Christmas Eve!

We are soooo excited for tonight! Kaylie has picked out Santa's treat menu! She says he wants Oreo's and milk NOT Egg Nog! After all Oreo's are milk's best cookie :)
We are hoping that Kaylie, Jeff and Ashley will get over their sicknesses today! Colds are a terrible thing to have for Christmas! I think Ashley feels the worst but she is such a sweet little thing and as long as she is being held is perfectly content. I tried to take pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses but my camera battery died so this is all I could get. At least I'll have the battery all charged for Christmas! I think everyone in our family made it on the "Nice List", but we'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out for sure!! Merry Christmas everyone, we were LAME this year and didn't get our Christmas cards sent out but we love all of our friends and family and hope you know that we are thinking of you!

How do you like Kaylie's baby Jesus? In nursery yesterday all the kids got a special doll (baby Jesus) wrapped in swaddling clothes. Of course he was from the dollar store....anyway his head popped off and Kaylie was so upset that Jesus had been beheaded so dad fixed him....Duct tape fixes everything right? She was thrilled! She said, "Hey now he's wearing a shirt!"

Marsha and Melissa!

I'm watching you!!!! Haha!

December!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! We are so excited for Christmas this year. Kaylie made sure that we put up our christmas tree and said we had to put "uniforms" on it. Aka..ornaments. She now knows the difference :) This morning we woke up to the best thing ever SNOW so it really looks like Christmas! We quickly put on our snow gear and went outside to make "Frosty the Snowman". We used oreos for his eyes, paper for his nose and buttons, and blueberries for his mouth. It was a lot of fun and then we came inside for some hot chocolate! We also made a chain of paper to count down the days until Christmas! As Kaylie would say....GIPPEE! Ashley stayed inside with daddy but we had to take pictures of her too!

Nicknames

So I have started calling my children Zerg and Zork both used interchangeably. The question I keep getting is why? and where did these names come from? Do you remember the evil emperor Zerg from Toy Story? That is Kaylie....no explanation necessary....except when she's being sweet and adorable which really does still happen! (in glimpses). And why do I call sweet innocent Ashley these names? Because she grins huge every time I say them so maybe she just likes the ZZ sound? Who knows? I'm not very good at nicknames if you couldn't already tell but I come by it honestly! My sister calls her little boy doodoo.....Where did that come from? No, not from poop, but from dude! But if you didn't know....what would you think???

The End

Here's my cute husband who cheered me on the whole time! Okay so he went back to bed after dropping us off but at least he was at the finish line! I love you Jeff!

San Francisco (cont.)

Do you notice that I don't even stop eating for the interview? I'm pretty sure I'm completely retarded! And do you see that cute Asian girl next to us smiling with the black and green tank top? Yeah, she's the one who gave them the answers they were looking for!

You look happy, how do you feel Julie? "Happy." Wow, great response!

Man, that bagel must have been good! I'm flaunting it in front of the camera the entire time! Grinning to the camera, but really I must have been thinking, "when can I eat this last bite?!?"

Me and Leslie :)

I love my sister!! She is so much fun and it's just too bad not everyone has a cool sister like her!

Happy Halloween

Kaylie as Tinkerbell
The beautiful fairies!
Ashley as the cute little Pumpkin
Lauren and Ashley
Us Girls!

Jeff's cool pumpkin!

All worn out!

Kaylie's new BFF "Victor Dracula"

For Halloween Kaylie was Tinkerbell and Ashley was a pumpkin. Kaylie had a blast wearing her costume all week! She got to go to two Halloween parties and ended up with the Flu Tuesday night. However, she was well enough to go trunk-or-treating Wednesday. We actually carved our pumpkins this year! Well we did Kaylie's and Jeff's. He did this cool skull pumpkin, he drew it first and then carved it. I could never do that! We saw some really cute costumes this year and maybe next year Jeff and I will actually dress up! (Doubt it).

San Francisco!!

So this post is overdue but here it is. We had a lot of fun on our trip to San Francisco. We went to Alcatraz and to the Body Worlds II exhibit, which was amazing, and of course the Nike Women's Run Like a Girl marathon! Leslie and I ran the half marathon and more pictures will be coming but we forgot our camera so Leslie still has to email them to me:) Our goal was to run the whole time and to finish around 2:15 which wasn't too far off from our official time of 2h 18m 21s. There were a lot of hills and it was actually easiest to run up them. The hard parts of the run for me were the flat parts. There were 23,000 people signed up to run this race so it was extremely crowded. We started at Union Square and ran down along the piers through Presidio and ended up at the ocean. The last curve as we came down the coast was soooo pretty. The beach was practically empty and the waves were rolling in and I loved it! Of course it helped to know that we were almost done. They had something to hand out at most of the

mile markers but the best was the Ghiradelli Chocolate mile. I didn't eat them right away but they were very good after the race. The run was for Leukemia and they raised over 18.5 million dollars! It was fun running in a mostly all girls race. The only annoying part about it was how congested and hard to get started it was for the first 3 miles! After we were done some news channel asked if they could interview us and some other girl that was standing by us. I don't think they liked our answers! Of course they did ask us what the "hardest part of the run was." I was thinking about it and didn't know what to say, and Leslie said, "the most annoying part was the first 3 miles because we couldn't get going." The news lady just stared at us. I think she was looking for "the hill at mile 9" or something like that. Then she said, well you look happy, how do you feel? And we said, "happy". She just stared at us again and then turned to the girl next to us who gushed about what a wonderful race this was and what a great opportunity to be able to run for such a good cause and thanks for all the volunteers along the way.....I don't think they aired our part! We weren't exactly camera material. I had no idea what to say or do. I was like a deer in the headlights. Leslie and I had a good laugh afterwords. I missed my kids terribly and probably won't leave them again for a while! I almost forgot about the finish line surprise! As we crossed the finish line we were handed a little blue Tiffany's box, yes that's right we got Tiffany's necklaces. SWEET!

