Which Airline will still be around at the end of 2009?

Well, we are in a bit of a quandry. We are travelling to Walt Disney World near the end of the year and have our hotel all taken care of, however, airline tickets are cheaper the earlier you book them and we aren't sure which airlines will still be around when we go!

With the economy going into the soup there may be airlines that have been around a while that will be pooping out before the end of the year! This is frankly stressing me out! I checked on Delta's website and found a primo rate of $308.00 per person. Carl didn't want to book it because of the aforementioned problemo. So then two days later the same flight was at $377.00!

Today, it is at $484.00! So what would you all suggest? Make the reservations now with the possiblility that the airline we choose will go under and we are out over a grand, or wait until about 4 months prior to our vacation and risk paying through the nose for our flights?

Again, I am stressing about this and could use any advice you are willing to give! We have until October 7th to decide whether or not to even go! That is the date that our hotel reservations need to be confirmed or cancelled!

Help please!

My Baseball Boy! So we gave Cole a choice of a few things that he could do outside of school. Some of the choices were, Boy Scouts, Baseball, Basketball, and there were others that he really wanted nothing to do with! So his choice at this point was baseball. I like baseball, it is fun and he gets good excercise! Of course I prefer swimming and he will be going back to swimming once baseball season is over, but that is more for safety reasons then for fun! He seems to be enjoying the practices and he is doing about the same as the rest of the boys (and one girl) that are on his team. He has a pretty good arm and he doesn't do too badly at hitting. His weakest area was catching! The above photo is pretty good! He is throwing the ball (you can see it in the upper right corner. A little high, but it got to the other kid! Oh and Tina, if you look really close at Cole's sweat pants you may just recognize them! Check the bottom of the back leg!*

In the next photo you can see that the ball is going straight for the mitt! Don't remember if it actually stayed in the mitt but he did catch a ball at least once while I was there! He seems to be doing ok at the batting cages too, according to his dad! The field where the kids practice has been too muddy the last few practices so they go to the batting cages to practice their hitting.

I think their first game is in March. That should be interesting! Wish Cole luck in his latest endeavor!

*They are the Mighty Ducks sweats you gave Cole a long long time ago! He likes them now more than ever! They are starting to get a little short, but they are lightweight and comfy!

Might Ducks II! Ok, if you look really close and you know the goalie and what he wears maybe you can tell if this is Tina's favorite player, #35. Giguere?

Or is it this goalie? This is the best shot I could get of this guy, he was much further away!

Now I KNOW that this is him because they said his name when they were interviewing him (this is just off the ice by the way, we could see him in person but you can't make him out because he was too far away for my camera to get a clear shot.

Here he is again! Yay, Tina!

Mighty Ducks Field Trip! So Kaleigh got to go to the Honda Center to see the Mighty Ducks practice and learn about sweat! Pretty funny. They had all the players talking about evaporation, condensation and precipitation! You could totally tell they were reading off cue cards!! Heehee. But it was cool watching them play! Kaleigh didn't get to be in her friends chaperone group, but they sat together anyway!

Here they were waiting their turn to try for the hardest shot, they were clocking in at anywhere from 86 - 96 mph! Wow! You can see in the middle is #8 Teemu Selanne, that number I could see!

Now, I am not sure if this shot is of the correct goalie, you know which one I mean Tina. But the other guy was down at the other end and I couldn't get a good shot. They weren't wearing their jerseys so the only way to see who they were was by the number on the back of their helmets and I just couldn't make this guys number out! It was different then looking at just a black helmet and a white number on it! So this could be #35 Giguere....I just couldn't tell!

I forgot what they call this guy, but he made a cool entrance being lowered from the high ceiling of the Honda Center, pretty cool! Ok, Kaleigh just let me know his name is "Wild Wing" the Mighty Ducks mascot! Thank you, Kaleigh!

