Mista Hebes & Lillahammer

Heber plays soccer for the Sharks at Chapparel Elementary (a K-8 in Higley). We attended the game on Monday afternoon; it was a great match. Unfortunately the Sharks lost 2 to 1, but Mr. Hebes played a great game & his team definitely didn't lose because of him. It was fun. New Nicknames: Heber is Mr. Hebes & Tyson is now Lillahammer (I don't know why--ask my dad, but I'm not complaining, because my son FINALLY has an official nickname from my dad. My cousins could get nicknames for their kids in seconds, but his own grandson took him 14+ months to figure the right one out. He finally picked a goofy one for my son & it's about time.)

Oh, yeah! Good stuff!
The rocks were most interesting to Tyson--even though we were all screaming our heads off, "Shark Attack, Shark Attack," he still was more interested in the different sizes of the gravel. Priorities!

Wear Sunscreen--You're Too Young to Die!

I went to the dermatologist this morning, because I have this little pink & flaky spot on my nose that won't go away (it's been there for 8-9 months). She believes it's pre-cancer. Isn't that lovely?! I'll know in 2 weeks for sure if it's really pre-cancer, because the cream she prescribed me is something that only reacts to pre-cancerous cells. If the spot goes away, it was pre-cancer; if not, it's something that can be removed with laser surgery. The point is that when you have fair skin, you shouldn't take chances. When in doubt, wear sunscreen--even at a 15 minute recess, especially in the summer time (or any time), and on the lake or the beach. Supposedly a pre-cancerous cell has 80% chance of it doing nothing, and 20% chance of it turning into skin cancer, but you don't know if you're going to be in the 80 part or the 20 part, so you need to take care of yourself. Ask yourself if you're too young to die: if the answer is "yes," you should stock up on the creamy stuff that protects your life. I think I'm going to go add the Sunscreen song to my Playlist, now. : )

Test Test

WHY IS MY BLOG DOING THIS TO ME! I'M POSTING ON THE 18TH AND IT'S SAYING THE 17TH. HELP!

My Little Cookie Monster

Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? TYSON did!!! He wasn't content to share a cookie with me tonight...oh, no! He had to have his own that wasn't broken in half & it had to get all over his face! : ) I love my little cookie monster!

Jen Wilson brought me the plate of cookies; it was her last visit to me as my Visiting Teacher. She did an awesome job!

Just a quick shout out to my sis, Erin. Happy Birthday! We love you...we have a few cookies left if you want one. : )

4 Years, Baby!

Today is our 4th Anniversary; we love being married. It started out as quite a regular day, but we went out to dinner anyway. Amidst work, school, and moving, we are lucky we fit in a dinner together. Thankfully my mom watched Tyson for us--she knew that we needed time together to celebrate our special day. I sure love my mom! Mitch went to part of his class, and skipped out at the break, at which point we went to On the Border. We had a great waiter named Dan & he gave us a free desert for our anniversary. It was great! Despite our cozy booth, there was a table of drunk African American women on the other side of the wall speaking fluent Ebonics. : ) Mitch and I just had to laugh. I thought they were mad at each other, but he said that yelling was just their form of communication. I didn't believe him until we heard their conversation change from yelling & cussing, to Dr. Phil, cousins kicking it no matter what the age, the $ nurses make, and praying to God for the each other. As you can tell, we couldn't really focus on our own conversation, but it's okay. Dan announced to everyone in the restaurant that it was our anniversary & they sang a butchered version of a celebration song. Brittany Heil from elementary school was a host there & it was great to see her again.

Mitch-Hubby, thanks for dinner! I love you! You're the best & I'm so lucky I married you! It's been a great 4 years--let's keep it going forever! You're the love of my life...tied with Tyson. I've never been happier than when I'm with you. Love, D-Jo

Not so free bowling...but still a good deal!

