repeat or snippets from commercials that drive us nuts...or something. He plants these little styrofoam gravestones in our front yard every year and usually adds at least one a year. Here's this years display. Of course he used the phrase I really want on my gravestone... "I told you I was sick" (SHooks, you said you'd make sure it got on there, I'm holdin you to it!)

This year he decided to put a scary skeleton guy on our porch too. We named him Skullie. He was actually a very friendly guy, but he scared the crap out of most little kids. Notice the strategically placed fake rubber spider on the doorbell! Hehehe! There are rubber spiders and cock roaches all over our porch (as you can see all around Skullie on the floor).

Every year, he hangs spiders from the ceiling of our porch - - at just about head level for various heights. He hangs them from invisible thread that he uses in magic so no one sees them until it hits them in the face. He usually hangs thread too so it feels like spider webs as you walk up on the porch. Moooowahahaha! Classic!! It's a flippin riot!

If that wasn't bad enough, we also put a head in a kettle. I mean, what the heck. Why not? There aren't many occasions where you can put a head in a kettle, so you have to take advantage of those times when they come up, right? This guy doesn't have a name, but he's got a slammin purple pirate scarf, a bulging eye that we added and a gold tooth!

Well you all know my dearest husband. He doesn't do anything just half way. He usually takes everything to a new level (or low, I don't know which). So we had yellow tape, plastic pictures of skeletons and coffins and a bunch of heads hanging on our porch. Here's what the final product looked like.Now let's talk about the trick or treaters. We always have the 18 year old men showing up in something that's barely considered a costume. Ok we give em candy anyway. They're having fun, right? We have tons of little kids and some parents that get into the action too. We secretly hold a "Best Costume" contest and this year we decided to snap a pic of the best costume. Don't know who this kid is, but she won our contest! Extra candy for her!!

I had to save the best for last though (and sorry no pics of this one). We had some 35 year old South American woman show up with this big ol mass of kids. She stood in the back, was in costume and patiently waited for all the kids to leave, then in a really sneaky and weird way, she slinked up on our porch and said, "Tlikc er Tleat". We were like..."uh, ok."

So the night progresses and 10,000 more kids have hit us up for free candy. I'm at the door dishing out candy to a big ol crowd of kids and guess who shows up again.

You guessed ... Tlick er Tleat! I spotted her at the back of this flock of kids and thought surely not. I know she's not going to come up here again. Throwing all shame to the wind, in the same freakin weird way, here she came, this time with a smile on her face and said in her tiny little voice, "Tlick er Tleat". I glared at her in my 'don't even think about coming back a 3rd time' kind of way. Now I wish she would have come just one more time so I could have snapped of pic to share with all of you. DARN! Guess there's always next year!

P.S. Halloween is over. So, does this mean the Christmas season has officially begun?

Fam! Time to pray for one of our own. Our cousin Stephanie (Pryor), Babe & Carla's daughter. She was just recently married, is approximately 23 weeks pregnant and just diagnosed with breast cancer.
Time to rally the troops and send some prayers her way! I know she will appreciate it. If you'd like to visit her website, just click here.

Let's all let her know she's in our prayers by signing her guestbook, even if you think she doesn't know you, she can use all the strength she can get right now to fight this cancer and win and I'm sure she'll be happy to hear from you regardless!

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September 20, 2008
Ellie's First Birthday Party

The party was at 6 o'clock, so Pop and I went over to Kellie and Brian's earlier in the afternoon and hung out for a while. We gave Ellie her presents there (a Dora couch and a giant Hello Kitty) so she could see them and play with them. We knew they would just get lost in the shuffle at the party.


Rich made a video of Ellie's life. The video started 2 weeks before Ellie was born when he and I went to their house to take pics of Kellie while she was pregnant. We watched the video with them before we took it to the party. As you can see from below, Ellie was into it too! We took the video to the party and played it on a continuous loop so everyone got to see her grow up before their very eyes all over again!


One of Kellie's relatives got a clubhouse at an apartment complex for us for the party. She knew the manager and they let us use the facility for free! Lots of Ellie's cousins were there so she was running around having tons of fun.


Time for cake!! Ellie's party theme was cupcakes. So she had a big cupcake on top of her birthday cake. She also had her own separate cupcake to eat all by herself!! YUMMO!

She wasn't too sure about that cake thing! She hasn't ever had that much sugar, while we've never known her to turn down food, she didn't dive into it. She wasn't all that thrilled about being so messy.

We couldn't keep the paparazzi away when she was eating her cake!

