No, Sam didn't rob a pawn shop...at least I don't think he did. He and Stella went exploring in the woods and found this radio. He heard there were really strong magnets in stereos so he carefully opened this one to see.

Our sidewalks are always littered with debris. If I weren't constantly outside picking up, our yard would seriously look like a dump...I mean a real dump - the kind where you dispose of junk like this.

This is what you get when you add - two bored girls, a potato, toothpicks & a stick - weapons to torture Sam with... Or some kind of evil princess wand???

GET IT MARIO!!!

You missed a spot, or two, or three...At our house "washing the car" is code for "can we play in the hose?" These girls will do anything to get wet...like swim in a horse trough.

Always good to see my dad. He has Multiple Sclerosis so he can't visit us...the car ride is too long. He is the parent who was a daredevil out of the two. He has done some CRAZY stuff in his life. He taught us to be brave, pick up bugs, shoot snakes, how to ice skate, not to be affraid to speed while driving. Forget about drivers ed...never took it! He put me in a pick-up at the age of 15 and said "don't get caught til' your 16! We spent summers on the lake and winters on the slopes of Colorado - I skied my first black diamond when I was in the first grade. Dad was a very determined, hard worker who started out as a welder for Texaco and eventually started his own successfull oil company. I feel bad for him because I know he would still be a real go getter if it weren't for his illness.

Papa Jack - what an interesting guy. He has really lived his life to the fullest and I'm so proud of him for that. Coming from humble beginnings didn't stop him from taking on the world. Some of his occupations have included: rancher, Texas Ranger, turqouise jewelry maker and gold miner (prospector). He has been interviewed by Dan Rather for his gold prospecting and traveled the world in search of the "Mother Load!" His travels have taken him to pyramids, Alaska and classified locations. He settled in Cripple Creek Colorado during his gold mining years and I have great childhood memories of summers in Colorado with him learing how to make a gold bar. He is now 87 and slowing down a little which frustrates him greatly...I still think he has a better memory than me.

This weekend we visited some of my family and on our way down my dad's driveway we encountered this little guy. Hank jumped out and held him with a stick while I took pictures. Notice the possum's tail has been chewed off - or something - an his ears were frozen off - or something. No animals were harmed during this photo shoot.

However - there was a possum harmed on our back porch by Sam and I shortly after moving in. He was in the trashcan on the back porch and after filling it completely full of bb holes we thought he was dead. I had my hand on the lid holding it until he stopped moving. Then all of the sudden THUD - he hit the lid really hard. I opened it and that thing was flopping and jumping 5 feet in the air! We finally finished him off. I think it would have been easier to just chase it away.

Life really changes when you are a mom - the biggest news of my day today was Justin Bieber's new haircut. Seriously, if I were 14, I would be in love with him too. I was nuts about New Kids On The Block....yes, I really said that. And yes, I really saw them in concert with my ratted bangs.

Speaking of stuff that migrates through here. Tarantulas do the same thing once a year. Just down the road there is a crossing that they travel on every year. I took this picture with my phone out in our pasture. Every summer I find at least one in my pool. Shelby thought she wanted one for a pet until we caught one in a glue trap and she saw how big they really are.

For some reason, every spring, ladybugs migrate through our master bathroom. This one was crawling down the trim this morning....and there were others. We leave them alone because they don't bother us and they stay out of our bedroom. It's only the bathroom? The first time it happened we thought it was some type of plague.

This is how you de-worm the horses.

This is how you watch the horses get de-wormed. Yes, Dr. Kehrberg, I know she could fall and crack her head open...

This is how you get a ride back (uphill) to the house.

This is how you get pushed on the swingset by daddy, on your way back to the house:)

Playing basketball (in socks) this is why Sam NEVER has socks...they all have holes or are on the garage floor.

Playing basketball (barefoot) current temp. 50 degrees.

TOOTH UPDATE - Hank went to the dentist and he doesn't have any horrible diseases - thank goodness! Just a random coincidence that two teeth broke at the same time. I guess when you have large fillings teeth are more likely to crack. Long story short, he went again yesterday to have the prep. work done for two crowns and have temps. put on. When he got home last night he said "I can't believe what I just paid for medevil torture!" He has been eating without chewing somehow? The real crowns go on in 2 weeks. He told me he did this for me - if he had been single he would have had them pulled:(

I just found a good, healthy, quick dinner idea so I thought I would share. After all, moms need all the help they can get in the dinner department.

