2007... see ya, wouldn't want to be ya.

Good-bye 2007!!

A special thanks for the gift cards...

Scott & I have been spending our gift cards & cash received for Christmas. Here's what we got with our 'loot':

• Crock Pot (I broke the lid on our last one)
• Deep-fryer (We LOVE french fries! - already used it twice)
• Stainless steel garbage can with flip-lid (for the bathroom... dang dog!)
• fabric to make curtains for the master bathroom
• placemats for the glass table (you're right Jill, it's hard to keep clean)
• 3 travel coffee mugs (not just 1, not just 2, but 3!!)

Thank you Mom & Dad (Larry & Vicki -and- Dick & Sandy) for the gifts!!

What a BEAUTIFUL day!!

Today was 70 degrees! Here we are after church today. None of us can believe how warm it is at the end of December!

Our church is in downtown Austin, so we go right by the Texas Capital every Sunday (zoom in to see the dome in the background). This is my favorite street in Austin, Congress Ave. See how it's all decorated for the holidays?

It a Jacuzzi for your hands!

After church today we went to Rudy's with some friends. Our friends showed us the 'hand wash station'. Isn't this cool?! You insert your arms & then jets spray and rubber squishy things rub your hands. When you're done you get to wear a blue round sticker that says "I have Clean Hands".
Rudy's barbeque is one of our favorite restaurants in Round Rock. It was really crowded today & we had to wait in line... but WELL worth it. We will take you there when you come visit! :)

messing with Dillon's picture

Merry Christmas from Texas

Merry Christmas Y'all

Them are some green grapes!

Madison & I made a fruit tray for Christmas day... look at the size of this bunch of grapes! Wow!

here's the stuff I look at each day

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0ewkind4\uc1\pard\fs20 Server was unable to process request. --> Transaction (Process ID 85) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.\par
\par
Stack Trace:\par
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall)\par
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)\par
Int64 imageId, Byte[] imageData, String imageStatus, String userId, DateTime checkinDate)\par
}
***** Assembly Information ****
Assembly Name Version Build Date Yes
mscorlib 1.0.5000.0 04/13/2007 08:50:46 PM Yes
A2 2.0.2.6 01/19/2007 06:55:10 AM Yes
System.Windows.Forms 1.0.5000.0 03/23/2006 05:07:37 PM Yes

Uhhhh, yeah. This is the type of stuff that I am supposed to fix? MmmHmmm. Looks like some alien language.... Oh! It is!
Actually I am starting to catch-on to some things (certainly not the stuff here) so my days aren't quite so overwhelming.

More snow humor

Does this remind you of anyone you know?
Comments are welcome. :)



ps: There are no right answers, I'm just curious who you think..

A little snow-humor

These crack me up. I love Calvin & Hobbs!

Madison's Christmas party

Madison had 3 friends over on Friday night for a little Christmas party. We played some games, here we are playing a gift-wrapping game. I think all the 'girls' (jared & dillon too) had fun!
Madison & Amber:Ashley & Kelsey:
Dillon & Jared:

Where is that singing coming from...?!

Scott made the comment that he really misses singing with the Les Hale Chorale since they retired the group a couple of years ago. He disappeared for a while & suddenly we could hear singing from.... the backyard? Here is Scott doing some reminiscing by singing one of his favortite solo songs: "You Raise Me Up" sung by Selah. Scott had his headphones on & didn't know I filmed him. heehee

find the pencil game

Okay, here's a little game we can play. In the picture I posted a few days ago called "Dinner with the Watson's" there is a pencil somewhere in the picture that it shouldn't be. See if you can find it. You will probably have to click on the picture to enlarge it.

Hint: Dillon's arm is on the right side of the picture & he's the one who 'projectiled' the pencil.
Hint: The people in the picture have no clue there is a pencil in the picture.

Comment back to us if you found it or need more hints.

My hair

Some of you will relate to this (mostly girls) & some of you will, um, basically not care (Howie or Damon).

Now that I'm working 8-5, I'm having a hard time finding time to get a haircut. I am busy most weeknights getting all the crap done around the house or I just want to veg-out when I get home.

So now my hair is really long. For me. Really long for me.

Most of you know that I keep my hair very short and 'messy-looking' or 'spikey' with gel. If I try to apply gel now it just goes straight & stays crunchy. So lately I've been using a 'wax' on it. A funny thing about wax is that it doesn't distort the color of my hair like gel... the gel made my hair look black even though it's really brown... so now everyone thinks I've 'colored' my hair. Huh!

