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Showing posts from 2009

Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jog

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We returned home (from Odessa) yesterday afternoon about 4pm. Once the car was unloaded, we laid down for a quick nap and ended up sleeping for an hour and a half...man it felt nice. We spent the evening starting laundry and doing some unpacking as we watched the last Monday Night Football game of the season - sniff sniff. We had a wonderful Christmas and a great time spent in Odessa with the family. It was very relaxing and enjoyable from start to finish. We also got all sorts of great stuff!! We are looking forward to having our Christmas together over the New Year's holiday and also getting the house back in order...lots of cleaning to do, items to put up and decorations to take down. We will share a few pictures once we have them all uploaded and many more to come with the exchanging our gifts from each other and still John's family to visit in Arkansas. We hope your Christmas was a very merry one - here's to 2010! Until we meet again... Riley

Heading Home for Christmas

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The bags are packed, the presents are gathered and the loading will begin very soon. This is our year to go to Odessa for Christmas. We alternate spending Christmas with John's family in Arkansas and my family in Odessa from year to year. Last year we were in Arkansas, so to Odessa we go. We will be leaving here this morning and will get into Odessa later this afternoon. Hooray!!! We will be coming back home on Monday morning. I'm not sure how much blogging I will do while we are away, but I will be back with updates and pictures galore, I'm sure! John and I wish you and your loved ones a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! Enjoy celebrating the birth of our Lord - God Bless! Until we meet again... Riley

Update on Noah

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Before I start, I would just like to thank you for your prayers - they are MUCH appreciated! Today, Noah had and MRI and an EEG as well as more blood work at the hospital in Lubbock. Thankfully, all the tests were able to be done today. There are lots of details, but the short of it is they diagnosed Noah with a seizure disorder. The name of the disorder is one that I could not pronounce or spell (my apologies) - it's not epilepsy. The solution is for him to take an anti-seizure medication at this time. So, not great news, but it could have been so MUCH worse so we thank God for all blessings. It could be that he takes the medication and never has a seizure again...only time will tell. Hopefully this will help though! This is the first one he's had in 15 months so it hasn't been a problem until now. Once they figure out what dosage he should take, they will prescribe some to him and they can be on their way back home. He just needs to be monitored closely as he gets used to

Please Pray for Noah!

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This sweet, precious little boy needs our prayers! This is our 15 month old nephew, Noah... Isn't he just the cutest? While at home yesterday afternoon, Noah had a seizure! He was taken to the hosptial in Odessa by ambulance. In the Emergency Room, they did a CT scan as well as a blood and urine test. After those tests and a couple of things they saw, they decided he needed an MRI and some other tests run. They decided to send him to Lubbock for further testing and evaluation. They took him to Lubbock by ambulance last night and he's now in the Pedatric ICU at University Medical Center. The doctor will come in sometime today to see Noah and then they will run various tests. Luckily, Noah is stable and doing well. He's alert and seems like his normal self, so that is a huge blessing. Hopefully, the tests will go smoothly, they will get results quickly and he can be released to go home in time for Christmas (and anything that might need to be taken care of can be done

A Charlie Brown Christmas

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Last night, after dinner and I wrapped a few more gifts, we watched a true classic..."A Charlie Brown Christmas" on DVD. We've been trying to watch some of our favorite Christmas shows and movies as we have had time this season. If you know us well, you know that John loves the PEANUTS gang (I of course love them too!). We even have a little set of Peanuts characters out with our Christmas decorations... The best part of the entire show is when Linus tells Charlie Brown the true meaning of Christmas as Charlie Brown is struggling with all of the commercialism of Christmas. Each and every time it warms our heart as we hear Linus' sweet voice... We hope you are not loosing sight of the TRUE meaning of Christmas - the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Until we meet again... Riley

Christmas Card ~ 2009

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I am participating in the "Christmas Card Carousel" hosted by Faith . How fun! This is our Christmas Card... We tried to choose pictures that were highlights from our year. On the strip on the left, the top picture was taken in May at Andrew's (my brother) wedding. It was a beautiful outdoor ceremony and we are so happy to have Heidi in our family. The middle picture is of our precious beagle, Calvin. You can read more about him on the right side bar. He'll be turning 7 next month and we just adore him! The bottom picture is of us heading out to a Texas Rangers baseball game. We love the Rangers and really enjoyed following them this season. Living in the Dallas area, it's nice to go to a few games throughout the year. All of the other games we watched on TV and enjoyed a pretty good season. The large picture on the right was taken in Fredericksburg, Texas. It's such a fun little town and special to us. John and I spent part of our honeymoon there and try to

