I took some pictures of Butters as he was snuggling with me while I sat by the fire this morning. That's our morning routine now. I love to relax by the fire in the morning and the dogs usually join me.
Alissa's Driver's License came in the mail today! So, she finally has a real driver's license! Yeah for Alissa! I recorded this video of her as Roger gave it to her.
Pictures of us chillaxin' in the living room and pictures of our Christmas decorations. I added some greenery around the top of the kitchen cupboards.
November 24th pictures of Brinley chillaxin in her room. These are the pictures I end up with when I'm sharing my google photos with Brinley. Lol. She's cute. I love my Brinley.
A Snapchat photo I took on November 25th. I'm a dork.
Alissa shares her photos with me also. She doesn't take as many and she has to add them to the folder that we share, so I don't get pictures from her all the time. Here are some Alissa selfies taken on November 27th.
On November 28th, while Brinley and I were outside Parker's school, waiting for him to come out, 2 boys got hit by a truck in this cross walk in front of us. We didn't witness it happening, because we had both turned out heads toward the school to see if Parker was coming yet. When we turned our heads back, we saw a truck stopped on the crosswalk (instead of before it). A kid ran out from in front of it and picked up a back pack and went running back in front of the truck. It looked like he was reaching down toward someone. I was staring, trying to figure out what was going on. As he got out of my sight and back in front of the truck, I saw a mom, had pulled over to the side of the road and she came racing out of her van and running toward the front of the truck, waving her arms and telling all the traffic around to stop. That's when it clicked in my brain that the truck had just hit some kids in the cross walk. That crosswalk is dangerous. Kids don't seem to understand street safety anymore. I see them walk across the street without checking both ways all the time. Parents that are picking their kids up from school are always too consumed with what they are doing and they are usually in a hurry. I've seen parents speed through the crosswalk area with out looking to see if kids are there. The law is, that if there is a person in the crosswalk area, you are supposed to stop and wait for them to cross. I've seen kids on the street at the crosswalk, just about to cross, and parents go zooming past, completely oblivious to the fact that there are kids there waiting to cross.
There was a story on the news recently about a woman claiming she had the right of way as she tried to plow through a crosswalk where a crossing lady was. Somebody had recorded the interaction, so we all got to see it. The crossing guard was in the middle of the road with her stop sign up. A group of kids were on the side of the road just starting to cross. The lady started to drive through anyway. The crossing guard is yelling for the kids to stop and telling the lady that she needs to stop because kids are trying to cross the road. The lady in the vehicle was very rude and yelled back, insisting that she had the right of way, as she kept slowly driving through and kind of pushing her way past the crossing guard who was trying to stop her.
The top picture is of the scene in front of us after the cops arrived. An Ambulance showed up shortly after that.
The bottom picture is Brinley pouring herself some milk, so she has something to cool her mouth down after she eats a jalapeno.
More Brinley and Alissa selfies. The selfie Alissa too of herself in the bath with soap bubbles covering her face is so funny.
Brinley took these funny pictures. I added her to my google photos sharing, so I get all of the pictures she takes and she gets all of the pictures I take. She takes a ton of screen shots and always has a lot of pictures. It's a little overwhelming. I think I need to find a new way to share our photos.
Alissa got a job at Dominos. She took these selfies of herself in her work shirt. I'm so happy for her to finally have a job. She had been waiting for so long to finally have a way to make money. She has been dreaming of the day when she could finally have more independence and it is finally with in reach. she feels like it took forever for her to find a job. I don't think she applied at too many places before getting this job. She was just so impatient, that it seemed like it took forever. I don't remember when her first day of work was, but she is just really happy to have gotten a job. She had a rough first day. They were not prepared for her to be there I guess. One person would give her a task to do, then they'd disappear. When she'd finish, she wouldn't know what to do or who to ask what to do. She just felt confused and frustrated. She felt like she was in the way and everybody was annoyed with her because she kept asking them what she was supposed to do. I could tell she really didn't want to go back to work the next day, but she didn't say it. I prayed so hard that her second day would be better and they would actually assign someone to train her and show her what her job would be (like they do at most places). Thankfully, my prayers were answered ans they did things right on her second night. She came home feeling much better about things and she actually understood what her job was and what she was expected to do. I was so relieved. It didn't take her long to get the hang of things and she is loving her job now. They were going through a weird transition when she got hired on. they were firing a bunch of people and hiring a lot of new people. she was one of the first of the new hires, that's why things were not prepared for her on her first night.
Goofy Parker hanging from the wall. He's funny. He's getting so tall and growing so fast, it's crazy!
