A Blog Ignored!

Hey! Did you think we had fallen off the planet?? Things have been a little stressful and ALOT crazy in the Thomson household! First off..when I went to Germany I borrowed my bosses memory card for my camera. Well, about mid-October, I finally gave it back to him and since my memory card went missing while I was away...my camera is without a card so I can't take any pictures. I have one on order and it should be here around Monday.

Kyleigh is in the community play Christmas Carol which is consuming all of her time. She has been at practice every evening from around 5:30 to about 10:00 or 11:00 every night. She is exhausted, but tonight is opening night and we are excited to go and watch her.

Landon is doing great. He has started boy scouts and really enjoys it. He was supposed to be in the Starlight Parade this year but he got a bad cold so I pulled him out of it. I let him bundle up long enough to go watch and then get right home with some hot cocoa.

Tristyn is Tristyn :) She's doing great. She is loving school and enjoying all of her new friends. She can write her letters and numbers and is starting to read and spell. I am so proud of her, she has come a long way from those first few weeks of school.

Thanksgiving was great. We all went up to my parents' house and then over to my grandparents' for desert. It was a nice day of family, food and games!

Dan and I are great. Busy, busy, busy! We are looking forward to a nice family weekend.

Landon has his Christmas program Monday night and then on Wednesday we are headed to the Polar Express! I'm hoping my memory card will be here so I can post lots of pictures next week.

Happy Birthday!

Okay, so not only is it Steve Irwin Day..it's also....Steve Adkison day! Happy Birthday Dad! Oh...and, it's also my Aunt Mary's birthday..and, my Grandma Barbara's birthday was a couple days ago! Lots of November birthday in our family. Happy Birthday everyone!

Crikey!

It's Steve Irwin Day (11-15-07)!! Don your khakis and have a whopper of a great day!

Someone emailed me the following story a few weeks ago and I loved it. I am not trying to start a debate whether animals go to heaven, etc. I just thought it painted a beautiful picture and one that I could clearly see happening.

Rainbow bridge is a place if both peace and anticipation as departed pets await their beloved owners. There are plenty of things to keep them contented while they wait: trees you can't get stuck in, endless meadows, splashing streams, thickets to hide in for pounce attack games.

But one day the residents noticed some rather.....unusual newcomers arrive. The koalas and the kangaroos slipped in rather quietly, but then came the bearded dragon, the skinks and the goannas. The influx of snakes startled an entire family of cats up a tree. Pythons, cobras, tiger snakes, brown snakes and even fierce snakes. There was so many at one point it seemed as if the ground was alive. A burly wombat shouldered his way through the crowd and plopped down in a shady spot, barely missing a jack russell terrier who yapped indignantly as he abandoned his position.

And then the crocodiles showed up.

Finally a Great Dane managed to get up enough nerve to approach one of the reptilian giants. "Um......excuse me," he said hesitantly. "But, why are you all here?" The croc dropped her jaw and laughed. "Same as you mate," she said "Waitin' for someone who loved us." The dogs, cats, gerbils and other "typical pets" looked at each other in confusion, then at the plethora of weird, ugly and downright deadly creatures assembled. Who on Earth could possibly love some of those faces?

"I see him!" shouted a green mamba from his vantage point in one of the trees. A cacophony of squeaks, hisses, bellows and roars erupted as the mob surged forward towards a lone human being walking across the field towards the bridge.

The other animals managed to catch a glimpse of him before he was overwhelmed by the crowd. "CRIKEY!" he shouted joyously right before he was bowled over by the wombat. "Well I'll be," said a Persian as she tidied up her fur. "It's that Aussie my human liked to watch on TV. Had to be the craziest human on the whole planet." "Oh, please," remarked the echidna as he hurried by. "Is it really that crazy to love something God made?" "No its not," they heard a voice say from the crowd. "You see, I, too, was with him, at his side as he caught the crocs, the snakes and the spiders and spoke of the importance they had in life. For you see, I am his mate, his dog Sui.

To you ordinary animals he may seem crazy, but to me he is simply known as "Best Friend"

And with that comment, as the animals looked on with surprise, she ran barking, clearing a path to him, and jumped in his arms, licking his face as he cried, "Sui my mate, my friend. How I missed you so."

And with that they all crossed the Rainbow Bridge together......

Rome...Finally!

I have been completely unmotivated to get my Rome pictures up, but here are a few.

This, of course, is the Colosseum. It was amazing. We did a tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. On this day, Holly & I started our day at our hotel (of course - LOL!) and headed straight for the Colosseum. It took us 10 hours of walking Rome to get back to our hotel.

Trevia Fountain
Dinner the night of our 10 hour walk. Yes, we ate at McDonalds. We were so exhausted and homesick that McDonalds was a welcome site!
Here I am back at our hotel. For some odd reason I decide to pose with my dear friend, Pepsi. After 10 hours of walking in a foreign country, you do strange things. I was pretty desperate for this Pepsi, I paid 6 Euro for this..which equals about $8.
Here was dinner the first night. We were pretty traumatized and just went to a small market. A great dinner of rolls, Funky Chips, nasty jelly, chocolate and mineral water (that we thought was regular water..that was a surprise)
Here is one of my favorite statues from the Vatican Museum. You don't see many statues of a mother and child so I fell in love with this one.

While I was in Rome, I did not particularly like it or understand it. Now, I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to go there and would gladly go again. Being in Rome was initially hard, it was the first time that Holly & I were truly on our own. We had been away from our kids for a week and deeply missed them. Despite the emotional issues we faced in Rome, we learned a lot of history, spent hours roaming the city and never once got lost. We saw paintings by Leonardo De Vinci, sculptures by Michael Angelo, the Sistine Chapel, Pantheon, the list goes on and on. It truly was amazing!

Michael W Smith - In Concert - I'm Up

Okay..here is an oldie but a goodie..and, possibly one of my FAVORITES! I am a die-hard MWS fan and this brings back a million memories. For those of you who think I have ditched my MWS years..I have not!