Ellie has lots of cousins. Right now she doesn't know how lucky she is to have so many cousins to hang out with and grow up with. She may not know it now, but these are some of the relationships she will treasure as she gets older.

Present time! Ellie's party was huge, over 50 people came!! She got lots and lots of presents!

The party started to wind down, people started to get their stuff ready to go. Everyone had a great time and left with a big smile on their face!!

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Where were you on 9-11-01?

I still lived in Beech Grove, back in September of 2001. I had only known Rich about a month. He was at work, I was a few days from starting my job there with him. I was going to meet my friend Dianne at her house in Trafalgar. I decided to take a day before getting back in the grindstone of working to go hang out with my pal in Nashville, Indiana.

It was a normal morning. Sunny, blue skies. I was happy that I was going to see Dianne. She had been laid off from BMG at the same time I was and she lived only about 20-ish minutes from Brown County so we were both looking forward to hanging out and being together.

I got ready and headed out the door around 8:30. I stopped at a bank machine on the way out of town, listening to Bob and Tom, as I usually do. They were on a commercial break and when they came back, Tom was so serious. He said there had been a terrible accident with the world trade center. I could tell by the way they were talking that this was something really serious and at that point, no one knew what had happened.

I took off down 65 southbound to Trafalgar, listening as they describe the second plane hitting the tower. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and couldn't imagine what I was going to see. I kept listening in disbelief and horror at what they were saying and felt my heart start to race a little. I've always lived in an America where I felt completely safe, probably the same way everyone else felt only a few minutes earlier. I kept looking at the sky...wondering what's going on??

I got to Dianne's and raced in to watch what was happening on TV. She had been watching already. We both just stood silent in the family room of her house staring at the TV. Was this real? Did this really happen? Who did this? Why? Did this mean we were at war? Were there going to be more attacks? If so, where were those going to happen? Who was protecting us? Dianne was in her 50's at the time, I thought she might be able to tell me what was going on but she was as bewildered as I was. No one had ever lived through any attack like this on American soil. No one knew why or who would have committed such a terrible crime against innocent people.

We stayed home most of the morning until we felt sure nothing else was going to happen. We did continue on down to Brown County. Most of the stores were open, some of them closed. Everyone was talking about it, had radios and TVs on in their shops. We didn't stay all day but by the time we started to head back to her house, we passed a gas station and there must have been 30 cars in line. We both though what the heck...then Nancy called and told me it was like that all over Indianapolis too. She said, if I needed gas, I better get it because there were reports that stations were closing after pumping all their gas. Just like us all to go fill our cars up with gas....not sure why we all jumped on that and panicked but lots of people did.

I stayed around Dianne's house for a while, ate dinner with her and Larry. I won't ever forget standing in her living room, watching that TV or that evening sitting down watching all those people searching for their family members. In the nights to come, when planes were still grounded, I won't ever forget how quiet the skies were. Normally there are lots of planes flying around the Beech Grove area, it's right on the flight path for the Indy airport. When there's absolutely no movement in the sky, that was very eerie and weird!

I can't ever forget about all the kids who lost parents that day or the men and women who lost their spouses, sons, daughters. It still makes me sick to think about how so many people were just going about their normal routines, flying on a business trip or on vacation. Or those sitting at their desks, so innocently and suddenly a plane comes crashing into their building, intentionally. Think of all those people on the streets, the people trying to get away, the firemen and policemen who tried to help. So many people! I can't connect with the terrorists and their mindset, the only thing I can wrap my mind around are the human stories. All those people.

I know I'll never forget that day. It's impacted me for the rest of my life. I hope I never have to live through another tragedy like that one. We all need to pray for our country and our safety every day and never, ever take for granted what and who we have around us.

Thank you God for my family, my friends, my home, my job and for giving me a sense of security even when things aren't so secure around us.

KFC is moving Col. Sander's handwritten recipe containing those delicious 11 ingredients to top secret and secure location.

Did you know that only 2 corporate executives at a time have access to the top secret 68-year-old concoction that coats the chain's Original Recipe chicken! The company refuses to name who those 2 people are but my guess is one is the Chief Executive Officer of Pepper and the other is the Chief Executive Officer of Grease.

I love KFC and the top secret recipe and I admit, I've googled it several times, trying to find that special blend of 11 seasonings and spices. I haven't been able to master what Ol Col. Sanders created but I'm workin' on it!

I've been playing around with some new Photoshop filters
and discovered one I really like. Check this out!

This is the original picture of Ellie:

And now, the enhanced version, below.

Really makes it pop doesn't it?

Yesterday was family photo day in the park. I took over 500 pictures! Yeeeowza!!

These are my favorites: