I put a couple more pictures from Friday's track meet on the Snapfish Track album. It was FREEZING Friday night so Maegan had on her black spandex when she ran. We were all bundled up under blankets in the stands. Maegan bettered her 2 mile time by over a minute and her 1 mile time by almost 30 seconds. I talked to her coach briefly and she was very pleased with Maegan's progress. As were we. She came in middle of the pack in both races, which is treat for a freshman running against juniors and seniors on varsity. After her first race we kidnapped her and ran over to Sonic to get Paisley, Jansen and I some dinner. It was so cold and she doesn't really know anyone else on the team so she just rode with us to warm up a bit and then we went back. Paisley's parents came right after her last race had ended, they had been at the PA Mardi Gras parade and drove straight over hoping to catch Maegan's last race. They are always so sweet and supportive. Saturday Maegan and I went shopping and she got 7 shirts and a jacket. We went to Target and then to Parkdale Mall. I got a few things of course I'm returning one of them. She also got a possible prom dress at Forever 21. I think it's cute....but a bit short because shes so small and so tall. It's a strapless black silk short dress. I'll try to get a pic of her in it this week. We came back and she had Nikki, Dara, Steven and Bobby over to play Wii and watch a movie. The Wii remote batteries have died so they didn't get to play but they did watch a movie and popped some popcorn and laughed and talked. They THOUGHT they were going to turn the lights off during the movie but I soon corrected that situation and they watched a very scary movie and everyone was gone by 10. Maegan had to be at church at 8:45 this morning to help put together choir notebooks for the Mission Trip she is going on. So that's our weekend, I washed the car and did laundry today and Maegan did homework and read her book. We're watching A Walk to Remember on TV and then I guess we'll go on to bed. Hope everyone has had a good weekend. Love you all.....

Honey Video

Track Videos

Just a quick word before I get in bed. It's been a long day. Maegan ran the 2 mile at 3:15. There were 28 girls in her group running at the same time. She said she thinks she got like 15th. I think she was thinking she would do better, but that was a TON of girls. I called her after school and she said it would be at least seven before she ran again. There are 12 running events, girl and then boys, and then there are several heats for each run. So it was going to be a long while before her turn because her mile and a half was the second to last run. I got there about 6:30 and James and Paisley and Jansen had arrived just before me. Leo and Sandy got there about ten minutes after I did. Turns out she didn't run until eight o'clock. So it was a long night of sitting in the humid wind. But Jansen entertained us all and Maegan came and sat with us for a little while. There were 28 girls again....WAY to many. They had to stagger them to start which really wasn't fair since there were four girls in each lane and no one had to stay in the lane they started in. Paisley and I were wishing Maegan were a little pushier and would have pushed her way to the front, but they were lined up by numbers so she was about in the middle to start. She got about fifteenth again I think. She starts off so slow and then is so tired by the end she just never catches up. We were all saying she needs to start out faster and then pace herself. My friend Kevin that teaches at my school is one of the Memorial track coaches and when we were leaving he said "She has too much energy at the very end, she needs to start off faster". Which is what we thought too. James ended up having to leave before she ran because he was working. I took some pictures and some video clips but I have Maegan's camera and she has the cord at her dad's so I will have to wait and put them on Snapfish Sunday when she gets back. Maegan and Jansen rode home with me, because of course I forgot her bag and laptop here even though it was sitting by the front door. He's so cute and sweet to everyone, such a joy to be around. Maegan is supposed to go to the movies and to eat tomorrow at lunch time with her 'boyfriend' Steven and a few other people. So that's all I have. I've had a long couple of days and predict a hard day tomorrow so I probably won't post for the weekend. Love you all...

TIKAL TEMPLE COMPLETED!!!

SEE VIDEO BELOW

Well Maegaen finally got her class rank today. She's number ONE with five other people! Out of 391. SO that was pretty big news. She also got her track bag with her uniform and practice clothes in preparation for her first track meet on Friday. Lyndi, Lexi and Lynli Bonin came by tonight to pick up a shirt and stayed for a while and visited which was really nice. Lexi and Lynli both love Maegan and she doesn't get to see them very often since they moved to Orangefield. So that's our day.

Temple Completion Part I

So construction is finished on the Tikal Temple. FINALLY. 100 hours later. Now we are in the final stages of putting all the pieces together and getting it on the display board. Then we'll add the grass. This is the first pic of the end process.

Here's a pic of the original temple:

Max's Video

Just wanted to see if I could post a video. Max got on that soft blanket Holly gave me for Christmas and has ensconced himself on it.

