Cabo San Lucas Sunset

Churches

Our Lady of Guadalupe CATHEDRAL in Mazatlan

Incredible interior.

Our Lady of Guadalupe CHURCH in Puerta Vallarta.

Cliff Diver in Mazatlan

This is not an organized sight-seeing activity. This is not his "job." After he gets done, his friends ask for donations!

Sand Art and Ocean View in Puerto Vallarta

Tequilla Factory in Puerto Vallarta

Tequilla is made from the Aguave plant. (My mom has some in her yard in Arizona.)

Before drinking, you say, "Salude!" This guy gets paid to give tours of the factory and drink 6 shots of tequilla per tour. He said he never drinks at home because he drinks all day at work!

There was a restaurant at the Tequilla factory. We thought we should have "authentic" Mexican food while in Mexico.

The chicken tacos looked and tasted very similar to what I would cook, which was a little disappointing!

ShipBoard Fun

Bathing beauties--never warm enough for swimsuits!

Shelley and I split a bingo pack and won a trip for two on a 7 night Caribbean cruise. WAHOO! We've got a year to take it!

Celebrating Libby's birthday. Cake anyone? We'd already had desert!

Sharmi's new boyfriend--he totally bought into this--Avil (Libby called him "Advil") from India! Oh yeah, and he's Catholic. Go figure!

Tornados in January???

The wind woke me up about 1:00 AM on Monday morning. A mini-tornado was hitting the Heights, but I thought it was just our regular wind storm! Here's a link to the KULR8 site, if you're interested in reading more!

http://www.kulr8.com/news/local/15532037.html

Not my hotel!

It's true, I'm flying to Vegas in a couple of hours, but thankfully, this is not the hotel we're staying at. I'm glad there are no injuries!!

Adios, Amigos!

I've left the king with a long list of to-dos for the children while I'm gone. I don't really care what happens--whether they get followed or not, but it was my motherly duty to write it all down. I am not responsible for what does or does not happen in my absence, and I just really don't care because I'll be in Vegas 14 hours from now, and I'll be on a cruise 72 hours from now! Hastaluego mi padres!!!

You know you're having a bad day when...

You wake up repeatedly during the night because of the howling wind only to oversleep by 10 minutes in the morning.


You turn on the water to your shower and there's no water. It's minus 32* with the windchill, and your water pipes have frozen. By the time your husband has unthawed them, you don't have time to shower before work. Much to the children's dismay, they do have time to brush their teeth. Thankfully, the pipes did not burst so all is fixable quite easily.


You leave, manage to PLOW your van through the large snow drift blocking your street, and with this new confidence in your driving skills, even managed to pull into the snow drifted driveway of the extra kids you pick up. You skillfully make it out of the driveway and manage to plow through two more drifts in your minivan before making it onto better plowed roads. Now you are feeling downright cocky about your driving skills.


You manage to go slowly with the flow of traffic, very slowly, but still arrive to work 5 minutes early. Things are looking up. That is, until you open the door to your lab. No heat. It's about 40* in there. It's a good 2 hours of blasting the heat (once it comes on) before the room in tolerable. Could this day get any worse? You really shouldn't ask yourself that because you'll just jinx it!


Sure enough, you make it through the day. You stink a little because you haven't showered. You're tired. But you're still feeling optimistic as you head home. You manage to drop off the extra children and turn onto your street. There's that big snowdrift again--between your house and you. But you made it this morning. Granted, it does look bigger this afternoon, but it was dark when you left for work, and besides, you've proven yourself a highly skilled driver today.


What you haven't taken into consideration is that fact that the snow has been drifting all day and what was a nice powder this morning when you were plowing through, is now crusted over and the kind that you can walk on!!! So your van gets stuck. Two hundred feet from your house!! The wind is still blowing, making the windchill below zero. You and your kids start digging the van out while you wait for your husband to come help. He comes, along with the neighbor (who, you find out, got stuck in the morning in the same drift and had to have another neighbor help dig him out, which makes you feel slightly better), and they help dig. Soon, the van is out of the drift--the drift you have now named THE FRICKING SNOW DRIFT!!!


