All Good Things Must Come to an End...

I know.. I'm a little late wrapping things up. Maybe it's because I wanted to hang on to my 24th year a little longer, maybe it's because I didn't get in until 2:30am on December 18th, or MAYBE it's because I left my camera on my desk at work all weekend so I'm just now getting to upload b'day pics! It was a fabulous day full of fun, food, and most of all friends. Josh Quick baked my favorite things - a 4Diamond Grilled Cheese, Fried Green Tomatoes and Brownies. The Swampers Kitchen Crew gave me a Chocolate Explosion, and I spent the entire day with my Chef who gave me Kit Kats and a Vegetarian Book/Cookbook. It was a good day.

SO, this is it. I'm wrapping up my 24th year. Here's my list of 24 things that I learned this year.

1. I'm still as bad of a cook as when I began the year.
2. You should NEVER wait 10 years between trips to the dentist.
3. If you have to have surgery, Valum is your best friend.
4. Chef is still the best roommate at the Marriott.
5. Hawaii is just as pretty the 2nd time around.
6. Being Volun-told can sometimes be a very good thing.
7. Teaching 2nd Grade Small Group was my true calling in life.
8. Little kids will tell ANYTHING.
9. When old friends come back into your life, it is a wonderful thing.
10. There are still so many things I wish I could ask my mom.
11. My Grandma is the COOLEST 85 year old lady I know.
12. Hanging out with Jenn and Mal is as much fun now as it was when we were 16, or 13 or 10.
13. No matter how much power you have in a company, it still doesn't make you a nice person.
14. It's not about ME.
15. I still don't handle change well.
16. I still turn into a giddy little kid when I get to talk to Jerry. (My 2nd biggest crush next to Coach Finley.)
17. Hockey is the BEST sport ever!
18. Being outside of Lynn is just as good as being inside.
19. Family may be the people you are blood-related to, but they can also be the people that you choose to surround yourself with.
20. Maybe God's not quite ready for me to settle down yet.
21. Sometimes it's okay to have a meltdown, so long as youj don't hurt anyone in the process and you quickly get over it.
22. I may be the "world's worst vegetarian" as Chef puts it, but I have learned to love mushrooms, peppers and onions.
23. Having the undivided attention of Coach Holladay seems to make everything okay again.
24. I am LOVED.

Hope you all had as much fun reading as I did writing this year. As soon as I get my new blog up, I'll let you know.

LOVE TO ALL!!! :0)

Happy Early Birthday to Meeeee.....

Grandmother stopped by tonight for a visit and it's obviously time for my birthday because she had her all famous RICE KRISPIES in hand!!! Every year since I can remember she has made us rice krispies in the shape of the number of our age for our birthday. It's beyond awesome and something we always look forward to. Tonight, they'd taken the grandkids out to see the Christmas lights and stopped on the way back through. I couldn't belive how big Taylor has gotten. She's the baby in the back. She looks just like Kev. Riley's grown too. She's the cutie in front. What a fun night! The other charactuers in this fun pic are Roger, who I call Marge and Kasey, Kev's wife. Good times. :0)

13 Icelandic Jólasveinar – Santa Clauses in Iceland

And here is my history lesson for you as promised. We are currently on #4 or whichever comes after Teeny Tiny Stufur. Stufur's my favorite. We once again went over the Icelandic Santas today becuase I told Chef they'd be my blog. This was all before we got into a discussion about how "Jazz Hands" just make everything better. We were laughing hysterically and I tried to get him to let me video him telling about going through a drive through with jazz hands, but he refused. I'm confident you're all like "What?" but that's okay. I told him that would happen. It doesn't read nearly as funny as it was in real life. SO, just enjoy your little lesson on Icelandic Santas.... they're quite creepy. :0)

13 Icelandic Jólasveinar – Santa Clauses in Iceland

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Oh the Mall...

