Sightler Cookie Decorating Party

Today we went to Tom's cousin, Ann's, house for the annual Sightler grandchildren cookie decorating party. Ann gave all the grandchildren an apron that she embroidered their name on. She lined them up on her stair well and took their picture. These are actually the great grandchildren and the only two great great grandchildren of Grandma and Grandpa Sightler. We had a great time and enjoyed seeing everybody.

Happy Birthday, Jesus!!

Happy Birthday, Jesus!!

We have a family tradition of singing Happy Birthday and having birthday cake to make sure Christmas is always recognized as Jesus' birthday. Here is Katie blowing out the candle. For some reason, she keeps calling it God Jesus' birthday but that's fine, as long as she knows the real meaning of Christmas.

We had a great Christmas this year. I posted the gifts Tom and I got earlier. But I figured I would list what we got and a few pictures too. So here we go.
Tom: Slingbox, Logitech remote, Carolina Panthers wallet (from Brittanie), Carolina Panthers office set, Carolina Panthers wall clock, Carolina Panthers T-shirt, Carolina Panthers polo, Carolina Panthers helmet Fathead (below), and a silver truck with a clock in it (from his parents).

Lynette: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, rice cooker (from Brittanie) and a $30 gift card (from Tom's parents)
Brittanie: Silver Army bracelet watch, Hollister August perfume, Fantasy perfume, Disney's Man of the house DVD, Lethal Weapon 4 DVD, The Sims 2 Playstation game, Mary Kay Satin hands, Mary Kay Satin lips, Mary Kay eye care kit, silver bracelet with a heart with her initial on it (from Tom's parents), $20 (from my mom), $20 (from my niece), a promise ring (from Justin), a necklace and bracelet set (from Justin), Fantasy perfume, lotion, and lip gloss set (from Justin), pink stuffed elephant (from Justin), decorated glass (from Justin's mom), McDonald's Arch card (from Justin's mom).This is Justin putting on the promise ring and below is the picture of her with her ring on and him wearing the Carolina Panthers watch she gave him for Christmas.

Katie: $20 from my mom, $20 from my niece, silver necklace with a heart with her initial on it (from Tom's parents), Three Little Pigs book and cartridge for her Care Bear Share a Story, Cinderella book and cartridge for her Care Bear Share a Story, Leap Frog Phonics Radio, Leap Frog Phonics Writing Desk, Leap Frog Phonics Library, My First Leap Pad Learning Desk, My First Leap pad ABC's and 123's book and cartridge, Finding Nemo reading book (below), Blues Clues Silly seat (from Brittanie), a Barbie B-Bright laptop, Toy Story 2 DVD, Madagascar DVD, and Veggie Tales Joshua and the Big Wall DVD.

I have to say, Katie looked HORRIBLE this Christmas and it was all her fault. She snuck in the kitchen and tried to steal Christmas cookies from the counter, slipped, and skinned up her nose. For the past few days, we have been finding clumps of hair around my computer and on the sofa where I sit. I was terrified that I had cancer or something and planned to make an appointment to see my doctor asap. I was really worried about it. Well I came down the hall Friday and Tom pointed out yet another clump of hair where I had just walked and by that point, I was about to cry because it had to be bad for me to be losing that much hair. Well that's when I started looking at Katie and noticed her hair looked weird. I called her over to me and quickly realized it was her hair I was finding all over the place. She had taken the scissors out of the drawer by my computer and had been giving herself a VERY ugly haircut. Unfortunately, there was no time to take her to a hair dresser before Christmas but there will be no fixing what she did to what used to be bangs. It is WAY too short to be helped. So she had a skinned up nose and chopped up hair for Christmas. She looks like a homeless child!

My new toy

My Christmas gift came in today and I just HAD to have it. It is only fair since Tom opened his Slingbox and his new fancy remote. Tom bought me a Canon Digital Rebel XT. We got it from Ebay in a big package. Here is the stock photo from Ebay of my kit.

My camera is actually silver and not black like in the photo but otherwise, everything else is accurate. I was going nuts taking pictures of Katie when I first got it. So here are some of the cutest ones of Katie taken with my new camera.


Since I got my new camera, I'm going to give Brittanie my Canon G2 for Christmas. It is still in mint condition and she wanted a digital camera for Christmas anyway. She was happy when she heard she would be getting my G2. Christmas isn't even here yet and it is already a great Christmas!

My girls

They fight like cats and dogs at times but they do love each other. Brittanie is taking care of Katie so I can type this morning and I turned around and they were curled up on the sofa watching Veggie Tales. It looked so adorable that I couldn't resist taking a picture.


This is my favorite. Katie was rubbing Brittanie's face and hair real gently. They can be so sweet together....when they are in the mood to be.

