Skyler turned 3!!!!!!

Our little girl turned 3 last week. I haven't had time to blog about it yet, so I thought I would and share some pictures too. What a sweet little girl she is. She is generally always wants to be a good girl and lets you know if she has been wronged. Usually by her sister. Her latest crazes are My Little Pony, Kitties (and kind of cute cat toy or real), Princesses, Tinkerbell, Animals of all kinds....etc. She loves to have a bag or purse or small luggage and fill it with every toy she can cram in there. We found out from our friend who works in her room at church that she does the same thing at church. She gets the big tea pot and fills it with all of the kitchen stuff and walks around with it. It's hilarious. Until everything doesn't fit. Then she gets frustrated. lol She also likes to play games (including some Wii ones now). She is always asking questions and telling us random things she knows. We are always amazed by the things that come out of her mouth. (In a good way.) Some of her favorite shows to watch are Backyardigans, Little Einsteins, Wonder Pets, Dora, Skunk Fu, Sponge Bob, etc. She loves reading books and is always bringing another out to read. She likes to pray for our meals and at prayer time before bed. And she ends every prayer with, "Amen, Amen." She loves to be a part of everything and this also includes stamping and crafts. Painting is a huge blast too. She is a runner. Sometimes she will be on her trike for a while and just stop to get off to run after her sister (and catch her). She loves her family and prays for everyone often. If she could, she would take all of her toys and animals to bed with her. She's really quite a special little girl. Even though she would say she's big. I can't believe she's 3 years old already. When did that happen? Where did all of that time go? She sure is growing up. We love you Sky!

Oh ya, some of her nicknames are: Sky, Pumpkin, Bubba(s), Sweetie Pie, Silly Goose

Ok, so these are totally out of order now. Oh well. This is from Skyler's birthday.

On her birthday we went to the park with her cousins, Madi and Josh.

Later that day we went to Disneyland. Yes, she needs a pass now. But at least by going on her birthday we got $59 dollars off.

After Disneyland we got home and had a little cake and ice cream.

I took some pictures of Skyler for her "3 year pictures" at home this year. They were taken on the day of her birthday.

This is one of my favorite pictures from Skyler's party.

It's my party!!

That funny smile of hers. This is the fake one.

Weight Loss Journey

I have become newly motivated to continue on my weight loss journey. I had lost 9 pounds already, and was at a stand still. This week I lost another 3, bringing my total to 12. I'm always motivated when I watch the Biggest Loser. But this time it really hit home with me. One thing they asked was, what are you waiting for? Because circumstances will never quite be right. I have been very active at the gym, but this last week I did an exceptionally good job. I went to the gym 4 days. All with using the eliptical machine for 40 minutes each time. Once I added strength training with my arms. Once I did strength training with my legs. And each time I did 200 sit ups (which I always do when I go to the gym). I also cut lots of things out of what I am eating, but I am not necessarily following a specific diet, per say. We are eating in for almost every meal. Very rarely do we eat out anymore. And I've been drinking way more water. I feel really good about these changes and I am excited about the weight loss this week. I did have a few little things I probably shouldn't have eaten. But I only had a little each time so that it wasn't a huge indulgence. I have set my first goal and am currently going for that. Then it will be my ultimate goal. I may shoot for smaller goals a long the way to keep me motivated too. I go to the 24 Hour Fitness gym at the Whittwood Towne Center if anyone is interested in joining me.

I was reading about interval cardio training in the Biggest Loser book I have and how you should integrate your workouts with interval ones. Most people do steady state, where you workout with the same resistance or ramp height the whole time you exercise. But interval is where you do a higher resistance or ramp height (or both) for 3 minutes, then have a 1 minute resting period, then do the 3 minutes again, until your workout is done. My body seems to be used to doing this now and all of the last 4 workouts I did were interval. It's fun to switch it up a little and makes the time go by faster. 30 second sprints along the way are good too. I do those at the end of the 3 minutes so I can rest after. :)

So, anyway. I'm excited about this and know I can do it. I keep thinking about those contestants and how hard they workout and work at it. And I think to myself, I could be doing that. I can do that. Sometimes I picture what Bob or Jillian would be saying to me. Especially when I rest my hands on a machine. Anyone who watches the show would understand.