Sunday
Maegan made it home last night around 9:30. She was pretty exhausted because she'd been up since 5:45 that morning. One of the girls in her room, Dara, had to catch the early bus at seven for her Ready Writing event (and ended up placing 4th) so they were all up before six. She did well in her News Writing event, she got sixth place and a ribbon. I am really proud of her. It was her first time competing in that event and she's only written one practice article for it last week. PNG won the sweepstakes for the whole event so overall everyone did very well. She also did Math, which is unbelievably hard. She only answered 11 questions I think but her score was over double what it was in the last meet. I looked over her math test she brought home and I couldn't believe she even knew enough as a freshman to answer those eleven! She also brought home a little bit of her news article, she didn't have time to recopy all of it, but what she brought home was really good. She and her three friends stayed in a room together that had a connecting door which they discovered connected them to a room full of junior and senior boys! Good thing these were all really good girls or that might have been a little bit of trouble. She said they went to Barnes and Nobles but did not get to go to any kind of book store on campus. They stopped in Conroe and ate at some Mexican place last night on the way home. I went yesterday and got Max so he accompanied me to pick up Maegan last night and she was thrilled. I got the temple sprayed yesterday so today she is going to try to get the front staircase finished and attached. She has to turn it in Friday and it still has to be attached to the board and then we bought some kind of kit that makes fake grass. So that will have to be put on and she has to write a short summary of some sort about it. I sure enjoyed Holly's posting and pictures, loved the little Wee sitting next to the 'big art'. So sweet. I'm waiting on Maegan to get up and Mom's going to try to call when she does. Zoe is resting in the brown chair and Max is sprawled out on the carpet in a patch of sunshine. Hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend. Love to you all.....

Well, first of all, we are very excited we will be having visitors in April (mel and meg)... I told mel tonight that the heroine can help tutor meg in math for her next UIL meet , NOT !! hellooo, how did she get to be such a good and smart girl, its beyond me !! but anyway, I am hoping we can take her to see Berekly when they are here, its such an amazing campus and I think with all those smarts, she can just make that her FIRST choice ! who needs new england winters and all those ivy league snobs !! bah....
anyway, its about time I step up and write our various goings on here in SF....Claude LOVES his trout ! see picture !! still having very warm weather which is of course great except we will have severe drought this coming summer if we don't get more rain....mostly the city is abuzz though, even with the recession finally hitting here, folks are still out and about...talked to a friend who was interviewing for ONE restaurant server position, she had been interviewing people for 2 hours and still have over 200 people left in line to apply...really sad stories of course, lots of people unemployed and now the state is holding back our tax returns...Dana decided she is going to mail the IOU from the state to the Property Tax folks and tell them they can work it out amongst themselves ! Ha !! I have to say though, a recession or not, its not the middle east and today I did NOT have to put my used toilet paper anywhere but where is GOES (P.S. Mother, I remember you telling me that but I had conveniently forgotten for my own peace of mind)
Anyway, I took the boys to the beach today, it was Izzy's first time (jake's little brother) and we stayed an extra hour, they were just so cute !! I could watch them for hours...mr grump (claude) is finally getting used to Izzy and starting to interact with him, so that was fun and then I went for coffee with Randy Hyde who I found out also went to UT after graduating from PN-G and lived in Los Angeles for 7 years before moving to San Francisco ! We met for coffee at Ritual coffee, amazing lattes, and had the best chat...he was going to dinner, so we didn't have long but it was so fun to see him and lament our jr high (he got me my second corsage ever and we went to homecoming in 6th grade) and high school days...
So staying pretty low, cooking alot and Im going to meetings...work has been insane, just keep laying off more and more people but work still keeps coming in, I have been slotted once again to step into a role I know nothing about while a dev manager is in New Zealand for three weeks, its amazing how many areas of my life the program works !! Next right thing, first things first, etc..etc..so I will be working a bit more than usual but thats ok, I haven't had too much overtime the last couple of years and its really good exposure...

We are having a literary dinner weekend after next with one of the managers in my group, her husband and Dennis to discuss the book, "Master and the Margarita" which is famous Russian literature...She has a book list for me of books I read and her husband is a big lawyer, very smart, I mostly will be saying "what are the words coming out of your mouth" but will try to find a Cliffs notes something so I can have something intelligent to say about the book which I did read...anyway, Nelli is her name, she is the one who will be in Israel for a month in April, assuming her father isn't still sick , but anyway, she said the other day that I was the most trainable person to have come into that group ever and what a good job I was doing, which was HIGH PRAISE from her, she is very tough and hard, so it really felt like the last two years of learning and doing whatever they asked really has paid off, I do know the tiniest bit about data warehousing and Visa, so its really rewarding to have someone notice !! in these economic times, I am grateful for a job and that I can pay my mortgage, so its all lagniappe !!
So I also got the big painting today from that gallery in Houston, 6 months later and alot of drama but its beautiful, I posted a picture on Facebook, Mr Claude had secured his spot on the blanket right below it of course !! we're going to put it where dana's grandfathers WWII picture is, its really the only spot big enough...and I got a little card thing that was hand calligraphy from Paris framed last week too, its going in the downstairs bedroom, I will post a picture when we get it...Dana just informed me Claude has repositioned himself by the painting again...ha !! he's too funny !!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Maegan made it safely to A&M today. I stayed at work all day but my kids were so bad that I should have stayed home. I haven't been able to talk to Maegan, she just texted me but if there's anything to post when I do I will let everyone know.

