A day in the sun

Second verse same as the first.

I wanted a chance to share some of my favorite memories as well as some of my favorite pictures, so here I am to encourage you all to not only read my blog today but also to (as Chris said) look at our new 'flickr' account. I will try to put the pics that we have on the blog as I sit down to blog but there are a lot of times that I want to put like 30 pics on here and I do not have a lot to say so I will try to keep both of them updated, really I will.

So the things that I took away from Sicily I wish that I could actually put into words. It was THE most amazing vacation that I ever taken. There was is so much that I want to tell each one of you individually but I will try to be as general as I can here.

Mom and Dad did a great job showing us as much of Sicily as they could in 3 days and I want to thank them again for the opportunity to go there. There were a lot of firsts on this trip; it was the first time that Micha took a plane, it was the first time that Chris or I had been to Europe, it was the first time that Micha has seen a beach (BTW she LOVED it), it was our first family vacation, it was the first time that I felt real jet lag (I am not sure that I am still over it), it was the first time I took a vacation and NEVER thought about work, and it was the first time of many that I went to Italy.

I am going to try to sum up the whole trip in as little as possible, I know right now that this is going to be really hard because there are a million things that I want to say about Sicily.

As Christine said earlier I miss the smell the most. There are a lot of orange trees there and right now they are all blossoming so anytime that you were in the north east part of the island no matter where you were it was like smelling the orange blossoms. I had never encountered such a strong pleasant smell over that large of a space.

I loved the history that was involved with Sicily, I think that my favorite day was the ruins just to look at them and imagine how those people built them and looking at the cities on hills and to think about the battles that took place to keep their city in their control. Just looking at the things that were built over 2000 years ago was incredible.

Mount Etna was so phenomenal to look at every time that I could look at the volcano I could not take my eyes off of it. It was just the most beautiful piece of earth that I have ever seen. I added a picture but it does no justice to actually looking at it with your own eyes.

My favorite part of the whole trip was to watch how much fun Miss. Micha was having. There were parts of Micha that I met on this trip that I had never seen. Sometimes it was not so great, she was more tired than she had ever been in her life, and other times she showed me a caring side of her that I had never seen. Yesterday I was making breakfast and she asked, "What are you making for breakfast daddy." I told her, " I am making biscuits and gravy I hope that is okay, I know that Uncle Ken just made us biscuits and gravy but I wanted them today." She answered with the most amazing thing that I ever heard from her lips. "Whatever you want to make is okay...people need to be thankful for whatever they get." Wow that is quite a thought for anyone, yet alone a four year old. In fact it has made me think the last few days. I should be thankful for everything that I get.

Thank you so much Dad and Mom!!

Italy

We had an incredible time in Italy. It was absolutely amazing. The scenery, the sights, the smell, oh the smell. We really miss the smell. We spent 3 days there and 3 days traveling. We could have spent 10 more days! Mom and Dad showed us a great time, being able to be there with them was such a blessing.

We got home Thursday and went to Tulsa to the zoo on Friday, we have run Micha ragged!

We did put a flickr on so you could view some of our photos.

Hope you enjoy them.

EASTER

We had a cold Easter, but we are very very thankful we didn't have snow.
Saturday night Mike told Micha while she was sleeping the Easter bunny would come and leave a basket by the front door. Immediately that did not sit well with her. She was very upset that a walking huge bunny would be lurking around in our yard, in the dark, while she was sleeping. After about 20 minutes of trying to explain to her that he was a very nice bunny we decided to tell her he was not real and then told her what Easter was really about. Once we talked about Jesus she was cool with everything. "So okay mom you can put an Easter basket outside for me if you want"

We had a really great day, We have been doing the nursery at church and for the first sunday we had one child besides ours, piece of cake. This Sunday we had 5. So we had fun with that. We would love to be more involved with the childrens ministries. Nursery is the first step, we'll just slowly work our way up. Mike has always wanted to work with the youth.