I bought this carving board chicken breast and salad ingredients. I like my chicken hot so I sauted it some olive oil and put it on top of our salad. I didn't add any seasoning to the chicken - it didn't need it. I used 2 packages of chicken for our family.

This is my nature girl wiping her nose with a leaf:)

INDIAN DIRT MAKING

Stell and her friend Haven created this indian dirt studio yesterday in our woods.

Here is the process:

1 - find sandstone

2-grind it against a big rock

3 - make your customers wait in the waiting room (i.e. sit on a rock nearby and wait)

4 - place your dirt in hickory nut shells

5 - optional: add water to make indian paint; using a feather paint the rocks

ABOVE photo: this is Stella's response to sleeping alone:( Not happening guys. News flash from the Hubler household....Stella slept in her OWN bed, in her OWN room last night. ALL the way through the night. HOORAY!!!! I've been trying for over 6 years now to get this child to sleep and she did it last night! Not to say it's going to last, but it felt soooo good to have one really good night's sleep. We have done everything from moving Shelby into her room, to letting her sleep on a loveseat in our room.

The last words out of my mouth (right before I snuck around the corner and took this) were "girls stay out of that horse trough!" They are so obedient:) This warmer weather is giving them the swimming bug. I have never seen kids that like water as much as mine - except maybe me! They don't care where the water comes from. I have seen them swim in mud puddles. When it rains they roll around on the driveway trying to soak it all up. I'm sure they are down there cleaning the water out and feeding the horses...or maybe they are dropping wet clothes on the garage floor and changing into more clean clothes for round two...hmmmmm??? Oh yuck - as I was writing this a SOAKING WET dog ran through my bedroom. I guess he was lucky enough to go swimming in the horse trough as well.

This is why I love living here. Look at the pink tape on the shoes. I know most of you have seen this. It's back from October 2009 when my mom and Hank's dad both had cancer. This morning I was talking to a lady about Bristow and she told me how she would love to move to a small town from South Tulsa. As I was driving I thought about this football game and many other reasons why I love small towns.

1. These boys really came together for Sam (even though he didn't even play football that season since both of his grandparents had cancer). He didn't grow up here and most of them didn't know his grandparents.
2. Your kids get hand-me-down uniforms in athletics so you dont' have to take out a low interest loan to sign up.
3. You can call up the bank and ask what's going on in town and when to sign your kids up for stuff.
4. You can let your kids walk across town, with their friends, to eat.
5. You can meet with your school administrators without making an apointment.
6. People live for Friday night football and on Monday morning you can listen to the old men sitting in Zigeez talking about the game.
7. Zigee knows your favorite foods, salad dressings, and what flavor of ring pop your kids like. If he doesn't have what you like he will order it!
8. Everyone knows where you live and if you try to give them an address they have no idea what you are talking about.
9. Your kids don't have to be superstars to play sports; everyone can join the team...in every sport.
10. My kids have tons of friends and they are happier than they have ever been:)

I am more relaxed since we moved here and I know the kids are too. This is the way childhood should be. The kids come home and play outside...we don't spend the entire evening in the car, eating drive thru just trying to keep up with everyone else. I REFUSE!

I had the best morning! Don't hate me for saying that - OK. Walking on my treadmill, staring at the wall makes me CRAZY. Oprah said it best "I want to shoot my treadmill with a small caliber hand gun." The weather was perfect this morning and the dog (that hyper little beast) needed some exercise so we walked/jogged through our woods. Hank's "hobby" if you can call it that...has been clearing out trails in the woods for the kids to run/ride on. I think it's good stress relief for him - cutting, breaking and burning branches. Boys and fire! So, I took some pictures of our trails...doesn't it look like Colorado, esp. with the snow? I felt like a NIKE ad. running all around down there. JUST DO IT! Well, maybe not a NIKE ad. becuase my hiney jiggled way too much to even wear nike. I wore old clothes and my mowing shoes since it was so muddy. Who needs a fancy gym and trainer when you have muddy trails? It's perfect interval training with the hills:)

I'm so proud of Sam...I have to brag a little (I haven't told any of our family) Sam was asked to move up and be the high school jazz drummer. A drummer quit and the band director asked Sam if he would play with the high school! Super cool. This means he will have to go after school since he can't join them 3rd hour. He will compete with them and everything:)

Side note - I saw the Justin Beiber movie with the girls and it's a GREAT story. I wanted to cry all the way through it. As a mom I was rooting for him the whole time. Esp. since I have a son who wants to be musician.

