Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Free shrimp and a christmas story!

12 random things I love! Why 12, because its Christmastime and because everyone does a list of 10 and I like being different, thank you very much!

12. Christmas Music! I just love Trans Siberian Orchestra! I have one of their songs as my ringtone and whenever someone calls me I have a overwhelming urge to start dancing! Diiing Doooong, Diiing Dooooong, Hark how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say throw cares away..........

11. Christmas Spirit! I love what it does to people at this time of year! For example, I went through the drive thru to get Bobby and I some Long Johns last night and the lady forgot my shrimp! After I asked about it she ended up just putting it in the bag and when I asked how much I owed she said nothing! Gosh, I just love this time of year and what it does to people! Gotta love free shrimp!

10. Teasing my children with their christmas gifts. Hayley asked me what we got her for Christmas and me being the horrible mother that I am proceeded to name a list of everything Hayley despises: Barbies, dresses, hair bows, etc. Of course she just rolled her eyes at me and walked away.

9. "Fragile..must be Italian!"


8. Maids a-milking....it's called filler, people!

7. Kick ass coupons to bath and body shop! Lotion and candles for everyone this year!

6. The fact that this year we have managed to spread out our Christmas love and don't have to be a 4 different places on Christmas day! Yaaahooo!

5. The pursuit of finding the most annoying toy on earth to give my nephew Caden! Though his mother did give me permission to give him Moonsand this year which I believe ranks right up there with some of the most rancid toys! Have you seen this stuff?

4. Christmas food...I do love it, yes I do! But cheese balls of the world, do not fear for I will be cutting back on my consumption this year. Stupid gallbladder!

3. French Hens....listing 12 was harder than I thought!

2. Did I mention christmas music...I did? Oh well, heres a little christmas music fun for ya!


1. A Partridge in a pear tree!

I hope everyone has a blessed Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love to all,
The Burns Brood

Monday, December 17, 2007

Sydney and Santa

Well my attempt to update with pictures from the last month or so have failed. Everytime I go to upload them my computer freezes up. I can only get one pic at a time and I don't have time to upload pics at one at a time. So anywho, I guess I will just carry on.
Yesterday was family day! We started out with lunch at Players to eat and watch some football. Then we headed over to the Warren and caught a movie. Bobby and Cody saw I am Legend while I took Payton and the girls to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. While I would have much rather have seen I am Legend the kids really liked Alvin! Bobby thought I am Legend was ok, Cody really like it. Or as he rates movies, he gave it 4 out of 5 stars. He's such a movie buff!
We then took the kids for ice cream since we were still pretty full from our late lunch. We then headed out to see Christmas lights. At one of the places that displays lights they had Santa. Since I didn't have my camera they took a pic for us for $3. Not bad for what they actually captured even though the quality was poor. Sydney is still at the age where Santa is still some creepy guy in a red suit asking little kids to sit on his lap while us parents plead with our offspring to just get near him to capture a christmas memory on film. What follows is a classic example! I pleaded, begged and bribed with Sydney to just get close. I knew it was probably the last year we could get all 4 with a pic with Santa. After much coaxing this was a close as she got!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Happy Birthday Code-man!

I will post more of what's been going on with us on a later blog since I've been a slacker! But right now I want to share a little montage I made for Cody's 11th birthday today! Yes, my oldest baby is 11 and I still can't comprehend it! Hope you enjoy it! I know I enjoyed making it and can't wait till he gets home to see it!

Friday, November 9, 2007

Hey Good Lookin', Whatcha Got Cookin'?

With winter basically here that means my cooking gene has finally awoken from it's long hibernation. I love to cook, I really do, well except for in the summer. I can't stand to heat my kitchen up in the summer and with us usually being extra busy during this time of year my desire to cook usually diminishes. Now don't get me wrong, we don't dine out all that much, we usually end up either grilling outside or having something that doesn't require firing up the oven or stove. But winter is here and I have pulled all my trusty winter recipes out and have been busily exploring many recipe sites or cooking blogs for inspiration!

One way I've gotten in the mood is by participation in a digital recipe exchange. This is really a good way to get alot of different recipes in a cool format. I follow the blog of Sherelle Christensen. She is a fellow mother of four and a out of this world artist. She scrapbooks digitally and traditionally as well as sews and other forms of craftiness. She is a featured artist for many different craft companies. Anyways, she asked for her blog readers to participate in the digi recipe exchange. She took the first 35 emailers and had us all submit two of our fave recipes to her in a digital scrapbook layout. We did it this way so if we wanted to print these out in a book like through snapfish or kodak it would look really nice. I ended up with over 70 different recipes all in scrapbook form. There are some desserts that just look deliciously sinful! All the different ladies did wonderful and I can't wait to try some of the recipes. Here is one of my recipes I submitted. My kids love this and it is so dang easy. Hayley and Sydney usually help me make this one.





