8 Things

I was tagged by my friend Keri http://thecrazyjacksons.blogspot.com/ to do this post.

8 Things I look forward to:
1)5 pm
2) Vacations of any sort
3) Saturday
4) Bunco
5) October through December - I love all of the fall holidays!
6) time with James
7) James being done with the '57
8) Owning land and building our dream house

8 Things I Did Yesterday:
1) worked
2) went to bunco
3) overslept through my alarm
4) slept
5) made corn dip for bunco
6) wore my super cute purple heels :-)
7) emptied the dishwasher
8) went to lunch with the girls at the office

8 Things I wish I could do:
1) Go to Europe
2) Get a new car
3) Vacation
4) Lose 20 lbs.
5) Play an instrument
6) Own my own cafe
7) Go back to school and get a degree in Interior Design or architecture
8) speak a different language

8 Shows I watch:
1) Bones
2) The Office (best show on TV.)
3) Burn Notice
4) CSI
5) CSI New York
6) CSI Miami (I have a problem)
7) NCIS
8) One Tree Hill - totally a teeny bopper show I know

8 Bloggers Tagged:
1) BrieAnn http://jakeandbrieann.blogspot.com/
2) Kalli http://steveandkalli.blogspot.com/
3) Kiersty http://skloughness.blogspot.com/
4) Brittany http://lundlife.blogspot.com/
5) Rushelle http://megerlefam.blogspot.com/
6) Larae http://merrittmemories.blogspot.com/
7) Teresa http://treeabbott.blogspot.com/
8) Susan http://macyinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

One Heart Umbrella Campaign

Ok I'm stealing this from my friend Leslie's blog. It is a great cause and if any of you or anyone you know might be interested and able to help, their family would really appreciate it. This is her post below and here is the website: http://www.oneheartumbrellacampaign.org/

So I know that most of you know about my nieces, but for those of you who don't know let me fill you in. I have 2 year old conjoined nieces. They are attached at the breastbone to the belly button. They each have two arms and two legs. They are very precious. ok, the reason for this little dialogue is for this: I was reminded today about a fund raiser taking place right now that I think is SOOO COOL!!! It is OneHeart Umbrella Campaign. The Chair of this campaign is the one and only Debbie Reynolds!!! How they got her to do it is beyond me. But this is the deal, they have recruited celebrities from all over the place (movies, tv, sports, and theater) to help out. Such celebs as : Jessica Alba, Kevin Bacon, Sean Astin, James Brown, Joah Groban, ASU Suns Basketball Team, The Phoenix Suns, Alice Cooper, HUGH JACKMAN, Michael Phepls, Cast of the Today show, the cast of: The Phantom, Singin in the Rain, Chicago and sooooo many more!!!!! When I read through all 75 participants I was amazed!!!. And what they have one is signed and decorated umbrellas. Now the purpose of all those umbrellas is this, they are being auctioned off on ebay!!! Is that not just the coolest thing ever!!! I am amazed at the generosity of others. It reminds me that there are good people out there. If any one is interested you can look them up on ebay or via google. Just google "oneheart campaign". And you can bid online through ebay. This really is an amazing thing to be part of.

Pinks All Out

A little education first - Pinks all out is a show on Speed TV where cars drag race for cash. My little sis thought it was a track meet for breast cancer. So the original name came from the fact that guys would race their cars for the pink slips -ownership of the vehicle. Now they race in this tv show for $10,000 cash and a tool chest.
It starts out with about 400 cars and they run usually 2-3 qualifying runs to get their time slot and eliminate those that don't win. Then Rich - the host - chooses the most common time slot where there are at least 16 cars within a couple hundreths of a second - and those are the ones that race in the Sweet Sixteen. These guys race in the finals that night and try to win the money. Here is Rich, the host, ranting about racers with antifreeze in their cars. It takes forever to clean up the track after a spill so we had 2 back to back and Rich threatened a lifetime ban from any of his shows if you violated this.
So my father in law - Ralph - took his 1958 Edsel that he has completely rebuilt and likes to race. It has a 514 engine and nitrous so it is pretty stinkin' fast considering how heavy of a car it is.
James and I drove up from Austin to the Texas Motorplex in Ennis. We didn't get to stay for everything because James had to work on Sunday at 8 am, but we got there around 9 am Saturday morning and left around 9:30 pm.
Here are the Fleischman boys with the Edsel.



