Krista and Edward

Create your own FACEinHOLE

New Hair!!!!

I have been thinking about dying my hair dark brown for quite a while.  I finally decided to give in to the urge and JUST DO IT!  Here is a before picture:

Here are the AFTER pics!

Happily Ever After...

My cousin Jennifer got married on New Years Day!  Her husband's name is Rich.  It was a beautiful day.  A rose amongst thorns, if you will.  It has been so cold and rainy, then perfect weather on the 1st!  Then back to cloudy, foggy, and dreary on the 2nd.  The ceremony was beautiful.  Here are a few pics!  Enjoy!

Nicolette and Simon walking down the aisle.

Rich and Jenn coming down the aisle.

Rich laughs at a funny moment in the ceremony.

Exchanging Vows

With this ring . . .

Here was their first dance.  It was right after their first kiss.  It fit 

perfectly at the end of the ceremony.  They were not having a "traditional" 

reception, so I'm glad they had a first dance!

Here is their cake :-) Yummmmm!  Notice the cake topper...

Cycling is the hobby of the happy couple, so instead of a traditional cake 

topper, here they are riding tandum!  So cute!:-) 

Three Christmases

We had a wonderful "Three Christmases" this year!  

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season as well!

Here we are at my Dad and Helen's on Christmas Eve!

Here we are at our house on Christmas day opening (and riding) presents from Santa!

Here we are at Dan's Parent's house.  Kelsey got an American Girl "Bitty Baby"!

More from Christmas

Here are a few more pictures from Christmas Day at our house.

What am I doing?

Michelle cutting the squash for dinner.

Betty and Alan relaxing in the living room.

Merry Christmas

Here are the kids in their Christmas outfits.  Have a wonderful Christmas!  Blog you next year!

Cherub Choir

Today Connor sang at church in the "Cherub Choir".  It's the pre-school age choir.  It was really cute.  The first service he sang most of the time because he couldn't see us.  But second service we sat right up front and he could see us watching him and cheering him on.  Our extremely shy boy clamped up and didn't sing the whole service.  We have a couple of great shots of the kid in front of him, who he hid behind the whole time, as well as the back of his head as he watched the performance live on the big screen!

Here is the only one where Connor is smiling.

Here is the only one where Connor looks like he is singing.

Connor giving Dad the evil eye for daring to take pictures of him.

Enjoy!  and Merry Christmas!

Princesses and Pirates

We went to a Princess and Pirate party.  It was amazing!  The girls all dressed in princess dresses and the boys in pirate costumes.  They all had a blast.  A few minutes into the party guess who showed up?!?! Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella!!!!!  

Here's Connor in his pirate costume after he got his face painted!

Here is Sleeping Beauty!

Pretty Hair!

Kelsey got her hair braided at school!

Field Trip!!!!

My friend Tressa and I went to the zoo on a field trip with Pre-School. This our second year taking the day off to spend the day with the kids there at the LA Zoo.  We had 5 kids amongst the 2 of us, so it was a little hectic, but we survived!  What we really had to survive was the hills at the zoo pushing that much weight in the strollers!  These pictures are taken with my iPhone, by the way.  Pretty good pics for a phone, don't you think?

Rock Stars!

Here are my little rock stars at Best Buy on Black Friday!

Fo-Hawk

This past weekend we headed down to Sea World to use our passes one more time before they expire!  We had a ton of fun! We left late morning so the kids would hopefully sleep in the car a bit.  We wanted to stay late this time so we could see the night-time show "Shamu Rocks", which was really good!  Connor insisted that morning on styling his hair in a faux hawk!  So funny!

You know you are a Twilight fan when...

You know you are a Twilight fan when ...

Your heart leaps when you see a silver Volvo drive by.

You drink cranberry juice...just to pretend.

You doodle his name.

You hunt mountain lion.

You compare every guy to Edward.

You pretend to read minds.

You run really fast (or at least try to).

You love meadows.

You suspect others of being vampires.

You think that pale-white is the new tan.

You think the Cullens are the new Brady Bunch.

StephanieMeyers.com is your homepage.