What I really wanted to share with you is that today I used a new type of shampoo since I ran out of the old kind (I haven't had new shampoo since last summer because I shop at Sam's Club & they sell shampoo by the barrel) and my hair is SO SOFT today. It's amazing! I think the combination of my hair being long enough to actually run fingers through it and that it's not crunchy makes me notice it more. I keep petting the back of my head today.

I'm at work, otherwise I'd take a picture. :)

Update on stuff:

Well... I've left you hanging on a few things... so here's what's going on:

Scott's MRSA is clearing up. Yay! The surgeon will meet with Scott on Jan. 14 for an evaluation & reschedule of surgery.

I'm still working at the job I accepted last month. God has provided this job to fill a need for my family; it gives us an income. I am not a good fit for this particular position but we're making it work for now.

Scott's Houston project was supposed to be finished on Dec. 15. We're thinking another month to finish it up. Scott physically can NOT work the long days anymore, so he has hired a guy in Houston & Scott moved back to Round Rock. It's nice having him home, but sometimes the guy in Houston could use a kick-in-the-butt (but Scott's too far away to do it now!).

The kids are experiencing finals week. They will be off tomorrow through Jan. 7. Madison scored 99% on her Spanish test! Jared has a debate tournament Jan. 4 & 5 so he won't be completely vegetated over the break (BTW Jared no longer works for Chili's... long story).

Dillon has joined Jared on the Stony Point Rugby team. They both made 'starting' team. I don't know whether I'm happy or sad about this. Their first game is January 12. Pray for them. :)

Oh yeah.... it's December in Texas!!

Here's the current weather conditions. Just an FYI.... my office Christmas party is tomorrow.... we're going boating on Lake Austin. :)

Dinner with the Watson's

We celebrated my Aunt Jeannetta'a birthday yesterday by having fajitas at their house. Here's the Watson Crowd: Kaitlyn & Tim, Jeannetta, Margaux (with kitty) & Kurt.We are so thankful to be near family... Aunt Jeannetta lives about an hour south of us. Happy Birthday Jeannetta!!

Funny Macey

While Christmas decorating Madison was teasing Macey with a blow-dart shooter. Macey didn't like it much...

Jared's new profession?? I hope NOT!

Jared was goofing around with the bow tie from his orchestra tuxedo & pretended to be a chippendale dancer. I wish I could have gotten him dancing on video, it was FUNNY!! This is just a very brief glance at what he was wearing, be ready to twist your head sideways to get a full view.

Dillon's choir concert

Here are a couple of video clips from Dillon's choir concert.

Dillon needs to work on his 'groove'.


Short clip, but you can see how many kids there are!

Get a haricut!!

Look at the curls on the boys' hair! Funny!

This is the longest I've had my hair in years. Scott... this is his Santa look-alike-stage.

Madison's orchestra

Here is Madison playing at her concert on Tuesday night.
In regular Cole Family fashion, we got bored before the concert & took silly pictures of each other.

Here is one thing NOT offered in the orchestra programs in Iowa.... Mariachi band! The mexican culture here is very strong & they love the mariachi. Madison does not play mariachi, but wouldn't that be funny to have a blonde haired-green eyed mariachi player?

Closing is scheduled

Well... the house in Waterloo is sold to a couple with 2 small children & one on the way. I think they'll be a good fit into the neighborhood since there's so many little kids on the block.

Closing is scheduled for Jan 18.

Just letting you know. I thought I'd be happier, but under the circumstances, I'm only happy to be rid of the mortgage payment. We'll have a monthly payment to the bank for about a year to payoff the remaining balance since we sold it for less than we owe. Oh well.

would you rather...?

Would you rather (8 hours per day, 5 days a week):

• Get paid $20 per hour to do a job that you really dislike

OR

• Get paid $13 per hour to do a job that is challenging

SOLD! not sold?

We had an offer on the house in Waterloo. It was for LESS than we owe.

We countered with an offer that would cause us to 'break-even'.

Our potential buyers have accepted an offer on their place & will close mid-January. They are working on solidifying their closure before they accept our counter-offer.

We should know more today.

We are disappointed that we'll lose all the investment $$ for upgrades we did to make it more marketable. I guess that's the gamble with investments, I know we're not the only people in the midwest who are losing money on properties right now.

This sucks, but at least we can get out from 2 mortgage payments each month. This is called a 'distress sale'. For sure.