Now I know that you were on the edge of your seat just waiting to learn about Icelandic Santa Clauses, but we're going to save that until tomorrow (my favorite of the Icelandic Santas comes tonight). Instead, I have a video and fun pic to share from my shopping trip to the mall tonight. We all know that I just love going to the mall and praying everytime that my children don't turn out to be freaks... because there are always a few running around in there. For some CRAZY reason, we had a couple of old guys that decided to play "Dueling Banjos" in the middle of the mall. Quite possibly the oddest attraction of the holiday season... that is until we walked to the end of the mall and saw the following sign with a group of rednecks in front of it that had walked in with their BOXER dog. A huge thing that obviously wasn't a seeing eye dog. His name was Rocky and he was there to get his pic made with Santa. Nothing says "Christmas Spirit" like a big RED sign that tells you you WILL be prosecuted for shoplifiting if you take a picture of their Christmas Decorations or Santa instead of paying the $50 for a package. Morons. So I took a pic of thier sign. And I hope if any little kids want to see Santa, they aren't scared off by the unspirited elves either. :0)

2 Extremely Random Posts...

I couldn't find any old pics on Dec. 9th, but I was rummaging through some stuff and found this one. Dec. 9th was Papa's birthday, so in honor of him, there's a pic of Me, Sister, and Him. I'd kill to have that figure again... that's me on the left... no hips! I'm totally rocking a leotard from dance class.

The other is of course, me and Chef. Since Bowz is out of town, it's just been us at the end of the hall together for about a week. He's the best roomie ever. Last night was also the first night of the Icelandic Christmas. They have 13 Santa Claus's. That may be the next few posts... I'll learn you all some Icelandic Christmas traditions. :0)

The Kids!!!

Here are the kiddies! Story for the day... we are attempting to study Jesus telling Peter to cast his net on the other side of the boat.

Me: OK. Put on your imagination hat and everybody pretend we are out by the river. Jesus has been preaching and now Peter's going out to catch some fish. We're all watching. Dressed up and wearing sandals.

Anna: I'm wearing a Hannah Montana robe!

Me: Ok. You're wearing a Hannah Montana robe.

Aubrey: I AM Hannah Montana.

Me: Ok. You can be Hannah Montana. Now can we get back to the boat?

Jonah: I'm John Cena!

Mallie: Who are we?

Me: What?

Mallie: Well Aubrey is Hannah Montana and Jonah's John Cena... who are we?

Me: We're just us.

Then, we decided to try and make those darn ornaments from Hobby Lobby. It would've been easier to construct a life size replica of the Great Wall of China with toothpics. No more of that business. The bazillion little pieces involved coupled with the fact that I had to work until midnight and only had about 5 hours of sleep and I'm so sore I could barely move...we're not going to try that again.

I'm not confident they learned a thing this morning, but we had fun. :0)

Those Crazy Dodd Sisters...

Oh was yesterday morning FUN. I was very surprised to see evidence of the Dodd sisters. Gran's sisters had come up to decorate Mama Dodd's grave for Christmas and spend a little time with my Gran.

They weren't there when I got there, but had left Gran's Christmas present with instructions for her not to open it. They didn't say anything about me. And being my grandmother's grandchild, I got into that thing without them even noticing and we discovered a beautiful purple gown. I even got it put back together before they got there. I snapped a pic of Gran trying to look into another of her gifts. She was smooth as well, after all... I learned my skills from the very best. And then the crazy arrived. They even brought Aunt Flora over as a surprise. We weren't expecting to see her. They were awesome. We sat around talking and eating and they told old stories. Such fun times. Best part of the holiday season. :0)
Helen is the sister with very dark hair and glasses. Aunt Flora is the one with beautiful white hair and glasses. Mary, the one that I constantly fight with all in good fun, is the one with the white shirt and red stripes and Faye is the one that looks like she's flipping me off. They truly are funnier than the Golden Girls. Such fun. :0)

The BIG moment...