You quote the book in every day conversation.

You fantasize about fangs.

You spend rainy days pretending you are in Forks.

You will name your first born after a character form the books.

You put on white make-up and hiss at strangers in public.

You downloaded "Clair de Lune".

You interrogate pale people.

You friended Edward Cullen on facebook.

You cusually migrate away from redheads in crowds.

You are afraid of dance studios.

You think being accident prone in now "in".

You have the countdown to the movie on your blog.

You have already purchased your tickets.

Settlement

After yet another day of mediations, the district and our union have finally reached an agreement!!!  I am not happy.  At all.  But, if this is the best deal we are going to get, I trust that our union contract negotiators have done all they can.  If they are for it, then I know we can't get more than this.

Some lowlights of the settlement are:

• A 1.4% raise for the current school year.  We will not be getting a raise for last year in which we had no contract.  This contract is through August of 2010, for some reason, and offers no raise for the next year.  This also means no retroactive paycheck for last year (which I was really hoping to use for Christmas shopping!).
• The district had proposed putting a cap on the amount that they would pay for our health care plans.  This would cause a family of 3 or more to pay an additional $300 (approx.) out of pocket.  Instead of paying an additional $300 a month extra out-of-pocket for our health care plan, we are incurring higher co-pays, prescription costs, and deductibles (while the district pays the insurance companies less).
• Full day Kinder was not pushed through, but the district is forming a committee to look into doing this in the future.
• Coaching stipends were increased by 10%

All in all it is good because we can stop the madness, but I am not happy about what we are getting.  I should add that I am so glad that my prayers were answered and we did not end up striking (assuming the teachers vote to ratify this agreement).   Did the march work?  Maybe we will never know.  

P.S. Trebs-you were right!  Good things come in 3's!  Here's our 3rd!

Front page

Look!  Our march made the front page!

March

Tonight myself and 609 fellow employees and families had a march on our district office.  It was awesome!  It felt so great to be out there doing something a bit more tangible than wearing red every Tuesday.  (I can't complain red is my "signature color")  

I wrangled up Dan and the kids, and some hats, mittens, jackets, a

nd umbrellas, and we hit the streets of Covina!  We had a great time hanging out with the other people from my school.  All of the kids know each other from pre-school/day care, so they all had fun running around and playing together.  

We started out at a park about a quarter mile away from the district office.  We assembled there and collected our glow sticks, kazoos, and signs.  We then marched to the district office where the board was having their monthly meeting.  They did have the door propped open so hopefully they heard our chants: 

"2-4-6-8 settle now it's not too late!" and 

"What do we want? A contract! When do we want it? Now!"

It was great to be part of something like this, 

especially right before the national election!  Get's ya all riled up for it!  

*In case you have not heard the scoop on our district's woe's, here is the abbreviated version: The teachers in my district are without a contract.  We have not settled our contract from LAST YEAR. SO, we have been without a contract for over 14 months now.  The district is offering us nothing.  They are not agreeing to ANY of the union's proposals.  They will not even give us our Cost Of Living Allowance (COLA) which has already been funded by the state.  They are also wanting to put a cap on our health care costs so that I would end up having to suddenly pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for our health care plan.  Etc., etc., etc.

So far, we have been wearing red on Tuesdays, a button every day, and have passed out flyers to parents at back to school night and football games.  Finally I feel like we are doing something real.  

I pray it does not come to a strike.

Trick or Treat

We had a great time on Halloween!  The kids were so excited to get in their costumes and go trick or treating!  Kelsey caught on after about a block that she was going to get candy at each house and became much more eager to go to the door.  She just wanted to eat that piece of candy NOW!  Patience is so hard to teach a 2 year old!  

After about 2 blocks Connor said he wanted to go home (whew!).  Which was great because that meant we didn't get very much candy!  When we got home the kids had so much fun greeting the other kids, seeing all of the other costumes, and handing out candy!  I really think they had more fun doing that than trick or treating!  Connor was rotating through, "Happy Halloween", "Happy Harvest", and "I like your costume".  He is such a crack up!