thanksgiving 2008

What a great day we had! A small but simple Thanksgiving dinner with enough food to have fed a small army ( love those leftovers) The day started at 6:30 am with Jeff preparing the Turkey  and had I been awake and alert I would have taken pics of that! Then we watched the parade and waited for the rest of our dinner guests to arrive, we had mom dad Steve and Jackie and Uncle Joe. After dinner we celebrated dads 58th bday!! heres a look at todays festivities

a day with my dad

Brandon has started to develop an interest in NASCAR and while he goes back and forth between drivers Jeff Gordon, Dale Ernhardt Jr. , and Tony Stewart  he has quite a collection of things. When the suzuki dealer we bought our car from had Jeff Gordons car there he went and took pics he even got himself in the paper for that one! Well this past weekend Home Depot had Tony's car so he and Jeff went out to take a few pics of the car. Its so awesome to see his interests developing and he actually knows quite a bit about the sport! He waouldnt allow me to go with them tho he said it was "father son bonding time" he has been doing a bit of that lately too, its good to see him and jeff do things together i think jeff likes it too he doesnt say much but then again when does jeff ever say much......... anyways heres the photo show of their day enjoy!

update

Our company came and went just as quickly but it was good to see them again,
I had a call back from Rose radiology for and interview so i went and found out about an hour later that I got the job , i have been working for them for the past 2 weeks now. Its going good,the people are real nice and i am getting more confident with each passing day, it sure is nice to have two incomes again. Jeff and I are paid on alternate weeks so that helps too! So now we can begin to get caught up and move beyond the way we have been living the last 15 years...thats my goal! i was sick for a few days last week actually the whole 1st week i started i was sick as a dog but i was afraid to call in, i did however take 2 days last week and just sleep, but i think i gave what i had to my mom and rachel they both sound horrible this week! Rachel sounds like a barking seal and shes been on and off with fever, i might have to take her to the drs if she doesnt get better soon.......
Mom and dad are on a mini vacation so Steve has been here with me this weekend, in fact i have to pick him up from work soon. Jeff went camping with a buddy of his so the kids and steve and i will hang here and probally play cards and eat some pizza.We havent just "hung out" in a while so it will be good.
Jeff is no longer working part time at the winn dixie that ended abrubtly thanks to the state of florida and the child support payments Jeff has to make..... he wasnt making much there but to have money taken out of it made it not worth even going in , so he told them he quit and they were cool about it said if he gets it all straight and wants to come back he could. Hopefully we will be done with this by the years end Dacoda turns 18 this december !!! Thank you Jesus! that will be a huge help to us financially too.......... we added up the $$$ we paid to that over the last 15 years and WOW was i shocked at the amount!!!
Over all i have to say things are going good..hope everythings good with all of you too!

getting into the routine of school etc

Well here we are 1 full week into school and things are going pretty well. Brandon has had a few "issues" with not sitting still and talking but we are working on that to stop it before it gets out of control! Rachel seems to be liking her classes, she was upset at first about getting P.E. again this year but has the chance to change it before next semester so all is good.
Jeff has just recently taken on a second part time job at the local winn dixie working about 3 nights a week unloading the truck and stocking the backroom. His goal is to get enough money saved up to once again begin his commercial diving job where he would clean boats while underwater. He is hoping to be able to buy the needed equipment by end of year and begin doing that part time until he gets enough boats to quit his day job and just do that. The average is about 3 boats a day total of 60 for the month.....
I am still not working however i have been searching the websites daily for something to peek my interest i have sent my resume out to so many places but as of yet no word back from anyone, not even a peep....i keep looking tho eventually something will hit, still not sure what i want to do if i even want to do anything its more of a need than a want at this point.
As most of you know we just had our visit from Dacoda a few weeks ago, he made it back home safely and has begun school himself. It was a good week for him and Jeff as they were busy doing all kinds of stuff, from fishing to watching movies to just chillin. Hard to believe he will be 18 this year. I'm glad he was able to come down its always a good time when he is here. he is still talking military but we have 2 years before we have to deal with that so i say a lot can happen in 2 years...
We are getting ready for more visitors in fact today Jeffs sister and her gang are coming in from Georgia and will most likely stay at our place for the weekend. I dont remember that last time Jeff and I had company like this its kinda nice for a change.