This is a journey and I expect there to be some ups and downs. I hesitated writing anything about this because I didn't want people scrutinizing every move I make or everything I eat. So, please don't say anything if you see me eating something considered "bad". You never know if that was the one "bad" thing I had eaten all week. And all anyone needs is for someone to be all in your face about it. Not that anyone would. I'm just thinking outloud.

On a fun note, I got the Jillian Ultimatum workout Wii game from Christmas if anyone wants to do it with me. I'm excited to try it out more. And the Wii Fit is always fun too. Not a substitute for the gym, but a fun addition to your workouts.

Year in Review 2008

Welcome to Traci's year in review of the year 2008. I was inspired by my husband's blog to do a review. It's amazing how different our perspectives are and how we were involved in different things or what pictures spoke to us more of a certain event. Be prepared, it's long. But worth it.

In January, the highlight for sure was Skyler turning 2. Below is Skyler at her birthday party.

She had a Tinkerbell themed party.

So many events happened in February. First of all, my birthday. A big one for me. I turned 30. Scott threw me a girly party. It was so much fun to just invite all of the girls over to have fun and help celebrate.

My Aunt Maureen, me, Mom, and Shauna all went on a scrapbooking cruise with Screamin' Susie's store. It was so much fun. We actually had a scrapbooking room where we could go at anytime of the day and scrap. Or just hang out at the pool or do whatever else there was to do in the ship. We sailed to Ensenada, Mexico. It was my first time to Mexico.

Courtney turned 4 in Feb also. She was so elated to have her 2 best friends there together with her. She was in heaven. She had a blast with all of her family and friends.

In March, was our church's serve weekend. This is a massive church wide event that had over 100 projects in the local community on one weekend instead of church services that weekend. One of the huge projects was restoring this run down home for this older woman who couldn't keep up her house anymore. It was such an amazing project. Scott was on the committee for this weekend and had his own project too. However, the project got cancelled at the last minute so we got to tag along with the rest of the leaders going around to all of the many sites. We got to pray for them and help encourage those who were working on projects. And I took a million pictures to document all of the projects we went to see and help with. It was such an amazing experience from that perspective. Seeing all of those people in the community helping out was awesome.

Here is a picture of that one house project.


Easter was in March this year.

Jen, Monica, Sunshine and I went to our church's Women's Retreat. It was nice and local this year (near the Block of Orange). We had a great bonding time. Here we all are after our beading class we all took.

Oh the Dodgers. Sorry boys in blue, but I will never again go to see you if you are in the Collesium. Ug what a crazy, scary event. Not the most enjoyable experience of my life and I will not be doing it again. But hey, Scott got to go to the historic game here, so all is well. Just bring it back to good ol' Dodger Stadium, boys.

In April, we went to Goofy's Kitchen. If you have never been, it's a character dining experience. You get to have buffet style food (that is absolutely wonderful), and while you are eating the kids get to have pictures and meet characters. Then they get to dance with Goofy too. So much fun. Here we are with Goofy and the Hoopers.

Courtney's best friend at school is Charis. They are inseparable. This picture was taken at Charis' birthday party. It's so sad right now for them because they had to say goodbye to each other. Charis' family is moving to Hungary to be missionaries. So, for a good reason, but still so sad to see their family leave.

We normally take a picture of Steven and Scott together on their birthday (or whomever's party for the birthday). This year we lost our camera, so we don't have any pics of Scott's birthday, so here is one of Steven's.

And the older girls are posing for pics on the stairs. This was actually taken at Autumns 1st birthday party in Lake Arrowhead.

May started off with a trip to Knott's Berry Farm for Shauna's birthday. It was a crazy night of roller coasters. I managed to keep my dinner in and decided not to go on all of the rides they all went on. Those crazies. This is a pic in the ride line for the Log Ride. Ahh nostalgia.

May for me always includes the end of a semester of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). This was my table who was there at the last meeting (Tea and Testimony day).

As part of T&T, the table leaders (me) decorate their table. This was my table for this semester. I was pretty proud of it. I also made journals for everyone at my table.

This was at Parnell Park for Mother's Day.

In May, Courtney's class did a field trip at the Kidspace Museum. It was awesome to see them all interact with each other. Here is Courtney with 2 of her friends.

