Sunday, January 23, 2011

Ryan's 8th Birthday Party

My baby can't be 8 already!?!


As most of you know the Homerhouse kids are allowed just a handful of special people for their birthday celebration. This makes things difficult when trying to choose who is going to attend but when we have the birthday treat we can do more intricate activities.

This year Ryan picked her two girlfriends Ashleigh and Shay. She wanted "stars on the ceiling" (a local Mexican place) and to go paint pottery.
We had so much fun hanging out making our creations! Shay made a jet ski, Ryan a turtle, Ash a coffee mug, Jared a snail, Kevin a longhorn magnet and football and I made a cereal bowl with cinnamon toast crunch characters on it. We had so much fun!

Afterwords we went back to the house for some chocolaty-chocolate-chocolate cake...Ryan's favorite.


I hope year 8 brings everything your heart desires Brittle. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Photo Shop Lesson I

I AM SO EXCITED!! Jared has been teaching himself how to use PS Elements the past couple weeks. I got it for Christmas (LAST YEAR...ooops) and I have ALWAYS wanted to do a black and white with a touch of color, that was today's lesson #1 YAY!!
Here is the before:

Here is the after:

Now I want him to help me move the Christmas tree in our photo card.....be back in a minute.

Ok lesson #2 was to move the Christmas tree behind the kids. This year I had grabbed a quick shot on the way out the door to church. Two problems with that 1-the light was behind them (HUGE boo boo) and 2-the tree was moved from the middle of the room where it has always been (eliminating problem number 1). So it drove me crazy to have that dumb window in the back ground of our photo card. I wondered if I could do anything about it in PS...here is the result. :)

and the after:

Obviously this was done quickly, but I know now that it can be done-with time and patience...it's not perfect but it's a start :)
Thanks Jared for the lessons!!

Monday, January 17, 2011

MLK swim meet & Kell Greenhorn

I have no pictures from the MLK meet. I tend to not take my camera there because it is not the best area of town. That was made obvious when Ryan's iPod got stolen while we were sitting with 20 of our friends. On her birthday no less. What a bummer.

As far as swimming was concerned, Ryan placed in all her events. This was her last meet as a 7 year old (since her birthday was the day after they started the meet she was registered as a 7) and she went out with a bang. She has finally grown into her age group and as kids age up and she gets faster I expect her to be close to the top here soon. She is seeded in the top ten for most of her meets and has been in the top 6 after finals. Awesome! The final results are still not posted from this weekends meet but she placed 3rd in her 50 free (dropped 3 seconds and is 3 seconds away from a 9-10 state cut...are you kidding me?!), 6th in her 25 back (right on her time), 2nd in her 50 breast (dropped 1/2 a second), 2nd in her 25 fly (down a second) and she qualified for the medley relay and they took first. WTG Pinkie!

Jared also swam on Saturday for the MLK. Rob hasn't seen him swim in a while and he was pleasantly surprised. :) In his first event he took 3 seconds off his 100 free and took 24th place, next up was his 50 back where he dropped a second and came in 24th place again, 100 breast is still his favorite and he was right at his time and came in 12th, final event of the day was the 100 IM where he came in on his time and probably finished around 22nd.

Sunday was a full day at church and the Kell Longhorn Classic. Since it is our tournament it is mandatory to be there and volunteer. While I took the church shift with Jared and Ryan, Rob took Kevin to the match. It was not a beginners tournament and Kevin got pinned pretty quick in both his matches. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

He came back the next day (Martin Luther King Jr Monday) for the Kell Greenhorn. Also our tournament but this time for 1st and 2nd year wrestlers only. My parents were in town for this since my dad had a hearing aid appointment. So far I was the only one to witness a Kevin win over the last two years and Kevin was set on getting a pin. His first match was a bye, second was a win by forfeit--great, we were guaranteed a bronze before he even stepped foot on the mat.

His first kid beat his first opponent. I looked at Kevin and told him it was the kid he ALMOST beat the week before, he only needed a couple more seconds to get him pinned, so today he just needed to get in there and get the pin early. I have NO CLUE if this was the same kid. :) Kevin got in the ring, put a game face on and got the kid pinned in the first period. AWESOME!!! 1st pin EVER :) Super excited. My dad had to leave for his appointment so he had missed it, luckily Gran was there and so was Jared so I have people to vouch that he did really do it. I bought him his shirt and he was over the moon.