So apparently there were about 17, 000 students there and we had to wade through them all as we tried to look at exhibits outside the center, before sitting down. I went to two exhibits and then the kids all said, "can we go in now?" I was HAPPY to oblige! We sat down at 10:15 and ended up sitting for an hour before anything started! But I was just happy to be sitting and away from the hordes of 3rd through 6th graders!!! I was actually worried I would lose the 6 kids I was in charge of! Kaleigh wants to add that when they did the trick shots to get it past the goalie, one of the Ducks distracted the goalie by throwing one of his gloves at him and then he sneaked the puck into the goal! Some of the others balanced the puck on their sticks, moving it through the air and then whacking it like a baseball into the goal! Some were waving their sticks around and it wasn't until they threw the puck into the goal before I even knew they HAD a puck! It never touched the ground! Some even balanced and bounced it on their sticks and then one bounced it off his stick and kicked it off his heel into the goal! It was rather exciting!

So although the outside of the arena was mayhem, we did have a good time watching the players! And we got a free Zamboni baseball hat, that says "Hot Ice". Yay!

It's Felix Time! As some of you will remember, (and some of you won't), Kaleigh had a project in the 2nd grade where the teacher gave everyone a little bunny named Felix. This bunny comes from a book entitled, "Letter's from Felix". It is about a little bunny who gets lost at the airport and instead of going home decides to travel around the world! Well, this bunny may not get that far, but what I ask is that you send a postcard to Cole (it's his turn now) from felix, from wherever you are from! I will be asking people from all over to send them in...this postcard should be addressed to Cole (last name witheld), at his school address (which I will not be giving out on my blog of course!) For those of you with my email address I will be happy to give you the school's address to send it to, if you are a friend of someone who reads this blog, we welcome you to send a postcard as well, the more the merrier! You just have to contact who you know to get my info!
So, if you are feeling generous (it is just a postcard afterall), please do this, it will mean a lot to Cole to get a bunch! Thank you! And hopefully felix may actually get to some of you if you really want him to! Last time, he actually made it to Oregon and Colorado! If you would like to meet felix face to face, let me know and I will send him, as long as we get him back by the 1st of May!

Ok, I goofed! See below for Cookie info for second chance orders!
I tried to re-post the GC Cookie order post but it didn't quite work like I thought. So if you are interested in seeing the cookie form with photos, please see below! About 2 posts down!!

I guess we're catching up...

I am always so glad when the stomache flu and those kind of sicknesses pass us by, our whole school has been running a flu/cold/whatever race for the last 2 months. I thought it had passed us all by, seeing as how the last of the sickies seem to be petering out these days. Well, I guess I was being a little cocky and on Saturday afternoon, Kaleigh started saying her tummy was bothering her. More achey than anything else but she was definitely not herself. A good indication that things were not ok. Saturday afternoon and into the early evening things got worse. She started in crying and saying she really didn't feel well. Now as far as Kaleigh goes, you really don't know how bad it is until something "really" happens. For a cold it is a fever, or usually you can tell when she has a real cold vs allergies because she is more congested and so on... Well, for a tummy ache (which, unfortunately, she has often due to her mother's nervous stomache condition) she tends to complain a lot and then later is fine and playing. Well, on this rainy Saturday afternoon she wasn't "getting over it". By 5:30pm she was running into the restroom to well, be "sick". I then knew without a doubt that this was the real deal. I know some of you have kids that only tell you they are ill when they really are ill, but we have a drama queen for a daughter and she tends to be dramatic over the littlest ache or pain. So you can see why it takes true evidence for us to really get with the program. So it is now Monday and the last two days have been miserable for her and I! Not a lot of sleep and not a lot of food staying down. Today (4pm as of now) has been better, and I am hoping it will continue into the evening and tomorrow morning. She is tired and a bit weak from lack of food, but she seems a lot more chipper and she says her tummy is better. She felt a bit better yesterday too, however, and I will be praying the good feelings continue into the rougher part of the day...nighttime. I would be ecstatic if she had a good nights rest, because that would mean she went an entire day and night with no problem and then she would be ok to go to school. I know she hates to miss, because make up work is a bear! Pray for her evening and night to go well!

My Weirdo Children!

