Happy Birthday Alley Cat!

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Happy Birthday to our dog Alley

October 1994 - 14 years old

(that's 98 in doggy years)

We don't know her exact Birthday, but she became part of our family in November 1994 when she was 6 weeks old. She tried to get away from us a few times by running away, but we just kept dragging her back..poor dog. I think she's finally decided to stay. We even had to bail her out of jail once. She has helped our family raise quite a few kids and we love her dearly. So Happy Birthday Alley aka: Alley Cat, Al, Fatty, Fat Cat, Alley Dog, Kitty Cat we all love you!

Problems logging onto Birthday Page

I think some may be having trouble logging onto the Family Birthday Page. If you are having trouble, please let me know by either a comment on this post, or an email. Thanks.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Baby Boy is Rollin'

OK - so remember a while ago? I told you about how I get all freaked out watching Chad and Anthony race. Well, there is a perfectly good reason I get all freaked out. And I knew it would eventually happen, Anthony rolled his car.

The exit to the track runs along the back stretch just before turn 3 and is separated from the track by a berm, so if they drive too high on the track they can go over the berm and onto the exit.

I'm not sure how it happened, but Anthony was high on the track, somehow him and others got tangled up, and Anthony went over the berm, rolled twice and landed on his roof in the middle of the exit. I couldn't see the whole thing happen, because the berm was too high, but I saw enough of it to FREAK OUT. As soon as I saw Anthony getting tangled up, I was up and out of my seat. When he rolled over the first time, I was headed down the bleachers. Kaylynn decided that she would try to calm me down (yeah right) by holding my arm and telling me he would be OK. I finally had to yell at her to let go of my arm so I could continue with my freaking out as I was running as fast as I could with Sharon right behind me to the entrance of the track. Luckily by the time we reached the track, Anthony was out of the car and waving his big long arms above his head to the crowd. He knew his mom and wife would be worried and wanted to let us know he was OK. We stood there and watched while they flipped his car back over and then he got back into his car and they pushed him off the track with the tow truck. I tried to take pictures of them pushing him off, but I was still shaking so much that I couldn't get the shot.

Thankfully, Anthony came out of this OK. His shoulders are bruised from the seat belts, but he is otherwise OK. His car is messed up but that's replaceable, my baby boy is not.

Super Monkey

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's slippery swine catchin, rock climbing Monkey -

What can I say? I have the best slippery swine catching grand-daughter EVER....This makes three out of four years that Kristy has been the WINNER. This girl KNOWS how to catch slippery pigs! She was in a group of 5, her and FOUR boys. And, she was wearing flip-flops, so she had to stop and put them back on because they fell off. She still got in there and showed those boys how it's done. Way to go Kristy!! You are awesome.

Then, she wasn't done showing off her strategic athletic abilities. She wanted to show us how to climb a rock wall. She got 2 tries to get to the top of a 25' wall and ring the bell. She didn't get very high on the first try, but that just made her more determined to do it. She just kicked off her flip flops and Christopher gave up his shoes and off she went to the top. She got stuck about half way up so she studied up and down the wall and finally made her plan. She got a grip in sight, used her legs and jumped up to grab the next handle and pulled herself up till she could get her footing. I was so amazed. Not only is she tough, but she is so smart, she planned that like a pro. I asked her afterwards if she was scared. She said "Yeah, I'm still shaking". I love that girl!

Family Birthday Blog

OK - so the secret is out. My secret project is a Family Birthday Blog. We are not always good at letting people in our extended family know that we remember them on their birthday's, so we've created this birthday blog. This way we can wish every member of our family a Happy Birthday and, share our special wishes with everyone.The project is not totally complete yet, but it is up and running and you can expect to see the first birthday wish(es) to appear October 4.

Right now, access to the blog is by invitation only, so if your in my family, and I have your email, you've been invited. If I don't have your email, you can go to my profile on this page and click on the Happy Birthday blog and enter you email then I can give you access.

We hope you enjoy our Birthday Blog as much as we do.

http://mysecretproject-trudi.blogspot.com

Racin' Shoes

This is so good it's worth repeating!

