Halloween 2005

The kids had such a great time Trick or treating. Caitlin being the expert trick or treater, leaded the way the majority of the time with tom and I yelling "wait up for christian". And christian lagging behind amazed at all the decorations and trying to dig into his little bag of goodies. This is christians first year for Trick or Treating that he actually knew what was going on. It took him awhile to figure out how this whole thing works. He would walk up to a door turn and cry at first and throw his bag. But after watching his guru sister he finally got the idea. However he tried to walk right into peoples houses. He was more intrigued with the dogs that showed up at the doors instead of getting the candy. It was so funny hearing him try to say trick or treat. It basically came out, tic teet. And thank you was tant too. He was very cute and by the end he was walking down the sidewalk dragging his horde of goodies along the ground.












Here's the jack-o-lantern that Tom, Caitlin and Christian carved. Caitlin drew on the face and Tom cut it out. Caitlin did a great job :)







Caitlin and Christian

Husband playing hockey F.O.X.

My friend Jeana and I (yes I'm telling on us) when we were young, single, hot, and could browse the inventory; use to spell out F.....O.....X about a certain male attendee at our church. Of course we've both grown up and we see how girlish and immature it was, but hey we had to have a release. Its hard to be a small church with ONE and only hot guy in it. :) hehehe jk. anyway so I have started using this phrase to describe my hunka hunka byrne'n love husband. I went to his hockey game last night and I actually got to watch most of it, having brought my two children with me and plenty of things to keep them occupied. I decided to bring out my trust dusty little camera. Well ok so its not so little, and I have like 4 lenses. *BIG GRIN* Here are some pics from that game.



mmmhmmmm gotta love it.... FOX like I said :)




I'm a sucker for a man (my husband) in hockey gear :)

Canadian Citizenship

I have to say its like jumping through hoops to get paperwork ready for the canadian consulate. I'm in process of getting my childrens Canadian citizenship. YUP! they are dual citizens. (and yes those of you that disagree, there is such a thing. ) I started this project awhile ago when Caitlin was about 2 maybe less. And it pretty much went the way side, getting to busy, needing things notarized, not knowing where to find a notary. And those darn citizenship pictures. I haven't found anyone who wanted to even touch that here in the states, so It all had to be done in a Walmart in Canada. Now its all official I have everything I need. Today I went down to the Human relations department for santa clara county to finally get my sons birth certificiate. They made it more difficult to get them after my daughter was born. Apparently they were having issues with people obtaining birth records that didn't belong to them. So now I have his birth certificate and I have felt like such a lame parent for not getting it sooner. But at least I did it before he turned 2!! The final step today is getting the copies we are sending notorized, attach 100$ and off in the mail it goes. And hopefully everything is just so that the consulate will like it and give the kids their social insurance cards/ citizenship.

hmm....does this mean I have to teach them about canada and the O'canada song..... danggg.... :) (joke)

Natural Bridges Butterfly tour

Friday our homeschool group went to Natural Bridges for the Monarch Butterfly tour. The kids had such a great time. I was so proud of Caitlin and how well she sat for the presentation and how well she listened to directions.





If you wanna see more photos you can go to Natural Bridges Butterfly Tour

Pictures for my amusement

Ok I'm posting this picture because I'm just down right disgusted. For those of you that can't tell what this is, its a dead deer. This poor deer was hit by an oncoming motorist. This isnt the part that disgusted me. What makes me mad is that whomever hit the deer or someone following after decapitated the deer. Ripped the suckers head clean off!! It didn't fall off after the accident, it was cut off. Smooth edges all around (ok I wont describe it anymore) I can only assume they kept it as a prize. UMM HEELLLOOO HILLBILLIES! (i can say that bc I am from ohio as well). Its one thing to go deer hunting eat the meat and keep the head, but I mean do I really need to go on to say why this is wrong???





Only my husband would find this amusing. This picture was taken in Amish country next to this....



Parking for horses!! I just chuckled when I saw this. Of course it is needed I mean where are the amish going to park their horses when they come to town! But geesh guys can'tcha remember to put the poop bags on those things :)




YYYYYEEEEEEHHHAAAAWWWWW, to bad I missed this!! I betcha everyone had a grand 'ol time. And to think I always thought moonshine was illegal. :)

Who says people in the bible belt dont have a sense of humor

So in my quest for sanity, rest, and wisdom from God. I came upon several Church signs along the way. I would be driving along jammin to my favorite worship music and these signs would just jump out at me. I found them very amusing. Every time I would have to stop the car, flip a U-ey and drive back to take a picture. I knew I would never remember these and I wanted to share the humor with my friends and my husbanhd. These signs are all over Ohio, everywhere you look, and usually you can find a sign advertising a revival somewhere along the way. To many to choose from and not enough time.

Praying to the Porcelain God.... :)

So we are in Canada EH! and yesterday was Mim's (toms sister) wedding. It was a gorgeous wedding (pictures to follow) and everyone had an amazing time, including me. For the reception we had a babysitter so it was just me and Tom, no little ones tagging along. I hardly knew what to do with myself. But it was time to get our groove on :) The reception had a full OPEN bar. And the drinking began the moment we all arrived. So in Byrne/Daly-Like style I started the evening out with a fuzzy navel. My ALL-TIME favorite drink. And let me tell you they added way more schnapp in the drink than I'm really use to. It was definitely strong. During dinner I continued with my alcohol consumption and had two glasses of wine and another fuzzy navel. Dinner was amazing, a typical Italian feast with your traditional anti-pasto plate, and after that I really can't remember what dinner was LOL. We sat through several speeches that brought tears to our eyes and some that even made us cry(mom!!!). After dinner we all enjoyed some dancing and a special tribute to grams, her tradition of always playing, "Going to the chapel". We lined up and formed the chapel line and danced just for her. It wasn't the same without her, but It was great!! :) I actually got to talk with so many people that I've always been to shy to chat with alone, I've always been with Tom. I broke out and really took initiative to talk to people. It was awesome to get to know people in my new extended family a bit more. I finally had the opportunity to chat with Michael Owen (CHEERS DUDE!!) and really found that he is a funny and intelligent guy.