summer fun

Its the end of summer

yesterday was the first day of school for Pinellas county YIPEE~ and i have to say it was way over due for our house. The kids might not agree but let me just tell you that nearly 3 months off is tooooooo long. Way to long. Having said that, the first day went rather well id say, brandon was up bright and early dressed and ready to go out the door at 8 AM off to start his new adventure. School for him isnt bad he actually likes going, he said his teacher is nice, in fact she id from NH and lived in Manchester for most her life ( brandon couldnt wait to tell her he was born in manchester!!) we have open house tonight for him so im sure we will hear all about it.
Rachel on the other hand thats a differant story she was up and ready but not happy about it. She had her friend pick her up and off they went, but she forgot her lunch and was very very VERY hungry by the end of the day! Her classes are good i guess dont get much out of her, she has journalism this year so she will be creating and selling a newspaper and she has a computer class to learn the basics but she alreadys knows them she said and i quote" its an easy A mom"....i thought she should try the graphic design class but she didnt want to apply herself to that. She said she only has 1 teacher that seems "mean" and thats Adv. lang arts, and her math teacher she said is really funny so we are hoping for the best this year!
Her open house isnt until Sept. 11.......
Well thats about all i have on the first day of school i will update as the year goes on. Until then love you all

lots going on

Well what can i say.... lots of things have been going on here we had the yard sale a few weeks ago as you know didnt go that well but we did manage to clear the house of alot of stuff... jeff returned with our things from Nh safely he said it was the worst trip he has EVER taken. a 26 hr drive ended up taking him almost 30 hrs!! he was delayed in south carolina for over an hour due to an accident ( not involving him) then it rained all thru georgia so traffic was slow and finally in Jacksonville they had a funeral procession so they deverted traffic to side roads and when your driving a 26 foot moving truck you cant take small roads so needless to say he was VERY VERY exhausted when he made it home. Then i started a new job last week so i wasnt able to unpack like i wanted to, we had boxes all over the place it took a full week to get everything put away like i want it but now the house is finished. The boxes are all unpacked and everything is where it belongs so we can finally sit back and relax.
Back to the job, lets just say its a job and leave it at that.... i dont like it and dont plan to keep it any longer than i absolutley have to, i have infact already begun searching elsewhere, im hoping the animal hospital i applied to calls me in to interview, i have always wanted to work with animals and maybe even go back to school to be a vet tech. who knows what is next in the plans for me.....i am counting the days until school starts again right now while we are both at work during the day the kids are home alone which i dont like.

yard sale day 2

day 2 was worse than day 1..... we had everything set out by 7 am and it wasnt until after 9:30 our first customer stoppped by. I don't think we had 10 people stop all day! If i didnt hate having a yard sales before i sure do now, too much work involved with setting them up for such a low turn out. Well at least some of the things sold we did make enough to pay for the ad and put a few extra bucks into the house fund! It was good to sit and talk with Aunt Judy and Aunt Eileen too we dont do that enough, saturday Jesse and her mom and carson came up to so that was nice. Hopefully the things that go to the sheppard center will go to people who will enjoy them as much as Uncle Manny did too thats all that matters really.

yard sale day 1

Well day one of the yard sale didnt have as many people as i would have hoped. It takes so long to gather, price, and then set up that you really hope for large crowds. Aunt Judy and I along with Aunt Eileen handled Friday i got to Aunt Judys early @ 6:30 am and Aunt Eileen arrived a few minutes after i did so we set the stuff out and waited...................... we had some customers then we waited..........you get the idea! We closed up about 2:30 or so and prepared to do it all again. Hopefully today being Saturday we will have more crowds of people and we can sell more.

HOME.... its finally looking like mine

It's been awhile since my last post things have been busy here at the Frist home, We are FINALLY going to get our things out of storage from New hampshire next week so we have been busy gathering up all the stuff that was left from Uncle Manny and cleaning house to make room for our things! Jeff has been busy painting which he hates but he does such a great job and mom dad aunt judy, aunt eileen and I have been sorting thru the antiques and stuff for a yard sale this weekend. What a job that was! Who knew one person could collect SO MUCH in the many years they live here on Earth.....my oh my. Im excited to be getting my own things back its been so long since i have had some of the things out of boxes its going to be like christmas over here next weekend. We packed up our house 2 years ago and the last few apt we rented were way to small for it all so i havent seen some of the boxes in 2 years!! I didnt realize how overwhelming a process this would be for me and im very very grateful to have had my family around to help me i think if it were left to me to do alone i would have given up, to many things to sort thru....so in case i didnt say it before THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP guys! well i'm off to the yard sale heres hoping for a big crowd with lots of money to spend!!

Memorial day

Look whose 12!

Wow! thats all I can say about my baby girl turning 12. Seems like yesterday she was running around the house in her diapers singing martina mcbride's " with a broken wing" at the top of her lungs.... shes growing up so fast.This year she wanted a hawaiian themed cake so we had Jeff's very talented sister make one for us i dont think i could have gotten a better cake if i paid big bucks and had someone do it for me. The weekend of her birthday we went camping with friends of ours ( whose daughters bday is the day before rachel) to a nice spot just south of here in osprey, fl. We had a great time the girls went swimming and the boys fished. At night we made smore's and sat around the campfire, it was very relaxing and a fun weekend. Already planning our next trip!

