BEST White Elephant Gift EVER!!!

     I started working part-time with Arizona Boiler Inspectors (ABI) this past February.  I just wanted something to fill my days now that my kids are older and not needing me as much AND I really missed having co-workers.  I met Jeremy & Laree when they were called to serve out in the Santan Branch with us this past year.  They own/manage ABI and offered me a job.  I have LOVED LOVED LOVED working along side them this year.  It's been EXACTLY what I've needed.

    We had our work Christmas party (after Christmas) and it was just plain FUN!  Like I said, I've MISSED co-workers to joke around with.  Well, we had a white elephant gift exchange and Chris & I came home with a mannequin--I work with HILARIOUS people.  We left it in our car overnight so our kids did not see it.  We had BIG plans for it...

    The next morning I was up and I set it up in Max's room.  There were a few unintended events happening that totally played into my joke PERFECTLY.  Max has recently been obsessed with serial killer/forensic documentaries.  He's always had an over-active imagination and these shows have only added to it.  For example, last week in Branson, every restaurant we ate at Max had an "Escape Route Plan" for each one just in case a killer walked in.  I was also washing my sheets this same morning...

    So I set up the mannequin, I snapped a couple of pictures--I thought I had my sound off BUT the camera sound went off for each pic.  No big deal I thought.  Max sleeps through our dogs barking, police sirens, etc...  But apparently he heard his door open AND the camera sounds.  He was somewhere in-between awake and asleep and dreamed that a serial killer was in his room taking pictures of him while he was sleeping.  He opened his eyes and saw the mannequin and IMMEDIATELY jumped out of bed to come find me.  He goes into my room but only sees my stripped down bed--I MUST have been murdered and the killer took the sheets to hide the crime right?!  Well I'm down stairs and I hear him walking around very quickly upstairs so I come out into the front room to find Max leaning on our stair rail resting his head on his arms.  He sees me and says, "PLEASE TELL ME YOU PUT THAT IN MY ROOM?!?!"  I just start laughing so hard that I can't even answer.  "MOM!!!  YOU CAN'T DO THIS KIND OF STUFF WHEN I'M WATCHING ALL MY SERIAL KILLER MOVIES!!!"  I'm crying at this point!  My joke went better than I had planned.

Pic is a little dark but she's set up in his
closet on the right and he's in bed on the left.

    Well after that we decided to name her "Bathsheba" and then we set her up in Ethan's bathroom to scare him when he woke up.  Ethan didn't get up for awhile.  Max actually went into his bathroom before Ethan was up forgetting she was in there and full-on SCREAMED AGAIN!😂😂😂.  I was again crying/laughing.  Max HELPED me set it up and STILL was caught off-guard!  When Ethan FINALLY woke up, he went into his bathroom and thought I was in there, he just turned around confused asking, "MOM???"  So he was barely scared.

    Max had a few friends over the same day so we had "Bathsheba" set up in our laundry room under a black light.  Big laughs and scares ALL DAY LONG!  Seriously...the gift that just keeps on giving👻😂

Christmas 2020!

    It was going to just be a normal/quiet Christmas at home.  Then my husband came up with the idea of going to Branson.  We had always heard how amazing Branson was at Christmastime and so why not?!  A week before we were still able to get an amazing airfare so we pulled off a last minute Christmas trip!!!

    I feel like Branson, MO is one of the best kept secrets out there.  It is seriously the last family friendly/Christian establishment out there!  We didn't get away from all the virus/mask-wearing stuff but we had fun anyways!  

    We left bright and early Tuesday, December 22nd--5:20 am.  We caught our Allegiant flight to Springfield, MO.  We were STARVING when we landed so we most definitely had to hit the best restaurant in the state--LAMBERT'S CAFE!!!  "Home of the throwed rolls!"  It's just good ol' home cooked meals (kinda like Cracker Barrel) but the wait staff walks around with huge pots of side dishes that you can get at any time--sides like black-eyed peas, fried okra, and of course...ROLLS THROWN right to you!  And HUGE mugs of Cherry Coke went with our meal perfectly.  