Friday night we went bowling with the Souquet-bressand's & the Lovell's. It was totally fun! I can't bowl worth beans, but we had a great time. The coupon Scott & Tiff found gave us a good deal on unlimited bowling for 2 hours+a pizza & free drinks. The only problem was that we couldn't bowl fast enough. We got 2 1/2 games in within the 2 hours. We should have been bowling at turbo speed the whole time & our scores would have been awesome, plus we would have finished the 3rd game. Our combined score on the 2nd game was 534--yeah! Go us! (I contributed a whopping 64 to those points). We went to Scott & Tiff's afterwards to watch a movie, but Jami & Dallas had a "blow out" to deal with (you know how that goes!). So Tiff & I just let the boys play video games while we fiddled around picking songs for her play list on her blog. It sounds so simple, but it was really fun & we were entertained until 1 AM. LOL Poor Tiff, I think we did her in for the day...not only does she have a baby draining her energy, she has peer pressure keeping her up WAY past her bedtime. You only live once, though, right?
Here are our pics:

The Girls: Tiffany, DJ, Jami

The Boys: Scott, Dallas, Mitch & Tyson
The Duck
Can you see the fireworks boosting Mitch's self-esteem?

They way Dallas bowls...

The way Jami rolls....
"That's it! That's a strike!!!!"
The way Tiffany rolls (you can't even tell she's prego from this side!)
The way Deej hopes it won't be a gutter ball...

Scott & Tiff, and Dallas & Jami are some of our best friends. They know how to spice up a weekend! Thanks guys for everything you do for us! You're the best!

Moving

Well we have been married almost 4 years now and will soon bemoving into our third home. First it was our apartment in Chandler, we were there for one year. Now for the past three years we have been living in a little house on the ASU polytechnic campus on the border of Gilbert and east Mesa. In both places we have made great friends. Moving is kinda a bitter sweet thing. We will miss our friends, and the unique setting here on campus with so many young married couples. We have loved living here. But at the same time we are way excited to be moving. For one thing it will be bigger. Now that we number three and tyson is way mobile this little house just doesn't seem big enough sometimes. Plus we are actually getting a better deal with the house we are moving to. Some people Debra Jo has known for years are moving to West Virginia for 5 years and want us to take care of their house. They are giving us a great deal to live there and take care of the place. We won't own it but for a while it will be ours. It even has a small pool. Well I'd like to say more, but this post is way long and I need to pack.

I love Starfall.com

I decided that ww.starfall.com is my favorite website because Tyson LOVES it! It helps me keep him entertained, AND it teaches him letter sounds. I've been doing Starfall with him since Wednesday of last week and already, he's trying to talk more. Lately Tyson's been screaming if he doesn't know how to communicate what he wants. It's awful. We've been trying to make him at least try to say the beginning sound of the word before we give him what he wants, but you know how quickly that works. He was already making the sounds /a/, /b/, /d/, /l/, /m/, /p/, and /t/. Since Wednesday, he's also learned the sounds /s/, /f/, /n/, /y/, and /z/. He tries to make /g/, and /j/, but they sound like d's. : ) I'm not too worried about that, though, because that was a common mistake among my struggling 2nd graders. He's still got a few years to master that skill. If he can't get it by then, that's when I'll worry. : ) Anyway, I just think it's awesome! Last night Mitch was reading Tyson bedtime stories, and I told him do do a few letters on Starfall. Mitch pulled it up and Tyson heard the music from the letter A. Next thing we knew, he was running to the computer with his arms up towards Mitch. Too cute! If you have a youngster, you should go to Starfall for just a few minutes everyday, because it works and it's interactive. The end.

Free Bowling Thanks to Rob & Deana & Pictures as Promised!

The last night we saw the Rasmussen family before their journey to Utah, they left us with a bowling coupon & told us to send pictures, so here they are! FREE BOWLING for everyone in our group! What an awesome treat. I am lucky to have noticed that the expiration date was coming up, so we went bowling on Saturday night. It was great fun. First, we went to eat buffalo wings at some buffalo wing place, but we had to eat fast because they were doing the UFC fight at 7:00pm, and if we were still there, we'd have to pay $5 a person. That would have been $2o bucks to watch a nasty fight. Who wants to do that? Good thing we went bowling!

D-Jo & Mitch







Mitch's classic bowling pose to the left.
Erin's almost flying bowling ball to the right.










Smile!