Geek

OK....so I decided that I'm an electronics geek. I bought a new phone the other day, and it is way more complicated than a phone needs to be. It's a blackberry pearl. At first I didn't think I liked it very much. I even packed it up the next day, I was going to return it and get an easier one. But guess what? Now that I have had it a few days, I've decided that I love it. So, this is where the geekyness comes in. I like playing with electronics to see how they work. I didn't know that about me before. They say, admitting it is the first step to recovery.

Happy Birthday Lindsy

Hope you have a great day Daughter-in-law!

We Love you!!!

Secret Project

I have a secret project going on. I think it is going to be so much fun and I can't wait until I can share it with my family.

It should be finished around the 1st of October. Check back for the announcement!!!!!!!

Tent Sale

Saitta Trudeau Chrysler Jeep Dodge is having a tent sale this weekend. It started today in the parking lot at the Pahrump Nugget. Go down, check em out, and get a good deal!

Movies in Pahrump

What a treat!!! We went to the movies last night......here, in Pahrump! Hard to believe huh? We saw Burn after Reading, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
The Saddle West has a portable movie theater in their convention center. I wasn't expecting much, but it was really good. The seats were like luxury folding chairs. They were padded and really conformed to your body, I'm not sure but they could have been soft leather. There were two columns of seats with about 10 rows. Each row had 5 seats on each side of the isle. The down side was that all the seats are on the same level, but they had the rows staggered so each seat was situated between two seats in the row before it. That way you weren't sitting directly behind someones head, you are more between the shoulders of two people in front of you.
The movie was pretty good, a little weird, but good. I've never been good at recapping movies or books, so I'm not even going to try. Go see it, you'll like it.

New Blog

I killed my old blog (accidentally), so I spent the day rebuilding. I hope you like the new look. Also, check out broadheadstwobitracing.com all the guys are building pages to let everyone know whats going on in their race world. Racing is about ready to start up again at Death Valley Raceway, so excitement is in the air, you'll see when you visit their pages. Blogging is fun, get your own at blogspot.com.

Happy Birthday Sammy Boy!

Samuel Rex Gunter

Born: September 9, 2007

Happy 1st Birthday Grandson!

Happy Birthday Christopher

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Christopher, Happy Birthday to you.

Since your turning 8 this year, I thought about getting you the coolest gift. I couldn't afford it, but I thought about it. So here ya go. Happy Birthday Bud, have fun. Love Grandpa and Grandma.

Previous Post Updates

I thought that I would give some updates on some of the stuff I have blogged about.

Racing starts again September 20th. Chad is excited. I don't know for sure what Anthony will do because he usually works on Saturdays. It wasn't going to be a problem for him because the races were scheduled at night and he would be off in time to go, but they changed it to day racing. Hopefully he can get off to go, we'll see.

A while ago, I posted a picture with the title "Pakistani Pauley". Pauley is real, but he is not from Pakistan (surprise, surprise). He works at Saitta Trudeau as a salesman, and provides the business office with much needed laughter. He will be leaving soon, and I'm hoping to get some of his comic relief on video before he goes on to bigger and brighter things in Laughlin, Nevada. That's all I'm going to say for now. If I'm able to get it, you'll see what I'm talking about.

The infamous weed-tree. OK, so I know I'm not getting much support on this, but I seriously doubt it's a tree. Chad is a little nervous about it too, because he is already setting it up to say I killed it when it dies this winter (like weeds do). This has been the conversation about it lately (several times now):

C: I know it's a tree.

T: It's not Chad, it's a weed.

C: I know your gonna kill it.

T: Why would I want to kill it?

C: Because then you could say "see, it wasn't a tree"

T: No Chad, your trying to set it up so when it dies, I can be blamed.

C: No, it's a tree. I know your gonna kill it.

T: Whatever.

C: Yeah, whatever.

Tiffany has trees in her back yard, that I will admit, look similar to Chad's weed-tree. But there are very distinct differences. One being; hers is a tree, Chads is a weed. Hers has wood, Chads has stalk. Her branches are brown, Chads are purple (what kind of tree has purple branches?). Check out the pictures I took (a little proof).

