Our Twins

We have always thought that Regan looks just like Brooke when she was young. Now we have proof. I was going through some old pictures today. Regan saw this picture of Brooke and kept telling me it was her. She didn't believe me that it was Brooke. To tell you the truth, there are times when I can't tell the difference. I showed Jeff this picture of Brooke and he said, "Are you sure that's Brooke? I think we have that purse." He couldn't believe it until I showed him the date on it of 2002. It's amazing how much they look alike. I think they're twins born 5 years apart!

Weekend Getaway - Time Out!

I kind of feel weird blogging right now about trivial things when there are much more important things going on right now. BUT, knowing those people I'm worried about, they would want me to go on and have a moment not worrying. I must say first, Elizabeth, we love you so much. Words can not express how much your friendship has meant to me in my life. Our prayers are with you. I have to thank Jeff for posting for me while I was gone last weekend. He did a great job. I missed that great announcement that was posted in our bulletin at church and will miss that class a lot. Now to catch up. Last weekend, I got to go to Time Out for Women in Nashville with these gorgeous ladies below. We had such a great time. We were fed spiritually by wonderful speakers and talented singers. On top of that, I got to enjoy great company. My friend Nicole set us up in her time share that was close to Opryland. It was spacious and comfortable. We even fit 3 of us in a bed very comfortably. Here's the group... Nicole Rees, Erika Bailey, Tiffanie Emerson, Sheryl Varnedoe, Cheri Sharp (who was really with the other group, but we needed her gorgeous face in this shot), Amy Smith, Marianne Rickabaugh and Me. As you can see, it is a very mixed group of women. As I sat listening to the messages and was surrounded by these girls, I realized how blessed I am to know each one of them. We all come from different back grounds and have had different trials in life. But each one of us has great attributes and outlooks that have strengthened me so much. I loved getting to know these women even better and loved being around them. After we were fed spiritually, we were fed physically at Macaroni Grill. YUM! Marianne had a birthday in two days and had these boys eating out of her hand. That woman is a kick in the pants. SO MUCH FUN! She had them sing to her, bring us extra dessert that we didn't pay for and had them kiss her on the cheek. It made them blush, but they loved it.

Here we are enjoying our dinner together. What a cute bunch of girls.

That night, Nicole really wanted to go line dancing at the Wild Horse Saloon down town. Most of the girls were tired from staying up talking the night before, but Marianne and I went with her. We had SO MUCH FUN! We made lots of friends along the way, danced and danced and laughed even more. Our sides just ached from laughing so much. It's so nice when you can do that. It doesn't happen often enough in life. Marianne in her 64 years of life is so spunky and high energy, Nicole and I had to try to keep up with her.

The next day, we had fun walking around the inside of the Opryland hotel seeing all of it's beauty. It was a great way to end the trip. Thank you Nicole for putting this together. Thank you girls for making this trip so memorable. Let's do it again sometime!

The Church has Canceled Gossip Essentials :-(

When we arrived at church today we learned from the Ward Bulletin that the Gossip Essentials class has been canceled.

We are so disappointed. How are we going to keep up with what is going on in the Ward? I guess we will have to see what the other classes have to offer...

Free dog anyone?

This is our dog Maddie. We rescued her from the local shelter. Most of us love her dearly. Regan, our four year old, unfortunately does not. For some reason Maddie doesn't realize that she is below Regan on in the dog pack order. The majority of the time Maddie is very sweet. She is the coolest dog I've ever seen. When she gets outside, you just have to call her name and she comes right back. We NEVER have to chase her around the neighborhood or anything. She's a very lovey dovey dog that loves to follow the mom of the house around EVERYWHERE and needs lots of loving. Sad to say though, Maddie has snapped at Regan a few times. The other day she actually bit her on the nose when Regan pushed her. She didn't draw any blood or leave a mark. BUT, she is our daughter and we're concerned. We would hate to see this continue to escalate and do some permanent damage to our little one. She has never done anything to any of the other kids. Just Regan. I think it's because she's about the same height...and Regan doesn't like her. SO, if there is anyone who knows someone that wants a dog... preferably no one that has kids younger than 6, we have a free dog. Please ask around. She really is a good dog. We'd hate to give her back to the shelter.

Save the Tatas - Race for the Cure!