Flu News

More news. I started feeling bad this morning during our grade level meeting and went to the nurse around ten and she took my temp. and it was 100.5 so I had to scramble to find an aide to take my class for the afternoon. She had been in Missy's room all morning because Hannah has the flu as well. So I didn't get to leave until around 11:45. I came home and laid down for about thirty minutes and then drug myself to the doctor. Which surprisingly only took 40 minutes instead of the usual hour and a half. He said he felt like it was too late for TamiFlu because you are supposed to take it within the first 48 hours. But I told him I'd chance it. His suggestion was to take Tylenol/Advil and drink lots of fluid and wait it out. So I went to Wal Mart to bring my prescription and went by Sonic to get a drink because my mouth was dry. Came home and slept till 3:15 and left to go back to Wal Mart to pick up my medicine and called on the way over there and sure enough the lady said it wasn't ready and I'd have to talk to the pharmacy tech about why when I got there. I hung up and thought bull on that....I want to talk to him NOW! So I called back and he said that the dosage on the scrip was no longer available and they had called Dr. Nooori and hadn't heard back from him. RRRRrrrrr... SO I promptly called Kim and she said she just got off the phone with him that she didn't get the message until after she got back from lunch. So irritating. So I went on up there and had to deal with three differen't people who didn't realize the doctor had called and FINALLY the pharmacist intervened and said he was going to get it done right then. It ended up being $40 which was confusing because Mark's was only $10 for the same medicine. So that's just one more thing I'll have to investigate. I also got some DayQuil and NyQuil and plan on taking it to combat the symptoms. He said for me not to go back to work until Monday but I really need to be there Friday so we'll see. I just picked up Meg from track and she is doing her homework. They are having some kind of Evangelism thing tonight at church so she is going to stay and work on her project. We've got to get this thing wrapped up before February 13th and she's going to be gone this weekend. So we're home for the night. That's all I have for now.

Hello everyone. It's Wednesday, thank goodness. Only two more days to go after today. I've been sick since last week and can't quite seem to get rid of it. It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to make the trip to College Station this weekend as Cheryl has two young babies and I certainly wouldn't want to get them sick! Maegan went to her UIL meeting yesterday and got all her info. They will leave school at 1:30 on Friday (which we don't understand because none of her events are until Sat.) and she will be staying in a room with Dara, April and Taylor (Stevens). She is really looking forward to it and I hope that she will get to see the campus some while she's there. They will be back home between 8-9 on Saturday night. She still has a lot of work to do to complete the temple, the stairs are still killing us! She said yesterday that they were telling her teacher how much money they had to put in to this project and he said he had no idea it was that expensive and might not make the classes do it next year. It is a bit ridiculous, and I can't imagine what those kids do whose parents don't have and extra $75-$100 to spend on a class project. Anyway, it's been a chore and she is very ready to have it done and over with! Styrofoam is a VERY messy thing to fool with and there are little white flakes all over the carpet all the time. I talked to Sandy Hebert for a little while yesterday, she is so sweet and offered to bring me some chicken noodle soup. I had to get off the phone because when I talk it starts a coughing spell and it just goes on and on. I talked to my sister later about our trip out there for Easter and she said I sounded like Aunt and I said I wished I had an oxygen tank to hook myself up to! I hope everyone is having a good week and is well. Love to you all...

Well not much to blog about for the weekend. Maegan was with James and Paisley this weekend. She went to the movies with a group on Sat. night and then spent the night at Dara's that night. Paisley and James dropped her off today around four on their way to a Super Bowl party at Paisley's sister Crystals. I am still feeling sick and started running a little bit of fever, not much but still enough to sort of put me out of commission for the day. I'm taking some medicine and hopefully will feel better tomorrow. Maegan worked on the temple some tonight, we spent a great deal of time being frustrated at the thought of how to get the stairs built. We attempted to start on them but don't know if our plan will work or not. We'll see tomorrow. I got to talk with Mom for a little bit yesterday and was so happy to hear the box I sent finally got there! I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend. Love to you all...