Thanksgiving....bitter sweet

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful. I am so thankful for a God that loves me and gives me all the grace I need. I am thankful for my husband Mark who loves me and has been filling love tank. I am thankful for my boys Marcus and Zachery who have been showering me with extra hugs and kisses. I am thankful for Marks family who invited us down to spend the day with them....that means I did not have to cook. Which was good since my oven is still not working.

This is Momma Betty, Angela and Kimmie's mom, who did all the cooking! Look at this spread! We had two turkeys, two hams, corn bread dressing, mac and cheese, rice dressing, potato salad, corn, green beans, gravy, cranberry sauce, bread rolls. It was all yummy, and I even tried and liked the rice dressing. She didn't tell me what was in it!

We also celebrated Angela's baby's B-day. She turned 1! It was fun to watch her have fun with the little cake that ended up all over her face and hands.

This was at the end of the evening before we all left to go back to our homes. This is Kimmie, Mark, Dad, and Angela. Angela drove 2 hours each way in the am to pick up her dad so he would not be alone for Thanksgiving. His wife was in a coma in the nursing home. We thank the Lord he was with us all this day because Jesus decided this was the day to take his wife to her eternal home. We are SSOO thankful that he was not at home alone when he got the call, with no one to hug and comfort him. Kimmie made the drive to take him back home, she was tired, but a trooper!

Auntie Kimmie loving on her little nieces.

We are so blessed to have our families and be able to visit with them. We were reminded how important our family is to us and now we cant wait to see everyone in Cal for Christmas. Only 3 more weeks!!

Casualty..the only one!

So this was the only casualty of our move to TX. We had a few things get damaged, but we were able to repair them. Unfortunately, our new, big, wonderful, TV was not repairable, per the repair guy. I talked to Mark about it and we decided that before we put it on the street for the trash guys to take we would let the kids open it up and do as they wished with it.
This is Matthew, Marcus's friend having a bit of fun.

Marcus looks like he knows what he is doing. Even Zachery had some fun.

Under normal circumstances, these three boys would be getting into some major trouble. But not this time. They are learning what the inside of a TV looks like. They were amazed at what they saw. By the time they were done, there was nothing left and they had taken every little piece off of the mother boards. It was completely stripped. They had fun and that was the goal!

Trip to Houston

This weekend we went down to Houston to spend some time with Mark's dad. It was a nice drive down the 59 for about 5 1/2 hours. The best part of the drive...it was at night and the boys were asleep. :-) Sunday morning when we all woke up we took his dad for a drive down the Galveston. I really wanted to go down and see what it looked like after the hurricane. It was not so good. However, we enjoyed the outing and got to see the ocean and the boys played in the water, dug in the sand, and collected some sea shells. Today we got up, I helped clean up his house cause it is in pretty bad shape. Mark was able to fix his furnace that was not working. We also changed the batteries in all the fire alarms. When we got there they were all chirping and we asked him why and he said that was the way they operated, they have chirped since he bought the house. Well... we knew that was not normal, we bought some 9Vs and when he went to the hospital to visit his wife, we changed them all. When he got home he noticed the absence of the chirping and I told him while he was gone I changed the batteries!! He was happy, and shocked that he was wrong. All is all, a great weekend. However, when we got home Mark called him to let him know we made it safe, and his dad was already at the bar drinking. Please pray that God would remove the desire in him to drink so much. He is going through a lot right now and really could use some prayers.

I think I am going to crop this pic, blow it up and replace the one from last year with it! I love it.

The boys are having a blast playing in the WARM water! It was chilly and overcast but I let them play anyway because I am a fun mom!!

We took Dad to Denny's for Breakfast. We didn't know that he had lost his bottom teeth and have been eating without them! OH well, what can you do when you don't know???

Look at my handsome men!! I am such a lucky lady to be blessed with them.

Here is all of us at the ocean! Fun times away with family. Next visit is with Mark's sisters in Louisiana for Thanksgiving.

Saving a few $$$ is a good thing!

Hi everyone! In an effort to save money, since I am not working, I am changing emails. I am paying for the earthlink account every month even though I can use the cableone.net account for free. So moving forward, please use the new account afunches@cableone.net. Also please do not add me to any forwarding email lists as I wont have the space. One last request, please send me you mailing address to my new email account. I need to be up to date so I can mail Christmas cards.
Thanks to all!!

Brain Fart!!!

So I completely forgot that I had a laptop I could use while the computer was in the hospital getting well, until tonight. I am sitting in my bed, nice warm sheets that my mom gave us for Christmas a couple years ago. Thanks Mom!! It is 31 degrees out and very cold. This last weekend we bought all the windows for this house and Mark replaced 3 so far. That means 6 to go. We can already feel the difference in our bedroom. We have been very busy the last couple weeks and I have just not had the time to update the blog. I am back on track now. Tomorrow we are leaving for a visit with Mark's Dad who lives in Houston. We will be there till Monday. The boys have a Pack Meeting Monday night so we need to be home for it. Then we will leave on Wednesday evening for a visit with Mark's Sister's mom for Thanksgiving. Lots of travels. Please pray for safe highways. I will be sure to have pics when I get back.

Our tenants have called and said that the dishwasher is not working at the house in California and that they are having some electrical issues. We know an electrician and called in favor and he will be fixing it all tomorrow. Hopefully it wont cost us too much money. We want to keep the renters happy so they will stay in the house at least another year or more....

Oh! We are loving our fireplace!

Computer Infected

My computer is infected with worms and viruses. I will out of action for a week or so. please check back soon to see how I am doing. Computer going to shop.

Too Long

I am sorry it has been almost a week since I have blogged. I have lots to show you from the last week. I dont have any pics of Mark and I but we are REALLY enjoying our Mon. & Tues. together since he is off and the boys are in school. God really is blessing us with lots of time to spend together and build our marriage.

Thursday Mark got home from work and wanted to go to dinner... so we went. Both the boys behaved really well, ate all their dinner, enjoyed desert, and we had a wonderful night out. I was so thank full for no behavior issues!!

Tuesday night we got our shoe boxes for Samaritan's Purse re wrapped and packaged. We actually made them last year while in Cali but for some reason did not get them to the church in time. We kept them and brought them to TX with us. Mark re wrapped and I repacked. I was even able to get a lot more items in each box. It was fun and the boys felt so proud to take them to church for Wednesday night Bible study. We didn't want to wait till Sunday in case we forget again and missed the deadline....

This shows some of the items I was able to get in the boxes.

On Monday the boys had their Scouts meeting. Marcus learned how to do CPR and Zachery's den went to the fire station for a tour. Monday we also went out to dinner with Ozell as this was her last night here.

Last night I put together a gift for a 10 year old girl B-day party today. We will be doing that at 2. We have a very busy schedule today. I am praying for an awesome time with the boys and cooperative behavior from my little man! Another update to come tonight!