I wanted to post about this earlier, but I was waiting on some pictures from my friend. Now that I have them, here I go. On Oct. 25th I got to do the coolest thing and participate in the Race for the Cure for breast cancer. It was really an amazing experience. Our group was a bunch of LDS women from the area (seen below). We have all been really touched by our friend Cheri Sharp who has been battling breast cancer this year. She found out she had breast cancer while pregnant with her 4th child. She's only 32. (I hope I got that right Cheri). Anyway, her courage and strength has inspired everyone that surrounds her. Luckily, she did remarkably well and is cancer free and just finishing up with a ton of radiation right now. On top of that, my best friend Elizabeth Cluff that I have been friends with for 20 years was diagnosed with breast cancer in October at age 37. She's at the beginning of her battle. As with Cheri, I am awed at her wonderful attitude and amazing strength. These are women to look up too. I love her so much. So, when Patty Michaelis put this team together, I just HAD to be on it. It is just crazy how many people I know have been affected by this horrible disease. It made me feel an urgency to try to do SOMETHING.

The two women in pink above are our LDS breast cancer survivors. Cindy Forsyth is to the left, and Cheri Sharp is in the center. Do you see her smile? That's what I'm talking about. She's wonderful!Here I am in front of the pink horse with the names of all the women I was running for. Now, another cool thing about this race was the involvement of the community. The race was a 5k that went behind a shopping center and into a neighborhood in Germantown (the city next door). Turns out, the neighborhood got completely into this. We had cheerleaders and a band from the local high school rooting us on. As we went through the neighborhoods, many houses were all decorated in support of the race. There was pink everywhere. It was SO cool. There were pink flags, pink flamingos, even pink Halloween decorations. The house with the Halloween decorations had pink spider webs and pink spiders with pink ghosts and a sign that said, "Save the BOOOBS!" The picture above is a family that dressed up like the rock group KISS that had a sign saying, "KISS breast cancer goodbye!" I thought that was so cool.

This is kind of hard to see, but this guy was dressed up like Elvis and had a huge pink ribbon for breast cancer on his roof top. He was doing his Elvis moves and cheering us on. Other neighbors just sat out on their lawn chairs and clapped for us. One house had the music from the movie "Rocky" playing to motivate us. Another house even had a sign that said, "Save second base!" I thought that was hilarious. I tell ya, it was such a cool experience. Seeing all the women in pink that are survivors gives you hope for a cure and motivates to try to take care of yourself. Here are my friends Vickie Mecham and JoAnn Briscoe who stuck by me through the race and weaving in and out of the other racers because I wanted to go faster. They were troopers! This was actually the end of the race, but we were accidentally standing under the wrong sign. I highly recommend doing the Race for the Cure if you ever get a chance. I know I'm addicted.

Halloween Fun!

We had a very eventful week that was a lot of fun. Jeff's mom started a tradition of making "scary" food around Halloween and getting together to eat it. She was out of town, but Laurie and I decided to continue the tradition in her honor for family home evening on Monday. Here's our food. I made some witches brew soup and some mummies....

Laurie made these very yummy candied apples for the kids. Not scary, but yummy.

She also made these cute ghosts to dip in a spider web of guacamole dip. It was fun to get all of us together and enjoy the beginning of Halloween week.

On Wednesday, the young women in our ward put on a trunk or treat night with dinner and activities. We still don't have an activities committee in our ward, so we were grateful they were willing to take this on. We all had a great time. Here's my little princess Regan.

Jeff had fun passing out the candy while I took Regan around.

Here's my cute primary Valiant 9 class at our ward activity. I have my cute Brooke, my niece Bailey Skipper, Madison Bailey, Melissa Ault, and our one and only courageous boy Carson Rees in the back. This group is a lot of fun. I just love being their teacher.

The cousins also got together to carve pumpkins during the week. Everyone bailed on carving the pumpkin except for Brooke. She did the whole thing by herself and loved every minute of it. Here's her great creation.

Brennan was sick for Halloween so he missed out on the fun. Poor guy. Jeff stayed at home with him and passed out candy while Laurie stayed at her house with Maddox since he was done after just a few houses. SO, I had the great privilege of taking these cute kids trick or treating by myself. Here's Kaisey & McKay in the back. Taelyn, Jadyn, Brooke and Bailey in the middle. Maddox and Regan are in front. We went all the way from their neighborhood and looped up and down through many streets until we got to our neighborhood. It was quite a walk, but we had so much fun. Regan squealed and laughed with delight as she pranced from door to door. Later she said, "Mom, I can only hold 3 candies in my little hand!" I just LOVE going with these kids and watching them. It's my favorite part of Halloween.

And here's all the candy they got without Brennan's help! Regan must have eaten more than we knew because she ended up throwing up at 1 a.m. That was fun. We had enough candy to send a big bag with Jeff to work, and two other big bags with the girls to their teachers on Monday and still had a ton left over. Hopefully I can keep it out of my sight! I just LOVE Halloween.