The Furry love of my life

Meet Chloe

Chloe is the furry little kitten that has wiggled her way in to our hearts. We were not planning on getting a kitten until we moved out of Jim's house but Brian called me one fine Saturday and let me know that he and the kids were holding kittens in front of the PX. (A walmart type store for military folk). I rushed right over and found my family holding the craziest, meowey-est kittens ever. I was game to give them a snuggle so I picked one up and thought they were cute but not quite what I wanted. Then I saw a little kitty in a different cage, lying just like she is in that top photo and it was love at first sight. 

As you can see, the feeling was mutual. This sweet little girl loves every member of the family, which is a huge difference between her and Abby ( our old cat that abandoned us and tore a hole in Jake's cheek). Chloe is hilarious, she is playful and funny. At night she is all snuggles and love, preferring to sleep either on a black blankey at the end of my bed or with one of the boys. If anyone at any time is lying down for any reason, she is all about naptime.

Probably my favorite weird cat quirk is that Chloe will do just about anything for a hair rubber band to play with but the love of her life is any puffball that has sparkles in it. She will carry them around, pounce on them, stare at the stove when they get stuck under neath it until Tyler comes and pulls them out with a hanger.

To say I love my cat is an understatement. She rocks.

A baseball Player!

We were so excited when Jake expressed an interest in playing baseball this year. We weren't sure what to expect, and we were amazed at how quickly he picked up the sport. Here's some photos from the year...

Tyler's birthday

10 years old already! This year for Tyler's birthday he wanted a cake with lego minifigure heads and m&m's. It was so fun to make! I ended up using marshmallows for the mini figure heads and dipped them in yellow colored white chocolate, easy and delicious! I still remember the first cake I ever made, it was a fire truck cake and it had hundreds of little frosting stars to fill in the fire truck. We've come a long ways!

Ty and Soccer

Ty played soccer as usual, he loved it but missed playing on the same team as Tyler Mauch. from UT.

Raiders!!

Christmas eve dawned with no snow and beautiful skies with two REALLY excited guys all prepped for the Kansas city Chiefs to play the....RAIDERS!! Finally we live somewhere that plays the Raiders and finally a game that was not on Sunday, wouldn't you know it, it fell on Christmas eve. No worries, I have no problem spending a day undisturbed in the kitchen while my boys freeze their behinds off at a football game!

Toward the end of the game time I was in a movie store looking for a good rental for the night and they had the game playing. It was in overtime and as I heard the Raiders score the win I started freaking out, only to realize too late that the entire store was glaring at me. Oops, I forgot, these people were rooting for the Chiefs :)

The Nutcracker Ballet

This year I got the opportunity to take Lindi and Natali to the nutcracker ballet! It was really fun having girls to take with me like my mommy used to take me with her. We got all dolled up and went to dinner before hand. It was a blast!

Love that you can see the neighbor girl taking our picture in the mirror!

Fall 2011

 This was the first indication that things were a little different in the midwest. Tyler found a live exhibit of Eric Carle's hungry caterpillar. This was the first in a slew of bugs that are still leaving us shaking our heads at the decision to stay here.

We also got to experience: Cockroaches, giant ants, brown recluse spiders, tics, chiggers, a hoard of ladybugs, a type of wasp that looks like the devil himself spawned them, and mosquitos the size of ATV's.





Then came the first day of school and Halloween, pretty close together. Jake was a little more excited for a new school then Tyler was.

Halloween we  ended up with a Harry Potter and a Halo guy. I think that's my favorite costume of Jake's...until 2012, but I'll get to that later...

There was a scarecrow contest on post last year for our neighborhood. To give you some background if you are not aware, we were living on Fort Leavenworth. As it Leavenworth penitentiary's home base. So They do all kinds of things like the jail bird 5k where people dress up like criminals. So in the spirit of things I created these little guys! 

 And last but not least, the sight that warmed my heart this year was all the times the kids piled on one couch and fell asleep, this time we even had the dog in the mix. He's got the "I'm bad" look there.