At the end of May, we got to take a driving trip to Colorado to see Susie and Adam. We stayed with them, but got to visit with so many people. Scott has a lot of family up there. Here is a picture of our meeting with my friend Jody and her child, Andrew.

While in Colorado we got to go to the Denver Zoo. The girls had an easy riding experience. hehe

Courtney started choir right after she turned 4 (as early as you can start) and this was her first choir performance. She's in the front, farthest on the right.

At the end of the school year, they threw a party for the kids and for the "graduating" pre-k class. The younger preschoolers got to enjoy the party too. Here Courtney is with her teacher, Mrs. Zulueta.

In June we took one of many trips to Disneyland. This is a favorite destination for all of our family. It's fun to see if we can find something new to do. Courtney went on Tower of Terror for the first time right before this picture.

We also took a trip to San Diego & Coronado Island with our Sunday school class. Here is Scott and Skyler on the beaches of Coronado.

June started the beginning of swim class. Both of the girls took a "Mommy and Me" class. My mom went with us. Courtney ended up getting upgraded to the next class since she was ready. By the end of that class she was jumping in the pool, not being caught, and swimming to the side of the pool all by herself. Skyler had lots of fun being a part of the class this year. They both enjoyed practicing in Grandma and Papa's pool.

In July, I took my first solo plane flight to St. Louis. I went there for PartyLite's National Convention. Here I am with my friends, Margaret, Lupe, and Toni. We had such a great time hanging out with just the girls and really getting to know each other. Late night chats and going to Hooters and getting hit on. lol Good times!

After swim class was over we decided to have the girls try out a gymnastics class. They LOVED it. They both did extremely well. They got to move on to the next intermediate class too.

Skyler was the youngest one yet was the only one who on the first day could get her feet up on the bar. Crazy strong girl. This just proved our thoughts of her strength and the instructor mentioned her strength too. By the end of the classes they both were doing flips on the bars. And almost doing cartwheels. Very close.

At the end of July we were crazy enough to do yet another trip. ahhh! But this was an important one. Our annual camping trip. This year we went to Lopez Lake. Ahh the bees. Crazy bees there, but very fun water park.

After Shauna and I had our cruise in February, we joked that we should take the guys on a cruise. Well, here we are in August on our second cruise. :) With the guys this time. We actually went on the same boat. We had a great time!! This time we sailed to Ensenada, Mexico, San Diego, and Catalina.

Since Scott got hired on officially as an employee at Chevron and not just a contractor there, we got to enjoy all of the benefits of being an employee. Our first picnic. It was amazing. The highlight for us was riding the elephant.

My girls are lovers of dance. Especially if it involves a bride. Or any girl in the fancy dresses. Here Courtney is with my cousin, Teri at her wedding in September. They both kept dancing with Teri and any bridesmaid that would dance with them. Or any cousins they knew or didn't know. It was hilarious. Courtney later told me she wanted to dance at more weddings. I told her we could dance at home with that music. She informed me that we couldn't have any of that cool dance music. How are we uncool already?

October came around and we got to see Susie and Adam again. Woho! They came down for a visit and we had a baby shower for them. That's right!!! We have a little niece coming in February!!!!!!!!!! Isabella will be her name. Here is Suz with Court and Sky.

Here the girls are in their Halloween costumes. Courtney as Jasmine and Skyler as a pirate.

The girls got a chance to dance at another wedding. My cousin, Jamie got married to Kory in October. So, we went up to northern CA to come. We went with my parents and camped after the wedding. We were so thrilled when we found out that Jamie and Kory were camping with everyone too. Their honeymoon wasn't until after camping. We were very excited. Here is Courtney and Skyler with their cousin Kayde and one of the flower girls.

November always means that Holiday Elegance is coming. This is a yearly tradition. It usually is at the Disneyland Hotel in the Gran Ballroom. There was a fun fashion show featuring all people from our church. The speaker was great. It was such a wonderful day, as usual. Our family and Shauna's hung out after playing games too. Here is a picture of some of the ladies at our table. (Mom, Linda, Nora, me, & Shauna)

At the beginning of December, Courtney's school did a Christmas Musical.

Courtney's choir at church did a Christmas musical too. They were so cute.

Candlelight 2008. Here is the best shot Scott got of us up there. There was a massive crowd, and the guy's head is covering where I am. But here is an idea of what it looked like. (See previous blog for details.)