We went to Duenweg to have a cookout at my parents' like we always do.

The kids ate tons of candy. Logan didn't find one egg, he totally was not interested in anything except for what was already in his basket. When I finally got him to start looking for eggs they were all gone............ so his darling sister hid some of her eggs in the play house and took him in to find them.

Although it was a little cooler than we would have hoped for we still had a great day.

On another note...........Caden is walking. Just cruisin all over the house. Now he can keep up with the other two.

I have a good video but I haven't the slightest clue on how to post it so I will leave it for Mike.

Hope everyone had a great Holiday.

Happy Birthday Logan

A few weeks ago we had decided to have Logans Birthday Party this weekend. To be honest (and this is sad) I had totally let it slip my mind. I mean like usually 2 months ahead of time I am getting excited.

With all we have been so busy with one day I was like oh yeah Logan's Birthday is in April.

Anyway, we had prepared very little. Wednesday night I stumbled upon a clown. Which was cool. The kids really liked him. He did magic tricks, jokes, and last but not least balloon animals. (Debby, you really hit it with that one!)

I felt a litlle sorry for the guy because of the age group we had there was little to no attention span.

But the adults watched the whole thing. I enjoyed it.

We had such a busy day, Mike and I both had to work this morning, we had nursery at church and then the party at 3. But we made it and Birthday boy is up way past his bed time.

He was confused all day as to what was really going on. He woke up from nap at 2:45 and there was a party here? At about 9:30 tonight (we had some friends over watching a movie) Logan came up into the kitchen raised his hands in the air and said "ITS A BIRTHDAY PARTY, ITS A BIRTHDAY PARTY!"

(And we will do it all again in 2 months. I should probably start planning now.)

I guess the last post does not like comments!

Happy Birthday MOM!!!!

The other day I got an email from my Mom that said something to the effect of: Send more pictures and send more vids!!!! More pics and more vids!!! So here are some pictures of the kids and a little vid of the kids just being my kids before bed.

Lately I have not been sitting down to post all that much lately so I just stick a vid or two on here so that you all can still see the kids but I thought that tonight I might actually write something on here to go with the pics. There is a lot going on in our house all the time lately. Christine and I are trying to make final plans on going to Italy to see Mom and Dad and getting that to match with both of our work scheduled is horrible. She has something this week and I have something the next week and it is leaving like a 2 day window of opportunity. The planning of the vacation is making me need a vacation in itself.



Logan has a birthday coming up so we are trying to make plans for that. (he looks really scared in that picture hu?)The big 2 years. We are thinking a lot about themes but I think that we have Ken to thank about the theme because I am pretty sure that it will be a dinosaur theme. Ever since we were at Ken's house and went to the T Rex store he has been obsessed with dinosaurs and mostly the sounds that they make . He runs around the house all the time yelling "Growllllll, I'm a dinosaur" I am really excited about the party but I love to have birthday parties for my kids I like all the 'Monica like' hosting things that go into them.

As For Miss Micha she is growing up so fast... She said her first 'cuss' word this week....teehehehe. Thursday she was on the computer and Christine overheard her say, "damn computer" NOW I am sure that she never heard her dad say that at all so I am not sure where she got that from. Actually Micha has been amazing as of late she is growing up so much and helping out with her brothers which is awesome. She is in this new state of mind that is she does not want to let people down. Her whole goal in life right now is to make other happy. There are small times in her life that she get a little selfish but when I ask her to think about it then she comes back to the reality that people are more important than things or situations. With Micha (and I think that I speak for Chris as well) it is like every day we see her grow a little bit more emotionally and that is a new amazing part of child rearing that we have never dealt with.

Sorry that the vids are so much darker with You Tube but that is all that I have tonight. I hope that you all enjoy it.

For your viewing pleasure

Please turn off all cell phones and pagers before viewing the movies out of consideration for others around you..........