Here is one of Sherelle's recipe's that she shared that I'm trying today. It looks so yummy!






Monday, October 29, 2007

Halloween fun!

So this week has been a busy one! The girls, along with my sister in law and nephew went to Walters Pumkin patch in Burns, KS. This place is so cool. It's so not your typical pp at all! The had slides that started at the top of a man made hill, then you go through the hill and you come out of the bottom. They had tons of places for the kids to play on, slides, swings, you name it they had it. Paddle boats, pumpkin launchers, pedal cars, trains for the little ones, etc.....oh yeah, they had a pumkin patch or two! We had a blast and took lots of pics but of course this site is acting up still and it takes forever to even get a couple pics downloaded!
Hayley

Caden

Sydney






Here are some pics from last night. We started at my mom and dad's house and then headed over to out friends, Jason and Christy's house. We've gone trick or treating in their neighborhood for the last three years because the whole place goes all out on decorating and handing out candy. As you can see we have Hayley as a cowgirl, Sydney, the princess herself as Cinderella!Then Payton went as himself, just read the t-shirt and that should explain it all! Cody went as a scary guy but he couldn't wear the mask around Sydney. You'll see why in the pics below! Our friends children, Matt and Eliza, went as batman and batgirl! Too cute!! The night was a bit chilly but not near as bad as last year and the kids were all well behaved for the most part!
Bobby and I did our responsible parent thing when we finally got home and checked the candy! I hate doing it but I really feel that we need to protect the kids from bad candy! I can safely say the candy is free of any poison, razor blades, etc...I just hope the kids don't notice all the Reese's Butter cups gone!























Wednesday, October 24, 2007

99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of.......

Sing it with me! Ok, you don't have to but that was the theme for last Saturday! My brothers, sister in law and I wandered downtown to the midwest beerfest to partake in the sampling of over 400 beers! OMG! We were like little kids on christmas morning! So before we got too sloshed we headed over to the food vendors and got something on our tummies and then we were off! Here is a before picture, not to say there is really and after picture of TJ and I! Before anyone asks who drove our drunk asses home, I would like to say my lovely sil, Angela was our DD! She did this out of the kindess of her heart and because she was promised that next year she has immunity and will not have to be DD!


TJ and our DD, Angela



This was taken by Angela as she was drooling since she couldn't drink her fave beer, Newcastle! By the way she took that blue sign! lol!


Just a glance from above!

So here is our only real after picture since I refused!
Nice Tim!


Here is Angela's new golf bag she bid on and won at the silent auction! Notice it's a Newcastle bag! No if we can get our husbands to take us golfing!


So Bobby joined us afterwards at TJ and Angela's as well as Jason and Christy for more cocktails and dinner.

Because this is how he rolls!

Jason and his Flying Dog beer!

Minnie and Jason! Really, no caption needed!

We got a bit bored and instead of playing board games like we had planned we decided to get in the halloween spirit and go visit Thearosa's Bridge! http://www.legendsofamerica.com/OZ-TheorosaBridge.html I know, it's something we did in high school but we had a blast! I guess the fact that most of us were pretty intoxicated helped!
Christy, Me and Angela

TJ, Jason and Bobby

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Shocker Madness

So tonight was shocker madness at Wichita State. We took the kids since they all had fairly good reports from parent/teacher conferences. The girls scrimmaged followed by the boys. Then for the finale they had a slam dunk contest. Look close in the pics of the judges of the contest and you'll see Jessica Hughbanks from this seasons Big Brother.

It was fun but started to drag out for me since Syd needed to potty every two minutes and she was cranky near the end. Plus my new camera batteries went dead and I didn't get as many pics as I wanted! It was neat to see the new coach and hear his thoughts on a very much anticipated season. Though I am a KU basketball fan first I do love the shocks and hope their season is exciting and successfull! GO SHOX!

On a bad note, the Boston Red Sox lost again tonight and that makes me very angry! Just thought I'd let ya'll know that!






Thursday, October 11, 2007

What a day!