Had a revelation this weekend... bear with me, this one's deep. Went and saw my favorite curly headed tenor Friday night. At a Gaither Christmas Concert, lots of artists are there. So... for about the whole first hour and a half, you get to all these other artists. I caught myself, as I do every time, waiting and anticipating David's songs. I completely miss the blessing of everything before it because I am so wrapped up in waiting for the BIG moment. So as I sat there thinking about this, it hit me. I do that with a lot of life. I think everybody does to some extent. We can't WAIT until we are 16 and able to drive... and then 18... and then 21... and then married... and then kids... and then grandkids... and then retirement. Why be in such a rush to die that we miss out on all the good stuff in between? Don't get me wrong, when we finally got to David, it was TOTALLY worth it as I'm confident Heaven will be. I just don't want to miss all of the other stuff I get before then. :0)

Peace!

Found the coolest ring the other day. It's a peace sign... obviously. Love this ring. IT really looks cooler in person than in the pic. Coach Holladay laughed. He said he always knew I was a flower child. I can't say that I disagree. If I'd been a child of the 60s, I would've totally embraced it. I think I'd have fit right in. LOVE the tye-dye. I'm all about some peace and free love. And the music... LOVE IT. Good stuff. :0)

Pearl Harbor + 3 Birthdays

Today's the day that will live in infamy. Pearl Harbor Day. I have been blessed enough to see the memorial twice in my life. Kinda Awesome. It's a breathtakingly, beautiful, peacfully sad place to be. Definitely makes you want to be a better patriot. Today is also the birthday of 3 fabulous guys I know. The first of which, and the one in yellow in the picture, is actually called Mr. Fabulous. Stevie Miller is the GM of Ross Bridge and he is the coolest. Such a nice guy. Two others I couldn't find pics of are Drew Haley and Ben Jones. Drew is Jacob's brother. Jay was my very first friend in the entire world. Drew was in Sister's class, Jay was in mine. We all grew up together. He's one of the sweetest guys I know and has always had fire red hair. Love that guy. And Benny Hinn Jones is the other. His name's not really Benny Hinn, but that's what I always called him. He's a sweetheart as well. Fun times. :0)

In.... Out....

Not much excitement other than we had a huge banquet tonight for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Guest Speaker: Rick Burgess. This I learned, those Ins and Outs signs on doors are FOR REAL. Running full speed into a door that's about to be opened will give you a purple knuckle.

Final Score:

Door- 1 Kim- 0

Love to All!! :0)

Paper Chain!

I put up my Charlie Brown Christmas Tree this morning. It was pointed out by more than one person that it needed a little bit of love. I couldn't disagree. It's a little sad. SO, I told the kids we'd make a paper chain to decorate it. They had no idea what that was. I told them it was "Old School". Again, crickets. They had no clue what "Old School" was. They totally got it when I said Little House on the Prairie and back in the old days. Then they asked me if that's how I decorated my tree... Not exactly what I was going for. It was fun though. :0)

Photo Op!

And my fantastic weekend with Coach Holladay concluded with breakfast this morning and a photo op in front of the Christmas tree. What a good weekend it was. Absolutely nothing has changed. I talked a mile a minute, telling him everything he's missed in the past 6 years, he sat back and laughed, occasionally chiming in. We're that kind of crazy close that he's heard absolutley everything since I was 10 years old so I don't think anything surprises him anymore. It somewhat surprises me now that I think about it. There are certain subjects I do not talk about. But with him, it's different. I guess it's because he was always there when I was growing up, so somehow, it's ok. And it was fun. Definitely the BEST weekend I have had in a long time. Early Christmas for me! :0)

Chloe's Ballerina Debut!

How incredibly cute is this ballerina? Chloe was awesome beyond awesome as shown in the video. She's the one in the middle and shown in the pic. It was great. Fun times. :0)

My wonderful, very good, fabulous day!