I was just trying to get some photos of them playing with Cole's Thomas trains! Really! But hey, when the camera comes out, these guys have to ham it up royally! Cole is worse than Kaleigh and this is the nicest shot out of the bunch! I kind of egged them on after the first couple, and they enjoyed pushing each other out of the shot! They have no fear or dislike of the camera that is for sure! Gee, I wonder where they get THAT from? (For Tina), "am I in the light?" Hehe.

Girl Scout Cookie Time! Second Chance Orders!!!
If you cannot read the small print (those like me 40 and above) the different cookies available are : Thin mints, shortbread, peanut butter patties, caramel delights (used to be samoas, I believe), Peanut butter sandwich cookies, Thanks-a-lots, lemonades, and a new one called Reduced Fat Daisy go rounds. They are $4.00 a box. Again, we are not trying to sell a billion cookies! If there are no takers we still have church and Carl's office so....no biggie! Again, we just want to make sure there are enough cookies for all! I will personally buy about 6 boxes! Yummy!

The Canon SX 110

This will most likely be my next camera, as soon as I can afford it. I noticed when taking the last photos, see last post, that the focus will often times be drawn to whatever is BEHIND the kids and not on them even though I keep the camera center on their face and then push down the button part way and then move it to the composition I want. It is a pain and I of course forget time to time. So the result is a somewhat fuzzy photo. Not that I can tell from the display on the camera! I try so hard to make sure the photos are good but you cannot truly tell how they look until you get home and look on the computer! So this camera, with a better zoom, a better flash and facial recognition, is what I like. The other reason I want this camera is when we went to the kids Christmas program, we were really sitting in the nose bleed seats and we didn't really even bother taking any pictures because the camera we have now would have just taken dark photos from that far back. There was a lady taking photos sitting directly in front of us and I could see the photo in the display and they looked bright and very sharp! I asked her what kind it was and she let me know. It isn't exactly the same camera, but it is in the same level. I looked at Kodak and I looked at Canon. Canon is more compact and is more popular apparently. So that is going to be my next camera. Unless someone has a better idea!

New Photos - January 2009 Well, it is another year and my kids have grown quite a bit! Cole (above) is almost as tall as Kaleigh now and is thriving in school. He will soon be starting baseball in the beginning of February. Our local Little League through the Community Center here in town starts up soon and Cole has been practicing with his Dad! Go Cole!

Kaleigh is growing into a very nice young lady, but not in the girly sense. She loves Lego's, drawing comics and writing stories! She is doing great in school and the teacher loves that she reads so much! They have a program called "Reading Around the Room" where each time the kids read a book (100 pages or more), they write 3 sentences and they get a die cut with their name up on the wall. Each die cut (Sept - Apples, Oct - pumpkins etc) gets put up next to the last so it is one big line going around the room near the ceiling. Well, Kaleigh has probably contributed about 50% of the die cuts! There are 28 kids in her class and she has half of the line! So the teacher is excited! They compete with the other 4th grade classes and her teacher has never won the contest! She thinks she may win this year! Yay, Kaleigh!

We took the day to go to and Arboretum in the area and I took the opportunity to take some photos. It is a nice place to just walk and learn about different types of trees and plants and the kids enjoyed it. There are samples of all types of areas, like desert, tropical and others. Kaleigh went there for a field trip and I was able to go along as chaperone. The kids really enjoyed it and as much as they hate getting somewhat dressed up for photos, they didn't mind today! So we had a nice walk, I took some nice photos, kind of .... but that is another thing. We had a nice Saturday all in all!

Snowball Fight!

