To be continued...

I meant to put pictures up of our flooded apartment as many of you have asked about. The picture of the pool tells you how much rain we got that night. It was empty in the yard before the rain. This is the morning after.

Landlords have never come by to check it out, so we wrote them a letter telling them that we were disappointed in their lack of response as we had been more than kind and that we would no longer be living here as of May 31st. We can't for everyones health sake. And we wrote another letter last night with our half months rent, stating that since we no longer rent a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car garage apartment but instead rent a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, no car garage and our kids are on higher doses of medicine due to their neglegence, we feel we are being fair.

We will see. We are still waiting on a go ahead from the seller's bank to forgive them of their back payments in accepting the offer we made on the house. Our lady thinks it shouldn't be an issue, since the bank set the price for the house and we are actually offering alittle more than they need so that they can help us out at closing. She said when the bank give the green light, it should only take about a week to do appraisal and home inspection and then we are set to close on it. so we are just hoping for a May 21st closiing date still, so we have a place to live when we are out of here. Please pray for us as we are a little nervous about the timing being so close. We have many people who have offered to take us in, but it would just be so nice to just move into a house and not 3 or 4 different places. We will see. God is in control.

Ok, back to the race. here is a picture of the kids in their gear waiting in our seats. and the other picture is the view of the track from our seats.

These pictures are from the souvenier trucks and the one Lowes had that offered the kids the chance to build. We also saw Mr. Sparkplug. yahoo!!

Lets see, after the trucks took the drivers around the track, they were dropped off near their car and a few minutes of checking with their pit crew leader before the "gentlemen, start your engines." I have video of that too that i will post when I learn how. then they took one slow lap around the track before the green flag. Once the green flag dropped, it was so fast and loud. I wore a white Lowes shirt and at first, when I noticed the little bits of black, I thought it was just dust. Upon further lookiing, it was bits of tire from the cars going by.

Jimmie did really well in the race, finishing 2nd and Kyle did really good by finishing 3rd. Carl Edwards won it and he is the guy who does the backflip off his car after winning the race. Watching the pit stops was cool as well as the victory spin out. It was something I think we all agree we would do again!! Here are more picts of the race. Enjoy!!

A list of the guys in order of appearance:

Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. , Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Clint Bowyer (from Emporia, Ks), and Jimmie drinking a gatorade along with my messed up picture of him in his truck!

Pit stop!! And Nathaniel listening to Jimmie and his crew chief, Chad, talk on a special headset we rented. They seem to be pretty good friends! At one point they were joking about how Jimmie needed some of those fuzzy dice in his car. :-)

The race cars and the kids half way through going to get dippin dots. as well as the finish and our family picture that someone took for us!!

Thats about it. This week is both of the kids field trips to the OKC zoo. Chris' corporate day off is Tuesday, so he is going with the 1st graders and I will be accompanying the kindergartners on their trip. Then, the 10th is Hannah's party with her school friends. Her actual birthday will be friday the 16th. then we will be making a trip home to Kansas to see leah graduate from college and attend her and Alex's wedding shower. When we get home, we will hopefully close on the house and it will be the kids last week of school. I am sure the month will fly by!!
Until I get a chance to write again, love you all and hope to see you soon!!

finally getting around to it!

Hi all! Am so sorry about the delay. Our desktop is still in the garage, but with some assistance, i was able to put some of the pictures I wanted to share on this laptop, so I will start from the most recent of events. Nathaniel's first grade program went off without a hitch. if I knew how to put video on like some of you have (hint: send me a how to on it, ok:-), i would let you hear him do his line during the program!! We went out for ice cream afterwards. the program was on Tuesday. monday we took Nathaniel to the eye doctor as he was complaining of his sight being blurry and having headaches. He needed to get reading glasses. His eyes werent' too bad, but the doctor said that if it helped and gave him more confidence in his reading, it was worth the investment.

