Fa La La

Merry early Christmas from Hartland! The holiday bug has bitten me hard and for the last couple of days we've been jammin to SUNNY 99--All Christmas, all the time. The house is slowly turning into a winter wonderland and there are packages to be wrapped. Thank goodness were done with shopping already!

We'll set up the ole' trusty artificial tree again this year. One because I feel guilty about killing a real tree *note that it may be argued, but I am not a tree huggin' hippie!* Next the live potted tree we bought when Zoey was one didn't survive once planted. Lastly I have this sneaking suspicion that Camryn might be trying to climb the tree this year, and a real tree would smash her. We're also going to ditch the ornaments this year (Again, for mom's sanity and Camryn's safety...) for construction paper chains, red and white jingle bells, and lights.

Also Meme and Apple just gave the girls a very cute Fisher Price Little People Nativity set. The girls LOVE it! It's fun to play with them and talk and about the REAL Christmas story. Feliz Navidad from Hartland everyone!

Missing Molly

Very sadly, we've lost our brown Molly dog. We last saw her the morning of Camryn's birthday party and there's been no sign of her since. She was a really sweet dog, so we're hoping for the best and maybe someone picked her up. Both of our dogs had recently been on a spree of jumping out of the yard...So now Blue Blue is flying solo in Hartland and she's very much taken to being a house dog :) Verrrrrry much. In fact today we girls went on a shopping trip and bought her a big fluffy pillow to lounge on. The only thing she has to get used to is the girls lovingly laying all over her!

Tom is kind of set on finding miss Blue a companion, but I'm still teetering on the fence about it. We've visited our local animal shelter several times in the last few days looking for missing Molly and there are several cuties there...I'd probably come home with 10 of them though. Our 2 cats would be thrilled!

Birthday Girl

Camryn is 2! We had such a fantastic time having everyone here for her birthday party, celebrating with us! We planned a monkey themed party: lots of monkey party favors, green jungle crepe paper decorations, and the piece de resistance of Tom decorating a monkey cake that I had baked.

A little cranky

It's been a whirlwind week and frankly, I'm just exhausted... Hope that you all had a wonderfully fantastic Thanksgiving! Tom is on a 48 hour shift and I work the holiday, so we didn't get much celebrating in on this end. Thank you so much Apple & Meme (aka Dad & Mom) for trekking down to LC to hang with our girlies. We love you!

After I've had a decent amount of sleep on board, there will be lots of stuff to dish about tomorrow :)

Awareness

Our great neighbor and friend was told last week that she had breast cancer. Yesterday she was admitted to the hospital and had a bilateral mastectomy and hysterectomy. Please keep her and her family in your prayers during her course of chemotherapy and recovery.

October was breast cancer awareness month, but
just a little reminder that truly, every month should be breast cancer awareness month! We are all connected in some way, shape or form to someone that has/had breast cancer. Show them your support!

Hot, hot HOT!

And when I say hot I am referring to both the fire and one particular NASA/South Valley firefighter!!! This week a big plant/nursery facility (that is actually pretty near Hartland in the south valley) went up in smoke. Apparently it was a welding job gone very, very wrong. Anyhow Tom spent most of his day here with many other city and volunteer firefighters doing a dirty, tiring job. This pic is of the ladder truck from NASA where Tom works.

For the first few hours Tom was the water control officer, meaning he coordinated every truck that showed up at the scene. Then when NASA showed up he jumped on the ladder truck and snuck inside the building to fight the flames and ventilate. It's a good thing he told me about that before I saw the pictures...This was an ugly fire! Thanks to all of you firefighters out there that serve the public in a very important way, we appreciate all you do!

Badger Mania

Saturday was the Badger's last soccer game of the 2008 season. It was a frigid one, but we had fun! The first pic is of Zoey with her team and coach. The second (bear with me, I couldn't figure out a way to rotate...) is of a very proud little Badger holding her soccer trophy! After the game our team, along with their entourage of parents/family/friends went to a nearby park to picnic, have a purple Badger cake and play.

Our new season starts in early February and guess who was conned into being a second coach for the team? Yup, Tom and I get to split because of our opposite schedules. I guess I'm going to have to google a lot of coaching ideas for soccer practice--not sure what we're getting ourselves into! Also we're going to try and down grade the team to a 4-5 year old team. Hopefully we'll be a little more evenly matched next year! We're also looking for three more players...Anyone, anyone?

Domesticity

So little miss Cams has developed a new obsession over the past few days...Apparently the dining room chairs are at her disposal and she can take them anywhere she wants. More often than not, it's to pull one over to the kitchen sink. 'Mamma I wash my hands', 'Mamma I wash dishhhhes', 'Mamma I cooking'. Sigh, if only it would last into her teenage years, right? And of course, it was all fun and games until she figured out that our faucet can be switched from regular to turbo blast jets! My floors have never been so clean, they've been moped so many times today... She is too funny--I can't believe my baby will be turning two years old VERY SOON!

Also on the homefront the pecan harvest has started in Hartland. My kitchen counters are littered with grocery bags filled with dusty goodness. We haven't even officially shaken the trees yet, but we've been picking up pecans from the ground that have already fallen. Trying to stay a little ahead of the game--that, and picking up as many as we can before our skunky blu blu dog crunches them all. Mmmm, fiber!

Go Badgers

Zoey turned 4 years old during the summer and we were able to sign her up for peewee soccer here in LC. Since Tom and I have split our schedules, the girls are pretty much home with us and getting her more involved with other kids can only be a good thing! Anyhow, we never realized the cult following of peewee soccer that existed out there. Saturdays from sun up to sun down there are anywhere from 10 to 25 games of soccer going on at one time. Unbelievable.... And a lot of fun!

Zoey is part of the Deep Purple Soccer League and her team is called the Badgers. Go Badgers! There were originally 8 kids on her team, which is a 4-6 year old team. Go Badgers! They've slowly dwindled in numbers to 4, sometimes 5 kids--All of which are 4 years old! Go Badgers! It's fun to watch them, but in our next season that begins in February we're going to try to switch to a 4-5 year old team. Yes, we've pretty much been smeared across the field in each of our games against obviously older, more coordinated players! Here in Hartland we're trying to work on Zoey's competitiveness for next season. She's such a mother hen that she runs over to every kid that falls down and dusts them off. She's also very polite and will gladly get out of the way when the ball rolls through :) Well, at least she's not standing off in a corner of the field picking her nose, right? Go Badgers! One more game on Saturday and then we wait out some cold days until February.

Testing the waters...

Blog, blog, BLOG! So, in this day and age it seems like everyone is talking blogging. So the Hart's are going to give it a try. Everyone has such fast paced schedules (including us!) that I thought this might be a fun way with letting you take a peek into our family and what we have going on. This will probably be a whole lot easier than trying to keep up my old webpage, which was more often than not, sorely neglected. So, pass it on and tell your friends! Here goes--Ready, set, BLOG!