Bring on Summer

Well it's official we are going to Jamaica for our summer vacation. We booked our hotel, booked our plane reservations and are going to get our passports on Monday. I'm so excited. We are actually going to Boscobel which is on the other side of Negril about 30min away from Montego Bay. We are staying at an all inclusive which means we get to eat and drink as much as we want. The kids are a little worried about the 10 hour flight from Lax to North Carolina (3hour lay over) and the rest to Jamaica but the good news is that we don't leave CA till 10:00pm so we should sleep the majority of the way. 

Work is going better for me these days. I have been successful in my fundraising which is making my bosses happy. There are many things that I don't like about office politics but I have to play the game if I want to survive any layoffs we might do in the future. I love my job don't get me wrong but we have a lot to do. 

Trevor is back in football and is weightlifting like crazy. He is so strong and I think ready to play Varsity this year instead of just suiting up. 

Tatum has already had her first Softball game and is catching (yes Jillian she caught her first game of the season and from what I hear she did a great job). Basketball is coming to an end though she will have some private lessons once a week to help her keep up on the game. 

Triston  hasn't started games yet for baseball but is doing a lot of practice to pitch for the team. Games start the 2nd week of March. He is also playing spring soccer and games start soon for that as well. 

Don is working very hard. He is the one that keeps this family together. He picks the kids up and gets them to practice and fixes dinner. He picks up all the slack that my job makes me miss. He is amazing and I love him

Thats all for now stay tuned for more

It has been so long

It has been a long time since I have had time to type on this blog. It seems that the Havard family is getting busier and busier. The kids are ending their winter sports and practices are starting for the spring sports. So that means an overlap with Tatum's basketball with softball and Triston is doing spring soccer and baseball. Trevor's wrestling season just ended and is now going to continue with freestyle wrestling. The wrestling program has a better weightlifting schedule then football and helps the kids get in better shape and I think that this will help him in football. 

Don is enjoying the rain as it bring more people to the store and we hope that it continues. Me on the other hand am constantly busy and have been working several hours. My favorite boss of all time, Ken, got promoted and is moving his family to Arizona. I will miss them tremendously. We have been having lots of fun giving him and his wife Jodi (my best friend) lots of going away parties. This past Friday night we went to our favorite bar and it was a blast. 

For Valentines day Don surprised Tatum and I with pink and white roses along with chocolate covered strawberries.  The kids and I surprised Don with a candlelight homemade dinner of Lasagna  with Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting decorated with sprinkle and red hots. I would say that we had a great day.

For now along with the sports and busy work days we are in the process of planning our summer vacation. We know that we are going to Laughlin with Ken and Jodi  in either June or July and we are looking to go to either Florida to Orlando or to Jamaica. We are looking at prices and going to the Travel agent this week hopefully Tuesday.  

More to come...

High School Musical on Ice and Sledding

There are some perks to owning a business. On Friday Don got a call from the company that we advertise with and she had 3 tickets to the High School Music the Ice Tour at the Honda Center that she wasn't going to be able to use. The company was sponsoring that nights show and they had a special pre-show event gathering where we got to meet and take pictures with a couple of the skaters. They also had free programs, pom-poms, megaphones, churros, pretzels, and sodas. Not only did we get all the freebies the seats were awesome we sat 5 rows back from the ice. The show was great Nick sang every song and he has the movies memorized so he did all the dance moves as well. There was a little boy sitting in front of  us that covered his ears and looked back at us like 100 times...Oh Well. To say the least Tatum, Nick and I had a wonderful time.

Today I took the kids sledding . It was a very long day. First we went to my old stomping grounds at Mt. Baldy but we only got 10 minutes up the hill before the Highway Patrol turned us around. They said that there were to many people on the mountain and that no one else could go up. We waited for about 20 minutes then decided to head to Wrightwood near Mountain High. What would normally take us 30 minutes to get there took us nearly 3 hours. To put this all in time prospective we left our house at 12:00pm and didn't get out of our car to sled till 4:00pm. We sled for 2 hours which was plenty of time the kids were cold and it was dark and we were tired from climbing the hills. We got home at 8:45pm even more tired and full of stories about the fun.  First of all Trevor went down his first hill and headed straight toward a tree. He had to abort and went through a bush that tore his jeans. Nick went down his first hill and slid off the tube and kept going and rolled over and over it was great. Triston and Jacob had solid rides the whole night except for one that Triston went on his own. He went over a jump and got impressive air. The only thing about impressive air is that you have to land and it was a hard landing. Tatum had a couple of runs but slipped once and then she was done. She is such a girl. I even went down one hill... well kinda Trevor and Triston were helping me on the saucer and I started going before we were ready and I knocked Trevor over on my lap. It was hilarious. So even with all the traffic and all the " When are we going to get there" and "Are we there yet" we made some memories that will last a lifetime.

Christmas 08

This year the holidays really came quick. I of course waited until the last minute to start shopping and even waited until the last minute to start shopping for the Christmas dinner which I hosted. I had to go to two stores to find a turkey it was almost a very scary situation. 