Ewwwww

The rule in our house has always been if you don't eat, you don't get anything else to eat until the next meal time. In the case of fast food meals, you don't get the toy or the dessert until you eat. Well we got Subway after church today and Katie was dying for her Fruit Roll Up that comes with the meal. Knowing the rule, she ate her sandwich and we got involved in watching the Carolina game and didn't realize she didn't eat ALL of her sandwich. Upon further investigation, we found that when she doesn't want to eat but still wants her toy or dessert, she makes the food disappear. This is what we found!
There is food from earlier in the week in there! This is her Spongebob desk that she eats at. She drives us nuts opening it and slamming it shut. There is the best reason so far to nail that seat shut!

Winterfest at Carowinds

Tom took Brittanie, Justin, and Katie to Carowinds for Winterfest tonight while I stayed home and wrapped presents. Here are some of the pictures from that trip.


Katie LOVES airplanes. So she was thrilled to be able to ride on one at Carowinds tonight in the Nickelodeon area.
This picture is the inside of a huge Christmas tree. You walk into a big present that is under the tree and look up into the tree and this is what you see. Cool huh?

Isn't this beautiful?

This is my little ham. She asked her daddy to take her picture and in true Veggie Tales fashion said "PEAS!"

God is so good!!!

My babysitter, Lisa, (who is Justin's aunt) is so sweet but they are struggling financially since her husband got hurt at work and needs surgery to remove a disc in his back but he has diabetes so they can't do surgery until they get the diabetes under control. It has been almost 2 months since he got hurt and they are telling him that he will probably be out of work for 2 more months after he does have surgery. In the meantime, she has a 13-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and he has an 8-year-old son from a previous marriage that is a special needs child. Their Christmas was not looking good. I e-mailed some family and friends from around here and asked for their help. Jim Kinard, our wonderful new county councilman, gave me a place to contact. But the only other people that responded were the people that touched me (and Lisa and her husband) the most and that was Jimmy, Sandra, and Samantha.....Tom's cousins who live next door. They not only contacted the Masons, who give out baskets with stuff for Christmas dinner in it, to get them on the list so they can get a basket, but they also told me they bought some stuff for them. That was an understatement. I went over to pick up "the stuff" they bought and was blown away! They gave Lisa and her family a large box full of gifts and there was another box of the same size full of food and Christmas dish cloths. I always knew they were sweet and wonderful people but their generosity was overwhelming. They have never even met Lisa and yet was still so generous in making sure they had a good Christmas. They truly have the Christmas spirit and we were so touched.

God has been so good to us and we got another great Christmas bonus this year from Tom's job so when I got my $100 Christmas bonus, Tom suggested we give my bonus to Lisa and her family. So that's what we did. When we were struggling financially at the beginning of our marriage, others blessed us and it was an honor for us to help them the same way we were helped.

Tom's new toy

Tom got one of his Christmas presents a little early this year. The one thing he most wanted for Christmas was a Slingbox. It looks like this:
For those of you (like me) who hadn't heard of this before, let me tell you about it. It is a device that you hook to your TiVo and the internet so that you can watch your TiVo anywhere that you have internet access. This is such a cool device but it lets Tom (and his buddies at work) have a little too much fun at my expense. He opened it and hooked it up the night he got it. He then went to work and he and all his coworkers were playing with it. I knew he would so I had Katie watching DVD's so he could show the guys how it worked. Well later that afternoon, I was watching "As the World Turns" and they were about to show what would happen the next day and it was REALLY good and suddenly a menu popped up. I had the remote in my hand and assumed I must have accidently hit the button. So I went back to the show and it did it again. I fixed it again and put the remote down. This time, it rewound the show. That's when I knew it was Tom. Seems his boss thought it would be funny to see how long it would take me to call Tom and tell him to knock it off. LOL It didn't take long.

I am enjoying it too. While my soaps are recording, I'm usually typing. Well now I have the sling player window up with my soaps playing and when there is a storyline that I'm interested in that comes on, I stop, watch the scene, then mute it and go back to typing. It is GREAT!!!

I love our electronics toys!!!

Katie reading the Bible

Katie was "reading" her children's Bible tonight and it was so cute I had to share it. She climbed up on me with the Bible in hand and started reading..."God is sweet. God is good. God is nice. God loves me. It is Jesus' birthday. The end." All those words and she summed it up well!

My little bully

When I picked Katie up from preschool today, the teacher told me I needed to see the preschool director as there was a problem with Katie today. So I went to talk to her and Katie got mad at her friends today and spit on them and hit them. They talked to her and told her to stop but she kept doing it so she had to go sit with the preschool director. When I got Katie in the van, I asked her why she did that and she said they were in her seat. I told her that she can't hit and spit like that. That's ugly. She said "They hit me back." I had to hold back the laughter because she said it like it was ok that she hit them and spit on them because they hit her back.