Today was a good day. IT's true. God can give you a good part to a day, a good afternoon, or He can just open up the flood gates and make the whole day spectacular. This was one of those days. Work - Good. At 8am, I thought it had a chance to go either way, I am so grateful it went the good way. THEN at around lunch, the greatest guy I know showed up. Coach Holladay arrived. This means nothing to any of you, I know, but to me, it meant a lot. After I got off, we went out to eat. He wanted to go to Dale's because John, his brother, had told him how wonderful it was. It's a finer dining place so it was very fancy-schmancy. I kinda chuckled to myself the whole way there, knowing how this would unfold. We sat down and examined the menu. He was checking out appetizers. "You like crab claws?" Of course, I shook my head no. Nearly cracking up, I replied, "Would this be a good time to tell you I'm a vegetarian?" He cracked up. "Are you serious?" I nodded. "10 years now." It's been 10 years since he left Lynn. So here we are, at a fine dining STEAK house. Hil-arious! I did have a delicious bowl of French Onion Soup (which I've never had before) and a salad. Plenty for me, entertainment for him. After we left, we headed to get some crazy expensive coffee and then sat and chatted. I have no idea how long. Probably 2 1/2 hours. But it was so good. I can without a doubt say that this has probably been the best day I have had in over 9 years. It was total awesomeness. :0)

Steve's Christmas Trees

Went to visit my pal, Steve Carpenter tonight and found him outside, videoing his trees. Jimmy always loved them as a kid and now that he's in the military and serving in... Japan I think... so Steve had to make him a video to send to him. I was equally as amused so I had to video as well for my blog today. Enjoy. :0)

Outkast - Rosa Parks Day!!

OK, I don't fully expect many of you to listen to this entire song... I had never heard it until tonight. An old friend of mine, Spencer, made reference to it and I had to do a little research. In honor of Rosa Parks Day, I just had to post it. I love the part where it says, "Ah ha Hush that Fuss, Everybody Move to the Back of the Bus." Cracked me up. And thank goodness for Rosa Parks. Where would we be without her? Also reminds me of a funny story... my Aunt Vicki's maiden name was Parks. When her oldest daughter Meredith was really young, they were studying Rosa Parks at school. She told the teacher she was pretty sure they were related. Hil-arious. :0)

Chloe and Carson

Went to see the coolest 2 kids on the block tonight. I had to hear all about Disney. Here's a pic from the vaca. Chloe was Princess Belle and Carson was Captain Jack Sparrow. Too cute. Carson wanted to play this game called Eye Spy. It's a board game. After one game with me, he had to call in Jen to play. This is not at all unusual. I'm not enough of a challenge. I couldn't keep up in Mario. He beat me in CANDYLAND. Candyland of all things. I just knew I'd beat a 6 year old in Candyland. Nope. He kicked my butt. And now Eye Spy. So I moved on to Chloe. I could keep up with her. We dressed her up as Princess Belle, painted her nails, did some makeup, and chatted about what she wants for Christmas. Guess what she wants. REally, just guess. A STINKY GARBAGE TRUCK. Apparently this toy is all the rage this year. "It eats cars and poops them out," she said. Hil-arious. :0)

2 Things...

2 Things made this day quite fabulous.

1.) I got a call from Coach Holladay and he is coming to town!!! I'm so excited. None of my own fam will come and visit, but he's coming up on Friday. This picture is a little freaky, but I don't have any of my fun ones up here. They're all in Nauvoo, so I had to snag this one from the OHS website. Friday should definitely be a blast.

2.) I got me a Christmas Tree for my 2nd grade small group kids!!! They will be so excited!!! It looks a little like a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree at this point, but it's 6 feet tall and was only $20. I thought that was a pretty good deal. It's fake, so we can use it over and over. I got a star to go on top and they will be in charge of getting some decorations on there. Should be fantastic!

Good day! :0)

The Kids...

Here they are! This was our last week alone together. Becky returns next week. We survived 10 weeks without her! They were so funny today... I had BIG news to tell them that Miss Becky is getting married. Luckily, it was just us girls today so we were able to be completely girly and squeel and be all giddy. They are all still fighting over who's going to be the flower girl.

In most of the pics, they are working on Becky's "Welcome Back" poster. In the others, they are
reading a scroll that I made for them. It was part
of our lesson. I thought it was cute how they all

crowded around to see what was going on. Luckily my camera was close so I snapped a shot without them knowing. One incredibly funny conversation followed Mallie telling me all about her new earrings from Claires.

Mallie: Miss Kim, do you know what Claire's is?
Me: Yep.

Mallie: I wish we had a (another store I can't exactly remember the name of). Do you know what that is?

