My Dad & Brothers

Kody & Jessie Gilliam



Recently both of my brothers moved to Arizona and are staying with our Dad until they find their own place and yesterday afternoon they came over and ate my famous tacos. :o) It was so awesome to see them! I couldn't stop smiling.


For anyone who doesn't know my Mom & Dad were married and had my little sister and I, they were divorced and later on my Dad married Missy and they had two little boys Kody and Jessie. Unfortunately they ended up getting divorced and we really didn't get to see the boys through out the years. Kody is 10 years younger than me and Jessie is 13 years younger so there's a fairly big age difference. Last month when Jessie moved here to Arizona it had been over 8 years since we had last seen him! Crazy I know! We saw Kody last Thanksgiving so it was like 7 years of not seeing him until then. Kody just got here about a week ago and so yesterday was the first time we got together since that Thanksgiving.


My Dad lives out in Apache Junction so it's a little over an hour drive to get there from here....and with his busy work schedule and ours we don't get to see him that often either so it was fun to see them all last night.


Here's a few pictures that I promised Brandy I would post....we wished she was here too and are hoping that she'll be able to come down and visit with all of us soon!! To enlarge the pictures just double click on them directly.
Dad (Johnny) & Kody
Jessie

Kody

Jessie & Dad 3/8/08

Calvin's Field Trip to Mac Farms 2/29/08

Last Friday I got to go with Calvin & his class on a field trip to Mac Farms out here in Maricopa about 8-10 miles from the school and had a blast! It was even better when I saw William's Mom Robyn there also. It is a large plant farm that grows a variety of foods and trees etc. They have a great facility dedicated for children and I really want to go back and take McKenna & Will. Unfortunately the bus was late picking us up due to a serious accident that another school bus had with a motorcycle. We had no idea until 3 days later that the motorcyclist that was seriously injured was our friend Tony Boyles. From what we are told & in the news is that the bus didn't yield and pulled right out infront of Tony and his motorcycle ended up being under the bus. He is in ICU and has several broken bones. We are keeping him and his wonderful wife in our daily prayers. I guess that it was better for us not to know especially that day because we wouldn't have had nearly as much fun at the farm. The kids had a blast but so did all of the adults!






Waiting for the bus





Calvin's 1st time on a bus! So happy!









William & Robyn on the bus.










Arrival & Gathering Area






Miss Connie their wonderful teacher as they were preparing to learn about seeds and how the farm works.





William & Calvin eating lunch. They had lots of picnic tables set up for us to do projects like planting our own seeds










Cute bunch of kiddos playing near the hay maze.






Calvin playing on the tractor & having a great time!






One of the best times of the entire day was this...us being pulled by a tractor around the entire farm. We got to see lots of great plants and smell the wonderful smells that came from them as they were being watered. We were being pulled by a red tractor on this trailer that had stadium seats and shade, what you can't see is the blue tractor behind us with another group of kindergarten kids. As we were being pulled around the farm our tractor stayed in the lead and the kids started yelling, "Go Red Go" over and over because the blue tractor caught up to us once but as soon as our driver heard the children and their chant he would punch it every now and then to make sure that we were far ahead of the slow blue tractor. As the children were chanting go red go, Miss Connie yelled out "the class of 2020" and Robyn and I looked at each other like yikes! In Robyn's blog she wrote that it brought a tear to her eye and I have to admit it made me swallow hard when she said it because the time flies so fast with our babies and before we know it they will be graduating and moving out. I wish I could keep them little forever. :o) But because that is a pipe dream I'll try and cherish every minute of every day with them. I feel so blessed to have been able to go on the fieldtrip and have this wonderful experience with Calvin & his class and our friends The Barkers.




Calvin wanted me to take a picture of this windmill and the sky to show what a beautiful day it was our here at the farm. I think it was about 80 degrees that day and it was perfect.




A fantastic fieldtrip to the Mac Farms on a beautiful day!

Kathy + Tomas = Wonderful Friends!

Today at church Kathy our Relief Society President leans over to me in RS and asks me what we are doing for dinner tonight....so this is the third time we've been to their house to eat dinner in the past month. They are so thoughtful and nice! We love hanging out with them too because they are so fun! Let me tell you they sure can cook too! What a treat! The kids love it because they have all kinds of games & stuff for them also.

They know we are in the middle of moving etc and so what a blessing to have such nice friends...the other evening they dropped by our new house and looked at it and visited with us....Kathy ended up taking the kids to her house and making some pizza for them and when we dropped Tomas off she insisted that we too come in and eat some pizza. It was late I surely didn't feel like cooking and pizza never tasted so good! What a nice gesture.

