I love it!

I got a new BlackBerry pearl (pink) and I love it! It may sound silly because I don't have a job that requires me to be connected to a computer but in all honesty I am addicted to my computer! My electronic leash just got really LONG! Since I have moved away from CA my computer is my primary way of keeping in touch with a lot of my friends. My BlackBerry is great...I can keep in touch, answer emails and surf the internet :-) - all without sitting at my computer! There are a lot of times that I am waiting around somewhere with nothing to do. It has less keys than the standard BlackBerry which I wasn't quite sure about but it does have smart type which really does let you type as fast as you can on a regular BlackBerry! It also can sync up with my email, my contacts on my computer and my calendar. I am looking forward to finally having everything in one place. And my computer backs everything up so I have it in two places in case it gets lost!
Now of course I got the standard lecture from my husband about not using it while I'm driving (spoken from experience as he almost rear ended someone doing that very thing the other day). I do remember a time when email and cell phones didn't exist so I guess they aren't really a necessity but I figure - why not embrace them since they are so convenient. I highly recommend one even for stay at home moms! This sounds like a paid ad but it isn't - I am truly excited about it! Of course I can even update the blog from it. So naturally this is:
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Mommy went to California!

(Top) I miss the snow covered mountains in So Cal. (Bottom)This was a view from the airlplane above all the rain clouds it was awesome!


I just got back from 5 days in California without kiddos! I really enjoyed having a break from my day to day duties but I really missed my monkeys and my man. This was the first time I was ever away from Lukie overnight. Everyone did well but they missed me :-) Ga said that Lucas wandered around looking for something and whining although he could not say exactly what was missing. He (and the girls) had lots of BIG hugs for mommy when I returned. It is wonderful to be missed and loved so much!


My primary reason for visiting CA was to go to training to become an independent artist for Piggies & Paws. Of course, I could not visit So Cal without seeing most of my old friends so I extended my trip to 5 days. It was so great to see everyone and catch up - I feel as though I didn't get to spend enough time with anyone. I was busy with someone from morning until night every day I was there. I miss you guys!


I am so excited to begin my new venture as an independent artist for Piggies & Paws. I absolutely love the artwork and I am so proud that they accepted me as an artist. I have a few more steps of training to complete and I hope to hold my first gallery in late February or early March. Here is a postcard for the galleries - you can also click on the link above to find out more about Piggies & Paws!

All Ideas presented are the sole property of Jennifer Thomas and are protected by copyrights.
Any duplication is strictly prohibited

Ella's Skating

Ella has taken up ice skating. Her first lessons were back in October. She is doing fabulously. She really loves being out on the ice and gliding around. They were even working on trying to spin last week. She is very particular about what she will wear to class - never pants, always a skirt with tights. Ga is working on making her a skating dress which she is really excited about! Here is a little movie of her skating - she is wearing the light pink shirt with dark pink skirt.

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Science Fair

A few weeks ago the girls' school had a science fair. We did not make the girls enter but Emily chose to. She is facinated by all things related to science. She loves to figure out why things work, how things work, and why things in our world are the way they are. Well we decided to try to see if we could get different fruits and vegetables to power a clock. Keep in mind that the science fair occurred the week after we returned from Christmas break and we forgot about the whole project during the break. Mommy went to the store and purchased a variety of fruits and vegetables on that Monday. After school, we sat down to try and connect a clock to the lemons which we knew *should* work for sure. We had no luck. We tried all different ways of connecting it (to the point that Emily was no longer interested in working on the project) Okay we had to figure out FAST what kind of project to do with all the fruits and vegetables. Mommy remembered the old baking soda/vinegar trick and realized that Emily did not know about this. We decided to add baking soda to the juice of all of the fruits to see what would happen. We got a lot of pretty neat reactions so we recorded them and researched why they happened. Emily was a trooper and did a lot of recording data and putting information on her display. Turns out, she got 2nd place in the second grade division (it was actually honorable mention but there were only two prizes per grade) We are very proud of her. Not sure if it was a good lesson learned though (waiting until the last minute and still succeeding) but there is always the other lesson of wait until the last minute and work your hiney off! Here are some pictures of her project:

Big Party Coming Up!

