Christmas Time!!

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Kaitlin over the Christmas break. She had a wonderful Christmas. She has been so busy playing with all of her new toys. One of the things she received for Christmas was a cupcake maker. Her grandparents in Washington also got her a Paula Deen cook book and a whole cup cake kit. She looks so cute in her apron and mitt. Needless to say we have been making a lot of cupcakes. The ones that we have made from scratch are a lot better than the mixes that they have sent with the cupcake maker. Those of you that made items from the Easy Bake oven when you were little know what I mean. We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas as well.

Let it .....ICE?!!

Well Kaitlin and I are warm at home enjoying our first snow(ice) day off from school. Last night we got about.20" of ice and sleet acculmulations. I got the call at 5:30 this morning that there would not be any school on Monday. This is our last week of school before Christmas break anyway. I am not sure how many days we will miss this week. They are calling for more winter precip. on Tuesday and Wednesday. The temperature dropped in a hurry yesterday. We went to church last night at 6:00 and the temp was 58 degress. We got out of church at 7:15 and it was 28 degrees. It is currently 12 degrees. At least we still have power and can stay warm. We would love to have a good snow, but the past few years it seems we have just been getting ice storms instead. I am posting some pics from Kaitlins play at church last night. She was a Christmas tree. She also had a solo. She did GREAT!!!! She is currently practicing her keyboard for her performance day in music class on Friday. She is going to play the song Jolly Old Saint Nicolas. She is such a fast learner. We hope everyone is warm and safe today. 10 days until Christmas!!!

Jesus is the reason for the season!!

#1 Sooners headed to Miami

Here are our great Sooner pictures from this weekend!!!

Mulberry Hill

This past weekend we traveled to Pleasant Hill, MO to stay at a wonderful bed and breakfast. Oh and I fogot to mention we were going to see our Oklahoma Sooners play in the Big 12 Championship game againist the MO Tigers at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. We had an amazing trip. We traveled with two of our great friends Randy and Sonya. This was our first time to stay at a bed and breakfast. It was wonderful!!!! Mulberry Hill was a beautiful house built in 1904. John and I stayed on the 3rd floor. I posted 3 pictures of our room called the Garden of Eden. The breakfast the next morning was amazing too!!! We had so much fun. Saturday night we headed to KC to Arrowhead. We had so many layers of clothing on that it was hard to move. It was 23 degrees that night!! But we yelled and jump up and down on our feet all night cheering on our Sooners. John yelled so much he can barely talk today. :) Our OU Sooners won 62 to 21. Now they are headed to Florida for the National Championship Game.
Boomer Sooner!!!!

Kaitlin had a great weekend with my mom. She came up to our house and stayed with her because she was in the Christmas parade on Saturday. They played the Wii, watched movies, knitted, and just had a ball. I think Max missed us more than Kait.

Halloween 2008!!!

We had a wonderful time this Halloween!!! We ended up going to Aurora that night and trick or treating, passing out candy, and visiting family. Kaitlin was a geisha, Max was a pumpkin, John was a hunter, and I was a hippie from the 70's. Kaitlin got tons of candy!! Max even got some treats. People just loved that he dressed up. Overall we had a great time. We hope that your family did too!!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! HAAAAAA

We hope that everyone has a wonderful and safe Halloween night. John and I are just like kids because we also love Halloween. I dress up every year and pass out candy. This year Kaitlin is going to be a Geisha girl. She looks so cute. I will upload pictures of her after Halloween. Max of course is going to be a pumpkin. John is still unsure what has happened to his once manly hunting dog. Tonight we carved our Jack-o-lantern. Kaitlin designed the pumpkin face, but she wasnt really excited about scooping out the seeds and goo on the inside. After our carving we watched the classic "Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin." I am hoping Halloween will be a warm night. These past few days I think we have skipped Fall and just headed straight into winter. In the mornings it has been 24 degrees. TOO COLD!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! We will post again soon.

Say Cheese!!!

Here are Kaitlin's Fall 3rd Grade Pictures. She picked out her outfit and the backdrop herself. It is amazing how fast she is growing!!

Sorry for the Wait!!!