Here we are on Christmas Eve. Taking our traditional "Myspace style" picture (taking it ourselves).

Christmas Eve Pajama picture--well, mostly all in pajamas.

Our family on the day after Christmas. We suddenly realized we didn't get one of all of us together. This was taken right before we said goodbye to my brother and his family as they move to Colorado. What's with Colorado, people? Seriously, no one else is allowed to move. Good memories from this past year. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Candlelight 2008

Wow, what an amazing experience it all was. Such a great show and amazing reaction from those who watched as well.

Our day started off by arriving by 12:30pm. Then waited for the practice to start. We went through all of the songs with just the choir and then added the orchestra, hand bells, and heralding trumpeters. Wow, were they loud. Beautiful, but loud. Then we had a break to eat and after that we started getting ready to line up and for more instructions. Then we lined up into 6 huge rows and got our robes on and our little stoles (little collar things). We got to get our fake candles too. :)

Then we started walking. We had about a quarter to half mile walk to get to the right gate to start. We went under the train and everyone was waving their candles. It was awesome. 4 cast members started it and everyone followed. Then we started the procession down the parade route. The funny thing is that we didn't even know what songs we were going to be singing as we did the procession until we heard them playing and started singing them. We knew they were just random carols, but still. I think we should have at least known what songs they were. We sang the same like 3 songs over and over and over until we were finally all up in the risers. We ended at the beginning of Main Street (right in front of the train station).

John Stamos was the narrator this year. He read the Christmas story and it was so awesome to have this message being said to all of those people at Disneyland. It's the most "christian" day at Disneyland. He did a wonderful job of narrating and told of how he used to come to watch Candlelight and how he is a local and goes to Disneyland a lot. He was such a jokester when we were rehearsing. It was cool to see that fun side of him.

The performance went wonderful. Scott and the girls were there watching the first one. Then they went to go on rides. We got to hang out in the Lincoln Theater during our break. They even had a cool dance light on outside. We took a group picture with everyone we could find. Before we knew it, it was time to line up again.

My foot was already hurting before I even got to Disneyland. Let alone all of the walking and standing we did. At one point I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to walk off the risers. But then the pain would subside and I could move it again. I don't know what I did to it. It was hurting on the arch of my foot and radiating to the outside and up. I wasn't the only one who had some kind of thing happen. From what I heard, 3 people went down during the first performance. I didn't see it happen cuz they were all on the opposite side of where I was. We were crammed like sardines, so it's a miracle how they got them off.

The second performance in my opinion was the best. I was able to hit every high note and it felt very good. I was trying to conserve my voice in the first performance so I didn't attempt every one the first time. They told us to do this. Not go for every one if we feel our voice getting shaky. I didn't want to lose my voice. And I didn't...so I was glad I did that. What was awesome is that I could actually see my friends, Don and Amy in the audience. I couldn't believe it. I didn't think there was any chance of seeing anyone I knew in the audience. There were just so many masses of people there, that I thought it was impossible. But there they were cheering us on. I was trying so hard not to wave. hehe

We got to re-enter the park if we wanted to. Plus, they gave us 2 free tickets to come back anytime. So, I'm sure we'll be giving those to someone to use. We also go the opportunity before that night to purchase sweatshirts. And the only way you can get these sweatshirts is by being in the choir. So, of course I got one. I'll wear it proudly.

We caught up with some of the ladies we came with and hung out at Downtown Disney (DTD) a while. Scott and the girls were already at the car about to leave. We kept getting stopped by people telling us thank you and how beautiful it was. Or how much they love it. Or that they come every year. From what I hear, the seats that are reserved were sold out in 3 hours. It's a dining package plus a seat. (And NOT cheap.) Everyone else gets to stand. We kept our robes on for most of the night in DTD because it was so cold. It felt a little silly wearing them, but it was cool too. Cuz people kept stopping us.

We had a great night and it was so fun getting to know some of the ladies in choir better. We were such a huge choir that I was seeing people everywhere that were with us. We were the second largest choir (80). The largest was the Disneyland Employee Choir (125). Most of the choirs were high school choirs or college choirs. Only a couple church choirs. It really was a ministry because not everyone singing really believed in what they were singing. Not necessarily all people in a high school or college choir would be Christians. And of course the audience.

