What A Wonderful Day!

Today was a beautiful day. My day was lined out and jammed packed with events. Here's a look on what was on the schedule for the day... School with the kids, Cub Scouts with J.R.(which I'm one of the new leaders :)Love it), Girl Scout (yes still a Girl Scout leader Love it!) cookie sale with Addie, dinner, Boy Scouts for A.J. (Klondike check in)(Any questions about Scouting just come to me I've got one in every part of it!), shower and bed for kids, and night time clean up. I was sure that I would not be able to finish all of the projects but I did! School was finished by 2 p.m., Cub Scouts done by 4 p.m., A.J. handled cookie sale with Addie, dinner by 5 p.m., A.J. off to Boy Scouts with all of the Klondike stuff by 6:30 p.m., kids showered and in bed by 8 pm, and night time clean up finished by 9 p.m.! How I managed it I'm not sure but I'm loving the fact that everything is running so smoothly! Not only does it help my house stay cleaned up, but it seems to keep smiles on everyone's face, and our house at peace! So as you can see life is grand! I hope everyone else had just as wonderful of a day as I did!

One last thing that topped my day off was finding out that my cousins' wife just had her baby this morning at 7:30 am! Congratulations Mark and Karen!!!! We can't wait to see her!
Any ways I should close this and head off to bed so I'm rested for another eventful day at the Dickson house!
Love,
Torie

Oh Man!

Oh man oh man how time flies. For the past two weeks I've been saying I need to go in and update and here we are almost to the end of January! So ready or not here comes KinCaid's 6th birthday, Allie's 4th birthday, and Valentines! I can't believe that my baby girl is really turning 4 this year. Oh how I miss it when she was just an infant. I also can't believe that it's almost been 6 years ago that I moved away from Beautiful Michigan. Oh how time flies when you're having fun! (or growing old)
Speaking of time flying this last Christmas I had the wonderful opportunity of hearing a story from Russ' cousin EmRee. She was telling us about this lady she knows and how she names her years of life... hmm now there's an idea right?!
So I've decided this is going to be my year of re-organization and de-clutter. In moving towards that step I also learned about this awesome website from my wonderful friend Heather Mickelson (yes this is John's wife poor girl, for all of us whom know John, understand that), the website is www.flylady.com she takes you step by step as to how to keep your house clean and organized. She also teaches you how to de-clutter and how to become oraganized again. Her first step is to shine your sink everynight. Oh my what a difference it makes. I love waking up in the morning now to see my bright shiny sink smiling back at me! Anyways I could go on and on about this wonderful website but I'll stop there.
On a side note; I've decided to make blogging as part of my re-organization, it gives me a moment to let things out of my mind and get them on the paper. So not only am I re-organizing my house but I'm also re-organizing my head. Hmm now thats a scary thought! LOL
I hope that over this next year I don't bore you with my re-organzing of my head while I blog; but please feel free to jump on board and offer some suggestions with organizing a house full of very energetic children, mom who's way to busy, and a dad that works shift work. All comments and suggestions are gladly accepted. For now I hope that everyone out there will find their name for the year and run with it and have fun.
Once again Love to All,
Torie

Russ still Amazes Me!!!

So the other day while we were in Billings we used some of our money to get Dance Dance Revolution 3 for the girls. Now understand it was marked wrong so we actually got it $20.00 less than what it was supposed to be, score right?! We intentionally bought it for the girls to have a game since 90% of our games are boy games. So this morning first thing AJ says to me is can we open it. Sure what the heck. I did not realize that he was going to be glued to it. As the day progresses through I'm finally able to squeeze some time in there for Addie to play and try it out. Evening is here and Russ is home so he decides to try it out, now mind you he was all against getting it..."That won't be any fun for us boys". It's now 10:46p.m. and he's been on it for going on two hours and I don't see me pulling him away from it anytime soon. The best part is that his favorite is the difficult stages where he has to move fast.... Yes you read that correct Russ is moving fast. If only this would've came out 30+ years earlier. And who would have thought that all we ever needed to do to get him moving was purchase a dancing game for the Wii. This you see is why Russ still Amazes me!!!! Oh how I love him now matter how slow or fast he chooses to move!!!!
Good night to all and keep on dancing!
Love,
The Dicksons

I'm A Very Tricky Mom!!!