Above is Ralph gearing up to race and burning the tires.
We spent the day at the track watching Ralph race as well as a lot of other cars. We also got to spend the day with Dan and Susan and the kids and then Mark and Lori were kind enough to let us hang out at their RV to watch the races. That was way more comfortable than the metal stands in the sun. Thanks Mark and Lori! Uncle Merlin and Cousin Scott both drove up early on Saturday morning to see all the excitement and races. It was fun to spend time with them. Dan and Scott were catching up while waiting on the food.
Here is a picture of Pat helping guide Ralph on to the dragstrip.

The Fleischman boys were all so excited to see the Edsel do a wheelie on the strip.

And he is off down the quarter mile.
There were luckily only minor issues that had to be fixed. Here is Pat hard at work.
The boys pushing the Edsel into the lane for his elimination round.

Rich liked the Edsel a lot too. I think it is just very different from the cars that are normally on the show. It was even a featured car which means that Ralph got interviewed and hopefully will be shown on the show this summer.

Lane didn't like being left out so he is showing what a great crew chief he can be.


Ralph won the race for qualifying runs and wasn't eliminated.
They finally announced who the racers would be for the final 16 and Ralph missed it just barely. We were so hopeful that he would get in. Dan and Susan had a friend who made it into the final 16 and then one of their friends from the Mustang club in Amarillo also made it. Here is Casey - one of the friends racing. His brother raced in San Antonio last year and actually won. Unfortunately both of the friends were eliminated pretty early but there is always Houston!

Bathroom Remodel

I haven’t blogged much lately. Not a whole lot of exciting stuff happening. But James and I did spend Saturday remodeling our guest room. I got a great deal on the stone at one of the “yard sales” at work. I also have stone for my master bathroom but that will be a bit further down the road and then I hope to do my kitchen someday. But for now my guest bathroom is done. So it is almost done exactly as the vision in my head looked.

First off, I love, love, love my new sink - also a great bargain at the yard sale - normally it is a $175 sink which I got for $30 because it had a small scratch. I dare any of you to find the scratch by the way. It is so awesome.

I convinced James that I had to tear out the old stuff, and he helped me do that and then install the new countertop. But of course once I had done that, then the paint looked terrible, so I spent Saturday night until midnight masking off and repainting the walls in the guest bathroom. Then none of my bathroom accessories – shower curtain, floor rug, trash can, toothbrush holder, etc. or my towels matched. So I found a great deal on the towels and rug at Walmart and then it was time for the shower curtain.

I really had it in my mind what I wanted but I was not able to find exactly what the picture in my mind was. I did finally find one yesterday that although is not what was in my head, works perfectly. I really wanted a fabric one with the sage green background and the pattern to be a red swirly pattern. I know it was really specific. But instead I found a gold colored one that I am going to iron ribbon onto. Since I do not sew I figured ironing it on would work. So today it is off to Hobby Lobby to find a matching red ribbon and a green ribbon that is just a bit darker. Then the whole bathroom will be tied in together because I also found this great picture at Hobby Lobby on clearance that was $22. I love the 66% off aisle. They have some great bargains.

I still have a few things in there I want to replace but I’m pretty satisfied with everything for now and new fixtures are a ways down the road. So enjoy my little project and James’ handy plumbing work. All in all I felt like I was quite capable. For a day. Next time my faucet breaks and James is out of town again I’ll go back to feeling helpless, and have to call Brent to come save me from the overflowing tub. But for a day I felt like I was pretty handy around the house.

Crazy Me!