There were just a couple of videos that I wanted to get posted. The first one is Harrison reading a story while he was down last weekend, and the next is my little boys eating "popcorn". I wanted to write a little bit tonight but I am so very tired that I think that I need to just go and rest but I still wanted to get those vid's going so that you all would have something to do while you were at work tomarrow.

Last weekend was great

This is the first time that I really sat down at the computer since last weekend that I could post on the blog so here is the recap of last weekend for those of you that I have not bragged about it to.

The top picture that you see is the picture of Christine and my girl that we would/will have. if this looks somewhat famliar to you it is becasue Ken and Lynette also did this Dave and Busters experiment at one time and they found it so much fun that they sent Christine and I there as a Christmas gift. It was such a great gift Christine and I had the best time ever. First of all we have 3 kids (for those of you that lost count) and we really never spend time away from them. Sometimes one of us goes somewhere or the other of us go the otherwhere but never do we just go out with each other. We got to do that this weekend and thanks to Ken and Lynette we got to go out in KC one of the nights this weekend just to have a great time. For Christmas the KC Fletchers took us to KC so that we could goto a place called Dave and Busters (it is kinda like a Chucky Cheese that you get carded at the door). Anyway we went last weekend while The KC Fletchers watched the kids and we had the greatest time. There were a lot of video games which puts me in heaven in ANY arcade. There were 3 things that I HAD to do when I was there.

1. They had a small "Old School" video game section and I had to play those. I played Donkey Kong, which I was quite good at actually, for quite some time.

2. There was the Biggest Madden game there I have ever seen with the best graphics as well. IT was a full sized game with at least a 60 inch screen and I had to play it.

3. There was a boxing game there that I saw walking in that you actually boxed while playing it. You picked up the gloves and boxed to play the game.

I got to do all of these things, when I walked in I was like "A kid in a candy store" this was the best place ever.

The next day we all went to Chucky Cheese (still some of KC Fletchers gift to us) and again we all had a blast. The kids love Chuckey Cheese espicially the one by Uncle Ken becasue they know that when they are at Uncle Ken & Aunt Lynette's they ALWAYS get to go there.

Thanks again for the GREAT Christmas gift Ken and Lynette--

Fletcher Five

We now have a David

We did get a new Hamster. This one is more alive than Hammy ever thought of being. His name is David. I am not sure why she picked David that is just what she thought of when we got him home,[or he is a she who knows.] He is so wired all of the time! The first night we had him Mike and I had gone out for our Anniversary and when we got home after everyone had left, we noticed there was no David in his cage. Gage or Logan had taken off the cap to one of the holes in the top of the cage and he had gotten out in the den. Micha was so scared, you mean he can climb? I was just kidding mom, I didn't want a hampster. What if he climbs on me when he I am sleeping? She was hysterical. Like scared out of her mind. So I guess maybe the hampster is mine now. But, the best part of it all is Michas room is still clean.
Still clean, can you believe it?
She is great. She is very proud of her room. And so are we.
I'll post a pic of David and Michas clean room later, now its off to work.

Out with the old and in with the new.....

Or, maybe I should say out with the dead and in with the new. I know that doesn't sound very hmm, whats the word............... appropriate but we have given it that kind of approach so that Micha isn't so devastated that her Hammy has already gone to be in everlasting peace with God. He never woke up this morning. We made it a whole 5 days with Hammy. I am asking myself "Are we going to try again?" and as Micha would answer, Mom, we totally need a new one.
When the lady that sold us the hampster told me the Hampster had a 7 day warranty I knew we may need to prepare Micha for that, so I did. Apparentaly hamsters do not adjust well to moving from one enviorment to another (at least that is what the lady told us and what I am hoping happened. I would hate to think that we are the reason that Hammy is no longer a part of the Fletchers. Even with Hammy gone we will always have Hammy with us in this video that Micha wanted to make the other day.

