Black Friday

It's 4:05 am, yes am, and we are headed out to hit the stores for Black Friday. Do you Black Friday shop? Have a great day!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!!!

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving with lots of good food and great times with family and friends. We had 19 people at Mom's and it was wonderful. We always go around the table and everyone tells what they are thankful for during that year. My brother started us doing that a couple years ago and we have really enjoyed it.
What kind of traditions do you have with your family?

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK ALOT LIKE CHRISTMAS!!

Normally, I don't start decorating for Christmas until the weekend after Thanksgiving but this year we will be at my Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving and I didn't want to wait for the next weekend. I love Christmas and I love to decorate for it. We have 5 totes full of just tree ornaments. The kids swear the tree is going to fall over. We really need another tree or two but I just don't have room for them right now. I love ornaments and the more the better.

When Rusty and I first got married we had to combine our Christmas traditions. That sounds easy but sometimes not. Growing up we always had Christmas stockings. They weren't full of expensive things just a new toothbrush, toothpaste, razors, little toys when we were kids, shampoo, things like that, and none of it was wrapped. Rusty's family had presents in theirs, I've gotten diamond earrings, perfume, movies, you get the picture. AND EVERYTHING WAS WRAPPED! Do you know how long it takes to wrap chapstick, shampoo and crayons?! As kids our big presents were always unwrapped, put together and sitting in front of the tree for the awe factor when you walked into the room on Christmas morning. Rusty likes everything to be wrapped, so you have more to open. I haven't had alot of different stockings in my lifetime but I do have all of them, still.

This is my first stocking, my Mom has always referred to it as my "hot pants". I can still remember being a little girl and using this on Christmas. This stocking was bought for me by my great grandmother.

This was the next stocking I used. My Mawmaw made this for me. Steven has one just like it with his name on it. I used this stocking for a long time and it was just in the last couple years that my Mom parted with them and gave them to us. She still displayed them every Christmas.

This is the one I can remember using the most and still use to this day. My Mawmaw also made this one. Everyone in my family has one that she made. Using them on Christmas is like having a piece her with us still.


This is the one Mawmaw made for Rusty.

And these are the kids stockings.

This is the stocking Rusty bought me our first Christmas married. Yes, it really is that big and yes it was completely stuffed. Rusty is like a little kid at Christmas. He absolutely loves Christmas. He loves to buy presents for people and he loves to search the house from top to bottom looking for his gifts. That is something he has done since he was a little boy. He stayed home sick from school one day and found a Redskins shirt that he had really wanted, when his Mom came home he was wearing it. lol He is not opposed to unwrapping and rewrapping gifts either. Gotta love him. I refuse to let anyone tell me what they are giving him because he will annoy the hell out of me trying to find out what it is. He will always be that little boy waiting for Santa.

Until you get married you never realize how different other peoples Christmas morning can be, you just assume that everyone does it the same way you do. We always had a light breakfast with a big Christmas dinner later normally around 2:00 or 3:00. Rusty's family has this huge wonderful breakfast with more food than any of us could ever eat in a 2 days. My mother in law in up at the crack of dawn starting breakfast and has it waiting for everyone when they arrive. When you get to my Mom's you can smell the turkey that has been cooking and your mouth starts to water when you walk in the door. Both mornings are different from the other but they are both so wonderful. Houses full of family and love, what more could a person ask for?

What kind of Christmas tradition does your family does your family do every year? Do you do stockings and do you wrap every damn thing in it?

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

It is so pretty around here today. You can't even see the mountains for all the snow. It's not going to stick around but we are enjoying it while we can.

The Rest of the Pictures

As promised I have the rest of the pictures, the ones of Rusty getting drenched by the parents and coaches. He was completely soaked and loving every minute of it.

Can you guess what happened?

Well, can you guess? You got it, they won!!!! Rusty's junior midget football team went 9-0! They were so excited, I think they would have all floated away.


This is what Rusty saw on his right side behind him. What he didn't realize was, while he was watching the 2 jugs of water on that side someone else was sneaking up on him on the left with another jug. Great diversion, he never saw the other one coming. Oh, they also poured these on him also. He was soaked but so happy.

Rusty is a man of his word and he told the kids if they went undefeated he would let them shave his head. Do you see a little apprehension on his face. They wanted to know if they could shave his face also. He told them sure, he didn't care, but he did draw the line when they wanted to shave his eyebrows also. bwahhaha I can promise you if he didn't veto that I would have stepped up at that point. I can live with him not having hair or the goatee but eyebrows, no I don't think so. All of the kids lined up and took their turn. Rusty said he didn't think it would cause that much interest but all of the parents stood around to watch it happen also.