Ella is turning 6! I can't believe it. I am so excited about the invitation that I came up with (with some help from my friend)! Her theme this year is Pink Poodles. She wanted the poodles but she wanted it to be 50's theme versus French Poodles so we went with the poodle skirts. We invited several girls from her class. It should be fun - we will update you later!

Who is on that box?

Emily did a couple of modeling jobs before we left California. She LOVES modeling! She keeps begging me to get her into it here in Dallas but I am not sure I have the time right now. It takes a lot of time and dedication (we went on A LOT of castings before she actually got the 2 jobs). I am very bummed to say that I did not get to accompany her on either job!!

The first job she got was for La Coste Clothing. She auditioned when Lucas was only 2 weeks old and I was way too tired to drive her into LA at 6:00 at night - I almost said no to the audition but fortunately Scott was in town so he was able to take her. They ended up being 45 minutes late for the audition (yes, LA traffic). A few days later she got the job - we were SO excited for her. Thankfully the job was on a Sunday - it worked out perfect because Scott was able to take her without skipping work. I was still to tired to take her and I didn't want to bring the baby because that is a big no-no in the modeling world (siblings on the set). It took what seemed like forever for them to produce the website that she was modeling for. One day last August I decided to check the site - sure enough there was the Autumn/Winter 2007 children's line and Emily was right there! Here are the snapshots of the site pages:

I am not sure how long they leave this collection on their site. Here is the website: http://www.lacoste.com/usa/main.html you can click on clothing and children.

Emily's next job was in March of '07. We got a call saying that MGA wanted to book her strictly off of her card (which is rare but does happen). They gave us the call date and time. On that Monday, I dropped Lucas and Ella off with Ga and Pop in the Winco parking lot - and we started off for Burbank. We are not in the car more than 5 minutes and I get a call from the agency saying that the shoot is cancelled because they didn't get the correct product in. I figured she wouldn't get re booked because bookings like this are usually too good to be true. Well a couple days later they re booked for Friday - great what a busy weekend - we were headed to Palm Springs for a weekend dance competition. Well I woke up sick on Wednesday. Thursday I was even sicker. Friday EVEN worse. I had a fever, my ears hurt, I had body aches - I was pretty sure I had the flu - I was really sick in bed - I couldn't stand without getting dizzy. GREAT!!!! Scott couldn't take her because he had work commitments. Good 'ole Ga & Pop to the rescue!!! Ga took her to her 2nd modeling job. Poppa watched Ella and I took care of Luke (he still slept A LOT at 5 months). After over 1000 photographs she finished the job and they were sworn to secrecy about the product! (But they shared it with mommy & daddy :-) ) She did packaging for a new Shrek Baby Doll that was coming out for the Shrek 3 movie. Well the movie came to the theaters and then left. Meanwhile we were constantly checking the toy aisles for the dolls she modeled with. We had pretty much given up on the toy and figured that they had scrapped the idea. Bummer! As fate would have it, Emily, my mom and I were doing some after Christmas shopping on the 26th (after 9:00 at night) we were looking at some clothes for Emily to buy with her gift card and we spotted some Shrek toys that we had not seen before. OMG! Emily was on the box!!!! The picture on the front of the box doesn't quite look like her because she is looking at the baby not the camera. There is one picture on the back of the girl Shrek baby that has her looking directly at the camera. There are three different dolls - two boys and a girl. Her face is on the fronts and backs of all of them but she is only looking at the camera on the back of the girl baby. Of course, we had to buy them! I bought one of each and Ga bought the two boys because they only had one girl left. I had to fight her for the girl baby but she let me keep it in the end ;-P We still have not found another girl - we have looked at several stores for her. I guess they only made one girl for every two boys. I think that is silly since most of the dolls are played with by girls and most little girls opt to have girl babies! We have of course found several more boys but we still want another girl if you ever find it! We can't even find one on the internet!
Here are the pictures of the girl box:

The back of the girl box:

These pictures were taken last March - almost a year ago! She has lost six of her front teeth since then! Boy, is she growing up so fast! She will be 8 in May - where oh where does the time go? Seems like just yesterday I found out that I was pregnant with my baby girl!

Luke's favorite Christmas present!

This really is one of Luke's favorite toys. This video is a little long but it is so cute. You have to pay attention to how big sister Ella turns on the toy, then watch for Luke to try to turn it on the same way.