These pictures were taken yesterday. I was relaxing by the fire and he realized he could reach up there and he let himself hang from the wall, so he yelled for me to hurry and take his picture before he fell. He's funny.
Roger's mom came to spend the night so she could be here in the morning to help with all the Thanksgiving preparations. Roger's family came to celebrate Thanksgiving at our house this year.
I think they knew we wouldn't come, so they called Roger and asked if we would host this year. We have had a hard time with Roger's family. A big horrible thing (that is not my story to tell) happened and we have not been visiting his family anymore. It's sad, because the kids never get to see their cousins anymore. I feel bad about that, but it's so hard on Roger to see his family. He goes to the get togethers feeling good and confident and comes home feeling so low. It makes me so sad to see him like that. We haven't seen his family in a long time, so I was unsure how today would go. It wasn't bad. The family members that were part of the big horrible thing that happened, chose not to come. That was kind of a relief. We wouldn't have been upset if they had come, but it would have been awkward. Here's the before pictures.
I always feel a little awkward with his family, so I didn't take any pictures or videos. I was busy with other things and really didn't even think of it.
It was nice having Roger's mom here in the morning. She helped out a lot. Everybody who came did. This was not stressful for me at all. That was nice. I had been a little overwhelmed, but when it came right down to it, I had a lot of help and my job was made a lot easier because of that.
Over all it was a good day. The only bad was the headache that I got shortly after we ate. The good thing was that we were home, so I just took some Advil, then went and laid down for about a half an hour, then my head ache was gone and I was able to go back out and mingle with our guests.
Delia is here! We love it when Delia comes to visit. It's so fun to get to see her. The kids are so happy that they are finally getting to know their cousin.
Brinley and Delia made a funny make up video.
Butters was making it really difficult for me to do the dishes. When he climbed up on the dishwasher, I remembered how little puppy Forest used to do this and I have a really cute picture of him on the dishwasher. I pulled out my camera to get a picture of Butters doing the same thing. I was really surprised after I took the picture, to see how alike the two pictures are. I love it! I think it is so cute!
Here's the picture I took of Butters and under this is both pictures (Forest on the dishwasher and Butters on the dishwasher).
Butters was being such a stinker tonight. He is such a cute little trouble maker.
Alissa tried out some really creepy Halloween make up.
Brinley's friend Khloe fell down the stairs. She's okay to laugh about it and she said we can post it. She cried at first, but eventually started laughing when Parker pulled up the video of her falling and she watched it. I was going to post the part of the video where she is laughing about it, but it is taking too long to process, so I skipped that part.
We are loving Alissa's new puppy. I'm so glad him and Forest are getting along.
Alissa had a dance recital type of thing for her dance class. It was a little weird and pretty boring. There was one exciting part where a girl fell. I had fun with editing that. I made it go in slow motion, then I made it play in reverse, then normal again.
Alissa also had a performance in her drama class today. She was the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz play. I had forgotten to make her a costume. I remembered in the morning. I realized a way to make it really quickly, so I told her I'd work on it all morning and bring it to her when I go to her dance thing. I still had a little more to finish when I got her school, so I worked on it while I watched the dance thing. She only danced in 2 dances, so it was okay for me to not be looking up the whole time. Anyway, I quickly finished it and Alissa was able to wear it for her play. She was really happy with it and she said that everybody loved it.
She was glad for today to be over with. It was such a busy day for her.
The dogs were being cute and fun when we went outside with them today.
Alissa got her driver's license today! She's so excited! And a little frustrated that she didn't realize she could have gotten it 3 months ago. She thought she still needed to take the final driving test and written test. She knew she had taken test in her class, but she hadn't realized that those were the final ones. I had no idea how this program worked since it wasn't with the public school and was so different from any program I knew of. I just assumed she'd have to take the tests at the DMV. When I called to schedule them, they told me she already had passed. She just needed to come in and get her license. I feel bad that she waited so long to do that. I wish we had known and that Alissa had understood that. She has spent the last three months stressing out about having to take her driver's ed test in the truck. It was a big relief for her to realize she had already taken and passed both of the tests. Also, the fact that she didn't realize she was taking her finally tests made it so she wasn't stressed while she was taking them. She passed them both very easily.
We spent the night at Linda's. There was a green sheet hanging up in the room we slept in. Parker and Brinley were quick to pose in front of it for pictures.
Pictures of Parker and Butters, and a cute video of our doggies.
I made a bunch of winter hats to sell at the store, 'Everything Your Heart Desires'. I took pictures of them today, so I can post them in my Etsy store also.
