Our new addition to the family...

Well, as you can see by the new title of your blog. We have a new cat. His name is Archie and I got him from my Aunt Patti here in Las Vegas. She's a big cat nut like I am.....except she has 10 at home and 2 at her office. She rescued Archie after another cat (or possibly a dog) beat him up. He had a big open sore on his side. She gained his trust and took him to the Vet and got him all patched up, as well as had him neutered, tested for disease and got him all his shots. As you can imagine she couldn't keep him because her cat capacity was at it's maximum! She sent me a "impassioned plea" email asking me to take him. She knew I lost my sweet Miss Smoochi last year.

He's been at our house now for about 3 weeks. He's still a bit skittish and only comes out at night because of the boys. Ada isn't too thrilled with him ......she's sabotaging him by eating his food and using his box. She's slowly coming around though. Dwayne too has had a bit of a hard time adjusting to him. I'm certain eventually he will get used to him just like he did my other ones when we met. He complains about him sometimes, but then I hear him "talking" to Archie when he's on the computer (I often have a hard time knowing if it's him or Archie doing the meowing)so I know deep down he likes him.

Sadly, not long after Archie arrived I found out Ada has kidney disease. I'm hoping it isn't as bad or advanced as Smoochi's was. I'm going to start her on a herbal supplement soon that will hopefully help. I would be pretty devastated if I had to put her down any time soon. She's such a sweet girl.

Well, that's it for this weeks update. Calvin starts baseball in March and Dwayne is one of the assistant coaches so look for pictures of that soon. We're all very excited about it because this year he got a great head coach and the team is the Angels!!! Until next time....

I finally learned how to add video!!! Funny Calvin clips

Wednesday I took Calvin rollerskating for a school function. To my surprise he did very well, much better than the last time we went. He fell down quite a bit but always got right back up. By the end of the night he was making it round the rink about 2 times with out crashing! (YOU'LL NEED TO CLICK ON THE PAUSE BUTTON IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER OF THE MUSIC PLAYER ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PAGE....YOU MAY HAVE TO CLICK ON IT TWICE TO PAUSE THE MUSIC)

Then on Valentine's Day he had a class performance. They each did a report on their favorite animal. Calvin chose the sea turtle. We worked together gathering facts and pictures and pasted them on the big white sheet of paper. During the performance they were each suppose to hold up their piece of paper and say their name and what their favorite animal was. Calvin did great....but the little class clown did it in an ENGLISH ACCENT! He has a little friend in the other class that is from England and he's since picked up an english accent every once in a while. It's very amusing. Below is a quick video of him doing his report. It may be a bit hard to hear him talking because I'm laughing so hard. I don't know which is funnier...his accent or my laughing!

Kelli, Calvin & Zach's trip to Arizona

The boys and I survived our trip to Arizona. We went down for my sweet Grandma Joan's memorial picinic. She passed away in October and we had a small family get together on what would have been her 90th birthday. My family gathered in a mountain park that we used to celebrate the spring time birthdays in when we were kids. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and the desert was very green due to all the rain Arizona had gotten in the past few weeks. It was a perfect day to celebrate the life of the wonderful person that was my Grandma Joan. Most of our family was there, some of which I hadn't seen in years. We had lunch, listened to music, laughed as we shared funny stories of my Grandma and then my Dad and his brother and sister headed up the little mountain to spread her ashes where they spread my Grandpa Bill's many years earlier. It was all bitter sweet, we know she is happier now that she is back with my Grandpa.

Unfortunatly our trip was short this year. We really didn't have time to do very much. We were planning on staying one night with my friend May and her family but they were all sick. We did get to meet her and her oldest daughter Mya at a park so the boys could do some running around. I also got to sneak in dinner with my dear friend Kristen who is fighting Inflamatory Breast Cancer. It was great to see her and she's doing good considering she's had a masactomy and is going through chemo.

Our trip home wasn't the funnest one we've been on. It was very long. We were stuck behind a huge truck pulling 1/2 of a modular home and they wouldn't let us pass for what seemed like 50 miles. We took a pit stop at Burrow Creek and had some lunch and took a few pictures, it was a much needed break for all of us. Zach isn't too keen on being strapped in his car seat for more than a few hours.

All in all it was a good trip. I got to see the people I love most like my Mom, Dad and Jess as well as my 2 best friends. Calvin was a bit disappointed that he didn't get to have a sleep over at his gal pal Mya's but he got over it. Below are some of the pictures I took while we were on our trip. Enjoy. Love to all of you!



Pa, his sister Pam and brother Jeff


Handsome Jess


Mom and Pa


The whole Gang


Zach exploring the desert


Calvin ready for lunch


Calvin and Mya


Pit stop @ Burrow Creek


Calvin just finished a cookie


My sweet boys

This stuff ain't easy....

Hello All,

I've been working a lot to learn all I can about this blogging stuff. It's hard! I thought I was pretty computer literate but apparently not enough! You practically need to be an engineer just to get through some of the instructions! I am learning a lot though and the more I learn the more I will post. My next adventure will be to figure out how to get some of our old video off of our ancient video cameras and post them on here. Be patient please, it may take me a while.

I'm hoping to make an entry on here at least once a week to keep you all up to date with what's going on in our lives here in what I call....Tacky Town. I'll do my best to post recent pictures and such. When I figure out how to post them so you can click on them and save them to your computers I will definatley let you know. I hope you like what I've done so far! Take care! Love you all!