Just sharing a couple of fun
links for ya’ll to check out. The Greaser Babies is sooo cute!

Smallest Cat In the World




Greaser Babies

Happy Birthday to my baby girl, who turned 10 on Friday. TEN years. Wow, how the time flies. Ashlyn is going to the American Idols concert on 9/1, so that is one of her main birthday presents. I took her shopping and she bought a lot of clothes. Her dad did the same. She also got Bratz dolls, jewelry, a weaving loom kit, jewelry box, and $125. She bought a Wake Me Up Dog, which is really super cute and hopefully it’s faithful in waking her up after school starts. She bought some horse things and I think she is going to end up buying a bike with the rest of her money and put some into her savings account.

We went to Chuck E Cheese on Sunday. It was pretty quiet there, which is always a nice surprise when going to a place like that. We used these coupons for 100 tokens for $12.50 - great deal. I used it four times, because it expires in less than a month and I wanted to have some tokens for our next trip. I had them in a token cup on our table and noticed they were gone as I was picking up to leave. I was not happy. There were about 150 tokens in there! And, I knew someone had taken them. I asked at the counter, JUST TO SEE, if someone had turned in a cup of tokens. They said no, but that someone had tried to return a cup full of tokens for cash just about 20 minutes prior. I said I’m sure it was my tokens, but really thought it was MY fault for not holding onto them the entire time we were there. There was always someone sitting at our table, so they weren’t left unattended, but we were at a LONG table so they were still easily taken.

The manager came out and pointed out who did it… I watched her for a minute, she had the cup in her hand and was playing a game with her daughter. I was just disgusted. She was dressed to the hilt and so was her daughter and I couldn’t figure out WHY you would want to do that. Take some other little kids’ tokens just to make a couple of bucks? How sad. The manager didn’t approve the return because he couldn’t find any orders in the computer for a $30 coupon for tokens like she said she had. He saw my two big purchases though and that was it, so he believed me and then was happy he didn’t give her the cash for the tokens. He came out a few minutes later and gave me 160 tokens. I was soooo elated. I had already written it off as my fault and they were gone. I haven’t had such excellent customer service in a LONG time. I wanted to give him a big kiss on the cheek LOL.

Anyway, I kept watching that darn lady spend my tokens as my kids were getting their prizes at the prize counter. What a dishonest [censored].

Here is a link to a slideshow I made, which has some pictures of Ashlyn’s first 10 years. CLICK THE PICTURE BELOW!

We have an abundance of blackberry bushes around our house. The kids look forward to the berries ripening each summer and bring me a bowl of them each morning. We have been washing them with myhomemade produce wash solution and  eating them out of the bowl. Today, I
decided we’d better make something with them. I looked through my cookbooks and online and didn’t find a whole lot of anything. I decided to go with something pretty simple - a Blackberry Crisp. Good thing too, it was SOO good. Tanner helped me make homemade pizza from the Jiffy box just like my mom made when I was little and the girls helped me make the


Blackberry Crisp.
We had a fun afternoon in the kitchen

Here are some pics of the crisp. It’s not beautiful by any means, but I’m just experimenting with taking some pictures for my recipes pages…. and thought since I’m trying something a little different with the blackberries, this could be my first picture Everyone but Bailey, LOVED it. It was VERY tasty and it’s fun taking advantage of a simple blessing like wild berries. It makes me wish we had a whole garden of fruits and veggies, if I knew a darn thing about it or had the energy to put into it!

Berries!!

Mixing it up with my ‘lil helpers!

The finished product topped with whip cream - YUMMMMMMY!
And no laughs about how lopsided it is, ya hear?

Ashlyn practically licked her plate — must have been good, cuz she is PICKY!

Now, if anyone needs any blackberries, PLEASE come and get ‘em!!! They are prime for the picking and we won’t even charge you to take them away.

