Just Jackie

Miss USA contest...South Carolina

I only have one thing to say. UNBELIEVABLE! I feel so bad that I'm actually doing this...but I couldn't show my Dad unless I posted it here. hahaha! So I guess I had more than one thing to say. ha haha! Check er out! Good laugh...

"and the iraq and everywhere like...such as." ha hah ahhahaha! So sad! Poor girl. She had to have felt so dang dumb.

The County Fair

Oh my my...have I got a story for you! So 'twas Thursday night of the county fair and another couple in our ward had asked us to go with them. Well they have two daughters, one that's almost three and one that's a year old. So off we go to the fair. When we first got there, we bought Linkin a paw print balloon. These are some not so good pictures of Linkin and their kids. There was too much going on to try and get a good smile out of them! It was sure fun and I was only there for the food. Corn on the cob, cotton candy, corn dogs, sno shacks, funnel cakes, Teriyaki steak sticks, etc etc etc. I know all the rides would make me sick and that's if I even trusted them enough to ride them in the first place. However,  Amber (the kids Mom) wanted to go on the screamer ( I believe it's called ), and no one else would go with her...so I decided I'd go with her. Well all was going well and it was super fun. Craig snapped some fun pictures of us before and during the ride. The food in my body at that point consisted of one corn dog and a whole bag of cotton candy that was already not sitting well in my stomach. Not to mention I spent the whole day laying around with a migraine previous to the fair. So round and around we go, laughing and having a great time, making faces and smashing each other!! The ride came to a stop and I knew I was home free --- ready to escape the ride without feeling sick. When all of a sudden we started to slowly move BACKWARDS, and the speed continued to rise along with all the cotton candy in my     stomach. "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna throw up. I'm gonna throw up, I'm so sick. Oh my gosh, If I close my eyes it might help." NOPE, it makes me sicker. "Oh my gosh," the ride finally comes to a stop and I'm just thinking to myself "if I can just make it to the gate, then I can escape the embarassment" ---volahhhh! Throw up! "I can't throw up right now. It would be so humiliating." So SWALLOW. Volahhhhh again... oh nasty. This is horrible!!" Swallow AGAIN!!! So gross. The ride operator asks the riders "raise your hand if you want one more round!" Everyone's hands go up in the air in excitement and everything in my mind and body is saying, "ABSOLUTELY NOT", I'm sweating and sick as I've felt in a LONG LONG time!!" I'm waving my hands in a desperate manner, No way NO WAY!! Please get me off. The ride operator proceeds, "ohhh it looks like we have to let one passenger off, she looks like she's not having such a good time." So he jumps out of his booth and lets me out. Me and Amber exit the ride only for the ride to continue it's devilish journey without us. Evil stupid crappy ride!!! I spent about fifteen minutes in the porta potty hoping the swallowed goods would come back up. Sweat filling my world and standing up a foreign action to me. I prayed in there that someone would have the sense to bring me a water, only knowing that no one would think of it. I walked out of there twice or so only to turn around and head straight back in. Sweet wonderful amazing and thoughtful Craig had the sense I didn't think he had to get me a bottled water and bring it to me. Oh how saving that was. We watched the girls while Amber and Adam went on one more ride, a ride which I didn't even have it in me to WATCH go round and around. So I sat on the sagebrush ground facing the stroller, the site of a balloon blowing even sending flies throughout my stomach. What a night! So I skipped the opportunity to take sweet Linkin on the cute little rides that he would enjoy and getting some fun fair kodaks!

Saturday, we had the lucky privilidge to return to the fair. We had signed up as volunteers to work in the youth booth for the LDS church. The fair is such a success for our youth here that this one fundraiser alone raises enough money to pay for all the youth activites for the entire year. This is a GREAT cause! So Craig and I signed up. However, Friday night I cut my finger SOOO deep that Craig said I should really go get stitches. Usually, when I (or perhaps you) cut myself, it doesn't hurt because it's ya know...just a cut. However, this bad boy throbbed like a mother! It was soo so painful. It wouldn't stop bleeding for hours and hours. Craig helped me butterfly it. It was super deep and pretty wide. We butterflied it with two butterfly bandages and then wrapped it up. I actually woke up the next morning and it was still bleeding. Like gushing. We didn't have a babysitter so we decided with my finger and Linkin that I wouldn't work in the booth and that Craig would. So I dropped Craig off at the fair and proceeded on to the canyon and drove up to Cloudcroft so that Linkin could have a nap. I stopped at every turn off -taking pictures of lots of things. Some silly some not. Everything, however- fascinating to me of course. I explored and actually enjoyed myself quite a bit. Though I was alone, I enjoyed my time in nature~! ha ha! Wow, I'm such a air breathin' tree hugger! Here are my crazy pictures...