So, Chad says Tiff's trees have fur because of where they live. That they know it's going to be winter there soon, so they have to get ready for it. Ours don't have the fur because we live in the desert and they don't need it. I'm not making this up....it's really what he said. I think he was just teasing me, but he really did say it.

So, on to School. I didn't start this semester. I didn't get my placement testing and essay writing done soon enough to start this August. The day of my essay, they told me that all of the Internet English classes were filled up and I didn't really want to do a live class right now, so I'll just wait until the next semester in January. Anyway, I didn't hear from them about which class they were going to put me in. I'm kind of nervous about what they thought about my essay though because it was pretty bad. They gave choices about what to write about. Something like, "Why do you want to go to college?", "Write about a favorite teacher you had.", "How will you balance your college schedule with your life?" Well, I don't really have a good answer about going to college, and I don't really know how I'll balance my schedule until I try, and if you know me, you know my school history, so I don't really have a favorite teacher. So, I used CJ's Mr. Monson. The only problem with that was I couldn't remember what I wrote and couldn't duplicate it very well. I'm sure it was really bad. Even my punctuation, which I'm not very good at anyway. They probably looked at it and said "Wow, that's bad. We don't have an English class that starts at the beginning basics. Don't call her maybe she'll go away." Too bad...so sad. I won't. Maybe I could anonymously send them a link to my blog, then they could get a better sample of my writing and let me in. hahaha.

That's pretty much all the updates I have. Except for what we did today at Christopher's Birthday. I'll save that for later.

More on our Labor Day Weekend with the Kids

The first night there, we went to dinner with CJ and his family. It was a new restaurant a few miles out of town. We waited outside for about an hour for our table, then we had to wait another hour before the waitress told us that our ticket didn't print so now the cooks were trying to cook our food as quick as possible. So finally after about 2 1/2 hours of waiting, we finally got to eat. We thought about leaving and going somewhere else, but in Duchesne, Utah, there is no somewhere else.
I played on the tramp with Jaxen and Mandy. Jaxen wanted me to bounce them really high. I told him I couldn't jump too high because I might pee my pants. He thought that was really funny. I heard him tell some of the other kids later, that grandma was jumping with him and that he almost made her pee her pants. It was funny.

CJ lives just behind the park so we walked over with all the kids. Here, Grandpa and CJ are swinging with the kids. CJ is in charge of maintaining the parks in Duchesne, so he has to test all of the equipment on a weekly basis. We gave him an early start this week. I think he was just really showing off for his dad. Karley is impressed with how high her dad is swinging.

Labor Day Weekend

We went to Duchesne, UT to visit CJ and Tiffany. It was so good to see them and the kids, we had a great time.
We wanted to take Jaxen and Mandy with us while Tiffany went to work, so Tiffany had to get them ready to go. Wow, what a chore that is. As soon as Tiff got the brush out for Mandy's hair, the fight was on. We laughed, but Tiff didn't think it was too funny, she also didn't think it was funny that I was snapping these pictures. And I'm sure she is going to think it is even less funny when she sees them posted on my blog.
I just couldn't resist. Sorry Tiff. By the way, no kids (mine or hers) were hurt during this demonstration.

Weed Tree

Last fall, Chad bought these trees from the Arbor foundation. A big box of dormant, packed twiggs arrived sometime during the winter. He finally got around to planting them late in the spring and not very many survived. There was this one twig, I'm not sure what kind of tree it was, but anyway, it died. Then all of a sudden, a little sprout was coming up out of the ground right next to the dead tree. At first I thought it was a tree, but as it grew taller, I now think it's a weed. Chad is convinced it's a tree, but I know it is a weed. The trunk ins't "wood", it's like a plant stalk.
We fight about it all the time and I told him I would humor him, and keep watering it. It has really grown tall. He tells me that when it grows 20 feet, I am not allowed to sit in the shade from his "tree". Tonight, when we were fighting about it, we decided to put a poll up and see what everyone else thinks this is. So check out the pictures and then tell us what you think Chad's weed-tree really is.

School Girl

OK....... here's some news. I'm going to college.