That friday, both of the kids were in a ceremony for TERRIFIC kids. It is an award given to kids who fulfill the acrostic of Terrific. Terrific stands for: Thoughtful, Enthusiastic, Respectful, Responsible, Inclusive, Friendly, Inquisitive, and Capable.

As for before that!, Our trip to Dallas that I have yet to post about! What a blast!! We headed to Dallas after school on Friday and went to our hotel. it was brand new and really nice. It reminded me a lot of mom and dad's trendwest. it was candlewood suites! We will definately stay with them again. Great price for a lot of room. We went out for supper that night at Chipolte. Chris and I were glad to eat there again. The kids had never been. They did't like it, but we had gotten chick-fil-a chicken, just in case, so they didn't starve. :-)

the next morning we woke up and the kids and i went downstairs to their gym. We tried a little of all the machines. it is kind of a routine we always have when we stay at a hotel that has an exercise room. We love it. Chris slept in, since it was kind of a last vacation for him before going from night shift to day shift. upon getting up, we decided to go to this Enormous flea market called Traders village. It was awesome. We saw so much stuff. there were little rides for the kids and I found the most gorgeous rose tree. WE spent most of the afternoon there. i had made sandwiches so we just picnicked it for lunch. We went back to the hotel later and had some dinner. We went to bed early, since we were leaving early to head to the track.

We got up sunday morning and read our bibles and loaded up the car and then headed out. i had made a bunch of muffins, so we ate breakfast on our way up. The traffic really wasnt' too bad.

We parked way off, so that we could get a good head start out after the race. We walked about a half mile to the stadium, but on the way you could see all the stars trucks. it was pretty cool. Inside, there were booths with souveniers and all kind of stuff.Lowes had a really neat one set up where kids could build little nascars. Nathaniel and Hannah made one. We wandered around there and then went to find our seats. The awesome thing about Texas motor speedway is that they display the cars on the track before the race. We were in row 6 and had awesome seats. And you'll never guess who's car was parked right in front of us!! JIMMIE!!!

After all the cars were out, these huge trucks with nascar numbers come out and you hear the announcers say they are going to introduce the drivers. Each driver climbed into the back of his truck and took a ride around the track waving to the fans. it was cool! however, I didn't get a good picture of jimmie. When I snapped the pict. of him, all I ended up getting was his face behind one of the gate poles. However, since he was right in front of us, i got a good picture of him drinking a gatorade. i did get pictures of dale earnhardt jr, jeff gordon, kurt and kyle busch, casey kahne, and matt kenseth.

And i am going to have to pause here with my story. i have to get ready for work! And the laptop needs to be plugged in again. So, to be continued......:-)

A delay!

Hey. This is going to have to be short. I was going to get on and post pictures of our weekend last week when we got about 3 inches of rain really fast. The backyard flooded into our room and we had to move everything into the garage. So, needless to say, the computer with all the pictures on it had to be unplugged. We are waiting for the landlords to come out and fix it all. We already shop vacced all we could, but our room smells like a dead animal. We moved our mattress into the living room and are airing out the room as we can, but we are so ready to move. Anyways, so i will write again when things get back to some sort of normal and i have better access to the computer and all is better.
Till then, hope all is well where you are.
The most exciting thing about this week was that we got word my cousin and her husband had their first baby. They are doing well and the baby girl is healthy and sweet!! We are so thankful for them and the newest blessing in their lives!!
ok, off to finish some laundry and dishes!!
more later!!

So much going on this week!!

Hi! Am on to post picts of my birthday, but also to let you know of a few things going on and some changes that will be taking place soon!

First, on my actual birthday, we got up and the kids finished decorating my birthday cake. We ate a piece of it for breakfast and then got ready to head to the Omniplex, which is Oklahoma City's space museum. We had a lot of fun. Exporing all kinds of science.