I really hope people were touched as much as I was by this experience. The ladies talked on our way home about whether we would do it again. We all said yes, because the benefits far outweigh the costs.

PLEASE leave a comment if you were there so I'll know. There really is no way of knowing unless you tell me. :) And of course, feel free to leave any comments. I love getting them.

Scott told me when we got home that they announced what choirs were singing in the performance and when they mentioned Whittier Area Community Church, we got a huge roar of clapping and yelling. That was cool. I wish we could have heard it. There must have been lots of supporters out there from church or fellow Whittierites. Another choir from Whittier sang with us too. The Pioneer High School choir.

Christmas Is Upon Us

What a wonderful time of year. And the running around has already begun. One thing we have as a fairly new tradition (this is the 3rd year). Is that we are doing an Advent calendar. Each day we do something special together as a family. For the first day of Advent I was able to go to the movies with my friend, Monica. We had a great girly time watching "4 Christmases". Then we all (both families) went to dinner at Round Table. Oh...such good pizza. I hadn't been there in so long. It just happened to turn into a celebration dinner too. Because while Monica and I were in the theater, she got an amazingly good phone call from her doctor telling her that her bone scan was good. Benign tumor and no cancer in her bones. What huge news!!!! So we had a good ol' celebration with pizza.

Today is our 14 year dating anniversary (this time). We decided to keep celebrating this anniversary by exchanging ornaments. So, when our kids arrived we started making it a family thing. So Scott and I find an ornament for each other and Courtney and Skyler find an ornament for each other. So that will be our Advent thing for today.

The kids keep saying all of these cute things and I keep forgetting to write them down or get them on here. So, I'll try to be better at that.

Today I have the joy of putting all of the loose ends together for MOPS tomorrow. So many last minute things to get or think about. It's the last MOPS of the semester, so it's a special day. I'll be at church later tonight decorating for it. I'm sooo looking forward to tomorrow. It's always such a special day.

Tomorrow night I have one last choir performance before Candlelight that is on Sunday. Disneyland actually has 2 nights of Candlelight (Sat and Sun), but I will only be performing at the one on Sunday. Not that I would see you, but it would be wonderful if anyone wants to come. I have heard that it is quite the experience and as a bonus, John Stamos is the narrator. From what I have heard, we start at Small World and have a procession (while singing) down the parade route all the way to the end of main street. Then we sing the rest there. The performance times are 5:30pm and 8pm.

Friday is Courtney's musical for school at 7pm. The performance is at First Love Calvary Chapel on Hadley Street and Milton Avenue. And that's after a choir practice at church right before that for her other choir (from church).

Saturday is the Dress Rehearsal for the Choir performances on the weekend. At 5pm on Sat. Courtney has one and Sun she has 2 at 9:30am and 11:10am. Then I'm on my way to Candlelight.

As I said, Christmas is upon us. I think this will be one of our busiest weekends of the season.

A little shout out to Kristy and Jason Rosander for being the first people to send us a Christmas card. You guys are on top of it!! A picture and letter. So fun. We are still waiting for our proofs to send ours out. Not to mention not writing the letter yet either. lol

I can't believe I haven't mentioned this. TWILIGHT came out!!!!!!!!!!! And boy was it good. I have already seen it 3 times. Isn't that a little crazy?! It is to me, but it's so good. I don't think I have ever seen a movie that many times in the theater. We hardly ever go to the movies (even though I love it). So seeing a movie 3 times in 1 week is out of the norm. I saw it once with Heidi, once with my mom, and once with Scott, Bryan, and Shauna. It was so fun to see it through the guy's eyes the last time. But at least they kind of can get it a little bit when we talk about it.

We have all of the Christmas decorations up and the lights. It's so much fun. The girls love looking at lights as we drive anywhere. They have a new and bigger appreciation of them this year. That was very evident when we first saw them. They get super excited. Ooh, a snowman, ooh a tree, etc...

Ok, I hope you liked the "Elf Yourself" below. It was fun making it. It's so much better than the one that was out last year. I'm glad they updated it.

Elf Yourself

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Updates

There are always a million things going on in the Steinman house, but sometimes are more than others. So, I thought I would do a few updates.