      

So after I went on the crazy random picture taking drive to Cloudcroft, I went back to the fair to be with Craig. Here is Craig with his silly hat on in the booth.  The boy next to him is named "Monkey". Craig only knows him as Monkey and I forget his name. They say they call him Monkey because he climbs trees like a monkey but ironically, he looks like one. Cute boy! He took me and Linkin around the fair with a corn dogs for sale sign around his body. We went into the building where they have advertising booths and everyone was so cute to Linkin. They gave him stickers, and wind mills and candy, and took pictures of us, and lots of fun stuff. He was of course smiling as always and feeling so happy! Here are some duh pictures of him. He smiled except for when I took pictures. Like I said earlier, there was just too much going on. He really draws attention in public with his sweet contagious smile! Anyways...then we went and looked at the animals. Wow~! That was crazy fun! Ha ha! Linkin was delighted. He smiled at those goat s the entire time a nd was so thrilled. So funny!~

Ok so that was a lot of fun. As you can see, he has his sticker on his shirt and his windmill in his hand. Big smiles, occasional "der" looks on his face - ok more than occasional. ha ha! He's just a cute boy. At least he always is to me! I just love him more than words could ever express! Alas, I shall post a video of  Linkin and the goat. It will start sideways and then go straight. Sorry about that. But it's a good little clip of a crazy goat. Must be the goat from Adam Sandler CD's. Don't listen to them to find out what I mean unless you've already heard them. It's not appropriate for anyone's ears. h ahaha! Honestly. Here she is.... Oh and here's the polaroid that they took of me and Linkin in the building. I scanned it in. Who uses a polaroid anymore anyways? ha haha! I guess them! Linkin was more into the smarties in his hand that someone gave him than this photo. Monkey was holding him up to the hole. Nice boy...like I said. I bought him a corn dog later and gave him a dollar for games. He was well paid! ha hhaha! :)

Our splendid weekend!

Boy was it a packed and fun weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! First I want to inform you all that I spoke too soon about Linkin sleeping well. He's awoke every night since I wrote that post about him sleeping well. He also wakes up WAY TOO early for his mother to handle. But hey, life goes on. At least he goes back to sleep with a little pat on the back (for the most part - not in the morning) and not having to have a bottle...All in all I think it's still a lot better. Oh Jenn - -the calm child didn't work for us. :( But on to my weekend story. This may be long.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
<-------scary photo!! Friday night, we had a bunch of friends over. See we went from having a good group of friends here when we first got here to having ZERO, and now we have an overload of casuals coming in constantly. So we are up to like close to ten casuals - hence friends. Plus we have started getting together with some other Lt's as well. And we have a new 2lt that just came in who is married and has a daughter. They are really fun too! So Friday night, they were all over at our place. That's what I made a couple desserts for, see The cook queen. We also ordered pizza and enjoyed the delicious taste of Papa John's Garlic dipping sauce. MMMM!! So we hung out for a bit and talked and then we started to play RISK. A game that I've written off for the last ten years simply for the fact that when the boys in my family  would play, it took HOURS and HOURS. So I have never had any desire to play. I got suckered in this night though and Craig and I were a team. As you can see, we were really excited and acting crazy. Well on and on and on and on goes the game. We all felt really bad, because the two girls covering their faces in this picture to the left were really get picked on in this game. They had no chance. Although they did fight til the end and did really good. Then we decided to keep it going down to the final winner instead of stopping at two players left. So we continued on and LO AND BEHOLD....Craig and I won! Here is the board. He he!! 

So Saturday we were invited over to some friends in our branch's house. They have been in the Air Force for close to twenty years, and the father is a pilot. So it was our chance to "drill" them with questions. Also invited was another family who the father is also a pilot. It was a fun day. We got there and everyone was already in the pool, so Craig and I and Linkin jumped in and swam for a good while. It was a lot of fun. Linkin loves the water and he warmed up to everyone else so he could play and enjoy himself. At one point, we had him in this floaty device and he liked that. It was so funny, they have this hot tub area above the pool so the water flows out of it into the pool and there's an area where you can put your head behind the flow of water. Well Craig would slide Linkin's little body back in there and right when Linkin would go behind it, you could see him hold his breath as if he was actually under water and then when he came out he would stop. hahah! He looked constipated everytime Craig put him behind there. It was cute! Silly boy. Anyways...then the grown ups hot tubbed for a bit after which was nice cuz believe it or not, it started to get a little cold. Then we had a BBQ dinner. Oh my it was delicious. It reminded me of home because we had the good ol' hot dogs and hamburgers but then there was potato salad, baked beans, chips of all sorts, and a big bowl of tasty fruit. Lemonade and the works. It was really good. I mean I cook a lot but it's not often, you have classic BBQ works at my house so it was nice. So we chatted and enjoyed ourselves for dinner and then Craig and I went home. It was a lot of fun though. Their families are very strong. It's been said many times that Air Force families are strong and close knit and it's been proven to me already while living here. It's really great!! Oh and good kids too!

