Confetti

Soft little ice flowers fell from the sky today. I have no idea what to call this percipitation. 

Getting ready for the holiday

The house is decorated. The lights outside are few, but I plan to get some more up when it's above freezing. Sahara says that will be next Thursday!

We went with a real tree for the first time ever. It hasn't taken ANY water yet and it's been 8 days. It's mounted in the stand it came in so I can't recut the bottom. It will most likely be brown by Christmas. Bummer. We only decorated with picks, lights, and snow flakes. But Sahara wants me to find last years tree spider. Again, waiting for the thaw. 

Since we're kind of iced in we decided to get some holiday baking done. We loaded up trays and headed out to meet our four new neighbors. House one, no answer, we left the tray in their chair on the porch. House two, Alisha answered. Nice lady and she said Scott and Cindy live there. House three, really nice mom, Amanda and 3 elementary kids there. Then we got stuck in their driveway. Too icy. Took forever to get out and pretty embarrassing. So we skipped house four for now. 

We have 4 more batches of cookies to make and 1 loaf of bread. Maybe tomorrow. 

And everything is wrapped and under the tree and in the stockings.

                          �� YaY��

Snow Day

School/ work got out 2 hours early yesterday to prepare. 

Today everything was cancelled. Even the Christmas Parade (not to be rescheduled), the Bost party for Canyon (probably will be rescheduled), the Art Walk downtown (unknown).  

This is looking out my kitchen window box. 

Frozen. 

Even tho that totally looks like Malaki looking out the window, it's not! It must be ghost Malaki spirit or something because...

He is out here with us!!

Ok, time for soup! 

Supposed to get to 11 tonight. Brrrrrr.  

State Bowling

Canyon and his crew qualified at Regional for State. I had to get him to school at 6:15 to catch the bus to Little Rock. That's earlier then his alarm usually goes off to wake up. 

Looks like another Spare. 

The team gets 2nd place! 

Awesome job APACHES!!

Canyon is proud of his medal. :)

Thanksgiving Day

Our day started with getting our meal put together (mostly so we can have left overs for the rest of the weekend)

Then we ate, packed a LOT of ham away in the freezer, and put all the left overs up. 

Next was a nice nap. 

Then off to Mila, Joe, and Zach's for another meal. Sahara and Zach's friend from high school, Jason, was there for grub too. 

Happy Turkey Day!!

It's been a crafty day :)

Made these for my teacher friends for Christmas today!

Eagle Trip

Canyon and his class went on a field trip this week to scout for eagles.  They even went out on a boat on the lake. 

Canyon, his class and teacher Mrs. Van Ez

It was a pretty chilly day and was supposed to rain.  Canyon was prepared.

No eagles were found unfortunately, but they did find an eagles nest.

After was lunch in the park.

Bangs and Blonde

Sahara's weekend project

Sahara decided to do a project. She wanted a place for pictures in her room and wanted to create that place herself. Not buy a premade board. We hot glued foam board on the back of the cork board because it's never thick enough and tacks poke through. Then she hot glued thin rope. Originally the rope was to tuck pictures behind, but that wasn't working so it became a design element. 

It took until the next day to figure the pattern she wanted to put them on the wall. The are held up with that double sided foamy tape. 

Pictures went up fast. 

Even before she remembered that she had bought little starfish to glue on the ropes.

She's going to take back the unused roll of rope and get more starfish to finish it. 

So until then, here's the finished project. $25. 

Engaged!!!

No. Not me, 

or Sahara, 

or Canyon for that matter. 

Sahara's friend Brittany and her boyfriend Tyler got engaged this weekend. Waaaay too young, but they plan on at least a year engagement. 

Her ring is beautiful but we could not get a picture to do it justice. 

Sahara took their 2 year dating pictures :)

Super Star

Canyon is a model for a brand new campaign called:

Lose The Label https://www.facebook.com/Losethelabel

It just formed 3 weeks ago so if it becomes more then a Facebook page, I will let you know. For now, he and around 15 other kids are there to spread awareness that they need to be thought of People First and they are not DS kids or Downs kids or but kids first, who happen to have Down syndrome. 

Special Olympics Bowling

It's that time of the year for Special Olympic bowling.  At 8:10 Saturday morning we left the house to head to Sportsworld Bowling Alley. Canyon and his team were set up on lane 16.  He found a gold ball in his size and soon the games were about to begin.

I sneaked over to the side to get a shot of him in action, but lighting is pretty dull so they all turned out blurry.  

He made a couple Spares as you can see in the picture above.  

Awesome job Canyon!

1st PLACE WINNERS!!!

The team: Chance, Shawn, Canyon, and Tyler

Pancho, our neighbor and Canyon's bud in the Jr. High, got his medal for Individual Bowling.

Another happy kid.

Everyone awarded and just in time for lunch at Ihop.

Way to Go Canyon!!

So this is how I work now....

 Online threats keep 70 percent of Russellville Middle School students at home

Police do a 6 am locker search before school on Tuesday.

Update:

KATV - Breaking News, Weather and Razorback Sports

In case the video doesn't work or take forever to load:

RUSSELLVILLE (KATV) - Two students were arrested Wednesday after death threats were made against other students at Russellville Middle School through the online message board Ask.FM.
More than half the student body stayed home Wednesday. More than 70 percent didn't show up for classes on Tuesday.
Thursday may be a different story, though, thanks to those arrests.
Police arrested the first suspect Wednesday morning as part of a separate investigation. She originally went on the same site asking how to make a bomb, according to police, and was charged with falsely communicating a terroristic threat.

• Online threats keep 70 percent of Russellville Middle School students at home
  

The second female suspect was interviewed and arrested Wednesday afternoon, directly connected to the Ask.FMdeath threats.
Police emphasized that while both girls were arrested for activity on the same site, they were not working together and their alleged crimes are in no way connected.
The case took major steps Wednesday morning thanks, in part, to help from federal law enforcement agencies that were able to ping the IP address from the chatroom.

Neither suspect has been identified because of their ages.

Evening visitors

I took these pictures from inside my house. They were about 50 feet from the patio. We've never had them come so close before (that we know of anyway).