I don't know yet, exactly what my college goals are, so I'm just going to start with stuff that I know I can use now. Like English. I am having a lot of fun writing on my blog, but I have become very aware of my writing limitations. And, I have always wanted to write a book so I decided, if I'm really going to do that, I had better get some help.

Before enrolling in a math or English class you have to take a placement test to see if your scores are high enough to qualify for collegiate level learning. I took my placement test today and as it turns out, I need more help than I originally thought. I had a 107 in reading comprehension which qualifies me for English 101, but only a 76 in sentence skills and that qualifies me for English 095. They call that a split score, so I'll have to write a short essay for a tie breaker. I guess I'll go in on Monday to write the essay and see if I get to be in the smart, or the not so smart class. Hopefully they will let me know right away, so I can get enrolled in whichever while I'm still there. I'm going to try to get into the Internet instead of the live class, but the lady who helped me said they are filling up fast since the classes start next week.

Stay tuned to see what happens.

Home Depot

Yeah - We went shopping at The Home Depot!!!! I have been itching to go since they opened at 5:00 pm on Wednesday. The parking lot was jammed full of cars and people were lined up outside the door when I drove by there on my way home from work. Chad and I went back later that night thinking it had calmed down a bit, but nope. The parking lot was so full that people were parking in the dirt. We decided against going on the opening day. There were pictures in the newspaper, that place was full. People were shoulder to shoulder.

We settled on going tonight, it was still pretty busy, but not anything like the other day. And believe it or not, it was pretty fun just wandering isle to isle. It's funny, I have been to The Home Depot dozens of times. But never have I been to a Pahrump Home Depot, now that's something.

We have needed a new kitchen faucet and have been waiting till Home Depot opened to get it. Wow, I never knew there were so many kinds of faucets. Our current faucet has the hot and cold turn on's separate from the faucet, so it uses 3 holes for just the water. Well, when they put in the reverse osmosis, they moved the breather thingy to under the sink, along with the sprayer. So, we bought a new faucet that has the turn-on on the faucet so we will only be using one hole for the water and now we have room for the breather thingy and the sprayer to be in there own holes on top where they belong. Anywho, The Home Depot was really fun and I can't wait to go back to get another project for Chad to do :)

Monkeys and Cowboys aka "The Brats"

Kristy and Christopher wanted to have their pictures on my blog....so, here they are. Camron was mad at the world and didn't want to have his picture with them. So it's just the big kids this time. They will start school soon, August 25. They are going to a brand new school. So this year they are going to be bobcats at Floyd Elementary instead of scorpions at Hafen. They both say they are excited about starting school because they are bored at home. Their mom is very happy they are starting school, she wants a public preschool for Camron, so she can get rid of all the kids. Personally, I think she should have about 10 more. That ought to teach her.

Well, Mitzi went to live at her new home with Debbie. And her sister finally got a name. Rosie. I'm sure Mitzi will adjust as well as Rosie has. Rosie and Ruby were at first looking for Mitzi, but now seem to have moved on. I think Brandy is glad there is one less puppy to torment her.

We went to Tonopah over the weekend so the guys could race. Chad took 1st in his heat and 2nd in the main. Anthony was 2nd in his heat with Chad and 4th in the main. There were about 9 cars in the main, so that wasn't too bad. I can't wait till the day that Anthony finally gets a 1st. Hopefully when that happens, I'll be watching. It's so hard for me to watch the races when they get intense. I don't know what it is, but watching Chad and Anthony gets me all freaked out and quizzy to my stomach. I try really hard to stay calm and tell myself over and over, "it's OK, they are OK". By the end of the race, I am shaking and about to throw up. My family thinks it's funny to watch me during the race, and they all know that if they sit by me they better watch out. Every time there is a bump in the race, I grab the person next to me for protection. I guess it is funny. Gosh..... I just need to learn to stay calm. They are safe....right?

Coming Soon!!

The Adventures of Pakistani Pauley

The foreign American in the midst of an Identity Crisis

(***all Pakistani Pauley stories are based on real fiction. Any resemblances to actual people or events are accidentally on purpose. Names may or may not have been changed to protect the guilty***)

Brandon and Zachary

Camron