His next match was also a win by forfeit so he was now guaranteed silver. Sweet! The coach of the other kid requested a rematch for exhibition during Kevin's bye. Since Kevin's coach thought the other kid should have won the first time around (he was VERY proud that Kevin went from being the non aggressor to the winner in that match) I wasn't sure how it would go. At least my dad was back in time to see Kevin actually compete. Not sure if the other coach just wanted mat time or redemption? Well, he got the mat time but Kevin walked away with his second pin. Too bad it didn't count for scoring...it was a nice recreation for Grandfather :)

Third match was against the kid that got beat in the first round. I told Kevin that if he won this he was champion. I also told him this kid was taller and faster, but he was stronger and bigger so get in there and intimidate him right off the bat. When he took to the center of the ring I almost peed my pants. The look on his face was like a chihuahua trying to stare down a pit bull. He had this weird constipated angry look on his face but it must have worked. The kid was pinned by the 3rd round and Kevin was the champion of the 10U! I was so super proud of him.

I don't usually take my camera to wrestling because the light is always so poor at the gyms. We were so blessed that a friend of ours was on the floor and took awesome pictures and got some great ones of Kevy. What a memorable day!!

the starting hand shake

Kevin going in for the first strike, right or wrong always go in for the first move. I told him to tackle that poor kid, maybe not what his coach would have said but I put it in terms he could get fired up about.

wrestling faces! love the dimples ;)

take down!

this one makes me laugh and think about Christmas Story, "he laid there like a slug, it was his only defense..."

Guess the kid was trying hard to not get pinned down...

...didn't work! :) Kevin got the pin and the win.

YAY! The Champion :)

Saturday, January 15, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN

HAPPY 8TH BIRTHDAY RYAN!!

WE LOVE YOU!
MOM, DAD, JARED and KEVIN

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Snowmageddon 2011


They started talking about the storm a week ago and they haven't stopped coverage since then. Warnings were given like go buy milk and bread. We have heard it all before but this time it was serious. When they started saying on Saturday that the kids would be out of school Monday I paid attention. There's no way they could mention that without knowing for sure. The hate mail the weather channel would get for false hopes would crash their ratings for sure! The rumor was that the storm was going to hit Sunday around 5 pm. That's fine since we had just made it home from Kevin's wrestling.
5 o'clock came and went. So did 6, 7 and 8. We finally sent the kids to bed knowing that school was closed but we weren't quite sure why. All the states West of us had declared states of emergency, Facebook was going nuts and there was nothing to show for it. Until 9:13 pm. Just kidding, I have no idea when it started. All I know was I stared out that blasted window for HOURS then during a commercial break of Desperate Housewives the deck was covered in a dusting. Could not have been more than 5 minutes, wow. Within 20 minutes we had an inch, in an hour almost 2. By the time we went to bed after surfing news show after news show we had close to 4 1/2 inches. We woke up to a couple more, a total around 6 inches. Problem was that when the system went through it sleeted on top about 1/4-1/2 inch of ice. Fun for sledding, not so much for snow man making. Bottom line? We ended up being out of school ALL week.


Roads were finally tolerable on Thursday but not good enough for buses. School will be out Monday as well for MLK. Ryan keeps going around murmuring how awesome her birthday gift from God is, an entire week off of school. I was happy since I wanted a do-over from being so sick over Christmas. Looks like it's a win-win. Now if you'll excuse me, I am craving milk and eggs with toast. ;)

right before bed, I grabbed the camera. This is the most snow I have seen since 1993.

It's been since the 1980's when Cobb schools were closed for a week. That was also from an "ice storm". At least we didn't lose power on Monday night for the BCS National Championship! War Eagle!! Sorry, I just had to throw that one in there, I found the picture when I was editing photos. ;)


Sunday, January 9, 2011

Sprayberry Classic 2011

After the Grizzly Tournament in December Kevin decided he wanted to wrestle in the Sprayberry Classic in January. He was already signed up for the two Kell tourneys but he wanted to do another one. Since conditioning seems to be his thing more than the killer instinct- get out there and cream your opponent-we decided that Kev would call the shots as to what we signed him up for. He's happy working out and we're happy he's getting exercise in the off season. Whether he competes is totally up to him. I decided to take him by myself since we had an impending storm system moving in. We needed serious provisions and Rob was in charge of doing that.
The first round of three was super intense. Kevin hung in for all 3 periods and the kid got a pin at the last second. I guess he did some sort of hold that wasn't legal so Kevin was pretty upset. Judging by how upset his coach got at the ref, I believe the other kid did something illegal. For the 2nd bout Kevin got in there fast and furious, more like we see him at practice. He WON on points, his first official win!! I was SO happy for him.

I think this was his 10th tournament, an average of three wrestles per tourney-he lost about 30 times in a row...pretty tough to keep getting up from that. But Kevin did, he got the tech win, now he wants the pin win. The third bout was ugly. The kid creamed Kevin on points. I'm not sure if he got a pin or not, the ref was less than stellar. Quite a few complaints but since I have no clue what is allowed or not I just had to depend on the coaches to fight that battle. I snapped another quick shot of Kev with my phone, the lighting was terrible for the big camera. We raced home to settle in for the huge snow storm...would it really snow again this soon?!?