So every year the four year olds have a snow day. Now of course we don't have snow and if we did it would melt too fast in this 70 degree weather we are having right now! So instead the kids dress in their "mountain weather" clothes and we throw marshmallows! At first I have them on either side of the table, with 5 kids on either side and the rules are: Don't eat the marshmallows, don't throw the marshmallows in someones face (if you can help it) and last but not least, if they leave me out of it I will allow them to use me as a human target at the end of the snowball fight. I do this so I can get good photos without being constantly pelted with marshmallows! So these are the kids throwing the marshmallows at me! One side of the table and then the other. It was a lot of fun and they work up an appetite for the hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls they get afterwards. This year the room mom brought Cinnabon cinnamon twists with each kids getting their individual frosting cup. Wow, it was yummy. Of course she bought 30 of the things and a little under half were left. Guess who got to take them home? MMMmmmm, yummy! Found a new thing my kids love! We also took a survey of what the kids (in my class) like best on their hot chocolate, mini marshmallows or whipped cream. I think it might have ended up half and half. So the little girl on the top photo has a cinnamon twist the little cup of frosting and the hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. It was fun and yummy! Of course this was at the end of the day and so they all went home a little wired, but hey not my prob right?

My Children are Turning into Legomaniacs! Kaleigh collects the "City/Town" series and the Spongebob legos. As you can see the latest addition to her collection is the Spongebob Emergency Room. They are enjoying that one quite a bit!

Cole's latest collection of Lego "Agents" series is almost complete already! He has 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the 6 "missions". Now he is also collecting the Power Mining series too!

There is another photo of the Agents somewhere, don't know where it ended up on my page as I downloaded it after writing everything!

As you can see by the photos, they have quite a few and this is not all of them. Our livingroom is sometimes not passable unless you have shoes on...otherwise it is quite painful! So for those of you who know what a legomaniac is....um Tina? Heehee. I don't know if my kids will every have as much as Trevor but it will be fun trying to! The kids love playing playstation lego games too, but you can't be as creative with that stuff. Oh and by the way, Cole seems to have a knack for building new and creative designs ... Trevor would be proud!

Merry Christmas Eve! Our wonderful tradition of Aebelskivers and sausage didn't change a bit this year, other than knowing we need to make more next year! Carl and his mom hang in the kitchen making the round pancakes (found in Solvang, mostly) and heating up the sausage. I get the house ready and make the mulled cider. We have a great dinner with Carl's Mom and Dad, his sister and her family, Great Uncle Kenton (to the kids) and of course, Us. This year was really nice and we all had a great evening. After dinner the guys and kids pack themselves into a couple of cars and drive around looking at Christmas lights. In our town there is one neighborhood who really does it full on! So they drive over there until we call them and let them know that the Christmas room is ready. When the troops are back home the bell rings signifying that the Kristkind has left the building! German tradition for those who don't know about the Kristkind. Different than Santa, of course, and a little closer to the real meaning of Christmas. Directly translated, Kristkind means Christchild, although I am a little fuzzy on the way a baby is supposed to do things on Christmas Eve. Anyway, Carl and his mom did another great job, making these tasty treats!

Cole and Grandpa had matching hats this year! Although, I think Grandpa just wanted to keep his head warm!

The Christmas room.... The tree, and the main present area.

The nice and warm fireplace (you can see that we don't put the "teller" too close to the fire! For those of you who don't know it...there is a doll house that was made by my dad for Kaleigh on the right side of the photo.

Kaleigh and Cole with the Christmas tree!

So to all of you from all of us! I hope you had a great Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas Day tomorrow! More photos coming later!

Holiday at the Park Well, we have a good friend who still works for Disney and she doesn't mind signing us in occasionally and we appreciate it! So, for a little treat, we decided to let the kids play hookie from school and I took a day off of teaching to take the kids to the park. We had to pay for one ticket as sign ins are only for 3 people at a time. I know when Carl and I worked there, the park was pretty much a ghost town from about the first of December through about the 10th. There are many little pockets of time that were totally slow in the park! By that I mean about 15, 000 people would visit on those days verses the oh...60,000-70,000 that you find on a typical summer day! In otherwords no lines anywhere! Unfortunately, I don't think those days exist anymore! The Annual Pass has brought those days to an end. There are so many out there these days that any day can be crowded just by the sheer numbers of Annual Passholder that go every other day! We found that the crowds mainly consisted of adults, young children (under school age), and twenty somethings. So there were very few school kids there unless they were on vacation, a few of those too. But all in all it was a fine day! We got to spend time with our family and see some things we haven't seen, like the Nemo sub ride. The kids tried Space Mountain and LOVED it! Went on Indiana Jones too, but were a little scared of what was in the ride verses the ride itself. It was a good day, but I do miss the emptiness of early december like it used to me....ah being nostalgic for the olden days...never thought that would happen!