Mitch was conducting Craig's List business on the telephone. He made out to have a very profitable Saturday, AND he still got a good score on his game...I believe he broke 100, which was more than I could do (and I wasn't the one multi-tasking). Hubby...I take back what I said about men not having the ability to multi-task...now, can I have some of the money you earned? : ) LOL

Macho Mike

MODEST IS HOTTEST! (And so is plaid!) Erin and I both love knee-length bermuda shorts. Go us. Just a quick celebration moment for myself: I bought these shorts at Aeropostale...yes I'm celebrating, because it's been ages since I could fit into their sizes. However, I've lost 17 pounds since I started trying to lose weight in April, and so I'm doubly happy about my bermuda shorts! Plus they're blue & green, which are my 2 fav. colors. Whoo hoo! Oh! Just a funny little anecdote about my outfit. This happened to be the outfit that I wore on the first day of school. The entire day went great--I was enjoying it & getting to know all of my students, when the ecstasy abruptly turned to embarrassment. The Large sticker was still on my shirt, and I didn't know it until 2:00pm. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It was so funny. What a fashion faux pas!

When you do anything with Erin, you have to take at least one black and white photo. So, here's our group photo. Thanks for coming with us, Mike & Erin. YOU ROCK & I love you!

Thanks again to Rob & Deana: You ROCK, too, and we miss you in Arizona!

Love, The Horn's & The Borden's!

Sunflower Frenzy

Between Show Low and Vernon, there were fields of Sunflowers! They were so beautiful, we had to take pictures. I was so sad, though, because after we spent all the time trying to take pictures, we drove down the road just a little ways, and found stunning areas full of sunflowers. Tyson liked to look at the sunflowers, and reach for the brown part. He was also a little distracted by the hundreds of insects fluttering around us. I love sunflowers, because they're bright, and make you happy.

Labor Day Weekend

Mitchell and I went on a hike up Sierra Trigo today. It was the perfect day to be on the mountain. The breeze was constantly blowing the wild flowers and bushes around. The whole mountainside seemed to sway with the wind. The hike is steep--it killed my hamstrings on the way up, and exhausted my knees & quads on the way down, but it was great fun! On the way down the mountain, I told Mitch that my favorite part was being at the top. Immediately in response, he said, "My favorite part was spending an hour with just you!" What a schmooz! He knows the cheezy, silly things get me every time!Can you believe I got him to pose like this!?

Nick has a hot new truck, and consented to give his niece and nephews a ride. What an AWESOME uncle! This picture from left to right is Tyson, D-Jo, Felicia, & Sterling. The kids were enthralled the whole ride, and then it started raining & we were all so cold. I had some other good shots, but they turned out to be blurry. Thanks, Nick for being the cool uncle.

Don't tell us we're studs...we already know (hence the pose).
Mitch made these two child size chairs out of an old stump of wood. As you can see, the custom design is made especially for our little one, with an ottoman and all for tiny feet to rest on! It's rustic, smells heavily of pine, and believe it or not, is now inside our house in Tyson's room. Haha.

4 little monkeys! No joke, I kept all of these little guys satisfied for 15 minutes with bananas! They're so cute! From left to right, we've got Quinton, Brycen, Sterling, & Tyson. This shot was taken about a week before our trip to the Homestead, but I thought I'd include it anyway.
These are the Alabama Bordens. From oldest to youngest, there's Kallianne, Quenton, Brycen, & Sterling. We love them so much, and miss them already. When Kit & Felicia were loading them up, I realized they made a larger sacrifice to come than anyone really knows. Driving to the Homestead and back with just one child in a car seat is hard enough, let alone driving back and forth to Alabama with 4 children in car seats. I don't know how they do it with four kids ages four and under. But, they're all so cute, and well behaved. We're lucky to be related!
Caden was satisfied when he got his own chair & ottoman like Tyson's.

Preparing for the truck ride: Sterling, D-Jo, Tyson, Myrna, Caden, Brycen, Felicia

Driving to Teaching Tools

On Thursday, before the rainstorm, Jodi went to the Teaching store with Tyson & me. We were having a normal conversation...something about boys (yes, a VERY usual topic for Jodi Lynn) when I looked over at her and died laughing. Somewhere within the conversation, a small bite of Ding-Dong remained on her teeth. I was laughing so hard I could barely tell her to look in the mirror. Our conversation was out the window, because we were too beside ourselves thinking about how ridiculous the chocolate on her teeth looked. We spent the next mile on the road dangerously trying to snap photos while we were cracking up. Fun times. Thanks, Jodi for going to the store with me--it was an entertaining ride!