But wait, there's more. Your driveway is still drifted in by the garage doors so you have to spend more time digging that out too. Good thing all this wind is suppose to be blowing in a warm front that might melt some of this snow!

By the way, the drifts in the back yard are as high as the 6 foot fence! Glad they weren't that high out front! Count your blessings! Count your blessings! Count your blessings!


And you thought your Tuesday stunk!

BRRRRRRRRRR

It's freezing cold here, snow, and more snow on the way.

How is it where you are?????

It's Coming...

The trip of a lifetime is coming...

Sharmi will leave the boundaries of Billings, her family, and her work and set sail for the Mexican Riviera. No kids, no husband, no work, no responsibility. What could be better than that? I can't think of a thing.

Only 10 more days left!!!!

Kids make me laugh

Yesterday, driving to work, we were talking about the upcoming national election.  The 6th grader I shuttle said, "I'd vote for anyone who's not in favor of school uniforms and can make sure bad guys from Iraq don't invade our company."  I thought, "Yep, me too!"

UFO siting

I saw a UFO this morning--not aliens--just a UFO--Unidentified, flying object.

I got up about 7 this morning and was sitting in the livingroom. I noticed a light out my diningroom window and at first I thought it was my canned light, reflecting off the glass. But the more I looked, the more I decided it wasn't a reflection. After a couple of minutes, if rose up and over my house. Mind you, it was way up in the sky, and I live on the flight path for a lot of small aircraft, but this thing headed AWAY from the airport, and the light it was giving off was too bright to be a normal aircraft.

Just thought I'd let you know...we might not be alone!

Happy New Year

From our kingdom to yours, have a very Happy New Year!

Four EYES

The prince, looking studious and oh, so handsome in his new specs! He's loving them, but then, he hasn't been to school yet and gotten any razzin' from his peeps!

Dancing Queen

Here's the princess, looking HOT HOT HOT in her cool dance outfit and also a photo of her in action. This sistah has got it goin' on!

Final (hopefully) Moped Update!

As the photo indicates, the king is too big for the moped. Although it says it'll support 250#, and he SWEARS the problem was that there wasn't enough air in the tires, what you're looking at is a sad, sad day--really, I had tears rolling down my face as I took the photos (okay, I was laughing my butt off, and the tears were a result of that...)--as the king had to push his moped up the hill the way a toddler would "peddle" a trike up hill. The prince was also too big for the moped though he could get up the hill. It really only "fits" the princess! Se La Vi!

Drunken Daughter

I'm at work today, and the princess is doing a VIP presentation. Totally in her element. All about her. She's showing the medal she got for singing in a talent show on the cruise ship. She tells the kids that the kid center is where you go, and I quote, "WHEN YOU PARENTS WANT TO GO TO THE BAR." Her teacher was cracking up laughing.

She then points to a picture of herself, holding a strawberry daiquiri, and tells the kids, "It didn't have any alcohol."

A couple of hours later, she gets in the van and gets very excited to hear her FAVORITE song playing--Whiskey Lullaby.

I give up!!!

Royal Treatment

The king is currently in "sunny" Florida--well, maybe not so sunny. When he arrived he called to say it was only 60* there. At the time, it was 58* here. I said, "So you flew 2000 miles for 2 degrees!" It's warmer there now and much colder here so I guess he's the winner, anyway!

Speaking of winning--his Boise service center was named "Service Center of the Year"!!! He knew he was in the running for it, but didn't find out until Wednesday night when they handed out awards!! YIPPEE for him. One of his employees in Billings was one of the top Employees of the Year too! It's very nice for him to get some recognition for all his hard work.

They worked at a YMCA Camp Service Project yesterday. He said he's never seen cockroaches that big except for in display cases!! Meetings this morning and a tour of the area this afternoon. More meetings Saturday, and he flys home Sunday. He's got to be up at 3 AM FL time to catch his flight. He'll be sleeping in his chair by 5 PM our time!!

Low Rider

If Rich's knees--in relation to the size of the bike--aren't enough, the tall boy should give you an idea of just how "LARGE" this beast is!!

I was able to get him to pose for you--on the bike. He's nothing if not politically correct!

Too much snow to fire this baby up. So sing along with us instead:

Slow Ride...