Christmas Eve is always a lot of fun. We go to my mother in laws and have dinner, talk, open presents and play games. It is great just being around family. It never fails though that we get home around midnight after an hour drive and like last night I haven't even started wrapping presents. So to make a long story short Don and I went to bed around 3am and Triston comes jumping on our bed to wake up around 8am (he let us sleep in for 2 hours). I think we finally made it to out to the living room around around 9. They had so much fun opening up their presents and their stockings. Of course for Don and I we already opened our present (which I'm typing on and love). 

The slow morning changed quickly into a rush to make sure everything was done for dinner and the house was clean enough for our guests. I have to say dinner turned out great. I cooked Turkey with all the fixings (stuffing, mashed potatoes, caesar salad, yams, cranberries, rolls, pumpkin pie, and berry pie. I'm on a rotation so next year it will be Lazana (sp?) which seems so much easier. 

I hope you all had a great  Christmas Eve and Christmas and hope to see many of you at our New Year's Eve Party.

 

Metallica What was I thinking

Trevor, his friend Sergio, and I went to the Metallica concert last night for Trevor's 16th birthday. We had the best time. Our tickets were for the floor so we ended up 2 people back from the railing next to the stage. To start off this is the first concert I have ever been so close (with the exception of Van Halen but we had seats) and I don't think that this was the concert to do this at. At first it was great then it started getting crowded and the boys and I got seperated. As long as they were together it was ok. Then behind me were these French guys who were plotting to make their way to the front as soon as the lights went out. They tried but big mama(thats me) didn't let that happen a little elbow the crotch and an elbow in the side they settled down a little. That didn't last long they pushed and shoved and then after I would say 30min I lost it and started yelling pushing back and cussing like no other. It was great after that I made some friends since I was by myself the entire concert it was nice to talk to somebody.
There was moshing crowd surfing and people fighting and it was great and scary. After the concert was over I found Sergio and Trevor. Trevor was so excited because he also made some friends that pushed him up to crowd surf he had a blast. We have so many stories to share. On the way to the car he hugged me and said thanks mom. What an awesome moment. YOU'RE WELCOME TREVOR AND HAPPY 16th BIRTHDAY and NO the next concert is not Slip Knot I'm getting to old for this. How about Elton John or Journey?

Vegas 08

Las Vegas in the Winter time is much different than in the summer. It was wicked cold and very windy. This years group stayed downtown at the Plaza. We all arrived before 10:00pm on Friday so we all ate dinner togethor and then went out site seeing down Fremont street. We gambled at a few different places and got some drinks and had a great time. After walking for a while we found this little bar called Hennessey's it had a live bad playing rock music and they were relly good. On Saturday we were going to head to the strip but why when we were having so much fun downtown. They had $3.00 tables and not many people on them. We did go to dinner on the strip at the Harley Davidson Cafe (my favorite Vegas dinner place) Everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had at least 3-4 shots each and tried several of their specialties that were very tasty. It was to cold to walk around so we went bak to our hotal and to our favorite new hangout at Hennessey's.
Some highlights were:
1) Having a suite and having everyone come up to our room for drinks
2) Having someone buy me a drink and seeing Don get Jealous. He does love me :)
3) Watching Margaret roll the dice on the crap table and instead of the dice landing on the table hitting people on the head.
4) Watching Ken Laugh histerically at the commedian at the Fitzgeralds
5) Having Jodi lend me her sneaker slippers becuse I couldn't walk drunk in my new girlie shoes
6) Hitting a Full house on Let It RIde on the first night and losing all the others
7) Guessing if one of the ladies in the fluffy suits was a lady or a man
8) Laughing at Derrick because of what the comedian said about chinese character tatoos
9) Spending some needed alone time with Don
10) Taking Ken and Jodi to the airport and having a nice dinner before taking off.

Thank you everyone for such a great time. This trip will go down in the history books. I can't wait to plan the next outing maybe the next one needs to be Lake Tahoe (Skiing during the day and gambling at night)
Good luck Ken on Tusan(sp?) We be thinking of you guys as you go through the process.

Getting back to normal

Because of the recent fires in our quite little city things have been different. The air, my car, and house all smell like smoke, the kids got some extra days off and Trevor still hasn't gone back though we got a phone call today saying that the High School is open on Monday. Every where we go the topic is "How close were you to the fire". "Is your family ok?". The good thing is that with the kids going back to school we can all get back to normal. We can now start to move our focus on how to replant our city. I feel sad for the folks that have lost their homes and hope that I can do something to help. I don't know what it will be but I will do what I can.

As for my family we are all doing well and ready to get back to our sports. Triston has Baseball tomorrow and Tatum has a cheer competition on Sunday. For Trevor wrestling get's back on Monday.

Don and I don't have anything going but getting ready for the holidays. For Thanksgiving we are going to Don's moms for dinner and the kids are excited to see their little cousin Jacob. Then of course our Vegas trip that we have been looking forward to (No kids).