I apologize for not updating our blog since the first day of school. Now that school is back in session we are BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!! I will try to update you on everyone and do a better job in the future of posting.

Kaitlin is doing wonderful in 3rd Grade. It is neat being in the same grade as her. However her teacher told me today that she is coming into the class letting everyone know what my class is doing each day. For example, my class won a pizza and ice cream party for winning a school contest and she announced that to her class. She also added," My dad says that my mom should give our classroom the ice cream to be nice."(Thank you, John. HA HA) That was difficult because of course I wanted her to win too, but I had to explain that wouldnt be fair to my class if I took away their ice cream. 3rd Grade is such a big year for Kaitlin. It is amazing to see all of the things she is learning. She is beginning to write in cursive and learn her multplication facts. We are so proud of her. On the weekends she keeps us busy with all of the activities and birthday parties. Tomorrow she is bringing the "AMAZING MAX" into visit her classroom. She plans on showing off the tricks he knows plus playing frisbee with him. We also found a really cute pumpkin Halloween costume for Max. Kaitlin now wants to be a pumpkin for Halloween too. She says that she will be the big pumpkin and Max will be the baby pumpkin. I think it should be the other way around since Max weighs almost 85 pounds!!

John is doing great too. The wonderful stock market has been keeping him rather busy. He is also taking 3 classes at Drury this semester. Plus we are now teaching more at church. We are currently helping with the Youth on Wednesday, he teaches Sunday School for the Middle School, and he helps me teach the preschool department during church service once a month. I love it when he helps with the preschool. They absolutely wear him out. He tells me I dont know how you do it, 16 kids between 2 and 5 completely wear me out. This is also John's favorite time of the year because it is..... OU SOONERS FOOTBALL SEASON!!! So of course every Saturday we get decked out in all of our OU SOONER clothes and hats to cheer on our SOONERS!! It seems to be working because they are currently at NO# 1. We are hoping to get to go see them play in the BIG 12 Championship that will be in Kansas City this year.
I hope that everyone is doing great. I will work on getting updated pictures loaded later this week.

Our First Day of School

These are the pictures from Thursday our first day of school. This year Kaitlin is in 3rd grade the same grade that I teach at our school. Her teacher Mrs. Leeper decided to loop with the class. We are so blessed to have Mrs. Leeper in 2nd and
3rd grade. Kaitlin's class consists of all the same students from last year as well. It is a great experience for Kait. This year John also got to go with us on our first day of school all day because he is a WATCH DOG. Our school is doing a program called Watch Dogs in which they try to have at least one dad at school for each day of the school year. This program helps to provide positive male role models to all students. John came home exhausted he couldnt believe how hard my job really is each day. He went to recess and lunch with the kids too. It was really great to have him there. Our whole family was at school except poor Max. HAHA Well I hated to see summer end... but it is nice to get back into the swing of things. I have another great group of kids this year and I just love working at LR.

Our visit from the Texas Longhorns!!

Today we had a wonderful visit with our good friends Adam,Kelli, Lane, and Logan. We try not to hold it against them that they are Texas Longhorn fans and we are die hard OU Sooner fans. John and Adam were both Rangers together and they were stationed in Washington together as a result they became great friends. We wish that we could see them more often but they live in Texas so we are lucky if we get to see them a few times of year. We would love it if they would move closer!! Today we surprised Kaitlin because she did not know they were coming to visit. She just loves playing with Lane and Logan.We could not believe how tall the boys had gotten since we had seen them last (and Adam too HAHa).
Here are a few pictures from their visit.

Before and After pics of our Painting

Summer is ending

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything to our blog. The end of summer is upon us, so I am rushing to get all my last minute projects completed. I warned you last time that I was beginning our painting project. If I did not say so earlier.... I HATE PAINTING!! It took us about a week to complete everything. We moved all of our furniture out so that we could steam clean too. The bathroom's paint color is supposed to be Cherokee Tan, but as you can tell it is more of an olive green than anything tan. It is a beautiful color we were just planning on that shade of green for our bedroom. Anyway I found a different paint color for the bedroom olive gray. I thought it would be different than the bathroom. However I was wrong again it was pretty much the same color. The walls in the bedroom are textured though so that makes it look a little different. Oh well it is done and the walls look much cleaner. We really do like the colors too. It made the baseboards and our bedroom furniture just pop.

