Here is Alyssa's art work from Preschool. That is her boat
from learning about Thanksgiving. It is so nice to have two
genius kids in the family!

This is some of Clessons school work. His writing is coming
along nicely.


This is his family picture. Cless Jr is in the middle with
his spikey hair, his Dad is on the left and Alyssa and I are on
the right with Zeus, the crazy dog on the bottom.

So I have been sick all weekend. Not fun and not at all what I had planned to do with my days off. So unproductive. This morning I awoke with a neck ache so bad that if I wasn't a nurse I would have run into the ER claiming meningitis but as it is I just took some Ibuprofen and some coffee and I am good to go! Since I am now feeling functional I am going to try to get as much done today as possible considering I work between now and Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is at my house this year. That'll be some good eating!
My dear sweet daughter has taken it upon her to take care of her mommy. Could there be anything sweeter? She rubs my back, checks my forehead and hands me tissues the whole time murmuring "I'm so sorry your sick Mommy. I love you!" That is enough to make anyone feel better.
Swimming lessons are almost done and I am so glad. 2 hours at a pool 3 times a week is more than enough. But Alyssa has done fabulous with only a few brief tears the first time she had to do class without her beloved older brother. Maybe this will continue to give her the confidence to try new things. Clesson on the other hand has done great as always. He is a little fish and is often halfway down the pool before the teacher is done instructing all the kids. He is just such a natual athlete.
Well I better get going. I promised the kids that we would put up the outside Christmas lights today. Many people already have around here and they are feeling horribly left out. I am holding off on the inside decorations and the tree until after Thanksgiving. I think we are going to try a real tree this year and pick it out with the kids. Ofcourse they are already eyeing either the purple spray painted tree or the 15 foot tall one. They might need a little direction when it comes time. Parenting....the hardest job you'll ever love. Has there been a truer statement? I do love it though.

Alyssa wanted me to add what she did during the games
which consisted of posing for pictures (and getting mad if
I switched to taking pictures of the baseball game) and practicing
her summersaults as you can see below. She really got
pretty good but still refuses to do any gym classes.

Thought I'd try and get fancy and add a video from my

flip video. Hope it works! This is last Halloween. Clesson

just crack me up because he kept "posing" as superman.

Slugger!


He is so proud of his first trophy.




Focused on getting that ground ball.


Okay so I didn't have any new pictures this week so I thought I would put some up of his T-ball games up. It was actually alot of fun though 5 year old baseball games are pretty amusing to watch. He did great and was really getting the hang of it. The whole team was very nice. I think all of us parents were a little sad to see it end. He will definately have to do it next year.

Now we have started our first round of cut throat swimming lessons. I finally got them both in so I finally feel like a good mom. For some reason swimming lessons just seemed to be on the good mom list and I was missing it. My son loves it, my daughter does not like to do much of anything that doesn't involve one of her parents hips but I'm hopeful.
Well I am off to run a bunch of errands. Alyssa broke her glasses so that is top on my list to go get done, though her eyes are doing so much better. I am hopeful that she will see in 3D yet!

Just to clarify, I got the 15-20 million number from the news and the papers here in Salt Lake. Considering where I live I took it as an accurate quote. I don't believe they should be allowed to marry, I just questioned the amount of money. I do believe they should have something though. Maybe because I see the other side of it here in the hospital. People who have been with their partners for years and their families have essentially abandoned them and then they wind up here with a critical illness and we are not allowed to let their loved one make decisions for them but their family who has not cared in years. I have seen it over and over again. I do not understand "being gay" but I do believe the experiences I have witnessed they truly love and are committed to each other. I truly believe some people can't help it either (I'm sure we all know some people that are what I call skipping gays, meaning they skip instead of walk) I just know that I have felt badly and not followed the hippa laws because it just felt wrong. This is definately a complicated world.
On another note, thanks for the nice comments regarding my soap box. It is nice to have a healthy depate without taking offense because I did not intend it that way. Just stating the other side because there always is one. Ofcourse in my case I am right :) hee, hee

Halloween!

Pumpkin pride!

We had such a good time on Halloween. I think it will go down as our best ever. The kids were so good and polite to all the houses they went to (after some threats from Mom to say thank-you or get no candy) It even started raining while we were out but that did not dampen our spirits. It was Alyssas first Halloween at school and she was so proud to have her Mom and Dad there to do all her fun school things with her.

soapbox

Okay, so I have to get on my soap box for a moment in response to my sisters. Where do I begin? The socialist comment I find disturbing (along with any further mentions of Joe the plumber who is not even a plumber). The comment regarding spread the wealth was in reference to taxes, which is what Joe and Obama were discussing. What are taxes other than a redistribution of wealth?? 90% of the taxes of this country are paid by the rich and then all the taxes paid in are REDISTRIBUTED to many things including, welfare, food stamps, medicare etc. His plan only recends the bogus tax cuts of Bush and it will mean paying the same taxes as when Clinton was president which is only a 2% increase on those making more than 250,000 which will effect at best Jase in Alaska but the rest of us will not be affected. The movement to get people believing the socialist thing was started by small minded people who use scare tactics to influence votes. It's worked in the past and I am happy it did not work this time. President Obama started as a community organizer and believes that change will happen through the people of America stepping up and making changes in their own communities. In building this nation from the ground up. I do not see anything in his positions that speak otherwise. I guess time will tell but last Tuesday night I was so proud to an American for the first time in at least eight years. In fact I got misty eyed during the small bit of his acceptance speech that I got to hear during a rather busy night at work. I feel like hope is alive in this country again after 8 years of gritting my teeth and bearing what will easily go down as the worst president in history. I could also go on and on but I will stop. On another note I wonder how everyone feels about how much money the church put into backing proposition 8 in california. I thought there was supposed to be seperation between church and state. There was nothing else 15-20 million dollars could be spent on? Hmmm....