Selling the camper

Well.... it's time to start liquidating... We've taken some measures to get the camper sold. According to a local RV Dealer, we should be able to get good money for it after Jan. 1. Apparently that's when camping season starts here. So if you know of anybody....

What NOW?!?!

The MRSA site on Scott's arm has slowed down 'leaking'.... but not completely. He must wear a bandaid on it all the time so he's not contaminating everything he touches.

Last night he started showing signs of Latex allergy. Reactions to latex. The bandaids are causing red-welt-looking areas around the bandaid. I read that the inside forearm is one of the most sensitive sites for latex reactions, which is exactly where his lesion is.

Great. Could it get any worse? I know the answer to that, so I'm not going to complain anymore.

Any suggestions for latex-free bandaids?

Starting to feel more like Christmas!!

crummy morning

We're not off to a good start:

• I overslept by 15 mintues
• The dog pooped on the floor
• Madison was not up yet - so she's late too - but then she says she's sick.... great
• My hair is doing funky (not attractive) things
• I ran out of foundation make-up, so I opened the new one -- turns out to be too light of a shade for me -- Now I look sick too
• We ran out of miracle whip for my lunch's ham sandwich... 'a sandwich just isn't a snadwich without the great taste of miracle whip' ya know
• The milk expired last Friday, so I'm afraid to use it on my cereal... so I skip breakfast
• I forgot to grab my purse when I got out to the car so I had to run back inside to look for it
• I got stuck at the light for 3 greens (2 mintues per light rotation, so 6 extra minutes on my commute)
• It's misty-rainy today so people drive extra slow (thus making me later for work)
• Madison stays home with Scott today --BUT she has an orchestra concert tonight that will reduce her grade an entire letter if she does not participate... is she really sick? What is going on?!
• Lastly, I arrived at work so that I could sit & wait for the phone to ring.... once so far.

Madison's weekend

Madison spent the night with some friends on Friday night. Here is a sleepy morning after staying up late watching scary movies.
This is Madison's "I bored" look during intermission at Dillon's concert last Thursday.
Madison learned how to make awesome appetizers from a friend at church. They were so good we ate them as the entire meal on Saturday night... forget the entree!

Lastly Madison helped decorate the house with Christmas cheer. Actually she did most of it! Look for the next post to see the beautiful pictures!

Dillon's concert

Last Thursday Dillon's Christmas, I mean "Winter", choir concert at Stony Point. It was a dark evening & Dillon was so far from us that it was hard to get good pics of him. Here he is from a distance.... Handsome! Of course Jared & Madison got bored during intermission too & took crazy pics of each other. These were the nicest ones that I could post.... you didn't want to see the others.

Ewww, GROSS!

Here is the lesion that Scott has on his arm from the MRSA staph infection. It finally crusted over, but over the weekend it continued to be 'oozey'. YUCK. Of course we're all freaked out about bacteria & lysol & wash our hands a million times a day.

What you will NOT see on their Christmas cards

These are my nephews, Sam, Will & Max. My sister-in-law put these pictures on her blog to show us the pictures that will NOT be on their Christmas cards this year. Aren't they funny?!

It's 'raining' prayers!

This is so cool.... we have received so many emails & phone calls from folks telling us they are praying for Scott's health.... some are from people we don't even know! It is so good to belong to a network of prayer warriors and we know that Scott's situation is being presented before God in so many ways and by so many people. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Update.... It appears that Scott's lesions are beginning to 'crust' over (which is good because then they're not leaking). He is still taking his anitbiodics and will continue for the rest of the month.

Scott's pain doctor told him to could have a 'spinal epidural injection' to relieve pain until the surgery. However, when Scott called to schedule the injection they said he is not a candidate for ANY punctures, injections, or insicions until he gets rid of the MRSA. Bummer.

Everyone in our family has to use an antiseptic body-wash a couple of times a week to be rid of the staph bacteria in our house & on our skin. I'm not so worried about us being affected by the bacteria as I am Scott.... we don't want him to have a recurrence. Jared wants to buy a 'case' of the Lysol spray from Sams's Club so we can each have our own can.... I actually think that's a great idea.

Holiday concert

Jared's high school orchestra had their Winter Concert tonight. The orchestra director invited the middle school 8th grade orchestra to join for a grand finale Christmas song. It was very nice! Jared & Madison got to share a stand for the song. It was cool to see them play side-by-side.
During intermissions Dillon & I got bored & started to take pictures of each other.