Take it Easy...

or maybe

Low rider, take a little trip, take a little trip...

or maybe

I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid...

Gobble, Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

A sad tale to tell

The king is having a midlife crisis.

How do I know?

The princess was looking at mopeds online the other day and the king SHOVED her off the computer (not really, but you know what I mean) and started looking. Next thing you know, he's telling me he just put a bid on a snazzy, silver moped.

And not just any moped, either. This baby has speeds of up to TWENTY miles per hour. That's right, baby. SPEED!

The item still had 5 days of auction left so he and the princess waited...and waited...and waited.

Alas, with 2 days left, the king decided he didn't really want the moped, hadn't thought it through, buyers remorse, mid-life thingy on hold...

"Too bad," I replied a little snottily. "You have entered into the EBAY contract (theme music to Jaws should be playing now). A bid, once placed, can not be undone." He came up with all kinds of plans to renig. But I wasn't going for any of that as he'd bid using MY user-name! I can't have my good Ebay reputation tarnished!

Alas, he was the high bidder. Our shiny, new moped--with speeds of up to TWENTY miles per hour (incase you didn't catch that the first time!) will be here in the week. The king assures me he'll ride it to work...just as soon as it's licensed, insured, and he gets himself a helmet.

I guess I should be glad he didn't see a Harley there--or maybe I should be unhappy--at least he might look "COOL" on a Harley. Ain't happenin' on the moped!!

Driftin' Along with the Tumblin' Tumbleweed

Oh how I wish I had a photo to prove it.

We had a terrible wind storm blow through Sunday night and all day Monday/Tuesday. My neighbor's truck caught on fire at 4:00 am on Tuesday morning (I'm not quite sure how that happened, something electrical), but he called the fire department, and we didn't even hear the sirens whaling because the wind was so loud! Scary. Luckily, the fire didn't spread to the field the truck was parked in front of (directly across the street from me), his house, or my house. We're very lucky, because those winds were fierce.

Along with the wind and the fire, came the tumbleweed. It's an on-going battle, and we laugh when they invade a neighbor's yard and not ours. Well, they were laughing at us Tuesday afternoon. I kid you not, our entire front porch was FULL of tumbleweeds. Ten feet high and 6 feet square--or whatever my porch measures!

A neighbor brought the prince home from school (because I was at school late with the princess), and he couldn't get through them to get in the house. He called me later to tell me he was back at the neighbor's house. It took the king and the kids over 15 minutes to dig it out later and haul them across the street to the empty lot! Unbelievable!

We had a little more wind last night so that the tumbleweeds are no longer in that lot. I'm not sure where they went, but they aren't in our yard either! Don't get me wrong, there are plenty more in our yard, but they were already there before last night! Go figure.

Does anyone out there know what a tumbleweed really is? What was it before it died, dried out, and started drifting????

Halloween

It was a night like any other night at the White House. George and Laura were celebrating Halloween quietly until George got a wild hair...(so to speak!)

Check out George dressed up like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and George dressed up as Kotter from Welcome Back Kotter!

Happy Halloween!

Birthday funny!

The king and I went to have lunch with the princess today in celebration of her birthday. I invited another boy from her class to sit with us as he was his birthday too. We were talking about parties, gifts they hoped for, and whatnot when I asked the boy what kind of cake he was going to have.

He promptly and confidently said, "German Shepard."

"What?" I was sure I'd heard him wrong.

"German Shepard."

Now totally confused he said, "You know, the kind with the coconut."

"Oh," I said, "GERMAN CHOCOLATE?"

A smile slowly dawned on his face and he said, "Oh...yeah."

We're back!

We had a great trip. No photos of us with Mickey. I don't know what happened, but we seem to have missed him somewhere along the line. We did see Shrek, Cruela Deville, and The Mummy, so enjoy those photos instead!

Let the fun begin!

Magical DREAMS!

Counting in hours

We'll be in sunny California in 26 hours--yeah, we get there at 9:30 AM and have to get out butts out of bed at 4 AM!!!

TWO MORE DAYS!!

Two more days until the Disneyfest begins!!! Happiest Place on Earth, here we come. And we are more than ready to have you spread a little happiness on us!