Choir is going well. We had our huge choir practice with a lot of the choirs that are going to sing at Candlelight. It was a very interesting practice. So many people.

I had a huge inventory clearance sale (open house)for PartyLite at my house on Friday. It was so insane to see how much I was willing to part with and how much I still had after doing that too. Lots of people showed up. PartyLite was also doing an awesome guest special so lots of people decided to order from the catalog too just to get those awesome deals. Need some Christmas presents??? I still have sooo much stuff that I am willing to sell. Most of it is straight from the box and never used. A few things have been used at some shows and others have been used a bunch at shows or in my house (so those are 75% off). Let me know if you want to see what I have. It's always nice to get a good deal.

Ahh Twilight. I went to the movies to see Twilight, of course! It came out this weekend. It was soooooooo good. I wasn't disappointed at all. It was very true to the first book. Some things they elaborated on that weren't talked about much in the book. It definitely made it interesting to say the least. It was suspenseful and left you with a feeling that you knew it wasn't over. (Of course not, there are 3 other books.) Ahh that Edward high feeling. lol You Twilight peeps will know what I mean.

Courtney has a possible print job. She's on the short list for one job. They're still deciding though, so it might not happen, but it's fun to think she has a chance. They asked for more recent pics of the kids in the running. So I sent a few. I'll post the ones I sent so you can see.





We got our Christmas pictures done yesterday. It was fun to see my friend, Lia again. Courtney wasn't feeling all that great though because she still had a fever from an ear infection. On Sunday early morning Courtney couldn't sleep. She kept waking up in pain and crying because her ear hurt. She kept begging me to take her to the hospital to get an "anbiotic shot" as she calls it. So, I took her to the hospital at 3 something in the morning. They gave her some meds. Thankfully, not a shot. We got home at about 5:30am and then went to sleep finally. She got the fever to go along with her infection on Sunday morning after she woke up. But that's already gone.

I have lots of new pics to share but I will have to upload them first.

Biggest Loser

Ok, so who watched it last night???? I love this show. It is so motivational. Ok, so I was watching it instead of going to Step class and taping it. lol But I'm letting my neck recover for one more week before going back to Step.

And all of America cheers as Amy votes off Brady! The only thing that would have been better would be if Vicky or Heba was voted off. But that wasn't going to happen this week. I have hope.

So, what does everyone think of Vicky? Seriously, she is bordering on insane. Does she not realize how obvious she is being? She treats Phil and Amy so bad. She's horrible. I'm glad Phil didn't get back so that he didn't have to endure Heba or Vicky. Even though Phil was really the only one who deserved to come back (most weight loss over all of those who got kicked off already). Oh, and I love how Bob totally sees right through everything she does and knows what she's all about.

Video

Please watch this video. It's so sweet. It made me cry.

Only 2 days yet so much happened

So, let's start with Friday. Friday was so much fun as it was Halloween. The girls were very excited to put their costumes on and go. Courtney got her 1st hair cut ever. She just got a trim of about 2 1/2 inches. But now it looks healthier at the bottom. I had only ever cut a tiny piece off of one side because it was so much longer than the rest of her hair when she was tiny. So, this was the first real cut. Aww.

Shawn, Rani, Steven, Willow, and Autumn (my brother, sister in law, nephew and nieces) came down to spend Halloween with us. The kids couldn't have been happier to spend the night with them. We started the night off going to Scott's parent's house so we could trick or treat them really early. And they could see their costumes and all. Then we headed over to the Guthrie's house. The kids got to hang out for a tiny bit and we got to lend a crown to Kate to enhance her cute costume. The kids had a blast. We then headed over to my Grandparents house (5:30). We were meeting my mom, my brother's family and my grandparents there. We always go to trick or treat them because I remember always doing that when we were little. So, I wanted to keep up with that tradition. Then we headed home to eat some food. We had to wait for the pizza to arrive, which we weren't anticipating taking so long. Apparently everyone wanted pizza. My Aunt Maureen came over to hang out with us too. Then Rani and the kids came over and we all went trick or treating on our block. We have never actually trick or treated that much. It was fun and the kids had so much energy. They would have lasted a lot longer, but we all decided we were done. They already had a ton of candy. We then went over to my mom's house to see my dad and brother. They were working on his moterhome since he would be leaving the following day for Colorado. We had fun hanging out and spending time with them. It was sad to say goodbye to Shawn. Last I heard, he was heading into Utah, so I'm assuming he's to Colorado by now. (Sunday) So, that was our eventful Halloween.