Today was a wonderful day we as a family decided to go to Billings!!! Now Russ being Mr. Budget sat down on Saturday and fine tuned our budget to figure out exactly how much we had to spend on our Billings trip. (Sure glad he's a budget stickler or we'd never have any money) This morning he finally informs me of the exact amount. I explained to him that there was no way to get everything on our list (list has been growing for over a month now) and stay within that budget. Low and behold we did it!!! In fact we came in $70.00 under!!! (Tithing works!) But the best part of the trip was the trick I played on my baby boy Donavan.
Here's the background... Now that we have reintroduced him to "Cars" we have watched it on an average of 6 times a day for the last ohhh 2 weeks now. Let me tell you everyone in the house can quote that movie line for line. In fact he is so in love with Lightening McQueen that he has rediscovered KinCaid's Lightening McQueen blanket and claimed it his! He'll every so often take a break from the movie and sit by the front windows and wait for cars to drive by then he comes running through the house yelling "Cars Mommy Cars".
Today we decided to take the DVD players with us to Billings and oh what the heck lets bring "Cars" for Donavan. The kids no sooner get in the car and it's started "Cars AJ Cars".
Once in Laurel (approx. 15 mi from Billings) we decide to get some lunch and stop at the Wal-Mart there. AJ proceeded to turn off the movie so that we could go eat and then shop but oh no the Donavan monster came out! Talk about a 2 year old tantrum in the car! So mom has this great idea...."AJ start the movie and just follow my command, Russ you follow along K; turn off the car, AJ undo your seatbelt, and watch...." I then unplugged the cord and yelled "Oh no Donavan the DVD player broke hurry we better get in to see if we can find the part to fix it!" (Donavan)"Hurry mom Lightening McQueen fix, come on mom hurry, lets go in, get part!" And we went in!!!!
Round 2; now we're in Billings and need to go into Costco and guess what, yep the DVD player quit working again funny thing is mom found another part to fix it there too.
So if ever any of you moms need a way to get a two year old out of the car and away from the DVD player just let it brake (unplug it). We know this trick won't work for very much longer but it'll be great for now!
One last thing Happy New Year! We miss and love everyone out there!
Love,
The Dicksons

It's really been 4 months!!!!

I can't believe that it's really been 4 months since the last time I blogged!!! Holy Cow! So I've decided to for my New Year's resolution I'm going to keep up on our blog spot and upload more pics of our family and our adventures. Over the past 4 months what has gone on hmmm......

Let's see Addie turned 7 and realized that she is only 1 year away from being Baptized she's so excited already!

Our new next door neighbors/friends were married and they asked Russ and I to be their witnesses; it was such a beautiful ceremony and I'm very thankful that we were able to be part of such a wonderful day!!

A.J. made me a really old mom he turned 13 this year. Yes we really do have a teenager in our house now. With him becoming a teenager we decided to take him back to his home town of Big Ol' Laramie to watch his favorite football team get crushed by his least favorite football team. UW vs. BYU yes it was a very sad day for all of us but we sat through the whole game and still cheered our beloved Cowboys on! While we were in Laramie we finished getting the supplies for our new adventure in life! We've started a clock and sign making business it has been a joy but also a stress in our life. Though we didn't get to stay all the way till Thanksgiving we did get to head back down the first week of December which at that time we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our first ever being snowed into Laramie. That made for a very interesting trip to say the least. After that trip Russ made me promise that we wouldn't even consider going back down until February or later. Well that pretty much wraps up all of the highlights for the past 4 months.

