Thanksgiving

I hosted Thanksgiving this year for my family. My Mom, Dad, my sister Anna, my brother Tom, and Tom's gf Mary all made it out. My little brother Scott is faithfully serving his mission in Uruguay; he obviously couldn't make it. It was a lot of fun. Thanks family, Russell and I are glad ya'll came to visit!!!

My mom and sister came in the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Monday and Tuesday were spent shopping for Thanksgiving supplies, and me preparing for my speech for school.
Wednesday is when all the fun started after Tom and Mary got in late Tuesday night. Wednesday afternoon we went down to the River Walk and the Alamo downtown. We had great Texas weather that day, the high temperature was around 81.
This is Mom, Tom and Mary on the River Walk boat on one side.
Anna, Russell and I on the other side.







Alamo picturesThe Turkey BowlA little after dinner napping.Sea World FridayRudy's BBQ!!! soo goodWaiting for the guys to finish installing the garage door opener.

Whipping cream

Who can ever resist?

Go Rockets

It was a close game. We would have won if McGrady wasn't injured. But the Spurs narrowly beat us without him. According to my history teacher "the rockets are soooo deep this year it's like having two starting line ups". I have no idea how true that is, but I do know we had a great time at the game. Of course Russell had to call his brother Ryan a couple times to commiserate together. All in all, it was a great time. We were even close to a little rockets cheering extremest group. There were probably about 50 of them. After the game, as everyone pushed their way out of the AT&T center, they paraded around the hall with different chants like "Can't beat the Rockets unless you cheat!" and "No one likes Dallas" (something both San Antonio and Houston can have in common).

I love working in the kitchen

But I hate it when my toes are underneath the little overhang of the cupboards over the floor. Who knows what little crawling things might be making a web under there, just waiting to pounce on my toes! I can't do it. So when i'm working in my kitchen, i have to stand back away from the counter. This little deal also transfers to the bathroom.

good thing to know

I found out today that when given the choice of eating breakfast or getting sprayed by the hose, my dog would rather be sprayed. It's fun to watch her cry and beg with her little whine which means "spray me spray me !". Since eating and being sprayed are her two favorite activities, it's nice to know which one is more fun in the eyes of my dog.

Jelly Fish Bad Day

My friend posted this on Facebook for people to see. I thought it was pretty good. Whenever you have a bad day, just think of this story and ask yourself if it's worse than this.

Robby is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to
radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft.Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down
lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you
realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to
me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know,
my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a
wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep
warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000
piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a
delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden
hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan,
and I've used it several times with no
complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take
the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit
with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.
So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few
seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the
damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot wa! ter
machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I
don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However,
the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought
was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my
butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.
His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other
divers, were all laughing hysterically.
Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing
in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could
reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at
the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of
the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed
me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the
chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days
because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it
would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt. Now repeat to yourself,
"I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."

Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, "Is this a jellyfish bad
day?"

Wearing Blinders

My dog is really smart..... in some things. And other things she is the dumbest animal ever!!! She wraps her cord around the grill a couple times a day and gets stuck. Why does she keep doing it when she knows what will happen?? So we moved the grill. She gladly eats dog poop and red pepper powder, the two things dog trainers tell you to put where they dig so they stop.

Sometimes it seems like she is too excited to get what I have that she struggles to understand what I want from her. When I do "trick and treats" with her, sometimes the treat will end up somewhere and she wont be able to find it. I can point straight at it all I want and she doesn't get it. I'll start with my finger close to me and sweep it away from my body in the direction I want her to look. But no matter what I do, where the tip of my finger stops, so do her eyes. She's too stuck on the end of my finger to try and look past it.

Athena is also terribly afraid of the Yoga ball. If she sees me or Russell pick it up, she'll run away as fast as she can and crawl under the table. I guess she thinks we can't get her there. If she sees the ball rolling across the room (not even toward her) she'll climb under the table. She'll stop trying to go up the stairs if we put the Yoga ball at the base of them. What is so scary to her about this ball? There is no possible way it can hurt her. She has all the right tools that make it sooooo easy for her to destroy it. How can the Yoga ball be her biggest fear?

I'm sure that while Heavenly Father and the Lord are up there looking down here, they probably feel the same away about me that I feel about my dog sometimes. "I'm pointing you right at it, just have faith in me and trust me to look past the tip of my finger to where it leads you!" "That trial, that thing you are scared of, there is no reason to be. I've given you all the tools and prepared you to overcome it. There is no reason to fear."

So hopefully I can learn from the example of my dog.