I have been slacking and not updated in a while so here is a quick one.
James and I hosted dinner at our house after church tonight for a couple of families from church - I made brisket, sausage and cookies and they brought the other sides. It was a lot of fun but they all think I am crazy because each of them have 5 kids so we had 10 children 13-almost a year, 6 adults, 2 dogs and a lot of food. Here are pics stolen from their blog. This is the Scott clan - Kylie is the one with curly blonde hair and we are best buds. I am known as Snow White around their house.

And this is the Claridge family. Kristin is my hair colorist so I see her family pretty regularly since she does this out of her home. I'm still getting to know all of them but they are quickly learning to love my desserts. I think Travis would live with me if I kept the cookies around. :-)

It was actually a lot of fun and I didn't mind the craziness at all. I must be nuts right? No, I think it is great because I can send them all home at the end of the night and then they are back to being their mom and dad's problem, once I have loaded them up with ice cream and cookies. :-)

I haven't had a whole lot of other excitement lately. James drove to Amarillo last weekend to pick up his engine for his convertible and the truck broke on the way there. Apparently we are not meant to visit Amarillo with all of our car issues.

I spent the weekend here at home, with a fun surprise party for a friend at church on Friday night and then I watched the Scott' 5 cute little blonde children on Saturday while they were in San Antonio. That was fun but it made me grateful that kids come one at a time usually.

Also-have been watching the Bachelor with a group of ladies each Monday night at 9 and eating junk food and making fun of these insanely crazy women. This has made me decide that if James were to keel over suddenly, I would stay that way instead of facing the piranha pit of dating life again.

I suppose that is enough updating and boring you all to tears for tonight and I am about to pass out so off to sleep I go. Hope you are all doing fantastic and I'll try to post something more interesting as it happens. :-)

Fleischman Christmas/New Years

Happy New Year to everyone! James and I spent the new year with his family this year. We didn't have things work out quite like we had planned but we made it.

So going back to my Christmas present of the GPS so as not to get lost. Make sure you read all instructions before using is the lesson we learned. We left for our drive to Amarillo at about 3 pm. That should have put us there around 11. We got to Brownwood and in playing around with the Garmin found a different route that we thought might be a quicker way to get there.
So we start off. Apparently if you don't have the right settings and miss a turn, the thing recalculates and sets you on a different course. So about 2 hours away from Amarillo by our reckoning...we find ourselves on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. No stores, other cars, or even homes really. Lots of fields. And it is pitch black. And we hear the sound that no one wants to hear....a blowout. Wouldn't be a problem when you are married to a Fleischman right? They are all about cars and always have tools around.....except on this night.
James had just replaced my brakes which involves removing the wheel...which requires a wheel lock...which was sitting on the work bench at our home.....hours away. Ok not to worry we have cell phones, we'll call a tow truck. Except we are in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!!
No cell service except to 911. So we call them to see if they can send a tow truck. They can't find us on a map. So with all the technology that we have 911 is still using a map.
As luck would have it after 30 minutes or so of this, a truck speeds by us and doesn't stop but shortly after a sheriff drives by, sees our hazards on and stops. He calls 3 different tow trucks to get them to come out, but it is New Years Eve and the drunks going to jail offer more money than us so they all can't come. I call my insurance who says I can pay them $228 but they can't guarantee someone will come. Not to worry we call my brother in law Pat, in Lubbock to see if he can come get us in Floydada. Most of you didn't even know that there was such a town right? We were 8 miles outside of there.
So the sheriff drives us to the sheriff's office and we wait for Pat to come get us, then spend the morning of New Year's Day going to Sears (Thank you for being open on a holiday Sears) and getting the necessary tools to go fix our tire to drive to Amarillo for the Fleischman family Christmas.
Needless to say by the time we made it to Christmas dinner, an hour late from the original plan, we were wiped out. So not a lot of pics. I'm stealing these two from Michelle's (sis in law) blog.
Meredith and Macy being quite the ladies and playing the piano.

This usually doesn't last too long and they are wrestling like the boys.