Happy Anniversery

So today is Christine and my anniversery. 4 years today since we got married. So the fun story about this was that I decided to send her flowers to work yesterday to surprise her. She called me in the afternoon and ask if I had sent her the flowers becasue she could not find a card with them. I am sure that she assumed that it was me becasue no one elso would be sending her 2 dozen roses. I was a little bit cuious that if I was sending her flowers and there was not a card then how did she know that they were for her? Well apparentally the name was on the box.....the box? I thought that flowers came from a person in a little flower truck not the USP guy. But these ones did, in fact they came in 2 boxes. One had the flowers in it and the other had the vase that I had gotten with it as well. There were 2 options and 2 prices one with a vase and one without a vase. I assumed that this ment they would put the flowers into the vase and then take them to her. I guess somewhere in the fine print that I missed it said "Flowers w/ Vase $XX.XX (some assembly required) " I really was just going to put a picture of the box on here but I knew that someone would ask to see the flowers so I put them on here as well.

I also got a better picture of Hammy that Micha wanted me to put on here and we took a few videos last night of the kids that I am trying to get uploaded onto You Tube so there will be some more posted most likely today if I can get the videos up there.

Hammy

So we made a deal with Micha that if she could keep her room clean for 7 days then she could get a hampster. The next condition was that she would have to have her room each day to be able to play with the 'pet'. Well as you can see we now have a hampster so I am going to let her talk to you about our new addition to the family.........

"Everybody I have a hampster his name is Hammy. We have to give him some medicine in his water. He is black and white and grey. He has a rolling thing. I got him at a pet store. I picked him out all by myself there were 8 hamsters that I could get but I liked that one. I think that is it."

The other exciting thing that happened this weekend is that I got to buy a computer. Sunday Chris called me from the Ronald McDonald House and said, " There are some really good deals on laptops at Best Buy today only. Well that is about all the convincing that it took me to get out the door to get one. Now I could not just get the laptop because I was going to need a new wireless router to go with this. I showed up before the store opened and as I was waiting outside I kept seeing all these people show up. I called Chris and told her while I was waiting that there were like 13 diffrent groups of people out there but I was sure that they were not all here to get the computer. I was wrong though there were 5 laptops and about 13 people that wanted one. Fortiuntally I knew one of the guys that was working at the Customer Service Desk and he hooked me up with one of the $499 super deals. Cool as that was there was a HP there for $649 that had Vista Premium and 512 MB more ram but this one would be okay. Well after I got this one home it still did not run fast enough at all (512MB is just not fast enough for Vista to run) So Monday morning I had to go back to Best Buy and got a 1 GB memory card (so now I had more than the HP had as far as memory but I am pretty clost to the same cost of the HP and I still only have Vista basic (so I might be upgrading on that as well.) The funy thing about Windows Vista is that it came out I think on Jan 30 and here it is Feb 4th when I bought the computer and there was not ONE computer in Best Buy that had anything other than Vista on it. The computer that I got was in factory sealed box that was preloaded with Vista on it so it was like they had to ship every computer in the store back and put all new ones out. I have not really played with the Windows side of it yet so I cannot tell you alot about it, but I like the laptop overall. I think that I will go see what Vista can do for me.

A little vid

It has been forever since I last posted anything so I am just throwing this out there. Got this train table for $21 (train set included) but the vid is for watching the kids not the table.

Electricity is Wonderful

We had a visit from the Craig's this past week. It was one of those so happy to get to see you but wish you weren't here for the reason you are kind of visits. We had an ice storm on Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday. Sunday we lost power. I thought it would surely be only a few hours before it came back up, A few hours turned into a whole night and a whole night turned into 4 nights. Poor Jessica and Grant. They had such a long day on Monday, going from McDonalds to McDonalds all day. But we have power this morning and are so so so happy to have it. Last night we had heard that it may be 14 to 30 days before it was restored. It was a long night of worrying. We are blessed. There are still tons of people without power. Our prayers are still with them.

We really enjoyed the visit Jessica. Micha already misses you Grant.