Reading from bottom to top Stella wrote "I love my whole family." She made us this Valentines Day card.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!! What says Valentines day better than chocolate and strawberries...if you can find a decent strawberry in the month of February. I will post how I made these under recipes. They are so easy:) I wonder why the scales keep going up instead of down???

I just made these for Shelby's class party today. We are lucky enough to be able to bring homemade treats to our school parties! I am going to post the recipe for these club wraps. I made extra for dinner. So easy and yummy! We are going to spend our evening playing Valentine games so I don't want to be in the kitchen all night.

Stella blowing bubble in Woodward Park

Shelby right before her brain surgery...we had these pictures taken right before we left for Dallas (she was about 14 weeks old) .

Just for fun...our little Sam.

CAKE TOP!!!! YUMMERS:) To some this might look like a mess, but to my family it is the delicious by-product of a cake. After I bake a cake I slice the top off so I can flip the cake upside down onto a cake board for decorating. The top is the best part so we don't let it waste. Warm cake top with a glass a milk and the kids are set! The cake will be going to Stella's class for 100 day (which actually happened on a snow day) topped with 100 cookie dough bites.

When my kids get married they will order "cake top" for their wedding cakes!

When they wanted to take the go-kart out Hank said "NO, it will tear big ruts in the yard!" I said "carefully drive out of the yard and into the pasture and it should be fine." This is the front yard (where he got stuck)...OOPS! Who cares- we live in the country now...no more golf course yards for us.

Sam had lots of fun (except for getting stuck 3 times). I sprayed him with the water hose while I was washing off the go-kart...buuurrrr!

Sam and Stella decided to take the go-kart out after church today...Stella wore her nice school coat.

Speaking of Valentines Day. Earlier, when I was telling him what a failure I was as a mother. He said he wanted to get me something nice this year, but the dentist would probably be getting his money instead. I told him it was okay becuase when I came home today (after attending a very sad funeral) my WHOLE family was cleaning away on the house. I was so happy to see eveyrone working so hard. I told Hank that could be my Valentines Day gift, but the kids probably won't speak to him for a week. I love a clean, organized house that smells like bleach and alcohol! I am an obsessive clean freak and many jokes have been made at my expense. I can take it though (with my bleach bottle in hand). My mother-in-law spent the night over here and told me her skin burned and itched when she went to bed because there was so much bleach in my sheets. I also love check lists and making plans. This makes me sound like loads of fun...haha!

About the funeral: I sent an email out to many of you regarding Stella's teacher who was looking for her missing father. They found his body on the Keystone Dam and his funeral was today. Allegedly, he was followed out of the Hard Rock Casino, kidnapped and murdered for a few thousand dollards that he was carrying. Let this be a warning to all who frequent casinos. I keep hearing about this happening. Yes, people are willing to KILL for trivial amounts of money.

Valentines Day is Monday...oh no! It's a NATIONAL HOLIDAY here in Bristow. The first year we lived here I didn't know how ridiculous it got here. I did not send my children $75 boquets of toys, candy and flowers. I heard about it from Shelby when she got home that day because she was the ONLY kid in her class that didn't get a special delivery. I was speechless. So, last year I forgot to pre-order from one of our local shops. The night before I remembered, so I picked this up at Reasors. I pulled off some of the candy bars and put stuff on there they liked and took this to the school for Shelby. Still LAME becuase she didn't get a DELIVERY!!! Ok, here we are, third time, surely I'll get it right this year. Well, I forgot to pre-order last week and Monday is the big day. What's a mom to do? I saved these vases so maybe I could whip one of these up again...or just hang my head in shame that I blew it again. Maybe one of the ladies in town will have mercy on me Monday morning if I'm really nice and tip really good???