Jeff and I on Alcatraz Island

I caught me a Deer !!!

Well the hunt is over. After only the first four days the group was done. Tuesday night after being bit by an inmate and having to be treated for that I finally made it up to the mountains. The next morning was the season opening. That morning Doug Attwood (a Deputy that works with me) shot a deer at about 100 yards on the run. The rest of the day we didn't see a lot of movement. Next day in the morning my Sergeant got a 4x5 just down the road from camp. It was a good number of points but a very small deer. Later that night another Deputy got a small two point over by the lower pond. The next morning nothing much was moving, that evening every one else was out hunting and I was left to watch camp and wait for the rest of the group to show up. It was just about sun down and I decided that I would just go up the mountain to see if I could push something down a draw to my Sergeant who was now hunting with his two daughters. My buddy Dean Larsen left the keys to his dirt bike so I could use it if I wanted. I took the bike and headed up the mountain. As I summited the hill to the top of the draw I came around the corner and found a buck staring right at me. I froze to see if he was going to bolt or hang around. After about two minutes of him staring at me he took about three bounds around the corner and stopped and looked back. I cut the engine to the bike and slowly got off, removed my muzzle loader off my shoulder, cocked the hammer and crouched down to see if he was still there. He was still there but all I could see was his neck and head. I finally decided that I had to shoot for his neck or I wouldn't get a better shot. I squoze the trigger and he dropped immediately. He was a good size deer with nice brow tines. He was the biggest deer we got through the entire hunt. It was a blast to be out there and to have the chance to camp with my friends.

Kaylie's favorite things...

Her favorite things (Translation)

1. Old MacDonald's (to get a hamburger and of course we sing the song!)
2. Sprinklers (Pringles potato chips)
3. Baby Enema from Costco (The name is really EMMA, she can say it now)
4. Nummy nums (M & M's)
5. ABCD123TL14, 15 Z... (Duh the alphabet! And no I didn't teach it to her, obviously Jeff did!)
6. Costco (COSTCO, who doesn't like that store?!?)
7. Playing with the Magzits (Refridgerator MAGNETS, Of course!)
8. Shoes (A girl after my own heart! We went to Target to get her some warm clothes today and she was doing a cheer about shoes in front of all the shoes and stripped down to try on every pair she could grab. Who needs clothes when you have shoes! I finally gave in and just bought her a pair so we could get to the WHOLE REASON WE WENT SHOPPING...WARM CLOTHES because it's FREEZING outside!)
9. Scooby Doo (Because Ethan and Adam like it)
10. Mom's bed ("Jules I can sleep in your bed because dad's not coming home tonight so there is plenty of room for me") WHATEVER!!!! BEEN THERE DONE THAT!
11. Hannah Montana's song Everybody makes mistakes, Everybody has some steaks (Everybody makes mistakes, Everybody has those DAYS, I promised her I'd get her a CD, does Hannah Montana really have a CD or is it just a tv show?)

Every day life :)

Kaylie and Ashley are both so much fun these days! Ashley is smiling and giggling more than ever and Kaylie is getting really good at making towers all by herself with the lego blocks and she can finally pedal by herself on her bike! Kaylie made this tower a few days ago and was so excited that she got it this tall without it falling over. She gets really frustrated when it falls over and yells at her blocks! At first I thought she was playing with someone and was being mean to them, I quickly looked in to find her yelling at her blocks. She told me they were frustrating her because they kept falling over. We tried making a base with some of the bigger blocks and she was a lot happier!

Ashley loves her baths! She prefers to sit in the actual bath tub and kick like crazy but she likes the sink baths too.

The Bar M Ranch

Alex in the car getting ready to go home.

One last glimpse of paradise!

Kaylie was having a hard time getting her shirt on correctly! But she did it all by herself!

The Bar M Ranch

Kaylie with her vanilla ice cream!

Sage the next morning after the run over the mountain, poor dog!

Ethan and Kaylie getting ready to go home :(

Leslie packing up the car

The Bar M Ranch

Ashley and Jackson

Adam, Ashley and Kaylie!

Adam was naked naked so Kaylie took off her clothes so she could be naked naked too! They snacked on these carmel popcorn balls the whole time! Life doesn't get much better than this!

Ashley took a nap on the bear rug!

The Bar M Ranch

Hey Kaylie nice face!

Ashley chilling on the couch

Adam had a little accident on the four wheeler, they went over a bump and he hit his chin on his dad's back and bit through his lower lip! He was so tough! He hardly cried.

More Pictures from the Ranch

Sage after his run over the mountain! Poor dog!

Jackson and his fish!

Ashley and Mom

Kaylie and Jackson, Kaylie wanted her helmet on the entire weekend!

Ashley was so good! She loved to look out the big window in the family room of the Ranch. Sage is Lisa and Russ Ridges dog and she followed the four wheelers up over the mountain and back. I don't think I have ever seen a dog so tired in my entire life! The next morning she just cried and cried she was so sore. She was throwing up after her little excursion over the mountain and wanted to sit in the water! Russ thought she was going to drown in the river so he made her get out and brought her back to the stream by the house. Jackson was so cute with Ashley! Conner was really good. He is so fun, I finally got him to do bones with me! (Knuckles is what we call it).