They are quite the entertaining. The boys were actually quite well behaved in the basement with the X-box.
We had a great Christmas and enjoyed getting to hang out even if it was during the Nebraska game. If you know the Fleischmans there isn't much that will get in the way of a Nebraska game. So we all turned off the cell phones, avoided tv and computer until we could get to Dan's house to watch the DVR'd game. It was a good game with Nebraska winning.
On Friday I went to see Marly and Me with Susan and Michelle after getting 4 new tires for my car. For those of you that have no idea what this movie is about, or who are dog lovers....go prepared with your kleenex. You will need it. It was a good movie and I always enjoy getting to spend time with the sisters in law. We missed Krista though. She had to work on Friday so was back in Lubbock.
Saturday was pretty laid back - Susan and Macy and I went to a girls day at the movies and saw Beverly Hills Chihuahua. As you can imagine this was a Macy choice. She thought it was quite entertaining though.
We made it home Sunday without any issues which was nice for a change. Stopped in to see Ashley in Lubbock and have lunch on the way home and made it home before midnight so we could unpack and get ready for the next week.
Now that all the holidays are over I'm sad because I have to wait until May for another holiday off of work. :-) Isn't that how it always goes?
But I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are looking forward to a great new year. I need to get started on my resolutions and then resolve to actually keep them this year.

Christmas Week

So Christmas week was a busy and exciting week around the Fleischman house. It started out last Sunday with the arrival of the first of 11 guests. 3 of my sisters - Kiersty, Megan and Brittany arrived as well as Seth my bro in law. So of course we had a late night of the home tour, Blue Bell ice cream with turtle cookies and catching up.
Monday found the 4 of us touring the Round Rock outlet mall and picking up some sweet steals. Brit found a great dress at Banana Republic for $34 that was all silk. SCORE!!! I found a great dress at JC Penney for $32 and was totally excited. The boys found a new Wii game to entertain themselves. Then cousin/adopted Lund sis BrieAnn, her hubby Jake and baby Cora made it late afternoon. We again spent the day touring the house, catching up and yet again - eating great food. We had decided to split up the days everyone was here between the 5 Lund girls and BrieAnn. So Monday was Thai food courtesy of Kiersty. It was apparently pretty good because James even gave it an acceptable. Quite a feat for those of you that know him. :-)
Tuesday morning (not so early considering we were up until 3ish the 2 previous nights) found us heading downtown to go to the LBJ Museum. They had a space exhibit (and it was free) that we thought sounded fun. Megan found herself a boyfriend who won't talk back....
Britt became a green beret.
Kiersty helped out with the "Race to Space"

Cora and BrieAnn became great pilots. The pic didn't come out that great, but I loved Cora's face.

We saw an eerily realistic LBJ thing (?? not sure what to call it) that talked to you and moved while playing funny recordings of LBJ telling stories.

And Brittany found her new calling as a mannequin.

James and I then introduced them all to Katz' Deli which is this great kosher deli downtown. And for dinner it was BrieAnn's black bean tacos. YUMMY!!!
Mom, dad, Kalli (sis) and Steve (bro in law) all arrived between 10 pm and 1 am, only to find out that the house they were going to be staying at was not available for the night. I was given the wrong key so they instead crashed on my dining room floor for the night until we could get the right one the next day. Always an adventure.
We spent Christmas Eve doing all kinds of things. Mom and Kiersty and Kalli were making aprons for everyone. They found these super cute retro patterns and we all bought fabric and that was the majority of the day.


Steve was kind enough to let Kalli open her gift a day early so that she could find out it wasn't a fish tank like he had been telling her all week.

Here is Kalli's finished product.

The boys went to see Yes Man to avoid all this girly stuff. :-) And then came home to play more of the Wii puzzle game. It took 4 of them to solve portions of this. When Steve got here he was immediately attacked to find out which of the 4 of them took physics 2 last and could be a better problem solver. See how hard at work they were?