Saturday had much more in store for us. First of all we were getting ready for a Halloween party at our house for our Sunday school class that would start at 5. Then we had Courtney's audition before that. It's her first print audition (modeling). It was for H&M (a clothing company). Anyway...as we are headed there we get in a car accident. Less then half a mile from our house. We were headed east on Lambert and had just accelerated after our green light turned crossing Colima. It had just been sprinkling so the ground was slick. All of a sudden all of the cars in front of us were stopped. So we slammed on our breaks just barely NOT hitting the car in front of us. The reason why everyone was stopped was because a cop was coming towards oncoming traffic (on our side) with his lights on and siren. So we barely miss hitting the car in front of us. But the car behind us slammed on their brakes and according to him the car kept sliding towards us anyway like his brakes locked or something. It was a hard hit. And by some miracle, we don't hit the car in front of us. (Even though he did end up pulling over to check his car. He must have heard the loud crunching noise.) So, we pull over to make sure every one's ok. Then decide to pull over on Mills (the next street) so we won't be blocking traffic. Everyone seemed fine and I was SHOCKED that the back end of our car wasn't crunched. I was expecting it. There were 2 tiny little puncture marks from the screws of his license plate frame on our car. That's it! His car however lost some paint in the front. They had a small car though so it probably went partially under our car. (We were in the van.) They were so nice and apologetic too. He even said that he had never been in an accident before. So we exchanged information and went on our way. As we got out of the car the second time my neck started hurting a little bit. And by the time we were on the freeway to go to LA, my head and neck were hurting.

So, we get to Courtney's audition. Skyler was asleep so Scott stayed with her in the car. We walked up 4 flights of stairs to the place and there were several people there already waiting. We all were getting a little agitated that the doors weren't open yet. We got there at 1 and the auditions were supposed to go from 1-3. (Show up any time between there.) So, we wait. Thankfully I had stuff with me for Courtney to do. Then this guy comes up the stairs with boxes of food in his hands and goes in the door. We're like, oh great. Then the same guys comes back out without saying a word and takes off the sign on the door that says "the doors will be open at 1"...to "the doors will be open at 2". All of the parents are getting livid at this point. Come on. Don't tell us to come between 1-3 if you aren't opening the doors until 2. Ug! But you drive all this way, so I didn't want to leave without actually auditioning. And the kids were all doing really great. Playing games and coloring and stuff like that. So, one of the moms calls our agent (we have the same one). Then the agent calls the lady in charge of the audition (who was inside). Apparently it worked because she came out apologizing and letting us in. Thankfully we came when we did because there were now a lot of people there. When the sign went up that it wasn't going to open until 2 we started making our own sign in sheet. Everyone was getting worried with the amount of people who were there that no one would remember. So, we created our own to be fair. We were 8th on the list. So, when the lady came out, she took the first 15. Woho! We're in. Once we were in, it didn't take long at all. They asked for her info, measured her to see how tall she is, and took a few pictures of her. Done. So, thankfully all of the drama was a good distraction from my neck hurting. On the way home, however, I started feeling it again.

We had a few hours to play with the kids and get ready for the party. We had a wonderful Halloween party. The Lang, Mrla, Rodriguez, Canada, Wilson, Joel, and Rubio families joined us for a great night of gaming. We played Mafia a couple times and Monica dominated one game. We also played Catch Phrase and Cranium. It was so much fun. My neck and head was hurting during the party. And how sweet of Amy to give me a little massage. :)

So, that was the 2 days and a crazy 2 days it was. Mainly compounded by the accident and major adrenaline rush from that. So, it's Sunday after church now and my neck is still hurting. My head isn't so bad right now. But my neck is more stiff and sore. I'm going to go to urgent care at least to have it looked at to be sure and to have it documented and all of that. Just in case. Scott's on his way to Disneyland right now to renew his pass and come back and then I'll be going to urgent care. We would just go with him to Disneyland later, but there is no way I would go there right now. Any major bump would just aggravate it. Ok, I'm going to post this and then post pictures of all of the events later.