Yesterday they added a new turtle to their family and a new larger tank so of course the kids were really excited! Calvin actually snapped most of these photo's himself.

Girls lunch out

Anissa, Jennie, Meagan holding Drew

Today I met up with some of my best friends & old roommates from college for lunch. Originally when I moved into the condo Jennie and I shared a bedroom but then her and her twin Karen who shared the upstairs bedroom with Meagan moved out and Anissa moved in and became my roommate. We have all stayed in touch through out the years and have remained very good friends. I've known Meagan the longest and met her in 1993 I think or maybe it was 1994.

Anyways...it is always great to see each other and hang out! We didn't get to hang out for long but the time we did was awesome! We tried meeting at Oregano's but they had a 45 minutes wait so we went to Mimi's Cafe and they told us a 10-15 minute wait but after about 25 minutes we ended up going to the food court in the mall. Had great food and conversation and then had to rush home to get kids from school. We all agreed that we need to do it more often!

Here's some pictures....

Pedicure - NEVER AGAIN!!!

Embarrassingly enough...this is my foot! The second time in my entire life of getting a professional pedicure....being pampered for my birthday at an almost brand new salon this is what happened. The lady giving me the pedicure was rough and actually made me bleed twice....but obviously something wasn't sanitized properly and two weeks later I still had a sore on my foot and too short of a big toe nail.

It has caused me a lot of problems over the past 3 years and has stumped many doctors as it triggered a skin problem that has spread to the side & heel of my foot, making walking painful and sometimes difficult. Not to mention the embarrassing toe nail fungus that keeps coming back after several costly treatments. This is the picture of my toe this week yes 2/18/08....I got so worried I thought I might have to go to the hospital. It swelled up and hurt really bad...the pressure was intense, I couldn't walk on it and I thought my toe was going to burst. So I called my Mom the nurse to ask her what I should do...I've soaked in everything and finally got so frustrated that I even soaked it in clorox water. She gave me other instructions of course to soak it in epsom salt & hot water. She told me to monitor it for a day and if it didn't go down to get to the doctor to get a prescription for the infection. Luckily after a couple of more soaks that day it began to feel better and the swelling and redness began to fade away. It's a tiny bit tender but nothing like it was.



Will thinks I'm crazy to share this...but I've dealt with it for 3 very long years now and although nail polish can hide it most of the time....it's still a very embarrassing thing that I have to deal with daily. I live in flipping Arizona the land of flip flops...how do you wear shoes & socks in the summer??? YOU DON'T! I just want to warn my family and friends when it comes to being pampered by a pedicure make sure that you make them prove to you their tools are new or highly sanitized otherwise your nails may look like this and you will feel like some sort of sick-O! Of course we're in the middle of moving so perfect timing! YUCK!

Moving Stinks...

Well it's been awhile since I posted but it is because we have been cleaning and trying to move all the while stay up with our normal and busy life. :o) We had hoped to sleep in the new house last night but that didn't happen and to be honest probably won't happen until later this week. We are making progress but it's slow going. Valentines came and went and we spent the evening cleaning & mopping. Lots and lots of cleaning has been done inside and out...practically every square inch of the house including walls & base boards and all of the weeds out front have been removed. I don't think I've ever done more cleaning in all of my life! But I know it is SOOOOOOOOO worth it! The house is so beautiful and we are so excited and anxious to get moved in. We'll keep plugging away and be extremely happy when we are sleeping there. :o)

Thanks for listening to me vent.

Our New House

I've been meaning to put this on here since last week when we closed on this new beautiful house. It's in Maricopa about 1.7 miles from our current house....same ward and closer to the kids' school.

We are currently cleaning, painting and moving garage items over but hope to be moved in completely within the next 2 weeks. We're taking our time since we are so close and that is wonderful! We can unpack as we go instead of loading everything at once and feeling overwhelmed.

We totally love the new house and the huge back yard! Here's the stats it's about 3100 sq ft 4 bedrooms plus a den, 2.5 baths and 3 car garage on almost a quarter acre. Our current home is gorgeous and we LOVE it too but this one has the 3 car garage & fireplace & granite & jacuzzi tub & soft water & double ovens & a way bigger back yard.

These pictures are prior to us cleaning & painting....so when we are done with all of that and moved in.....I'll take more pictures and post them to our blog.

Looks like we'll be calling Maricopa, AZ our home for good! :o)

Any suggestions on the back yard landscape? It'll be awhile but we'll glady take any suggestions on what we should do with it. :o)