The Big 1-0! Ok, so Kaleigh will be 10 on Sunday. She has already had one birthday party, with family because December tends to book up a little fast with Christmas and all. She doesn't mind a bit having her birthday near Christmas, and we have a nice family gathering come to the house and celebrate with her. This year since it was right after Thanksgiving, we decided to just make it really easy and get pizza and have salad and cheesy bread! The guests all appreciated not having to bring something (usually the ladies in the family contribute to the meal in some way) and Carl's mom just had to make the cake. As you can see, Kaleigh liked the cake. Right now she is in pre-competition swimming and truly enjoys it! So Grandma made her a swimming cake. Kaleigh had a hard time deciding what kind of cake to have until while in Julien, McKenna came up with the swimming idea! Thanks again, McKenna! Look how good it turned out!

Acorns!! For you, Annamarie!

We had such a great time in Julien, the kids wanted a souvenier! So rather than spend money, they gathered Acorns! Just the bottoms mind you, there were tops but they were not as nice as the bottoms! The kids literally polished them until they shone! So for our dining room table I made a candle arrangement with the acorns the kids gathered and polished. Annamarie has such neat ideas for seasonal decorations! Steve does too! They decorate their house so beautifully! I am inspired! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Let's all do the Cockatoo!

Ok, maybe not. But Kaleigh sure had fun!
This bird sure liked Kaleigh! The owner of the bird said that Cockatoos rarely speak unless they are with someone they are truly comfortable with or just plain like A LOT! He said this is the first time he has seen this bird talk to a person other than himself! The bird really just said "Hello" but we all heard it and it was pretty cool! Usually they just squawk like this!

A Wonderful Weekend!

Ok, I never quite know where the photos will fall on my blog, so I will try to go in order. We went down to visit with Steve and Annamarie and family down south and had a relaxing, fun, wonderful time! The adults got along, the kids got along and the visit (in my humble opinion) was a huge success! The top photo is our time at the park with the cockateels and the parrot.

More on that later, video to follow... Then the next photo down would be the last day when Carl was able to go with Steve on a cool helicopter ride and training session! I think he had a blast!

The kids and I got to see the helicopter too (before we left for home). The next photo down was the delicious meal that Annamarie prepared for us, that we all enjoyed! It was heaven having someone cook, who does it so well and enjoys it! I truly enjoyed doing nothing but enjoy! Oh wait I did "chop" some lettuce...heehee. Then the last photo is of all of our kids at Vieja Mall. It was fun and they just got up on the rock like that! Gee you think these kids have their photos taken much? All around good time! Thank you so much Annamarie and Steve! And thank you Mckenna for watching the kids and letting the grown ups visit a while!

Ashes, Ashes, we're all OK!

Ok, so there is a fire near us...kind of. I mean if you are looking at a map of the Yorba Linda/Brea area, yes, we are pretty close to the Brea fire. It would take us all of 5 minutes to drive up into the fire. However, that is up on the hill where all the brush is and we are a bunch of houses, businesses and a large Hwy away from it. So we are all ok, no sign of any evacuation orders and mostly everything has been north of us moving east and north. Yes, the 57 fwy is closed as is the 91 fwy. Things are looking worse for our school then our residence. We are waiting to see if anyone from the school will be calling to say not to come to work or the kids to school. There is an area about a mile from the school that has been evacuated so.... who knows.

Kaleigh did get home safely from her camp out at Lake Arrowhead so that is all good. The air quality is something different. It is smokey and stinky and we are not thrilled with all the ash that has fallen on our cars, and everything else! As you can see by the photos there was a lot of ash that blew our way. The last photo was of the Yorba Linda fire when I was on my way home from our Silent Auction at our Church. Needless to say our Auction was not too well attended because of the fires. We still did pretty good though. So no worries, at least so far.