Sunday was the best! But of course it deals in nature as always. Whenever I think something is the "best", it probably has to do with critters or sunsets, or something natural on earth. ha haha! So Sunday night was the meteor shower. Well they were actually perseids. So Craig and I gave Linkin a late late nap and woke him at about 9:30pm to go out to see the stars. We drove out to what's called Tulle Peak. It's north of where we live, WAY out on base in the middle of nowhere really. It's where they have test tracks where they test missiles and stuff. So we took the long drive out there but it was sooooooo worth it because when we got out of the car, the stars were simply AMAZING!!! Seriously, I've never been somewhere where the stars were so bright in my life. There were millions and millions and they were sooo bright and pretty. The milky way was SOOO long and SOOO bright and marvelous!!! I seriously was so happy. I loved it so much. THEN when we saw a perseid, it made everything even MORE awesome!!!! Holy cow, it was cool. They would shoot clear across the sky and leave a dust trail. The star would stop shooting and the tail would still be there and slowly fade. I wish sooo bad I could have got it on camera. For one I forgot my camera and two, it wouldn't have been captureable anyway because my camera stinks. Although, those stars were bright enough to probably show up on video. Hmmm...perhaps I'll go out again just for the stars. But anyways....WOW those meteors were soooooo awesome! We saw about ten! Which was plenty. They would have gotten more close together and more wild if we would have stayed but Linkin needed to sleep and so did we. It was very worth it only seeing ten. Heck even seeing one was a thrill and a half. Everytime we'd say, "ok let's go!" then we'd see another one and then we'd want to stay again. ha haha! Then when we for sure decided to leave, I saw three within like 20 seconds. Oh my my my! So so so cool!!! If any of you missed them, then you truly missed out. It won't happen again for another hundred years or so (exaggerating - I have no clue how long)!! But it was a great night!!! THEN...we took the long drive back. We were driving along seeing rabbit after rabbit after rabbit after rabbit, did I say after rabbit. I think we saw hundreds. So were crusing along when THUD, we ran over a jack rabbit. It was soooo sad. We went back to see if we killed it for sure because I didn't want it laying there suffering. it was so awful...but it was 100% dead. Still twitching but I doubt suffering. Did I need to throw that in? Nasty! So anyways...we kept cruising along and saw hundreds more rabbits when all of a sudden, you could see a precious little cottontail run right under our tire and THUD!!! Gone was the cottontail which is really sad because they are innocent - at least Jack rabbits are varments!! So I honestly have a heart and felt really bad, but it was so slow motion and we could see it but nothing we could do....and we both at the same time were like "OHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" and then we both BUSTED up laughing so hard. It wasn't funny but just the fact that it was our second one was horrible and we didn't know what else to do BUT laugh. We'd already dodged like five other ones. UGh! Stupid rabbits. Stay off the road. And why do the dumb things always DART out right when you are driving by. Duh! So we didn't go back and see it because I couldn't bear the cottontail thing. Then we were cruising along still and drove right over the top of a SNAKE!!! So we went back and it managed to stay between the tires and continue to live it's life. ha ha! He slithered off the road into the sagebrush and the end of it's tail was black and white striped. I looked him up later and learned that he's called a western diamondback rattlesnake!!!!! CRAZY. click on the link to see it or learn about it. So we sat and threw hershey's kissables at it, to try and get it to look at us or come out of the brush. Eventually he turned and stared us down. Freakish. I love snakes. I think they are awesome. We didn't hear it rattle so we didn't think it was a rattlesnake but apparently this is the "king" of the rattlesnake family. You might be interested to learn about it if you click on the link. I learned that they have venemous fangs and "reserve" fangs incase their original set breaks off in a victim. EEK!! It also says they have heat sensing facial pits and an essential infrared detector to guide them to warm blooded creatures! Sketchy. I'm glad we had the sense to throw kissables at it from the car and not try to mess around with it. He was out hunting for our next victim which was a poor little gopher that got slammed by us right as we entered the life of base again. Poor dear. We went back to scope out our final victim thinking it was a rat but then realized it was a gopher by it's pokier looking brown hairs. Poor thing. Animals, may you rest in peace! What an adventure 'twas! Oh and at this point, you should be thankful I forgot my camera. Or it wouldn't be pretty! ha ha! Well I would at least have been able to snap a shot of that gorgeous snake!! Oh well. Another time I guess.

