A whole month of fun!

Oh my we have had a big month! The month began with me finally locating the couches that I wanted. This was a very big deal. I found the perfect leather sectional! The only problem was.... it cost 8,000 dollars. After a day of pouting because I knew I couldn't have it I threw my self into stalking Craig's List. If I couldn't have my Bassett sectional new I would stop looking for new all together. One evening after checking Craig's List for the 200th time that day, a new ad had popped up. 500 Bucks for a leather couch, chair and ottoman. All purchased at Haverty's 3 years ago. The pictures were great! I e mailed them right away. First thing the next morning the sellers called me. I made arrangements to go take a look at the furniture. It was in a very nice neighborhood. As I walked to the door I noticed small home made confederate flag hanging in the window. When I got in the house I noticed a few other confederate flags. All very Americana style. So I took one look at the couches and bought them. They are in mint condition! The wife had the husband post them on Craig's list. He had never heard of Craig's list and he didn't think they would sell. So he listed them at 500 dollars. (They had five people waiting to see if I was going to buy them.) They have a truck and we don't. So they agree to help us move the couches. I run home and tell Dave all about the couches. I also mention to him that they have confederate flags hanging in their house. I said isn't that nice that they honor their heritage like that? Dave then said, "Honey I'm not going to argue with you about this.... those people are dirty racists. Anyone who still flys that flag believes the south should have won. And what did the South stand for?" I had no good response for what the South stood for. But I insisted they weren't racists. David told me I was wrong and left it at that. We went and got the couch's and brought them back to our neighborhood. We'll let me tell you a little about our neighborhood. We live in a very nice neighborhood. There are a lot of teenage kids in our neighborhood. It was Saturday and as we drove in most of them were out side enjoying the day. Our neighborhood has 139 houses. Of those 139 houses Dave and I are sure that 3 of them have white families living in them. As we round the corner to our house our teenage neighbor/ babysitter is out side with about 10 friends washing the car and listening to music. The music was a little loud, but not so loud that I could hear it in the house. It was fine.... it was 3 in the afternoon. So I'm all excited about the couches! Dave and the husband bring them in the house. As they are doing this the wife leans into me, looks up a little and totally under her breath says "so what do you think of your neighbors?" I could have died! Dave was right! They are dirty racists! I then started going on about how wonderful they are and how lucky we are to have them, and how the daughter baby sits the boys all the time. She then took a step back and said "oh well that's nice." I couldn't believe it! We now have 500 dollar, brown leather, racists couches in our house. By the way Dave thinks the husband is the leader of the KKK. He is tall as Dave, thin with a pot belly in the middle, blue jean pants pulled up above his belly button, white t shirt tucked in and..... a huge confederate flag belt buckle! Wow! That's all I've got to say about that.

So that was how our month began! On the 19th Kimi arrived. She will be living with us while my parents are serving their mission in Detroit Michigan. They will be on a 18 month CES mission. Teaching at UofM in Ann Arbor. Having Kimi here is great! My mom brought her here and was able to stay for about three days before heading back home. The boys loved her visit. Dallin keeps on asking me when grandma is coming back.

Dave and I both feel like having Kimi in our home is very much a blessing for our family. However, it does come with it's challenges...

Kimi and I are both the children of my parents old age. (My parents do read my blog, hope I don't get in too much trouble here.) I'm sure that when my parents were a little younger and had 4 kids under the age of 7 the moved a little faster. But in my life time everything has always gotten done in it's own time. This has caused strife in my marriage to Dave. If Daves mom (Roma) says lets go to a 4pm movie, at 3:30, everyone says great! They get ready, get out the door and make it in time to grab some popcorn before the movie. This would NEVER happen in the Gale house. We are a slow moving bunch. Kimi has adopted this same quality. This has been a bit of a challenge for this unstructured, fly by the seat of our pants family. After a couple of weeks of this Dave came to the conclusion that Kimi is like a bear who just woke up from hibernation.

The other challenge we have run into with Kimi is.... she doesn't really complain about anything. She will ignore you, she will mutter under her breath, she will lash out at something very little. But if something is really bothering her she doesn't say a word about it till it's too late. We are working on communication.

For example: Kimi and I go to the gym pretty much every day. The first time I took Kimi to the gym I kept a very close eye on her. She was on a treadmill in the back row and I was on the elliptical one row in front of her. After about 20 minutes I stopped looking back every 30 seconds. At about 28 minutes I glanced back to check on Kimi again. There she was.... walking on the treadmill.... with her shirt off!!!! Yes she did have a sports bra, but non the less, her shirt was off. There was no Hey Jodi I'm hot. She just took her shirt off in a military gym full of soldiers. I couldn't get my fat pregnant butt of the elliptical fast enough. Lucky for us there were probably no more then 40 people in our section and she was in the very back.

Christmas this year was great! It was so fun to spend the season with just my little family. On Christmas eve Dave made us a Mexican feast and we played games. It was really nice. They boys got just the right amount of gifts. Kimi was so fun to watch. We got her all the High School Musical bedding for her room. She loved it. She also got an I pod from my parents and I put all her music on it for her. She Loves her new I pod! Dave got a Blue Ray and the perfect Pull up. And I took the grand prize! Dave bought me a Canon Rebel! With all the extras! I could have died! I have loved photography for so long and been wanting a really super camera. Dave has grown sick of me not having a hobby. So he bought me the camera. At first I was going to return it to the store. But then I opened the box and couldn't part with it. I love it! Hopefully I'll get really good at photography.

For New Years Eve we went to Sea World in Orlando Florida. Military gets in for free, so we took advantage and rang in the new year in style. I was totally amazed at how smart those animals are. Kimi and Dave rode the big roller coaster and they both loved it! Then Dave, Abe, Dallin and Kimi rode the wet roller coaster. Thee of them loved it, but Dallin hated it! He got off and told me that he didn't have very much fun. There were fire works and noise makers at midnight. We really had a wonderful time.

The only draw back was our hotel! It was awful! I was in charge of finding a place to stay. It was dirty, the beds were tiny, it was run down and the AC was so loud it reminded me of being inside Grand Coolie Dam! Usually I am very good at finding nice places for very little. But this time I failed! The place we booked it from gave it 3.5 stars and compared it to the Double Tree. UMMMMM... not even close!

While in Orlando we went to breakfast at McDonald's. No big deal, but this McDonald's seemed really big from the out side. So we go in and holy cow it was huge! It was the worlds largest McDonald's! I ate eggs Benedict and David had waffles! Dave was not as impressed as I was. I was totally blown away! I took tons of pictures.


On our way back we stopped in Daytona Beach and let the boys play. It was 65 degrees and windy, but Abe didn't care. He hit the water like it was a hot day. Dallin mostly stayed on the shore and played in the sand. Abe is totally my child and Dallin is all Davids.

We had a great Holiday season and are so happy to have Kimi with us now. I'll try to blog more often so I don't end up so wordy.