    We then headed over to Silver Dollar City--our tickets were buy one day, get a second day free.  So this day was like a bonus day.  The weather was perfect (in the low 60s) and we needed to walk off some of our lunch.  We hit a couple rides and then decided to head out.  It was the busiest I had ever seen the place and the wait times for most rides were about 30 minutes.  We knew we had the entire day on Wednesday to really get our fun in.

    That night, we went and saw the production of "Noah."  (A couple years ago we saw "Jonah."). It was AMAZING!!!  The set was incredible!  And they used many live animals in the production which was just awesome.  The shows/actors/talent in Branson is top notch.  Some incredibly talented humans live there for sure.

    Wednesday...the MAIN EVENT!!!  All afternoon (it didn't open until 1:00 pm) at Silver Dollar City!!!  The weather was definitely colder (in the 40s with some rain) which kept the crowds away!!!  So yes!!!  We braved the cold and the rain all day and it was worth it--the rain felt like tiny needles hitting your skin while on a ride but thankfully the rain didn't last too long!!!  We rode every single ride we wanted to!  They added a new roller coaster a couple years ago that we had never been on--The Time Traveler.  Seriously MY personal favorite roller coaster up to this point of my life!!!  We rode this 7 times today!  (The kids rode 8 times:).  What is so unique about this roller coaster is that the carts you sit in free spin WHILE you're going around the track.  So NO two rides were every exactly the same.  Sometimes you were head first, sometimes backwards, and even sideways other times.  We LOVED LOVED LOVED it!

Good times at Silver Dollar City: The plastic Santa was the only Santa my kids wanted to see:)

Coffin-measuring--gotta do this EVERY time
we go:)

Just a pic of my IVY OBSESSION!

BEST COASTER EVER!!!

In line at Time Traveler--
have I mentioned how many times we rode this???

  

    Nighttime at Silver Dollar City was SPECTACULAR!  We didn't get to do our traditional "drive around and look at lights" this year (because we would be flying home late on Christmas Eve) but this definitely made up for it.  

  

 

So we ran ourselves RAGGED Wednesday.  Grabbed a pizza on the way back to our hotel and then watched Wonder Woman and crashed for the night.  Headaches and runny noses all around!😂

    We had all day Thursday to hang out until our flight home so we headed back to Springfield to go to the Bass Pro Shop/Aquarium/Museum.  Apparently the owner of Bass Pro Shops lives in Springfield, MO so he's opened up a HUGE museum/aquarium there.  It was a perfect way to spend our last day there as it was VERY cold outside and we were exhausted/still recovering from the day before.  We spent about 4 hours going through the entire place.  Very impressive and good news!!!  I FOUND MY NEXT DOG!😂. There was a "therapy dog" that works at Bass Pro Shops.  His name is "Ara" and he is a 180 lb. Armenian Wolfhound.  Apparently, this breed is TIGHTLY controlled so they aren't over-bred and as a result, these large dogs live 12-15 years (HUGE improvement over the normal 8 years of other better-known large breed dogs).  So OF COURSE we had to pet this guy💕 And OF COURSE I follow him on Instagram now too!!!

    My other favorite part was petting the Manta Rays.  Cool AND freaky all at the same time!  Whenever there are animals to be touched...MEEKERS ARE THERE!!!

    Our flight went perfectly and we arrived home at 10 pm Christmas Eve.  We quickly opened our Christmas PJs and then went to bed--I actually forgot to take PJ pics until Christmas morning.