And then we had some yummy lasagna for dinner - Thanks Meg and Brittany, made sugar cookies - as if we hadn't eaten enough - even Cora jumped in to help.
And I started baking for Christmas day. We had chocolate pecan pie, pumpkin caramel cheesecake, and caramel apple pie. And we ended the night with White Christmas to really get us in the spirit of things. And Cora let dad hold her and play with her and laughed at his funny faces. :-)


Christmas Day was a pretty laid back day. We ate a late brunch of Grandma Carlene's famous stuffed french toast and buttermilk syrup (THANKS GRANDMA FOR SHARING THE YUMMY GOODNESS!!!) and we finally started opening gifts around noonish. We always start out with the youngest and work our way up, so Cora was up first. She really wasn't sure what to do but enjoyed tearing up the paper more than the gifts probably.


Here is BrieAnn holding her best present of the year. Bows and all.
As well as a fabulous necklace - Thanks Steph.

I got a garmin so I will stop calling James for directions when I don't prepare before leaving the house.

Seth got a soccer sweatshirt from Kiersty and his face says it all.
Brittany started a wrapping paper war with Seth and Steve...She just got beaned in the head twice in a row by them.

Jake for all of his spare time, now has a Rubiks cube to help occupy it.

And Steve got some new goggles so he can be totally pimp out on the slopes in 2 weeks.
Mom got a new shirt to wear for pictures and of course for work too.

Dad got I believe the only John Wayne movie he doesn't already own. (now what do we get him. :-)
James got some new Wii games to entertain him when not busy with his car.

Megan got some new movies to entertain her roomates with.
And then there was the end of Hurricane Christmas '08!

We had a great Texas Christmas menu of brisket, mashed potatoes, homemade mac and cheese, and of course yummy pies. I will be trying to lose the weight for months to come!! And we did family pics. I'll post those later as this is already super long!
Friday morning BrieAnn and Jake and baby Cora had to head back home to Oklahoma for the Johnson family Christmas. We were sad for them to go, but so glad they made it and we got to hang out with them. The rest of us piled in to the cars and headed for Fredericksburg. It is a great little German, touristy town about an hour and a half from here. James and I love going there. Great food, great shopping and lots of fun. We took everyone to our fave restaurant - Friedhelm's Bavarian. It is fantastic food. I introduced them to schnitzel, spaetzle, rye bread and they loved it!! We then tried to go to the George H. W. Bush museum/Admiral Chester Nimitz museum of the Pacific Theater of WWII, but it was under construction. So instead we walked around the memorial wall. So many people gave their life for that. It is such a wonderful reminder of all those people were willing to sacrifice, and it makes me wonder how we can't comprehend a sacrifice for the war we are in now. I really liked this plaque.

We saw dad's hero, Ronald Reagan.
We found the plaque for one of the ships Grandpa Roy served on. The USS Monterey.

And we found a friend of Grandpa Irl's who dad even met one time. He served on a ship with Grandpa Irl, but the plaque is for another ship he spent time on. The Arisan Maru was a Japanese ship that was sunk by US Ships and was carrying over 1800 POW's to do slave labor in Japan. Of the POW's 9 survived and Grandpa Irl's friend Robert S. Overbeck was one of those 9.


We came home Friday night and Steve made us all Ukranian borscht. James was unsure, but being the great person he is, tried it with a brave face ;-) and then realized it wasn't as bad as he was expecting and actually said it was good. Yea Steve! That is a high compliment around our house.
We saw everyone except Steve and Kalli off early Saturday morning. Kiersty, Seth and Megan headed for Tucson so that Megan could be dropped off, and then they made it all the way to about Kingman before finishing the rest of their journey back to Provo on Sunday. Mom, Dad and Brittany headed to Phoenix. Britt is spending the rest of her Christmas break at home before hitching a ride back to Provo.
We kept Steve and Kalli for a few extra days showing them the stuff they had missed earlier in the week.
It was a great week for us to all catch up, get to know each other again, add a new little one into the mix and remember how lucky we all are to have a great family.