High Kickin' Holiday Fun

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GUESS WHERE MY SWEET, HANDSOME HUSBAND IS TAKING ME SATURDAY NIGHT?? The Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular - hip hip hooray! He bought us tickets a couple of months ago. Since he surprised me with the tickets, I've had it written on the calendar in red and green pen and have been anticipating this night for a while. I am super duper excited!! My Mom and I went to this show 3 years ago and it was FANTASTIC. I completely enjoyed it and could not to wait to go back when they came again. I have always loved the Rockettes! They are my favorite part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Hence this picture on Thanksgiving this year... It will be lots of fun to get all dressed up tomorrow night. We are going out for a nice seafood dinner at Pappadeux (John's favorite restaurant) before and then to the big show. I don't know how many pictures (if any) I'll be able to take, but I am hoping to at least get a good one of John and I in front of our Christmas tree. Th

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

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Below is a slide show, with about 40 pictures, of us decorating the inside of our house for Christmas. For just two people, we sure have A LOT of Christmas decorations. We didn't even put everything out OR take pictures of everything - these are just a few glimpses. We said goodbye to all of our fall decorations and brought out the red and green Christmas tubs to "Deck the Halls". We have two Christmas trees - one in the dining room and one in the living room. The one in the dining room is decorated to match the dining room with burgundy, olive green, cream and gold colors. This tree is more for show and it's in the front window of the house, so when people drive by, they can see a tree in our window to go along with the outside lights. The tree in our living room is much bigger and taller and every ornament on it has a special meaning....seriously! There are ornaments we had separately or that we've gotten together. We also have several we've received as gift

Lots O' Pictures - Thanksgiving Weekend

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Below is a little slide show of our Thanksgiving weekend. We had such a great time. You can read about it all HERE . I think over the course of five days, we took about 200 pictures! No worries, there's only about 40-50 in this slide show - just the highlights. We took lots of pictures of our Chrismas decorating last Saturday, but I'll put those pictures in a separate post in a few days. Hope you enjoyed a look at our Thanksgiving. Have a great weekend! Until we meet again... Riley

Eight Years Ago today...and the rest is history

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Eight years ago today, December 3, 2001, John and I met each other. Well, electronically anyway! Here's the story... For Thanksgiving in 2001 I went with my Mom, Armando and Andrew to spend it with Armando's family in Pearsall, Texas and also celebrate Grandma's (Armando's Mom) 70th Birthday over the weekend. During the evening of Thanksgiving, a few of us were sitting around visiting and John's sister-in-law, Angela (who is also Armando's niece), asked me if I was dating anyone. At that time, I was a few weeks away from my college graduation. I was not dating anyone at the time, but was focused on finishing school and looking for a post-college job. So I proceeded to tell Angela that I was currently single. Well, she got all excited and said that I should meet Jason's brother (Jason is her husband - John's brother). Are you confused? Hee Hee! Anwho, Angela went on to tell me a little bit about John and what I heard sounded really good. I obviou

Fantastic

What a FANTASTIC 5 days this has been! I got home from work Tuesday afternoon and it's been non-stop fun and good times since then. Now it's Monday...back to work, reality and eating like a normal human being. I hated to see the extended holiday weekend come to an end, but it's been great and there is much more fun to come in the month of December. Thanksgiving was simply wonderful. After coffee and coffee cake for breakfast, I finished cooking and baking while I watched the parade and John replaced the last of the burned out bulbs on the house. Once we stuffed ourselves completely at lunch, we cleaned up the kitchen, took naps and watch the Cowboys game. Hooray for victory!! The evening was spent eating leftovers, making a shopping list for Friday, playing games and watching the Texas vs A&M football game Friday we ventured out to do some Christmas shopping...what a full day it was. We left our house at 7:30am and got back home about 4:30 - whew! We didn't want to

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

What a wonderful day this has been! After breakfast this morning, John and I went to Starbucks and then to pick up our last minute groceries. We also stopped in Target to buy "Four Christmases" and "Home Alone" to add to our Christmas DVD collection - can't wait to watch them this season. The rest of the day was spent here at home cooking, baking and cleaning. John so kindly cleaned a lot of the house while I worked in the kitchen for several hours doing all sorts of cooking and baking for tomorrow and the weekend. The house smelled so good all day. It was a great time and we are excited for tomorrow. I made a coffee cake to have for breakfast so we are looking forward to that and a cup of coffee while we watch the parade and then work on lunch. John has a few burned bulbs to replace tomorrow sometime and then we will be ready to plug in the lights tomorrow night. Oh and GO COWBOYS!! I'm now off to watch "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" with Jo

Exterior Illumination

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On Saturday, John worked on getting all of the lights on the house and the yard decorated for the Christmas season. Yes, it was the weekend before Thanksgiving, but we haven't actually turned them on yet. In fact, he's still got some work to do. He is off the rest of this week, so he's working on getting it all finished up today and tomorrow. We always do this the weekend before Thanksgiving so that as soon as all of the festivities are over, we can plug in the lights and let Christmas begin. If he had it his way and we had tons of money, we'd have a house like the Griswold's. He's already talking about changes he wants to make for next year. Here are a few pictures of my sweet husby in action... It'll be so beautiful once it's all done - I cannot wait to see the house all lit up. This is hanging on our fridge right now. I am so excited to make and eat everything on it - hee hee! These are our menus for Thanksgiving breakfast and lunch plus our Tree Tr

Thanksgiving Week is Here - HOORAY!