LInkIn SlEepS!!!

I am very very very happy to announce that my beautiful wonderful awesome child sleeps solid through the night!!! Being a first time Mom is hard because there are so many things that you dread trying because of all the horror stories you hear from other parents and what not. I thought I would have the hardest time ever trying to get him to actually go back to sleep when he wakes up without giving him a bottle. Wow!!! Boy was it easier than I thought. The kid took ONE night and only like ONE and a half "sessions" before he stopped crying and crying for me. It was amazing. I spent about a half an hour ( felt like a whole three days...) "sleep training" him during the first cry session. I went in there about every five or ten minutes (it's supposed to get longer and longer but I didn't have it). Anyway, all I would do is go in there, pat his back and rub it and give him his binky, etc, and then walk right back out. Me being in there didn't calm him AT ALL but I still kept doing it and while I was there and while I wasn't, he was screaming and crying like a maniac. But after about a half hour, maybe fourty five minutes, he stoppppppped! And then....he was asleep!!! I couldn't believe it at all. I was thrilled to death. So I JUMPED into bed and tried to fall asleep as fast as I could because I knew it was going to be a LONG week and LONG night. So about three or four hours later, he woke up again. He cried for maybe ten minutes and I might have went in there once or twice to pat his back. But then he fell asleep again! Well that was night number one of throwing in the towel and deciding that I can't can't can't handle getting up that many times with a child this old and since that night, Linkin hasn't awoke in the night and screamed and cried for me or his bottle! It has been amazing. The first couple days, I woke up in the morning with my heart so full and felt sooo proud of him for doing. I actually thought that it would never ever ever ever end, but it has and it's the biggest relief in the world. Great great great~!! He also goes right to sleep when we put him in bed most times. Ok well I take it back...he actually dilly dallies around in his crib for a half hour sometimes but he doesn't scream and cry like he's mad to be in there. He actually seems to like it quite a bit. He's so cute though. One time, he was really quiet and I figured he was asleep so I snuck in there to get something and there he was standing up to the edge of his crib playing with the mobile that's hanging from it. h ahahah! What a nerd. He hurried and fell down and looked at me like he was in trouble. The things that a baby this young knows is crazy! I can't remember right now what I mean, but I'll tell you when I do remember. ha ha! He has learned a lot of fun things. He can throw a ball as you've seen, he can give kisses....my favorite thing. I ask him like twenty times a day...twenty??? More like five hundred!!! He's like, "mom, come on - there's a limit to this!" sometimes he'll push my face away but most of the time, he opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out and leans towards me and gives me a big open mouth kiss. I always tell him not to kiss me like that because I'll get arrested, but he doesn't listen. I think it's so cute that he doesn't quite know what to do but he knows what kisses are and tries real hard. Whenever I say, "Linkin give me five, he gets this huge grin on his face and then smacks my hand. I love it, it's so funny! I'll try and get a video. What else? Well he's a little BUGGER!! He likes to get into MISCHIEF in anyway he can. I'm sure ALL kids do this because they are exploring but his favorite things are the toilet, and hopefully he can get there while the seat is up (his hopes, not mine) so he can splash around in the water and have a hay day. He also gets into diesels big dog dish and splashes in that water. I even caught him eating a few bites of dog food one day. He likes to eat dirt, and that's totally a baby thing I think! And he loves to get into the garbage can. And pull every single thing out of it and throw it all over. In fact, I'm surrounded in garbage right now because I let him get in the one by the computer because it's just all paperwork garbage so it's not so cucka! Then I clean it up and we start all over. He's sure a lot of fun though. Having a normal nights sleep is so life changing. I actually don't feel much different at all but if I think about it, I feel happy and excited!!! He's a good boy. I just love him so much!!!