I also have been working really hard in my classroom to get it all ready for the start of school. This year we are starting school about 10 days earlier because we have had such bad winters lately. This past year we missed so many days of school due to bad weather that we had Saturday school and still not get out until June. I am not ready to go back quite this early but it will be really nice in May.

This past weekend John and I went to Kansas City to meet Kaitin and her Grandpa at the airport. She was just getting back from her visit to Washington. She had a good time. We are really happy she is back home!!! It was just too quiet without her. Her grandparents took her on two really exciting trips one to the beach in Oregon and another to MT. St. Helens. She brought back all sorts of seashells that she collected from the beach and a beautiful statue of Jesus and two children which was made out of Mt. St. Helens ash.When she arrived home and went outside she could not believe how hot it was outside. The temperature has been running close to 100 lately and with the heat index it feels about 115. We are focusing on getting her ready for school this week too. We are going to go to Branson one day this week and get her some new school clothes and all of her supplies for the year.

Summer time fun!!

I love summer!!! Summer is my favorite time of the year. I just love being able to get caught up on projects around the house (John I know loves this too--haha) spending time outside, and just doing whatever I want without worrying about the stresses of work. Don't get me wrong I love my job but I just love the freedom. If I am tired I can sleep in late or take a nap in mid-day. I am also spending lots of time at our local Y. I am able to take all sorts of different exercise classes that I dont normally get to take during the year. I really enjoy this. I also actually feel like I have the time to cook good dinners instead of just fixing something quick in the 30 minutes we have before our next activity. Last night, I cooked stuffed peppers and not to brag they were pretty good. Since we have gotten married I think or at least have tried to become a better cook. I just love getting recipes out of the Taste of Home Magazines my mother-n-law sends me each month. I am not sure if John asked her to start sending me these magazines because my cooking was so bad or what but I love them(Just kidding)!! I hope this week to get started painting our bedroom and bathroom. I will try to post before and after pictures. I can only take so much painting each summer. :)

Kaitlin is in Oregon this week with her grandparents at the beach. We talk to her everyday and get to hear all about her fun adventures that she is having. She loves collecting sea shells and seeing all the different animals there. We really miss her it is so quiet around the house. But we are glad she gets to visit her family.

John is also staying busy this summer. At first he was thinking of taking the summer off from school in which he is working on his masters, but at the last minute he changed his mind. At least this summer all of his classes are online so he can work on his assignments in his spare time. I am really proud of him he works really hard.

I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer time.

Kaitlin's Gold Medal Turtle

Happy Belated 4th of July!!!
This year we had a great fourth. We went down to my parents house and enjoyed a wonderful barbecue. Kaitlin( and John the biggest kid) enjoyed shooting off our fireworks purchased from the best firework stand around " Crazy Prevo's." Next we went to the Rogersville Independence Day Celebration. Kaitlin was in our church float for the parade. Then she participated in the Turtle Race. Kaitlin had taken care of her turtle for a week. She named her turtle Leslie Turtie Greenster. She also decorated it. She did drills with her turtle each day to make it faster. I guess it worked because she won the turtle race. After that we enjoyed a beautiful display of fireworks.

Memories from our Honeymoon in Hawaii

June 24th

Our First Toast as Mr. & Mrs. Pope

Our Wedding Anniversary--June 24, 2006

It is hard to believe that 2 years have already passed. It seems just like yesterday we were planning our wedding. This has definitely been the happiest 2 years of my life. I feel so blessed for the amazing husband that God has given me.

Kaitlin

Kaitlin is having a great summer!! She is attending enrichment summer school. She loves it because she gets to make crafts and play with her friends. She has also really excelled in her swimming. Her favorite swim stroke is the back stroke. This is the first year she has played coach pitch baseball as well. She has picked up on it so easily. John does a great job working with her.

Testing ....1,2,3

Hello to all of our Family and Friends-
We are new to this whole blog thing so please be patient. We hope this will help to keep everyone updated with our lives.

The Pope's