We had to go to school when Brittanie was in 3rd grade because a little girl kept hitting and kicking her, and eventually bit her. Brittanie wouldn't defend herself. I'm afraid Katie is going to be the bully that parents go to the school to talk about.

Gaston Christmas parade 2005

Today was the annual Gaston Christmas parade and it was great! There were TONS of entries. It is great for a town the size of Gaston to have such a long parade. There were also tons of people that came out to watch. The Swansea band didn't attend the Collard Festival parade but they were there for the Christmas parade and they looked and sounded great. Of course for me the best part of the parade was Swansea's JROTC. Brittanie and Josh Titus switched off calling cadences along the parade route. So I got to see and hear Brittanie leading the cadets in "everywhere we go....people want to know....." She did a great job. Actually, all of the cadets did a great job. Our color guard was very impressive. Those flags are huge and heavy and they carried them like seasoned soldiers. It was great.

It was also nice to see Sheriff Metts in our parade. He has had health problems and it was great to see him riding in our parade, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and throwing out candy.

Katie especially loved the parade. We were almost at the end of the parade route but there was still plenty of candy flying our way. She was having a blast. She squealed/screamed with delight everytime it would rain candy down around her. We came home with half a shopping bag of candy....and good brand name candy. Katie wanted to hold the bag with one hand and pick up candy with the other but the bag became too heavy for her. She even had some sweet people a little ways from us who were picking up candy and giving it to her. She never forgot to say thank you everytime they gave her candy.

We had a very good time.

Here is Brittanie calling cadences. It is blurry because I was struggling to get it focused and they kept moving and the sun was in my eyes. But you can see Brittanie with her mouth wide open. This is a great shot. This is how she looks all the time around the house. hehehe

I managed to get it clear and focused. Unfortunately, they were walking away. But you can see our banner and color guard in this picture so I wanted to post it anyway.

Katie is soooooooo funny!!!!

We just cannot get Katie to stop digging. No matter what we do, she continues to dig! Brittanie made the mistake of leaving her gift bag for her assistant rifle team coach on the table. The gift bag had a mug in it with the rifle team's picture on it and she put Hershey's kisses and little Kit Kat bars in the mug. Well Katie and I took a nap while Brittanie was at Justin's house helping him and his mom string popcorn and decorate their tree. We got up shortly before Tom got home. We all left, got take out for dinner, picked up Brittanie, and came home to eat. Well I don't know why Tom went into Katie's room after we finished eating but while he was in her room, Katie crawled up in his chair to read a book. Suddenly Tom comes out of her room with a hand full of candy papers and says "Do you know there are tons of Hershey's kisses and Kit Kats in Katie's room?" Immediately, Katie started crying and said "AWWWWWWWWWWWWW It's bedtime!" And she went and put her book in the playroom and Brittanie and I burst out laughing as Tom tried hard to keep his composure. The more I thought about it, the funnier it became. But he took her in there and made her clean up the mess, dressed her for bed, talked to her AGAIN about not digging, and then gave her two swats on the butt. As soon as he finished spanking her, she turned to him and said "I love you daddy." He told her he loved her too and then told her to come out and apologize to Brittanie for messing with her gift. She came out all broken hearted and apologized to Brittanie and hugged and kissed her. Well Brittanie is so tender hearted, she started crying too. Katie then came to me and hugged and kissed me and I started crying. After she was down for the night, Tom told me that Katie is good because she knows how to tug at your heart and make you feel bad for disciplining her. But it has to be done or she will go through life thinking she can do anything she wants with no consequences. But man she makes it tough!!

Brittanie and Katie's Christmas 2005 pictures

Ok, I admit it....I'm addicted to pictures. I was born that way. But it makes my blog more fun to look at, right? I just got Brittanie and Katie's Christmas pictures back from Wal-Mart tonight and couldn't wait to post them on my blog. I would love to know which one is your favorite so drop me a line! Katie refused to laugh at the photographer at all. No matter how hard she tried, all we could get her to do is fake smile.

This one (above) is my favorite!

This one is the package. (above)

But it isn't over yet! Katie took pictures at preschool yesterday as well as class pictures. So there will be even more pictures coming! She was so funny yesterday. She wakes up GRUMPY in the morning and at naptime. Well yesterday morning, she got up refusing to get dressed because she didn't want to take pictures at preschool. I dressed her anyway and made her go. When I picked her up, I asked her if she made a pretty picture today and her answer was "Of course!" She's so much like her daddy....a big ball of personality.

I am truly blessed!!

Brittanie and I have always been close. I fell in love with her the minute I found out I was pregnant. This morning I woke up with the best Christmas present I could have ever gotten in my inbox. Brittanie sent me this e-mail:

hey mamma.