From this point on our life is yet to be seen we just pray that the future is full of good health and happiness. For everyone out there in the Blogging world I would just like to send to all of you a wish for a Happy New Year that is filled with love, excitement, and good health.

Love to All,
The Dickson's

When it Rains it Pours!!!

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the old phrase "When it rains, it pours" for our family we're to familiar with that phrase. Here's a glimmer of a day in the life of the Dickson's.

About 2 months ago the plant that Russ worked at finally had to do some layoffs and guess who was one of the firsts to get laid off.... You're right Russ. After about 2 months with no pay or insurance he finally lands another job at Georgia Pacific. Things are going great until last weekend. Allie fell and split her head open, then the boating trip that the kids have been dying all summer to go on (this is different than our normal trips we're going to have the PONTOON BOAT out there with their cousins) falls through because the boat still isn't as finished as we thought it was, so CaMee and I take off to do our shopping only to discover that takes longer than expected.

Here comes Monday oh boy... we're finally going to do this family boating trip with the PONTOON BOAT so Russ, CaMee, and myself with all of the kids take off to the lake with the ski boat ahead of Travis and Brent (their bringing the other boat). We go out on the lake and do some tubing and knee boarding realizing it's getting to late and the other boat never showed up. Once back to the dock we find out that as they were turning the corner they discovered water leaking out of one of the pontoons. So that idea went bye bye quickly. While Russ is trying to pull the boat up on the trailer he discovers the the engine won't lift. 2hrs later we finally get it out of the lake and the engine lifted and now were rushing home so Russ isn't late for work to his new job. We're not done yet in fact we're just getting to the exciting part.

Now it's Tuesday.....
We own 4 vehicles; '75 GMC truck, '78 Olds., '96 Nissan, and an '04 Suburban so one would think out of 4 vehicles we should have no problem having a car when needed right? Oh know not so much for us. First a piston goes out on the Olds. which at this point it's a matter of is it really worth the work. Then the tire blows out on the Nissan and it won't start, sounding good so far right. While we were in Cody which is about 45miles away from us, grocery shopping the fuel pump on the Suburban goes out on us, leaving us stranded for oh about 6hrs. We finally make it back to Lovell around 10:30 p.m. just in time for Russ to make it to work. Once arriving to work he here's this hissing sound and watches the back tire on the truck go flat. Oh boy!

There you have it that's the update on the Dickson family. I have decided that after every large rain storm there's always a rainbow. The theory goes that if there's a rainbow then there's a pot of gold waiting at the end with Leprechauns. I'm hoping that when my rainstorm ends I'll find that little piece of Irish luck hopefully the good luck and find that pot of gold!!!

Speak To Early!!!

You know when you say something only to realize later that you spoke to early. Well that just happened to me recently. I put in my last post that we had to take Bamm Bamm to the hospital and how grateful I was that it had been a 1 1/2yr. since our last visit and I'll probably not be back for awhile. Spoke to soon; just Friday night we were back in the E.R. with Alexandra this time. She sliced her head open above her left eye. When asked how it happened we found out that since we wouldn't let the kids go outside and jump on the trampoline, they (meaning J.R., Addie, Bamm Bamm, Alexandra, and Donavan)decided that the couch in the front living room would work. Never mind that mom and dad both have told them not to jump on the furniture, that furniture is for sitting on not jumping on. As she was attempting to jump from the couch to over the foot stool and land on the floor she discovered her jump wasn't nearly as far as her brothers and sisters; well hers was short quite a bit. She never made it over the footstool, instead she landed head first between the footstool and the couch knocking her eye on the corner wooden piece on her way down. Quite the ordeal as you can see. But the most exciting part was at the E.R., the Doctor decided to just glue it shut. He used PURPLE glue oh boy!!! She was so excited, because purple is her favorite color. On our way home from the hospital she informed mom and dad that when she got home she was going to tell all of her purple friends about the purple glue the doctor put on her head.:) Oh boy!!!! This is why we love her, she always makes us smile :)!!!