OK!!! I know it is the holiday season so I should have some other more "holiday" pictures than a beautiful blue sky while hiking up a mountain. While most of you reading this are having freezing temps and snow. I do have to say though. Yesterday I finally got in the mood. Because it was actually overcast yesterday and it rained throughout most of the day! I guess that is as close as we can get to "It's beginning to look alot like Christmas" as we can get. And it was cold too, I actually put on a sweat shirt yesterday when I was driving around town!!!!! Of course I do have to say that I have to laugh at the locals because some of them just don't understand these record "lows" that we are having. I was actually excited when I woke up to frost on my car window the other day. I am sure there are a few that thought it was snow.

this is the peak we climb on Monday's
My running partner Paula
Me and Paula, not quite at the top
View from almost the top
The very rocky terrain

My friend Paula and I have been climbing Sqaw peak every Monday morning for the last couple of weeks. So I thought I would bring my camera this morning. It was really windy on top of the mountain this morning, but luckily I didn't fall off.

Blankie Dog!

This dog is just like a baby. She needs to have her blankie to settle down.

The other day in the morning she was restless, and wouldn't settle down for her morning

nap that she usually takes, so I bring her blankie out of her kennel and she gets all snuggled in and can finally relax. Twice I was looking around for her and she had taken her blanket out of her kennel and was laying on it some other place in the house. Even at night when swe watch TV and we want her to settle down, we give her her blanket and a raw hide bone, and she chews on that just like a binkie. What a baby!!!!

Tis' the Season!

Well it is that time of year. Ofcourse it is hard to think about

Christmas when it is 80 degrees outside.

But we put up our Christmas tree and other decorations too.

I kind of need the decorations to jumpstart me and

get me in the Christmas Spirit!!!

YEAH IT IS DONE!!!!!

I finally finished Liz's room. I hope you can kind of get a good idea of what we are did with her room. We put some fun words in vinyl on the pink part of her room. It looks really cute. I almost had to find another type of border. I started putting the border on and realized I needed more. So I headed down to Lowe's to pick up another roll. And of course because I procrastinated in doing my project, I learned that it had been discontinued. Of course!!! Luckily I was able to find the skew number and only had to go to 3 stores. Whew!!! So yes, I learned my lesson, I will measure next time, AND I will finish my project soon after I buy my supplies. The room has turned out really nice. Next project? Hopefully painting the kitchen!!!!

Thanksgiving!!!

This year we had a big Thanksgiving dinner with our friends again.

We had the Joyner and Leavitt family over. We had Turkey and Ham. All sorts of side dishes and ofcourse pie for dessert. Even though it is hard being away from family this time of year it is nice to have friends to spend the holidays with.

New Pictures of Puppy

Here are some updated pictures of our growing puppy. As you can see she loves nap time with Daddy. She actually loves to lay on blankets. It is funny how much like a baby or toddler she is. If she gets to out of control, I put her in her crate and she has a nap. And sometimes she likes to carry her blankie around the house then she finds a good spot and she lays down and takes a nap. She is doing really good in Puppy school. This week we are teaching her "leave it" and she is doing better than I thought she would do.

More pictures of their fun weekend.

My Cowboys!!!!

While I was in Spokane at my Grandfather's funeral my family was able to participate in the Arizona territorial round up. This was Jake's first shooting competition. The kids had a great time. They got to dress up and watch everyone do their shooting. Sam is excited to turn 12 so he can start shooting and competing.

The Boy cousins!!!!!

The girl cousins!!!!

Our favorite things of Papa

G.G. and her grandkids.

My Favorite Papa!!!!





On Tuesday November 7th my Grandfather Max Abston passed away. It was a very sad day for our whole family. Especially for my sweet sweet grandma who is now widowed. She is a such a strong woman and a great inspiration to us all. The wonderful thing through this sad day was the fact that all of the family got together and pay our respect and love to our wonderful grandfather. The only people missing was my cute family, Jake, Sam & Liz. I had the wonderful opportunity to fly up to Spokane and visit with my family. I got to see babies that I haven't been able to see before. So ofcourse there was lots of kissing and hugging. I also fell in love with a little blonde hair blue eyed cutie named Ezra!!! Ofcourse I had to bribe him with cookies and M&M's and chips for any affection, but that is OK. Then there is my new nephew Wyatt. He was so happy just to be there. His smile is infectious. Then there was cute Leah! She loved to laugh!!!!! She had so many silly faces. Seeing watching her just made me laugh!!!!





It is true that through bad things good things happen. We had such a wonderful time as a family. We had the opportunity to reminice over our memories of Papa. The memorial was so nice and reminded once again what a wonderful person Papa is. I love him so much and he will be dearly missed.

More Pictures of Puppy!!!






As you can see we are enjoying puppy. Even Tina is getting used to the idea. The dogs like to play together. We are getting there with the potty training. Rosie is growing really fast. We are starting doggie obedience school on Friday nights too. Hopefully she will learn that she is not top dog in the family. This has been kind of a hard lesson for her to learn!!!

This is Cameron Newberry and Kate Leavitt

Sam was being Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day.

Liz, Emily Leavitt, and Nathan Newberry

Tyler, Brant Joyner, Nathan Newberry & Sam

Me, Paula, Tiffany, and Debi
Halloween at our house!!!!