Enrichment Night

Tonight was a BLAST! For any of you looking for an idea for enrichment night in your own church's (I use the word church because some people are non mormons and they could do it too if they wanted ) but then I guess it wouldn't be called enrichment night. Anywho...we had what was called a "service auction". Everybody brought a service. For example: a homemade meal, a coupon for babysitting, homemade cards. I brought a crafty sign that said HOME is where they love you. I have to say that lots of people liked my "service" so I was glad. It wasn't that much service so I feel like I should have done more, but anyway... Then what we did was well ate of course....delish food!! I brought a strawberry margarita squares. They were ok. There was a really good salad though and it's going to be on my cooking blog really soon (when I get my hands on the recipe). I will post the Strawberry margarita squares soon too though. Anyways...so after eating, what we did was they determined ahead of time a list of ways you could receive "points" or "money". So they read the list and for each thing you did, you got 5 points or more depending on what it was. For example, if you read your scriptures daily, you get 5 points, if you attended 4 sacrament meetings last month, 5 points. Um, 5 points for each child you have. etc etc. The list went on for a while. There was lots of creative stuff. Things that you should be doing to better yourselves basically. So then after we tallied our points, then the auction began. There was some fun stuff there. None of which I could "afford". The advantage is in being older because you have more children, and lots of other stuff too. But then again, that's just a good excuse for why I stunk at auctioning for what I wanted! ha haa! I ended up getting some cute homemade cards that someone had made. 8 of them. It was nice! There was lots of babysitting, and food. Loaves of bread. Etc etc. It was great fun. We laughed and joked and had a great time trying to bid for what we wanted. Everyone had a stick thing to wave for our bid, and someone's husband did the bidding for us. So anyway, I just thought I'd share my idea. I thought it was super fun and a good way to mingle and get to see other people's talents but also to focus a lot on service. Doing something for someone else. Some more idea for "services" were Crochet lessons, homemade jewelry, piano lessons, food storage binder with recipes and helps for how to use random food storage ingredients, and scrapbook pages. Some more ideas for points are if you've done visiting teaching this month, visited a sister in need, visited someone in a hospital in the last year. Attended the temple, and points based on how many times in the last year. So it was a lot of fun! It also helped me to think about the things I have and haven't done lately. It's amazing how a YEAR can sneak by you before you go to the temple again. CRAZY!! One was if I've bore my testimony to anyone in the last year. I don't believe I have. Someone said well you do every week when you teach primary and then the sad reality came to me that I don't even do that. I teach my lesson but I never actually explain to them how thankful I am for Jesus Christ and the atonement and that I have this wonderful gospel in my life. So I enjoyed it fully. It was a fun night! Have a GREAT WEEKEND!!! Mine is busily packed with plans. Which I like! So I'll talk to ya on Sunday probably. Have fun!

CHRISTMAS!!!

Well Saturday felt quite a bit like Christmas. At least for Linkin. In the morning I went to a USDA meeting for my child care. Afterwards, I "borrowed" a TON of stuff from the Family child care office. And when I say TONZ...I mean it!! Here are the pictures I took to show you how much I incorporated in one day. It was so fun. I'm going to get more too. Some things I forgot to get until I got home came to mind so I will do that this week. I've been getting a few calls to see if I have openings already. I haven't been able to help any of them thus far because I don't have my official license until hopefully Monday, if not the next Monday (2oth)...but the word going around is that everybody's full and there is still people needing care so we'll see how it goes once I'm licensed. Here are the pictures. I'm sooo excited to start providing for children. For one because we need the money, but also I think it will be fun to teach children things and care for them. Yay~!

We have our own Vanna White here!

We got a play kitchen, a two seat wagon with seat belts, a little tike car rider thing, another steering wheel oval shaped thing ?? Those are what's up there. Linkin had a blast on them. As you can see on the turquoise car thing, he had a very serious look on his face as he tried to steer it where he wanted it to go.

   

Here are some more pictures of the fun things we got. The kid table I put outside on our patio so the kids could have lunch out there occasionally or what not, and next to that is my FAVORITE thing...the crab sand box with a lid. I love it love it love it. We haven't gotten sand for it yet, but we will do that this week. The middle pic shows the kid car lot. Obviously those are the toys in the pictures of Linkin riding. And the last picture shows the kids outdoor chairs and in the corner you can kind of see the kid small slide that I got. I will be putting that in the backyard though not on the patio. He he!

As you can see from these pictures, I haven't quite figured out the best way to organize all the many toys I have here. There is so much stuff. A lot of it isn't in these pictures too. We got everything from Toy cash register, child BBQ grill, Sand toys of all sorts, Cushy toys for baby, kitchen play, horseshoes, gardening kit, blocks, legos, Stackable blocks, baby builder toys, Sewing kits, play telescope with slides, Brain Quest, A music kit with tonz of different instruments, dolls, play dinosaurs, play sea creatures, Marble ramp thing, puzzles, math toys, food magnets, books, books, books!, Trucks drums, tool set, play guitar, zoo legos, camping backpacks, play mops, ironing boards, vacuums, handheld vacuum, etc etc etc!!!!!

So much fun! Linkin thoroughly enjoys his new "play corner" and I really think I like how I have this all set up for the kids. I can't wait to start! Neither can my finances!! ha ahaha! Thanks for visiting my blog!