I took Ashlyn school clothes shopping yesterday. She had to try everything on, which was like a fashion show - she had a blast with it all. Kati tagged along and tried to encourage Ashlyn with certain styles (what is up with the skulls?!) Ashlyn stuck to her guns and got lots of bright colors, pinks, horse shirts, girlie stuff. YAY, another year, and she’s still my innocent little girl. LOL. She actually wanted to shop at Gymboree. We walked in there for a moment and walked right back out. Without my gift cards or gymbucks, I can’t shop there anymore. Sniff, Sniff.

JC Penney had a great sale going on on their Clearance stuff. Not alot left at my store, alot of pajamas and summer tops. But everything was 50% off the lowest marked price. I got Bailey this size 4 Zoey “shirt” that fits her like a dress. (she wears a 2T) It’s sooo cute! $4.49!!! They had a lot of shoes on clearance too, but the mall was closing, so we didn’t have time to look. Great deals to be had there. The Children’s Place also had some good sales. I got Tanner two pairs of jeans there, $14 each. And several tops for $9.99 that are good for a mix in with his scraggly t-shirts he likes to wear. Good deals. Still gotta take McKenzie and Kati at some point. Oh you get a 15% off coupon to JCP on the back of your receipt - you have to go fill out a survey online, same with Old Navy, but at 10% off. That’s a pretty good deal. Needless to say, we’ll be going back there

Here is Bailey strutting her new dress. And the next picture is for Grandma Lisa — McKenzie’s new horse necklace. I had a hard time trying to get a clear picture of it.. but it’s basically silver with little pink stones all over it. It was 50% off at Stormin Norman’s LOL. Like $3.50 or something. My little deal hunter in the making. ;o)

Someone needs their bangs cut!!

Sorry for the little blog hiatus we have been taking. The fair ended one week ago, and we’ve just been SO busy and tired.

If any of my loopies are reading this, please let everyone know that we are all well. I’ve been having AOL issues and the little amount of time I have had to be online, I haven’t had the patience to really figure it out. I will be back soon.

We went to the beach yesterday and had a great time! It was gorgeous, beautiful weather. Tanner brought along his friend Nathan, and they played at the arcade, while the girls and I (minus Ashlyn) shopped around downtown Long Beach. We did our usual tour of the bakery for some florentines and Marsh’s Museum for the fun things that place has to offer, LOL. Then we picked up David from the retirement party for his high school coach, and we went to the beach and rode go karts and bumper cars, then went for pizza. It was a fun day, the kids were very good for the most part. Great way to spend a Saturday! Here are two new photo albums, click each picture to go to them.

Long Beach
Clark Co Fair 2006

We are busy working at the fair… this is just a quick post to give a little belated birthday shout out to my sister…. exactly 4 months and 1 day late, but yaknow… what can a girl do? I wasn’t really actively updating this site in April. Happy belated 22nd birthday mi sistah!

The fair has been a blast. Exhausting, but lots of fun. I’ve had Tanner and Kati there each day with me, and Kati actually ended up getting hired on by one of the head honchos of the fair. Her first “real” minimum wage paying job - complete with cool orange uniform. She is picking up garbage, sweeping, cleaning tables, etc. Good hard child labor :o)

Totally enjoyed Darryl Worley, Keith Anderson and Lonestar. I’m a total country girl… LOVED LOVED LOVED IT! Our booth is right outside the grandstand, so we have excellent views of the entertainment! Tonight was Alice Cooper, which was interesting. Not my kind of music, more up David’s alley, but interesting. Pretty sure Tanner will have nightmares tonight. LOL.

Here are just a few pictures. I am too tired to upload them all, we’ve taken a lot and our friend Jon (a semi professional photographer) has been taking a ton of pictures that I plan on stealing off his website when I have a chance to do so.

This Darryl Worley song is just amazing — I loooooove it. My mom had 3rd row reserved tickets, and it was slow enough that I was able to go down and enjoy the concert with her http://www.minibite.com/america/forgotten.htm I took some video of this song
with my camera, but I have to figure out how to upload movies and publish them here. Not sure how to do that!

Here are just a few pictures!
CLICK EACH ONE TO ENLARGE.