So Michael Owen, my sister in law Anna and Sean's girlfriend (ellen) and I all got together dancing and having a great time. At points in the night we were all worried that Ellen may hurt herself while she was dancing....she really got her groove on. But it was so nice to be able to let our hair down and be silly (and safe) for one evening. It was the best wedding I've ever attended. At the end of the night we were all exhausted and Poor Ellen was puking from our rented Yukon, and Thanks to Jeff for being the DD. :) I have to admit I wasn't feeling so hot this morning............ooohhh I need some tylenol..






Everyone starting a bit early :)



Our Beautiful sister on her wedding Day

O' Canada....

So we made it to Canada safe and sound and in one piece. However the flight was THE most miserable flight I have ever been on in my entire life.......

We get to the San Fransisco Air Port just fine thanks to my wonderful friend Lani. Who awoke early (and being quite ill) still drove us to the air port. I LUV U LANI!! So that was fairly uneventful. The line to the ticket counter was pretty long, but not a big deal since I still had to make out a large number of those fun little airline luggage tags with our new house address instead of the old one. After that we went through security yet again uneventful. After having a bit of a wait, we gathered our children, our carry ons and boarded the plane. *sigh* we were all finally settled into our seats and Christian was so completely mesmerized by the planes that it took up most of his time (yiiipppeeee). Right after take off the elderly gentleman in front of me and his wife decide to recline their seats back alllllll the way. Now we aren't on one of the newer types of planes we are on the old ones, that they haven't removed three rows of seats to make extra room for people. So its extremely cramped. I'm sitting sideways so I wont keep bumping his seat and so I can talk with the kids. Tom is sitting in the aisle seat behind us. So I bring out the laptop so the kids can start zoning out to a movie and we can all have some peace and quiet and just maybe I can start reading my new book I bought at the airport gift shop. Its a fourth book by Jennifer Weiner, my favorite author. My sister Mim and I are both obsessed, and now I'm trying to hurry through the book so she can take it on her honeymoon.

Anyway, as we are sitting there quietly watching Aladdin. I notice a bit of noise coming from the seats in front of us. As I look up the elderly lady ahead of us is shaking her finger back in our direction. As I'm noticing this she starts to yell "stop kicking the back of my seat I'm trying to sleep". At this point I'm thinking if she doesn't calm herself down shes going to stroke right out of her skin. I apologize and tell her my 4 year old is behind her. I proceed to look down and caitlins legs are under her bottom in her chair. Well obviously shes not kicking the seat. So I politely explain that shes not kicking her seat. Now her husband starts to scream, "you are kicking the seat and damn it I paid for my seat and I wont put up with this nonsense" Now I'm getting furious. I paid for 4 seats, who cares, it doesn't obligate me or anyone else no matter how many seats they purchase to have a luxury flight on a freaking 10th century air vessle that everytime you hit turbulance you think your going to fall out of the sky. So my response is, well I apologize and simply state, "if you insist on reclining your chairs back as far as they go your bound to get bumped, there isn't much leg room", not even for my 18 month old son whose feet are touching the back of the seat(no one was sitting in front of him). He proceeds to scream louder and get madder, and tells me " I need to use my head and get control of my kids, and he's not going to take this type of behavior from anyone because he bought a ticket". Apparently they've never flown in an airplane before....

Long story short, the lady a row ahead of us confronts him and asks him if he wants to change seats with her. He refuses. I was trying not to laugh because she was so annoyed with him. She actually said, "well if its going to make you happy then you should move." I was so thankful for that lady, because I replayed the situation over and over in my head to figure out what I possibly could have done to make the situtation more enjoyable for us all, and it turns out there was nothing. They were going to complain no matter what. Later in the flight the sweet lady actually walked to the back of the plane where I was resting with christian (in an empty row) to tell me how discusting she thought the whole situation was and that she was sorry it happened. It was a great gesture and I appreciated her support so much.

As we were preparing to excit the plane, I looked at both of my children thinking, "it could be worse they could have been crying and screaming, but instead they were acting like perfect angels." At one point my daughter did say to the couple, "hey leave my mom alone." I was so proud of her, not only because she was so well behaved, but because she loved me enough to stand up for me.....at the age of 3 1/2. She has such a strong and loving soul. I couldn't be prouder or more in love with her. Shes amazing.

I dont know what possesses people to confront parents who take their children out to public places and who think that if you have children, you should hold up in your house until they are of a "reasonable age" (whatever that is). This is the 3rd instance where someone has approached us negatively about our kids. But I wont let that stop us from continuing our family trips or our family nights out, or whatever it is we decide to do. All those kinds of people can just **** off. :)

So the second portion of our flight was miserable because our children screamed the entire flight. *sigh* I felt for those people on the leg off the flight. But I mean what do you expect when your kids have been up since 6:30am and have been traveling all day and naps were basically obsolete. *shrug* we do our best, and theres always going to be an unhappy child on an airplane. Think about how uncomfortable you are, and how crabby some of those people are when you get on a plane. So imagine that from the eyes of a child. So if you want luxury travel.........I highly recommend you NOT travel via an airplane. :)