My day started off by waking the diva herself, Miss Sydney up at 6 am for her 1st day of preschool! She was so excited about it and got up so good this morning which is so not like her! She even had her first completely dry night in panties! WOOHOO! What a kid! I can't wait for her to get home and tell me how her day went! She did so good when I dropped her off that it made me sad in a way but it just reassures me that we are doing the right thing! You can just see the excitement in her face in the pictures below! I usually take 1st day of school pics outside but it was still dark when we left this morning!





So after dropping Syd off at school(that sounds so weird to me, I'm so use to her being home with me!) I met up with Hayley's class at the zoo at 9am. Let me say it was such a beautiful day to be at the zoo! I had a good time. Hayley picked two other kids to be in our group and of course she picked boys! She reminds me of me so much! Such a tomboy! They were fairly good and I was just glad to be able to spend some time with Hayley! She is such a good kid! So right now is down time and I'm waiting for the gang to get home. I should be sleeping since I work tonight but I can't wait to see Syd!
Below is a pic of me, I chopped my hair again and went darker! Payton says I look like a rocker! I guess I'll take that as a compliment! lol! I really like what Crystal did this time. I always like what she does with my hair but this time she took very little direction from me and still managed to create something I had totally pictured in my head! Crystal ROCKS!


Tuesday, October 2, 2007

What a nut!

This video below cracks me up! It's about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic president of Iran. He was in the USA last week and spoke at Columbia university in New York. He was introduced as a "petty and cruel dictator" by the university's president. He is well known for his anti-Israeli statements, his disbelief in that the Holocaust ever happened and that his civilian nuclear weapons program is in all regards, very peaceful! He also believes the non-existence of homosexuals in his country! Here is a excerpt of his speech regarding homosexuals,"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it." Yeah, I know, unbelievable but not unexpected. The video below is a something SNL cranked out this weekend in response to his statements made while in the US! Too funny!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Me and My Boyzz!

Well the first picture really has nothing to do with this post but I couldn't resist!



Ok, now back to the original post about our night out with the boys! Not very often do Bobby and I have a chance to just hang out with Cody and Payton without the girls. But tonight the girls are with g-ma and that gave us a chance to hang with them and have a little fun! We started off at the downtown skateboard park and let the boys rip it up for awhile on the ramps and bowls. Didn't get any pics because I was just too busy trying to keep an eye on the boys because the park was so crowded. Next we headed to one of Bobby's and mine favorite mexican restaurant, Reubens. Yummy! So after we filled our tummies we headed over to the river to see the Keeper of The Plains statue with its new and improved set up. It's really nice and they have two cool bridges that lead to the statue from either side. As you can see by the pics below I was in an artsy mood and couldn't stop taking really cool pics of the bridge. After that as if our bellies weren't full enough we headed over to Cold Stone Creamery for some ice cream! OMG, I love this place and I believe Bobby is smitten with this place now. Then we headed over to Borders to check out some new books and then to Wally World for some neccessities! All in all it was a great night and I think the boys appreciated it and loved having some mom and dad time with out the lil' sis' running around!


Wichita's skyline

Keeper of The Plains

Bobby, Cody and Payton's interpretation of the Keeper of the Plains!

We put the fun in dysfunctional!





Cody and I fighting over who gets the reeses peanut butter cup in my ice cream!

Friday, September 21, 2007

A pissed dog and shreddin' it up!


If you think my dog looks p.o.'d, it's because she is! I put this cute doggie shirt on her that I bought at Old Navy for .97! If you know me at all you know I can't pass deals like that up! Plus it's too cute! Well she didn't think so! Sophie moped and layed around the whole time she had it on. This is from a dog who I'm convinced is ADD and can't sit still for 2 seconds unless she is just worn the heck out! Hmmmmm......maybe I'm on to something?



Before I get britney spears inspired emails about my parenting skills regarding the following pictures let me declare that I KNOW! I realize he doesn't have a helmet on and yes he is on a very large, concussion causin' steel ramp. I was not there and Bobby and I have had a talk and Payton will be getting his noggin-savin' helmet soon! That being said, I can't believe this kid! I know I'm biased since I am his momma but he just blows my mind sometimes! This kid is all about skateboarding at 9 years old and will spend endless hours in our driveway untill he has a trick down pat! In fact yesterday a neighborhood kid who is at least 14 came over and asked Payton to show him how to do a kick flip?! I have no idea what a kick flip is but apparently it's tough to master. Anyways, these pics are from the Park City skateboard park.