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Hooray, the week of Thanksgiving is here! This is probaby my favorite week of the year. This year, John and I are staying in town for Thanksgiving...just the two of us and we are looking forward to it very much. Two days of work and then a nice extended weekend. We have so many fun things planned over the next few days. I'm really excited about all the cooking and baking to do for Thanksgiving - we have quite a feast on the menu. We are anxious to celebrate on Thursday and then look forward to getting the house ready for Christmas over the weekend. Shopping to do, cards to prepare, gifts to wrap - fun times. John worked on getting lights on the house this weekend and we'll have pictures to share soon. Oh the excitement... Have a wonderful week and truly take time to thank God from whom all blessings flow! Until we meet again... Riley

Show Us Your Life - Pets

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Kelly at Kelly's Korner is hosting another installment of the "Show Us Your Life" series and this week we are showing off our pets! I've been so excited about this one...we simply adore our dog. This is CALVIN - isn't he cute? We got Calvin two months after we got married. We were married in February of 2003 and we got Calvin in April. We had been talking about getting a dog once the wedding was over and we were all settled into married life - how domestic of us. John really wanted a beagle and he knew that he wanted to name him Calvin after the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes (one of his favorites). We would look in the newspaper from time to time and finally came upon a man selling several beagle puppies. We told him we wanted a male and arranged to meet up with him. When we went to get Calvin he was the only puppy left in the cage - all 5 pounds of him. So we've had him for almost 7 years - he'll be 7 in January and it's been such a delight to hav

Weekend Wrap Up X 2

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Well, we have some catching up to do from these past two weekends... The first weekend of November we spent in Mount Vernon, Arkansas with John's family. We had a great time! We played board games, played football outside, watched football, did a lot of cooking and eating, made homemade hot cocoa mix, camped out in the living room, talked and laughed, went to church - all sorts of good things. We also shared an early Thanksgiving meal Saturday night and did our annual gift exchange. Each Thanksgiving, we all draw a name and get that person a little gift to kick off the Christmas season - it's a fun tradition. We took lots of pictures, but here are a few highlights... This past weekend, some of my family came up to visit and help celebrate our nephew Seth's 7th birthday. My Dad, Kristin, Andrew, Noah, Hillary and Bronte all came up LATE Friday night. My step brother, Neil, his wife Amy, Seth and Alyssa live about a half hour from us so some people stayed with them and som

HAPPY WEDNESDAY!

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My apologies for a lack of blogging these past few days. We left last Friday afternoon and returned on Monday afternoon from a trip to Mount Vernon, Arkansas to visit John's family. We had a really nice weekend with them and we will share our pictures once we get them all uploaded. Stay tuned! Life is staying busy for us in all sorts of ways, but life is good! Don't you just love this time of year? So much going on, but so great. Speaking of "this time of year", a few turkeys have made their way into the living room. The turkeys on the DVD shelf were Grandma Stone's and I was able to take them when she passed away - so special. The cute little "Give Thanks" piece was given to me by Carianne as part of a hostess gift for helping with her baby shower. I just love it. We have a turkey on our "Welcome" wreath, a turkey towel hanging on the stove and a Fall flag in our front flower bed, but I haven't snapped pictures of those yet. Hopefully in t

Celebrate Good Times ~ Halloween 2009

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This post is way late, but it's been a week of sickness and busyness. All is well now!! We had a really fun Halloween . It started off with orange cinnamon rolls for breakfast with milk and coffee. After breakfast, I opened all of our candy and got it ready on the entry way bench and also made some cupcakes for us to have Saturday night. We then spent the day being productive around the house and working on all sorts of things. For dinner, John went and picked us up a pizza and breadsticks. Being the darling that he is, when he came back in with the pizza he was holding a bouquet of beautiful flowers and said "Happy Fall" as he walked in the house. I'm so lucky!! I put them in a vase and set them by the sink. After our pizza, we spent the next two hours passing out candy. We bought more candy this year and STILL ran out. When we turned out the light and blew out the candle in the jack-o-lantern, we had "treated" 161 kids (we had 148 last year). We easily co