Luke is 15 today!

Age: 2days
Brenden Luke Huffine
born on December 22 at 11:55pm I was in labor for 34 hours and 55 minutes.
Weighed 6lbs 8ozs and you were 18 1/4 inches long. You were 3 weeks early.
The first thing I said when they laid you beside my head so I could see you was, "Oh he's beautiful!" and it was the truth.

Here you are at less than a week old laying beside the giant Christmas Stocking that you were sent home with because you were born 3 days before Christmas. We got out of the hospital on Christmas day.
Here is your first photos with Mom and Dad....Dad is doing ok with the first holding of the baby...me...well as you can see from your cricked neck..I needed some help hehhehe.
The first night you were home, I slept with a big flashlight on with the lamp covered so I could look at you about a thousand times that night. I was terrified of losing you or that something would happen, I looked at you every time you made any sort of noise.




Here you are at 3month I believe. Cute little bugger!

This is at age 1 I believe, Love your hair!


You were such a good baby, Never fussed, always sweet, You were VERY colicky for the first 3 months though. Lots of crying and fussing until we discovered mylicon for your upset tummy and you were as good as gold after that :)
You grew up way to quickly
Here you are at your Christmas play in kindergarten.

And here you are all grown up and 15!
I guess I figured out how to hold you cuz your neck is no longer crooked!
I think you turned out pretty great..and I am very proud to call you my son.


Your brother Timothy wanted to make you a special breakfast for your day so here it is.
1 egg over easy,
1 piece peanut butter toast
Cinnamon apples
1 Happy Birthday Cookie
Bowl of rice crispies *not shown*
Frappachino drink *not shown*
Happy Birthday son.
WE LOVE YOU!!!

Christmas Play and Cookies

My youngest son Timothy, aka Playtime had his annual Christmas Play at our church and like other years this one was a complete disaster but fun none the less.

My adorable son was Joseph this year, in what I thought was the best rendition of Joseph from any year I have seen since my older son Luke was Joseph back a few years ago.

This year my son experienced stage embarrasment at how awful the play really was, because nobody knew their parts, but still it turned out to be a real classic, minus the 2 scenes that were completely skipped.
Here are some pictures and videos. YAY!






Here are some outtake pictures

hahah is it just me or does this look like some 70'sish creap show movie where there are mysterious beings lol. Cracks me up his eyes in that one.

Moving on to our cookie decorating event!
This is the first year we decorated cookies. I thought it was such a great idea until I realized I don't have cookie cutters, but we still had fun and managed to improvise on the shapes of the cookies, We decided we just make christmas ornaments this year (round). It worked out nicely.!
Here are the boys starting their project..



Here is where I told them they didn't get to eat any of them. Tim smile is on the verge of a scream I think hehehehe. Of course I let them eat some!


Here is Steve busy at work on his. It is hard to design with frosting. We went for a more abstract approach to cookie art as you can see on the next 2 pictures.
I am sure they would fetch a handsome price on Ebay but we are going to give them our neighbors and family and friends.

Devil Dogs

Bunny is small, yes...however look how powerful she is...she is controlling Soup with her eyes..wooooweeeeeoooooh scary how this pic turned out

Good Grief aka Chuck in all his Glory

Well my husband decided ultimately to rename Good Grief to "Chuck" however I still like Good Grief therefore I will continue to use Good Grief...anywho...Here he is in all his Christmas ornaments and lights.
He took:
1. 1/2 strand of lights, the other portion of that strand are balled up behind him.
2. Approximately 25-30 ornaments which keep falling off.
3. 2 strands of garland.
4. One tree skirt
5. Some wrapping paper to cover his black bucket (thanks Steve)

So here are some pictures of the boys decorating Good Grief, and the final pictures!

Looks like Luke is about ready to attack Good Grief...I am not sure what the little tree has done to him!


Here are the boys hangin some ornaments Timothy is evaluating which ornament he wants to hang while Luke investigates his fingers..

Timothy seen here is rather proud of the fact he hung an ornament! (cheeseball)
They had an interesting time trying to hang my hookless ornaments on a real tree, it seems real trees dont have hookless friendly branches like our old artificial tree. So they had a hard time hanging anything, and most mornings I have to rehang at least 2 ornaments...I could buy hooks...but I am a rebel.

Bunny watches from amidst the ornament boxes.

And now for your viewing pleasure...Good Grief!!!

Good Grief

It is time for Christmas trees and decorations and this year I wanted a HUGE BIG Beautiful Full Christmas tree for our new home.
I had it all planned out. It would be so big I would have to buy like 5 boxes of brand new ornaments to help decorate it in addition to the box of ornaments I have had for years. However my husband Steve had completely other plans.

I have known and lived with this man for almost 8 years and never had the foggiest clue he was a tree hugger!!! When I outlined my plans for a real tree this year instead of using the old artificial standby he threw up such a fit I was in shock and awe! He was so against the whole establishment of cutting down beautiful trees so we can display them and watch them die for our own amusement it made me feel horrible just for thinking of such a thing.
My argument that the trees were grown just so we can do this seemed to hold no weight with him. His alternative...how about we buy a live Christmas tree!
A Christmas tree that we could keep year after year and then eventually plant in our backyard. He assured me it would be every bit as good as a cut tree and even better than our artificial tree.

So I was given that info to chew on for a few days, and ultimately decided that a live tree would be the "green" thing to do. I am all about being "green" and I liked the idea it would not only provide us a tree for this year but for years to come.
So I agreed.