The kids loved the maze of mirrors,

the planetarium,

(I hadn't been into a planetarium since grade school. It was neat. The guy narrating it obviously thought some of the consellations were a little funny as he turned the "little bear" into a giant squirrel asking the "shepherd of the sky" for acorns. And he also called the "little dog" a hot dog. It made everyone laugh.)

the giant mouth that had a little game where you zapped the plaque,

"discover space",

a model train area,

a kids play area with water and bubbles,

and this thing called the "gadget trees"

which had all kinds of machines, like levers and pulleys and such worked into this enormous tree house. It was neat to see where in the Oklahoma sky you can locate Mars and Saturn at this time of year. We also went to the Dome theater and watches, "Rivers are running out", which was a guy taking a trip down the Colorado river through the grand canyon. Afterwards, we went to Cracker Barrel for supper to have some comfort food before heading home and to bed.

It was a really nice birthday. Just spending time with the family:-)

I think in the last blog I told you about the possiblity of buying a house. Well, last week, a lady told us about the one in Bridge Creek area that seemed a perfect fit for us. Well, after church, we went to look at it and see what was next. It was AWESOME!! WE fell in love with it and after talking with Cheryl more, we made an offer, as someone else was interested in it too. It is a pre-foreclosure, so we did some figures and gave an offer on it. Then we prayed that if it was God's will for us to have a home, he would allow this to work out and if it was his will for us to wait a little longer, he would allow the house to go to the other people who were interested . We prayed, as we truly have believed for years that our time would come when it was just right, where God would open a door and it would just work out. Believing in this and trusting in it, we knew we wouldn't hear any results until later this week. So, we have been focusing on our Nascar/Dallas trip. Well, I got a phone call from Cheryl today and she said that the people had chosen.................... US!!! After getting off the phone with her, I did a little dance and then it hit me that God is so good to me, and always hears me when I pray, knowing that in His perfect time, he grants his blessings. I fell on my face and wept, thanking him for being so good to us and for this wonderful blessing. I am posting pictures I took Sunday of the place. WE will know some final details as to when we close on it and stuff tomorrow, but when we made the offer, we suggested the 21st of May as closing. So, by the beginning of summer, we will be there, unless there is something that comes up with financing. The greatest things about this are: All electric, so it will be money saving, and fire hazard of gas heating gone, a wonderful storm shelter!!, well water (no water bill), and 1.2 acres of land with it too, a patio, close to the hwy, yet far enough away that it is so in the country!!! We figured that we will saving in housing expenses about $500 a month. We are so looking forward to seeing how we can bless God with that extra!! So, here are the picts for that...

The living room from the kitchen, looking at the front door

The kitchen looking from the living room towards the back door and the wash room

The master bathroom (Chris is so excited about the size of the tub!!)

The kids bathroom, with a little neat window

One of the kids bedrooms

And our room!

And finally, just some regular, I need to post these pictures just because I said I would, pictures

First off, my autistic kiddos: T.J, Bryce, Cody, Issac and Angie

Second, the ladies I work with! Michelle, Laci, Suzanne and Shaista

Thirdly, our trip to see Brent and Sarah the first weekend of March. Aren't they silly?

The Truman after school thing at Skateland, where Hannah let the Norman North high schoolers turn her hair pink and give her a face paint. :-)

Max Atchley's 6th birthday party!!

The kids student-led parent teacher conferences:-)

I can't remember if I posted easter picts, but here are some of that and of the day Hannah and I went up and spent the day with Grandma C.

I think that is about it. Will post next week of our trip to Dallas and the Nascar!! We are so excited!! I am making the kids special shirts, because they want to. Nathan wants a shirt with 48 on the front and Jimmy's name on the back. Hannah wants a shirt with a number 18 on it and Kyle Busch's name on the back. We are staying in a suite, so we are planning on bringing some groceries from home so we can just chill Friday evening and Saturday evening. WE are planning on going to the Dallas zoo Saturday and to Chipolte grill for supper on Friday. It will be a nice get away. April is already filling up as Nathaniel will be in a 1st grade play the 15th of April with a speaking part. April 29th is his field trip to the OKC zoo. Chris goes back to working days as of April 7th and there you have it. Hope this finds everyone doing well. Will write more later, but am getting tired, so I am going to bed!! In His hands!