    Max got Lola a Christmas sweater and she wasn't quite sure how she felt about it but darn she looked CUTE!!!💕😍

She's looking at herself in the mirror
in my bedroom😂

Rocco just appreciates being left 
ALONE in his old age😂

    There was no snow in AZ but there was a few drops of rain.  We enjoyed what we could of that:)

    We did keep our Christmas tradition of a movie at Harkins.  We went and watched Wonder Woman 84.  Not as good as the last one but it sure felt GREAT to be inside a movie theatre again.  We also talked to Carlie later on in the day--her last Christmas away!!!  So glad to have her coming home SOON!!!  Can't wait!  February 17th can't come fast enough!  So all in all it was a great Christmas.  So grateful for this little family of mine.  Words cannot express how much I freakin' LOVE these crazies💗💗💗

Diamond Queens--Champions times THREE!

    The year 2020 was FULL of disappointments.  After softball was canceled for both Heritage AND Chandler we NEVER thought the fall season would be in jeopardy...boy were we WRONG?!  Chandler waited until the very last week of July to inform us that they were once again canceling their fall season.  OH.MY.GOSH!  All of the club teams were playing and we were just devastated.  WHERE can these girls who just want to play ball and not have it rule their lives play???  So we started looking around and one of our teammates dad found...QUEEN CREEK HEAT!!!  

    We immediately called/emailed/texted all the board members fearing we had missed the sign-up deadline.  Well, they were HAPPY to have us and better yet, they asked us to bring an entire team of 10 girls!!!  (In Chandler, we are only allowed to bring 5 players--keeps the teams a little more fair).  So Coach Scott started texting all our past teammates and we were once again able to bring together our DREAM TEAM DIAMOND QUEENS!

    We know when you're allowed to bring your own team, that we would be playing against some "stacked" club teams but we didn't care.  Playing hard teams and losing would be better than not playing at all.  Tatum was asked to step up and cover the catch position in addition to her normal 1st Base.  She is a "utility" player in every sense of the word and stepped up and filled her positions.  She was INCREDIBLE!  Sounds strange, but Tatum is one of those players you have to watch awhile to appreciate how dang good she is.  Her athleticism is not immediately apparent.  But after a time you will see that this girl is SMART!  She understands the game better than most and will KEEP HER COOL and MAKE the RIGHT play every single time.

    As you can tell from the pictures, Tatum just LOVED her teammates.  They had each other backs on AND off the field.  Tatum spent a ton of time with her friends this fall hanging out at the mall and even went to Fear Farm with a few a them in October.

    

    This is a favorite pic of mine.  It was right after our toughest tournament game.  WE ALMOST LOST!!!  Tatum was up to bat...we were down by 1...we had 2 outs...Tatum had 2 strikes...then BAM!!!  She crushed the ball over the 2nd baseman's head and drove in the tie AND winning run!!!  She was the HERO that day!  We all went to In-N-Out Burger to celebrate their big win!

    So turns out, we have a pretty dang good team too.  We can hang in the QC!!!  We finished our season 13 and 2 and went undefeated in the tournament.  So all in all, we were 16 and 2--those 2 losses were against the same team that we in turn beat 3 times for the Championship.  We won our final game due to the mercy rule of being ahead 10 runs--final score 14-4.  QC gives out rings instead of trophies and our girls were just over the moon about it!

    I LOVE this next pic too because this team was our toughest opponent.  They had a Coach that was basically...TERRIBLE!  He was thrown out of one of our games because he was quite loud and rude!!!  So it was quite the rivalry--this team had been winning everything for the past two years in QC--but in the end, NONE of the girls cared!  They wanted to take a picture with our team because they enjoyed the athleticism/kindness/challenge our girls gave them.

Tori, McKenna, CC, & Tatum

These are the Fab Five-Three-Time Champs
Tatum, Jules, Chloe, Marly, & Riley

(Tiny but Mighty) Sophie & Tatum

Chloe & Tatum--1st Season 2013

Chloe & Tatum 2020

    We ended the season with a team party/bonfire and Coach Scott's house.  What a FABULOUS season!  I am SOOO glad we were able to have this moment despite how the year had been going.  Who knows what next year will bring but it's gonna be hard to top this team this season.  Congrats Diamond Queens.