A Visit to Houston

After Christmas Uncle Corey and (Aunt) Jessica came to Texas for a visit! The kids adore Corey & Jessica. We really had fun getting to know Jessica a little better. We think this is important since she is officially joining our family in March! We really adore her and think that Corey couldn't have picked a better wife. She will make a fabulous addition to our family :-)

What a cute couple!

When Corey & Jessica were here all 9 of us piled into two cars and drove down to visit Uncles Ken & Ben on their acreage near Houston. They have a really great place. Several acres of property that includes horses, dogs, a pond, lots of wild creatures and much to the girls' joy a brand new kitten! They were great hosts, cooking two huge meals, taking the kids out in the boat on the pond and letting the kids ride one of the horses. Although it was a quick overnighter we still had a great time.

Daddy worked from home and took vacation a lot over the past two weeks. The kids really enjoyed playing with him and having him around.

Christmas

We had a lot of fun this Christmas Eve. We had to change our family traditions of going to the Thomas' or the Tortorice's house since we are a little far from California now. We miss all of our friends in California but we are also making some new friends here in Texas! Remember that Girl Scout song "Make New Friends but Keep the Old...One is Silver and the Other Gold" not sure who is silver and who is gold but they are both really pretty and I love them both!

The Bower Girls and Goodman Girls all dressed up for a fashion show (make-up and all) on Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve we had our "New" friends the Bower family over for dinner (along with Ga & Pop) The Bowers have 3 kids and they are lots of fun. We had baked ham (thanks to Daddy's boss), cheesy potatoes, green beans, corn casserole and pumpkin pie for dessert. All of our kids get along great so the adults just chatted, shared wine and enjoyed ourselves.

In fact, it was so much fun that we invited them over for Daddy's famous Egg's Benedict the next morning. We decided that the Bower's really are good friends when they held their word and showed up in their jammies at 10am for Christmas breakfast just as we had planned! It was great! They even brought Their gourmet teas over and turned all of us onto gourmet tea and the Teavana store http://www.teavana.com/. After they left we just hung out, played Wii and watched movies in our new "Media Room" (more on this later).

Surprises on Christmas morning!

Santa was good to everyone. The hit presents were a telescope for Emily (from Santa), an easel for Ella (from Santa), a ball pit for Lucas (from Big Sisters), a ball popper for Lucas (from Poppa Pete & Mimi Barb), a keyboard for the girls (from Poppa Pete & Mimi Barb).

It was really a magical Christmas.

Christmas Parties at School

Christmas Parties! The last day of school before Christmas vacation (or Holiday break as the schools prefer to call it) was nothing but fun! Fortunely Ga & Pop were here to help watch Lucas because Mommy spent the day at school and he would not have lasted all day at school. The day started out with a sing-a-long for the kindergarten - 2nd graders. Mommy got to see both of her girls sing Christmas carols (an Hanukkah songs) that they had been practicing for weeks in music class. Next we had a blast at Ella's class party - Mommy was the lead coordinator (along with her friend Lori) for this party so it was obviously the most work. We had pizza, cookie decorating, ornament making, bingo, coloring, making reindeer food, a book exchange and even a surprise visit from Santa himself! Daddy worked from home so he came to the school and surprised the girls by staying at El's party and having lunch with Em in the cafeteria.

Daddy & Ella

After Ella's party Mommy and Daddy went to grab a quick bite to eat and then Mommy went back to school to attend the rest of Em's party. Emily's party really lasted all day watching movies, playing bingo, exchanging books and having free time. They also did some crafts and had pizza. The girls both got out of school early that day to start the Christmas fun early!!

Emily at her party

ICE!

ICE! is cold! Before Christmas we went to see ICE! at the Gaylord Convention Center. It was really neat. There were rooms full of ice sculptures and even a large ice slide. It was very crowded and even though we had pre-purchased tickets there was still about an hour wait. Before we went into the 9 degree rooms they issued us a very heavy parka which we definitely needed! We walked through the sculpture rooms in less than 15 minutes because it was cold. We decided to skip the ice slide because the wait was about a half hour and none of us wanted to wait in the cold for that long. We enjoyed seeing the ice but it was one of those things that you probably only do once.