Off we went to the nursery that proudly displayed, "We have live Christmas trees!!" So we went into the Nursery and to my utter dismay they did have Christmas trees but these were not the big gorgeous trees that are displayed at every street corner, but little trees that I can only explain as "Charlie Brown" Christmas trees.

So although I was about to cry, and pretty much outraged at the injustice of havign to have a 4ft Christmas tree, I compromised and picked one out...My husband named it.... "Good Grief".

It is a cute little tree...and although not beautiful and full now..it will be with us hopefully for many years to come!!

Please meet, "Good Grief"


Here is another picture to give you something to gauge it's size on.

Electric Light Parade

We Saturday was our local electric light parade in Casa Grande. What was cited (by me) to be a joyous time started out a bit tight lipped as my lovably irritating husband can not be a team player and get his butt out the door when necessity calls for a change of plan.

We originally were going to leave the house and be at the parade by 5:30, in years pass this had worked out pretty good. However as I was driving my oldest Luke up to the drop off point for people who were going to be in the parade I realized that at 5:00 oclock and hour before the parade started it was a MAD HOUSE up town and there would be no way to find ANY where to sit if we didn't leave asap! So I rushed home to alert my hubby we were in a noodle and needed to exit the house and go stake our claim of asphalt ASAP!! Time was of the essence!

So I rush home and give my husband all the details of our dilemna, as he was snoozing comfortably on our bed. He didn't move or really comment so I again relayed my time is of the essence message. To my dismay I stood there watching as he he opened his eyes and informed me he wasn't moving and that we wouldn't be leaving any earlier than what we originally planned.

Uh, What??? There is one thing that irritates me more than anything about my husband and it is his inability to be excited about ANYTHING, and his inability to adapt to ever changing situations. UGH, so he toddles off to the shower taking his sweet time while I fly around the house trying to make time go faster until he gets his slow moving butt out of the shower. It seemed like eternity but was only actually 10 minutes or so until he emerged and with an attitude to boot.
My husband also does not like to be hurried and I am a hurrier by nature. I like to be early and settled for at least 15 minutes whereas Steve would prefer not to go and to certainly not rush if he has to go..sooo irritating.

So we finally leave after a horrible mishap with one of our camp chairs leaking rusty water all over the floor as we carried it thru the house. That chair is now laying in our side yard where it was heaved by someone who shall remain nameless (Steve).

Alas we arrive at our destination at 5:45 a full 15 minutes later than I had originally planned but we got there and found our friends and settled in for a full 10 minutes or so until the parade started. So it wasn't too bad. After all the frustration left our minds we settled in to watch the parade.
I tried to snap some candid photos and as you can see in some of them Steve was still being a pain in the butt. If anything he is consistent.


Our son Luke (shown below) marched in the parade with his JR ROTC group. He as always looked so daper in his cammies.



He looks so grown up in his cammies.
We enjoyed all the beautifully lit floats and waited patiently for the Frito Lay truck to come by and throw us all bags of Fritos and Cheetoes, It is what everyone is there for we just dont all say it. So the Frito truck drives by and to our dismay they barely throw out ANY bags of chips!! What is going on??? Last year we were shoving bag upon bag of chips in our purses and coats and this year NOTHING!! Don't they know we all came just for that???
Anywho here is a picture of Tim eating his Hot Cheetos while watching the chipless parade.


Here is a picture of some local monkeys that were in the trees before the parade started.

and here is a picture of Tim and me hamming it up for the camera...He knows how to take a picture! Steve should take notes!


Well we actually ended up enjoying ourselves and had a few friends over after the parade to our home.
I guess Steve's inability to adapt and my impatience at pretty much everything works it self out in the end and the kids were happy so thats a good weekend in my book!

Marine Ball

My son Luke is a member of the JR ROTC at his high school and it is sponsored by the Marines.
Well every year the Marine Corp celebrates the Birthday of the Marine Corp. They have a ceremony and then a Marine Corp Ball. The recruits get to invite a date and dance the night away.
Well my son invited me to go with him to his Ball. I was shocked and honored, I thought that was such a nice thing to do!!
I had a really good time.
Here are some pictures of the ceremony!




The firt picture is of my son marching!



Here are some more pictures right after the ceremony and of us before the ball and at the ball.

Grass is growing!!

Well as most of you know I am pretty obsessed with having grass in my back yard.
So obsessed that I bought a tiller and actually hauled steer poop in the back of my Rodeo..can you say GROSS!!
However it looks like my efforts are paying off!!
Here is the before picture.



and here is the after picture..it started coming in about 7 days.

The process was to till up the earth so it's workable. You can do that with a shovel but I wanted to do it quicker so I bought a tiller. Then once ground is broken up we shoveled in about 3 bags of steer poop and mixed it with the dirt, then raked the ground even, then spread seed evenly, then spread a healthy covering a steer poop and watered it twice a day until it started to sprout.
Pretty easy. I can't wait till it comes all the way in!!

Halloween is over!

Halloween is over! It happened to be one of the funnest Halloween's we have ever had!
We had our friends over and their children who are our children's friends and it was just a very fun time.
Here is a picture of Luke and Timothy and Bunny of course.

Here is the whole trick or treatin crew.


While the kids were all outside trick or treating all of us adults were hangin out at the house handing out candy and partyin it up!

Steve and I dressed up as drunk people for Halloween...we were very convincing!

Amy had the coolest costume, I just LOVED her witche's hat. I also discovered my friend has Green eyes...I always thought they were blue!


The boys also watched Gremlins and played board games when they got back home..They were very good and had a great time..Can't wait till next year!