Me: Nope. (None of the other kids knew either.)

Aubrey: I do know what Victoria's Secret is!
10 weeks later and they still leave me speechless. :0)

Loooooong Day...

Yesterday was a LONG day. We were awoken at 5:30 in the am, not something I am accustomed to, by my dear Uncle Earl. He was coming to the house to hunt with Coach Shawn, Mason and Justin and he just had to call. So, we got up, got ready, and left to drive ALL the way to Pigeon Forge, TN. WHAT A DRIVE! We had to go the Apple Barn for a Wedding Reception dinner for Cynthia's daugher, Mary. She finally got married and we had to go celebrate. Here are a couple of pics from the day. Then, we drove ALL the way back last night. 12 hours on the road. We're BEAT! :0)

Fred

Remember this cute face? This is Fred that I found back in the spring when she was just a teeny, tiny kitten. She ran across the road in front of us and I couldn't bear the thought of leaving her to fend for herself. Sister said there's no way I'd catch her. I stopped the car, got out and hollered, and this precious thing came running at me and jumped into my arms. It was like something out of a movie. That was all it took. I took that baby home with me - actually I took her to Dad's barn. He fussed and complained but he's had about 3 black and white cats, all named Fred, so I knew he'd eventually warm up to her. And he did. He can't do without his Fred. She is a monster too. She's eaten countless birds and squirrels. There wouldn't be a single one left in Nauvoo if she had wings. She's about 3 times the size of my Ko-Ko now. Her belly nearly drags the ground. She's so funny. This is her discovering tv for the first time. She couldn't take her eyes off it. :0)

The Bop It..

Today, the Tittles discovered the Bop It. Holy Cow.. that was funny. None of them can hear. Combine that with the ability to think fast, it just wasn't in the cards for them to be very good at that game. The amount of brain power they were attempting to generate today was astonishing. Good times. :0)

Let the Feasting Begin...

Here we are, at the back of the line, about to begin lunch. The other pic is only a small portion of the fam, sitting around the table. It used to look a lot bigger...

From the little bald man going around, we have Uncle Dennis, Aunt Brenda, Leah, Daniel, Dad-o, Aunt Minnie, Mackenzie and Scott. :0)

Getting Ready...

Now this is some serious Thanksgiving Day cooking... here we are at Cafe Radine's... aka... Grandma's House. This is all of the deliciousness. YUM!! :0)

GOOD MORNING!

Sometimes all you need to start the day is that
perfect cup of coffee. Today was that day. This is what I found on my desk when I walked in the office this morning. My dear friend (and the Director of Restaurants) Jim, whom I have taken to calling Jim Bob, had a fresh cup of delishness waiting on me. Now it's going to sound gross unless you've ever had it but trust me, It is GOOD! You start with a cup of black coffee... a little cream is good too... and then you add 1 packet of hot chocolate in with it. SO GOOD. That's what Jim Bob had made for me. And it will get you going. I was flying around the Hotel for a good 3 hours. Sometimes all it takes is a random act of kindness or an awesome cup of coffee to get your day going...

Another quick, funny story. Chef always calls me on his way in. It normally starts with:

Me: Good Morning!!

Chef: Good Morning!!

Me: How's it going?

Chef: It's going GREAT!! It's a beautiful day, the birds are singing, the sun is shining... and we go on and on making up ridiculous stuff to make our lives sound more fun than they really are. And I ask him what I missed on the TODAY show after I left.

This morning, I told him it was great and to guess what I'd gotten this morning. He guessed coffee. SAY WHAT?! I was convinced he'd already called Jim. But he hadn't and he was equally as surprised he'd guessed the answer. Then he said, "Congratulations on being an adult." (It is important to note here that every morning we go to the restaurant and every morning I get water while he gets his first of many cups of coffee. I haven't been a fan of coffee since Mrs. Finley used to make it in High School. Another story for a different day.) I told him not to worry though, I'd stuck my bubble gum up under the lid so I could save it for later. No need to sign me up for the old folks home yet. It was a delicious cup of coffee though. :0)