Blake getting a swipe at his Dad's hair.



Cody hurt his knee during the game so he was sitting in a chair but Rusty leaned over to accomodate him.




This is Tim, one of Rusty's assistant coaches, fixing Rusty's hair after 36 kids had a chance to shave part of his head. Tim, thank God, is a retired Marine and knows how to cut a high and tight.


It all turned out pretty good in the end and the kids loved doing it. He has had his hair cut like this on purpose before so I've seen him with no hair in the past.


This is another one of Rusty's assistant coaches Vann, after Rusty told the kids about shaving his head he offered to get in on the deal with the kids. Another man of his word, took the chair and let the kids take the clippers to his hair. This is his youngest son Josh taking the first swipe at his Dad.



This was his finished product. Not too bad either. He is my best friend Sharon's husband.

It was a great day and a wonderful way to end our season. The other 4 teams have 1 more game, this coming Saturday. The each have a game that was rained out and they are making it up. Football is almost over and I really will miss it, we have a fun time. It does take alot of time and while my season is ending, the midget football board is a year round job so Rusty's job will continue on just not every night of the week. I will have more pictures to post of Rusty getting drenched by the water, I just couldn't get a picture while it was happening but the league photographer did get quite a few of them and she said she would email them to me. So this is.....
to be continued......

We Did it, Did you?

We got up bright and early and headed out to vote. When I say early, I do mean early, well early for not having any sleep. We went to the Redskins/Steelers game last night (I hate night games and may be banning them from now on) and didn't get home until almost 3:30 this morning! ACCKKK If you saw the game or even saw the score you will understand why I don't have anything else to say on that subject.

Rusty and I got up, got ready and then I went and asked Blake if he still wanted to go and vote with us. He was right up and out of bed. Blake loves to vote and is very interested in the whole process, actually very interested for a 10 year old. He has voted in every election possible since he started school. They gave the students voter registration cards at school so he grabbed his and out the door we went. Rusty and I voted first and I love our small town, we are still voting with a pen and paper, filling in the little circles. They have one electronic voting station but you normally have to wait for that so we grabbed our pens and paper and got busy. After we finished, which didn't take but maybe 10 minutes, we took Blake to his station to vote. He is very serious about the whole thing.

Finally, just a picture of one of the trees in our yard. I love the yellows and oranges of the leaves, it is so pretty. If you look beyond the tree to the left you can see our McCain/Palin yard sign.

Have a great day and keep praying that the right candidate gets voted in.

THEY DID IT!!!

Yes, Blake's midget football team beat their biggest rival yesterday.....in overtime. It was the most nail biting game I think I have ever seen in midget football. We have 1 more game, next Saturday, and if we beat them Rusty will soon after the game being getting a VERY CLOSE HAIR CUT. The kids are very exciting about it. The chances of us winning that game are very good, we played them 1 other time already and we beat them 50-0. Rusty hates to have a score like that, he is all about the kids and doesn't want to humiliate them. After our score had gotten up pretty high he was putting kids in positions they had never played before, had offense playing defense and vice versa. He did everything but make our kids stand on the field and not move and we still continued to score. They are going to add the "red flag" to the rules next year just for games like that. It's like a slauder rule in baseball. I think it's a really good idea. The kids are supposed to be having fun and losing like that doesn't do anything but cause bad feelings. But on the upside we are now the champions no matter what happens next week, but Rusty and the kids really want an undefeated season. It will be the first time in Strasburg Midget Football history that a junior team has been undefeated and they are very excited about that. Rusty has a great group of coaches with him and they are just seem to click together. It has been really exciting to watch it all come together this year. Rusty is my husband but he really is an incredible coach and a wonderful person with the kids. While they are warming up (both junior teams warm up together) he goes down each line and shakes the hand of each kid and calls them by name. We have a little boy on Rusty's team who's Dad has a brain tumor. The Dad came to Rusty at practice one night and told him his son was going to be going through some hard times and asked Rusty if he could be there for him when the times were tough. Rusty had a hard time not crying. That's an important thing to ask someone to do for you and Rusty was very honored that they would think of him. But that is how the parents feels about him. He treats their children with respect and cares about each one them. He wants to teach them about football but he wants them to enjoy it and love the game also.

Way to go team, 1 more to win!