Merry Christmas at the Fletcher Five!!!!

I know that I promised these pictures like a week ago but I did not get them in on time but tonight is the night!

We had a GREAT Christmas at the Fletcher house, in fact it was my favorite Christmas ever since Chris and I got together as a family. The reason was that this time I got to share MY triditions with her family . On Christmas Eve we had family over for a dinner of snacks and Yes we did open one present (SCORE). Then on Christmas day we We did presents and I made dinner with Ham, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, rolls, and pie. Quite the Christmas dinner I must admit since usually we just do presents and enjoy time. I was so excited to have Christmas here this year and I am really glad that I got to do that.

After Christine's family I got to share Christmas with Ken and Lynette (and Sophia as well, I guess they are the Fletcher 3 aka Fletcher KC).This is what made this Christmas the greatest that I got to share Christmas with my family and hers as well. Usually we struggle with doing hers on this day and traveling to do Christmas there on that day but this year I just got to cook dinner and have my loving family come over as well.





For those others out there that I did not get to spend Christmas with, I love you and I am sorry that we again missed it; The DiCocco's and The Creig's. I am sorry that we have to do mail order Christmas. As Micha would say "We totally love you , I am serious." Something happened this Christmas which made me realise how much I love my family I wish I could share that as much as I feel it but all I have is this text. Tears come to my eyes when I realise how far apart we are, however joy comes to my heart when I also realise that we can still share Christmas miles away.

I LOVE YOU ALL

Merry Christmas!!

So here it is the middle of the night and I am up, on Christmas none the less. There is such a lot to do tomarrow but that is okay. Just wanted to share what a Fletcher Five Christmas was looking like on Christmas morning. BTW the tree looks even worse with all the presents under it. Merry Christmas and we will try to post pics of Christmas later today.

Just a few pics

Monday Carrson took advantage of having a snow day and came over to play!

Caden is sitting up now, well barely.

He had just eaten dinner, notice the orange face?

Christmas Traditions

Tonight Micha and I went to the Joplin Christmas Parade, which is a must for me which brought Chris and I to the thoughts of.......

I think that I am the most traditional person when it comes to holidays but I thought that I would get the family's take on this if they care to share their own thoughts. As Christine has now spent 6 Christmas Day's with me she starts to wonder "Why is this guy ALL ABOUT CHRISTMAS" and we talk about this also. Here are the things that I HAVE to do every Christmas.....

To start the season I have to have a tree up by the weekend of Thanksgiving, that is an absolute must. Right before I get the tree up I get all excited about the Christmas Music (hence the MyPod player that is playing different my favorite Christmas songs. It is set on random so keep coming back or stay a while and you will hear them all) Then I draw my children (or child as the age may be) into watching the best Christmas movies ever with me....

Those are The Christmas Story, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (original version), Home Alone, and Charlie Brown Christmas

These are all a MUST of EVERY Holiday season although there is a lot more that I like. After this I start planning trips for things like driving around town to see the lights at other houses and finishing off with a trip to Carthage to see the Big display there.

I can remember taking a few rides in that blue Zepher to Carthage and looking at the lights at a few houses in Joplin on our way there. I know some of these traditions might seem silly to some of you but I loved Christmas then and I still love it a lot so I want to make Micha, Logan, and Caden's Christmas just like those that I loved. What I am looking for is who remembers other Christmas traditions, and what are they? Do any of you do things because it is tradition?

We got some here too!!!!

Micha loves the snow. We didn't have much last year so its the first snow she's ever gotten to enjoy. Logan likes it too its just he can't stand the cold for very long.
Its beginning to look alot like Christmas! After I took these pictures (this was all ice actually like 14 hours of sleet) we got 10" of snow on top of that. It was awesome that we FINALLY got winter. I know that most people hate ice and snow but I love it. I do not mind driving on it and I love playing in it. Micha loves it as well and I promised her a Snowman tomarrow! So tomarrow we will build one.