Father and Son bonding!

Brandon won 2 tickets to the Mike Alstott celebrity softball game from a school drawing so this past Saturday Brandon and Jeff went to the bright house stadium in clearwater to watch the game. To say Brandon was excited is a major understatement... The seats they had were awesome 3 rows up from the dugout just off thirdbase! Brandon got 5 autographs and a t-shirt (shot out of a cannon to the crowd) the other kids were pushing and pinching him so he didnt catch the shirt himself but a man in front of them caught it and handed it to brandon . We are not a big baseball family but this was a nice chance for Brandon and Jeff to get out and do something together that they would have never done on their own had he not won the tickets. I hope they have many more experiences to share together.

Spring Break visitor

Well Spring Break has hit and we were blessed enough to have my step-son Dacoda visit us for the week. He is down from North Carolina. It all started over easter weekend Jeff's sister has a cabin in Northern Georgia and they invited us to join them for easter up there, its about a 9 hour drive from here and then another 6 hrs from there to where Dacoda lives so we packed up the car and headed out. We left about 2 pm on friday and made it to the cabin about 11pm. Then we headed to NC saturday morning about 7am and made it back about 9pm. The kids stayed at the cabin with Jeff's sister and played games and colored eggs. Then Sunday we all headed back to Florida. Thats a lot of driving in one weekend but it was worth it to get Dacoda. Hopefully his mom will come down this weekend to get him so we dont do it all over again!!

tree friends

Recently we had some work done on some palm trees in our front yard. We had a dead palm removed and then one trimmed up to look pretty. When the tree guys arrived to cut the trees down we discovered two of theses baby squirrels living in the tree. They had come down from their nest and could not make it back up the tree. The mama squirel had already left and they were all alone. The kids were holding them and playing with them until they started to climb up their legs so we put them in a box and the tree guys took them home.

happy birthday Jeff

well i did it again, i pulled off another party at the house, this time it was for Jeff's 39th birthday. This time it was much less stressful for me just lunch and a cake, we had a very small gathering mom dad aunt eileen and uncle dave and Timmy. Here you can see brandon getting the candles lit (yes he also helped blow them out)

brandons new job

We might have a future guitar player on our hands, Brandons new favorite thing to do is play his guitar hero 3 game. He's actually quite good at it. He wanted it back around christmas but it was sold out everywhere so he patiently waited (which isnt easy for a 9 yr old to do) until they got it in stock last week ..here he is showing off his guitar.

hostess with the mostest??

Well i hosted my first "party" in the new house it was more of a dinner than a party but never the less it went well. It was for Aunt Eileen's b-day, we had a small gathering just mom dad Steve aunt Eileen uncle Dave and Stevens girlfriend Jackie. I know why i never became a professional party planner if it want for my mom coming in and taking over i think i would have stressed myself to the max! I never knew i was such a perfectionist before, i always knew i liked things to go smoothly but never thought i would "sweat the small stuff" so much but we had a good time and i was glad to be the hostess......looking forward to hosting more parties and gatherings as soon as things straighten out over here and i get my things from NH i will be having another so be ready everyone!!!

New Beginnings

Ok i'm new to this blogging thing so bear with me...i got the idea from Cheryl's site and thought i could do this too looks fun. Lets see what to say: Well for starters the Frist family has moved back to Florida, we now live in Tarpon Springs and I must say it feels as if I never left. The children are going to the schools I went to at their ages and they seem to be settling in nicely. Brandon is a busy third grader learning all kinds of new things from beginning geometry to writing in all cursive at all times (which he hates) he already has a new best friend at home and one or two at school but he always was a very easy going kid. Rachel is adjusting to life as a Tarpon Spartan at the middle school she is in sixth grade but not liking middle school as much as she did elementary the work load is harder and they expect more of her so shes not liking that at all!! She has a few friends at school and just got to know the neighbor girl so its a start. She was hoping to get out of P.E. by moving down here but noway that was the first class they gave her!!!
Jeff is working in St. Pete where he was before we moved north only now he is working DAYS!!! no more nights or weekends or holidays for that matter he is thrilled to be home with us and we are thrilled to have him! It has been a long time since we have all been together to do things like a family in fact as long as the kids have been born he has worked nights (rachel will be 12 this year ) so this is AWESOME!!!!! He isnt working as a security guard anymore either, now he is in the shredding dept and they hired him on as the supervisor so hes already doing well! They always liked him from before and were sad to see him go so when we decided to move back he called tehm first and they hired him that day! he had the job before we even left New Hampshire!! I am not working as of yet but i have been thinking about maybe trying to get back on with Kohls just waiting on a second vehicle to do that....
well i uess its like Cheryl said once you start its very easy to type forever on here! I'm going to go for now but i will update as things progress here.