This year I was a bit insane and invited alot of people over for a pizza party and trick or treating at our house. We had the Joyner family, the Newberry family, and the Leavitt family. We had 18 people in our tiny little house. A little squishy but lot's of fun!!!!!!

Well earlier in my sister-in law Piper's blog she stated that she din't want her front teeth for christmas she wanted that cute wrinkly puppy. And I don't blame her. However, it is a different story for me. Actually, I don't really want my two front teeth, I want seven others. For those of you in my family, you know that this was coming for years. And today was the first day of a long process of moving myself out of the red-necked population of people walking around with no teeth, to the proper civilized people with beautiful teeth. Today I had my first implant on my bottom jaw bone. And granted a beautiful tooth will not be there for another 3 months or so, but a nice stainless steel stud is there until the space heals. Ofcourse this is a first of many steps.

The second step after this may sound a little vain but what we are going to do is whiten my bottom row of teeth. Why you ask, well on my top row of teeth all of them will be getting crowned, and my two front teeth which are already crowned will need to be re-crowned as well (explained in a minute). So I thought since all my teeth will be "new" and it is cool to have them whitened. Why don't I choose pretty teeth. So the second step is to have the bottom teeth all whitened.

The third step will be to put a plate over my mouth to to make it higher. So basically a retainer type thing will fit over my bottom teeth to see if my jaw bone can handle it. I will wear that for about 3-4 weeks. You see with years of not having teeth on top, and only a partial denture, my bit is "un-naturally" lowered. So this will help "lift" it so when the new teeth are placed in I won't have stress on my jaw bone with the new height of my teeth.

OK, fourth step is to put the crown on the implant that I had this morning. And since I will have had my teeth whitened on the bottom I can have a color close to the whitened teeth.

Ok, on to the fifth step. This is kind of a pricy step. We will be crowning my 4 upper molars. There is 2 reasons for this. The first reason, is because of my bite sinking gradually over the years, the molars are shorter and need to be built up a bit to be even with the new teeth coming in. Plus, with the partial denture I have worn for the past 7 or so years, there was a big huge gapping whole drilled in between each molar on each side of the mouth. And I do not need those holes just sitting there open, it would be impossible to eat and try and get food out of there. Part of this process will be to re-crown my two front teeth as well. When my bite is corrected, and in its correct position, my two front teeth will have the appearance of sticking out . Well since I am trying to get away from the appearance of looking like Bugs Bunny, we will re-crown those as well to re-position those and have them look normal.

Ok what step are we on now? Oh #6. This is actually kind of interesting. I will be getting a CT scan of my head to have a stent made. At first when it was all being explained, I was wondering why in the heck I needed a stent. All I was picturing was the cathater that Jake had put in when he was going through chemo. But luckily I had it all wrong. A stent in this case is going to be guide to help Dr. Blazic place the 6 implants I need on the top of my mouth in the precise place so they can put temporary teeth on them. Which moves us on to the next step.

Number seven. I will have my 6 upper teeth implants placed. Three on each side of my two front teeth. As I was explaining in the previous step the doctor will use this stent for exact placement of the implants. The reason for this is because there is a new procedure that we are going to do where I will get to have temporary teeth put on at the time of the implants. Having these temporary teeth put in at the time of implants will help shape the gum and encourage that gum around the teeth so I won't have any space between the gum and the teeth. And for those of you that would like to learn a new "dental" term today. The gum that builds up and forms the peaks in between your teeth are called "Papilla". And after the papilla is formed then we move on to the last step.

LAST STEP!!! This will to place the permanent crown over the impants. It will take several months for this to happen. Probably 6 months or so.

So over all this whole process I am guessing it will take a little under a year to complete. Friday I learned what all of this costs. I had a very bad day on Friday........I about had a heart attack actually, because lets just say in paying for all this, I could have paid off my car and taken the our little family on a nice Disney cruise. And probably had a little left over. But it has to get done, and it will be worth it when it is over. Atleast that is what I keep telling my self. And when my mouth is a little less sore I will have Jake take a picture of my mouth today.........,

OUR NEW BABY!!!!!!!!


We would like to introduce our new baby Rosie to our family.
She is an American Bull Dog and is about 4 months old.
Tina it seemed, was happy to have her when she first came home, however, later in the evening I think she was wondering when this dog was going to leave. They have been getting along pretty well so far. However, Rosie just doesn't understand why Tina doesn't want to play, and Tina doesn't understand why Rosie can't just leave her alone.

Here is my old west cowboy gunslinger family!!!

Jake is getting ready to start competing in Single action shooting competitions. Part of the competition is dressing the part. Even Liz is getting into the act!!!! Now I need to get my clothes, I have a couple of good ideas. We have a great store in Mesa that has some great clothes from the old west era.

More Pictures of Cousins!!!

Here are some of more pictures of cousins from our trip in Utah. The top picture is Byron, Nate and Cassie, the bottom is cute Luke, Jared and Issac. We had such a great time visiting family in Utah, we can't wait to see them again soon!!!!!!

THE SIM BOYS

While we were in Utah we had the opportunity to drop in and visit with the Sim boys.
Jake and Ryon are at the top, cute Jordon, in the middle, and adorable Tanner on the bottom with Sam and Liz.

Here are some scuba diving pictures. It was alot of fun. WE got to see a Sea turtle, and octopus, a couple of eels, and a puffer fish. And ofcourse lots of tropical fish!!!!! I can't wait to go again.