Just yesterday I was about to go out and take a picture of our overflowing, commercial size, metal dumpster, when the trash truck drove up - WOO HOO! With the bad weather trash pick-up has been delayed and boy did we have some trash! After being snowed in for 2 weeks and cooking 3 x daily for up to 8 people - we had some serious waste. Which reminded me of Christmas 2006 (see above photo). I went out and took a picture that night becuase we had sooooo much more trash on our curb than anyone else. Notice 3 dumpsters full, PLUS all the other trash. We laughed so hard that night. You have to understand south Tulsa neighborhoods...you would get mean letters in your mailbox if you didn't mow your grass every 4 days. We had a next door neighbor named Mr. Wilson - yes really - and when Sam the menace moved in we had a few meetings with Mr. Wilson. One day I walked out and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were vacuuming the acorns off of their lawn, with a shop-vac, like it was totally normal. During the time we lived there, Sam had to offer up several apologies to Mr. Wilson for his boyish deeds! By the time we moved Mr. Wilson really liked us and told us we were some of the best neighbors he had ever had. He tried to screen prosepective buyers for our house(others who would vacuum their lawns).

Hank is traumatized and so am I!!! This is half of one of his lower teeth and get this...he just lost another half of a top one. What's going on here? He cracks two teeth within 12 hours of each other. They were both filled (see the dark spot). Last night we thought he bit down on an uncooked grain of rice just right, but today he was eating something soft. I married him for his nice smile and straight white teeth - what will happen to us now? Not really, but this is a major problem becuase he thinks they will have to be pulled. I can't take him out in public missing half of his teeth:( One thing I do know for sure; that he is going to the dentist and then following up with his doctor ASAP.

I have a theory on customer service. They make the automated menu so hard to drill through and the people sooo hard to understand that you decide it's simply not worth your time and you just take it! I have allowed charges to go through on my credit card just so I wouldn't have to deal with the frustration and I believe others have done this too. I think that is the plan. Hank deals with it so much more than I do, that I truly feel sorry for him. Technical support is all overseas now. The conversation I just had went something like this, once I finally got through to a person. I was calling SIRIUSXM radio. "oh we are sorry that our system automatically billed you for an extra year when you clearly had your account set up to pay annually."
I'm thinking "then why did I get billed for 2 years?"
Customer service: "um, hold on..."
Customer service: "one moment please"
Customer service "ok then, one moment"
Customer service "we will credit you for all months subtracting the one month this year you have already used it, becuase you had a credit balance then we will blah, blah, blah and she kept spouting all of this nonsense out about how she was going to only charge me for one year at a time.
IF you are a linguist you can kind of sort out what they are saying through the thick accent on the other end of the phone.

This is why Hank jumps up and down and tells me don't EVER order a FREE sample of ANYTHING off of the internet because they always charge your card the very next day and it's next to impossible to get that stuff taken off. I have done it with a travel service, acai berry, the other day I got a free credit report for a $1 processing fee only to be charged $85 dollars.

I PROMISE Hank I will resist the temptation to ever do this again!!!! If I do, you can take away my computer privileges.

Sam's friend, Levi, was so bored he played dollhouse with Stella. I hope his friends don't see this! I sat there and watched him carefully buckle the bunny mommy into her seatbelt in the Polly Pocket car! He is the youngest of 5 kids so Stella is the little sister he never had:)

Trouble makers...and one with a bad case of hat hair.

this would be such a beautiful picture of the horses running through the snow if it didn't look so unnatural for Joe to have his turnout coat on! If you are wondering about Ginger...I bought her one and when I went out to feed one morning she had herself all tangled up in it and almost broke one of very expensive legs. The coat was too big:( I had to call Hank up at the house and have him help me get it off of her. I never bothered to order another one as she is the fuzziest, fuzzball of a horse I have ever seen. If anyone is looking SHE IS FOR SALE!!!!! She's a beauty:)

Don't they look like an ad. for Guns & Ammo.? I think that's a magazine...

Yeah - he still has his eyes:) His parents will be thrilled that I returned him with two eyes.

My nephew crashing...notice the mine field of sticks - watch your eyes Whit!!!