I heard this song last night on the radio and it really got to me and made me think about some things. I know that I am not the best daughter at times. I have a rough day at school and my words get hard at home for no reason and I don't do my chores like I should, but I do love you with all my heart and you mean the world to me. I would not be half the person that I am today without you. I am so thankful that God gave me such a good mother cause as you know first hand, there are plenty of bad ones out there. I was blessed with you and I am so thankful for it. Here is the video link. Just click the link under the videos.

http://search.music.yahoo.com/search/?m=all&p=somebody%27s+hero

If I wasn't crying enough from the e-mail, the video pushed me over the edge. Brittanie has such a big heart and is so loving. We are so blessed that God chose us to be her parents. I cry at the thought of her going to college or getting married but at the same time, I am looking forward to seeing her fulfill her dreams and becoming the young woman she wants to be.

All around update

First of all....GO PANTHERS!! We beat those Falcons 24-6 so we are 9-3!!

Tonight, Katie was reading a book and it was so cute, I couldn't resist taking her picture. The first one was taken before she realized I was going to take her picture.

Then after she realized I was taking her picture, I got the cheezy fake smile.

Brittanie spent the day yesterday at Justin's house watching movies with him and his mom. Then today, she went to their family Christmas party in Lexington, then to the Swansea Parade where Justin and Brittanie were supposed to call cadences but since the batallion commander didn't show up, Justin became acting batallion commander and Brittanie called the cadences by herself. She was able to meet Justin's dad's parents and said they were really nice and she really liked them. After what happened over Thanksgiving, I figured Justin's mom was bipolar. I have a bipolar radar. Well his mom confirmed it to Brittanie this weekend and just like a true bipolar, doesn't like taking the medicine to control it. So Brittanie got to see first hand just a taste of what it would be like to have a bipolar mother-in-law. We love Justin. Brittanie said she loves Justin. But I'm worried that she could get serious about him and marry him one day. Every date is a possible mate. I have always told her that. Though I think Justin is a good boy and we love having him around, I don't ever ever ever want Brittanie to go through what I have gone through for the last 17 years. Just because Justin isn't a mama's boy doesn't mean that the bipolar meanness can't reach out and hurt you....believe me it can. And she of all people should know that because last Christmas it reached out and hurt her and she is still hurting over it...almost a year later. All I can do is pray. Obviously it is too early to push panic buttons but it is never too early to pray. So everyone please help me pray that God's will be done. I just feel for Justin because Brittanie just had to see it for 2 days. He lives with it 24/7. And he doesn't have a dad to shield him from it or demand she get on medication. I just pray that he didn't inherit that condition.

Did we clone this child?

I e-mailed Tom's boss about a potential gift for Tom that would go on his office wall and I wanted to make sure he would be allowed to put it on the wall of his office because his company has strict rules out what can be put on the walls. Well in talking he mentioned Tom's patented "Tom Sightler stare that makes you feel stupid when he does it to you." So I sent him the picture of Katie taken for her 3rd birthday with the mean face. I had already sent this picture to my father-in-law and he said "We like the Tom look too. That is Tom deciding if he is going to put up with this or not and wanting to say not going to do it. Or maybe she is saying "This is really stupid or what are you talking about?" Well after I sent it to Tom's boss, he said "I am laughing right now because you are so right. That is a genetically cloned double of the look." So we definitely know she got that from her daddy.

Well now she got another bad trait from me. This morning she went on a "digging expedition" before we woke up. She went in the refrigerator and got the container of left over cube steak and gravy that I cooked yesterday, along with the big tray of brownie I took out of the freezer last night to defrost on the counter. She had them both in her room and was tearing up that brownie. Thank goodness Brittanie got up before we did and caught her. Tom fussed at her and she told Tom "I dig if I want to. I like spankings." Flash back to when I was 16 and in the middle of a spanking from my dad, he stopped and I said "Don't stop now if you're having fun." So he started hitting me with the belt again. When he stopped, I looked him straight in the eye and said in a real nasty tone "Didn't hurt." He was REAL mad by then and really started beating but my mom pulled him off. I had marks for a week on my legs from that one but I was mean and defiant with a fresh mouth that he should have slapped. Well now Katie has this nastiness from me. I hate that! But after Tom got done spanking her, she didn't like spankings anymore. I'm praying already for her teen years. I was never rebellious in that I didn't drink, smoke, do drugs, have sex, etc. My mouth was and always has been my biggest problem. But that was a different time. Katie will have much more to deal with than I did. All we can do is pray that she gets saved early. I got saved at 18. I didn't do the bad things because I thought that would make me trashy. But the world embraces trashy now. So everyone pray for Katie and pray for us too.