Good Friday at Vista del Mar Elementary

On Friday we got to leave work early, at noon. So, I called Melissa to see if she wanted me to bring Easter cookies to her class for the kids as a treat. When I got off work I went to Ralphs and picked up some yummy bakery cookies and headed for her classroom. Oh my gosh, her students are absolutely adorable! I can see why she loves being a teacher so much! She definitely has a way with them and they adore her!

Island Prime

Last night (Friday night) Kevin and I had dinner with our friends, Tom and Sue at a great restaurant at the San Diego Bay called Island Prime. Really nice. Kevin had a 21 ounce roasted prime rib steak...his eyes were way bigger than his stomach! I had a glorious grilled pork chop with the most amazing sauce! Sue had scallops to die for and Tom had seared ahi. Oh and I had a bowl of lobster bisque to start off my meal. I was in heaven!

Bistro West - A great place to sup with friends!

Tonight we had dinner at Bistro West just down the street from our house with the Pratts and the Rademachers. It is such a great place to meet friends and have a nice relaxing meal! The menu is so varied...my favorite section is "Comfort Food". It has become our new favortie place to go! You can check out their website at www.bistrowest.com .

Cutest Baby

This has to be one of my all time favorite pictures. Well at least of the current set of pictures of Hudson. He is growing up so fast! I can't wait until the day that we all get to live near each other and I can see more of the day to day fun things that he does. He loves eating bananas out of his mesh fruit holder. His momma tells the funniest stories about it. He doesn't want to turn loose of it when it's time to refill it. He gives her "The Look" until she brings it back to him.

Hudson gets cuter and cuter by the day! He will definitely qualify for next years "Cutest Baby" on Regis and Kelly! Heck he should be on Oprah too as the cutest baby for that matter!

LOTTERY EXCITEMENT! $17,292.00

It all started with one of my bosses coming up to me with a "Lotto Captain" kit that his wife got for me before Christmas. It was a box and in it was a baseball cap with "Lotto Captain" embroidered on it, a Lotto Captain whistle, a Jackpot whiteboard to post the current Mega Millions and Super Lotto Plus Jackpot amounts on and a play slip holder.

I put the box in my cupboard in my office and kind of forgot about it since so much was going on in the office between the Thanksgiving holidays, Christmas and New Years celebrations. One day after New Years I was in the cupboard and noticed the box again. So I took it down, opened it up and started checking everything out. I decided that I would go ahead and see if anyone was interested in doing a lottery pool. So, I put on the Lottery Captain hat, hung the whistle around my neck, found out what the current jackpots were for the Mega Millions Lottery and the Super Lotto Plus and started walking around the office looking for interested participants. This was in the beginning of January. So every week we would play the Mega Million on Tuesdays and Fridays, and The Super Lotto Plus on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sometimes we wouldn't win anything, other times we would win anywhere from $1 to $10.

On Tuesday, Feb. 19th I had collected the money for the Mega Million Lottery for that night. At lunch I went to the Arco station where I normally would buy our tickets and the Lottery machine was broken. So I had to go down the road to the Mesa Spirts and Wines and buy our tickets there.

Wednesday morning I asked our HR person if she could print out the draw results for the night before so I could check our numbers. The first thing I do is check to see if we matched the Mega number as that means we won something right away. Sure enough, we matched the Mega number. So next I continued checking numbers. I started with the first 3 numbers and went through the tickets. On one line 2 of those numbers were a match, I also noticed that we had the Mega number on that same line. So I checked to see what the last two numbers were and then looked at my line again. They matched! We had 4 out of 5 numbers and the Mega number! My hands started shaking as I couldn't believe what I was seeing. So I tried to keep breathing and concentrating on checking the rest of the lines on our ticket. Once I got through them all and then looked again at our winning line I put on my "Lotto Captain" hat and whistle and walked down to our HR's office to have her make sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. She took one look at me wearing the hat and whistle, carrying the ticket and the draw results sheet and asked if we had won? I just said, "I need you to look at this and make sure that what I'm seeing is right." I told her to get out a ruler so we could put it under the line and then we compared the numbers, one by one. She started screaming and I started blowing the whistle! We had just won $17, 292.00!!!! The others in the office came running. Some thought we had seen a rat and others figured out that the whistle was the lottery whistle and came running. We all screamed for a bit before we got things under control. Everyone started calling the people that had participated to let them know the good news. We had 32 participants. After taxes we will each get about $405. Not a fortune but still fun!

Yesterday we went and took pictures at the liquor store with the owner where we bought the ticket, had lunch at The Corner Bakery to celebrate a co-workers birthday and then headed over to the Santa Ana California Lottery office to turn in our winning ticket and paperwork. What a day! So much fun. I don't think we have had a more exciting day in the office before!

Demo Weekend at the OKC house.

Over the President's Day weekend Kevin, Melissa and I flew back to OKC to tackle the demo of the kitchen, laundry room, dining room and part of the family room. After a flood in the kitchen destroyed a lot of these rooms we had to go in and tear everything out, replace the insulation and drywall and plan for the next step.

Melissa and I sat down with a designer at Home Depot to figure out what cabinets we wanted in the kitchen and laundry room. That was a fun, 2 hour process to design what we needed. Our designer, Don Leatherwood at the Home Depot on North May Ave. in OKC was great to work with. He was very patient with our novice at the whole procedure. We were really happy with the outcome.

In the mean time Kevin and Russ were busy working at the house. Cindy, Kandie and Ricky also helped alot!

Looks like we will be going back at the end of March to do some more work.

Writer in the making.

Hudson sent out his first email while he was visiting us at Christmas. He was quite the typist, he had a lot he wanted to say.

Four Generations of Murphy Men!

Another blessing this Christmas was Kevin's dad flying down from Bellingham, WA to spend Christmas with us. (Pictured is Great-Grandpa Murphy, Grandpa Murphy, Daddy Brian and Baby Hudson) While he was here we were also able to have a "Four Generations of the Murphy Men" photo taken at "The Crossings at Carlsbad" golf course. In spite of the chilly weather it was a great experience! Our photographer, Sharyn from "At Play Photography" drove down from Orange County to take the four generation portrait and also other family portraits. Emily from The Crossings drove us in a large golf cart to hole #7 where there is a beautiful waterfall and that is where the portraits were taken. We can't wait to get the proofs back! We can't thank Sharyn, Emily or The Crossings staff enough for how they helped to make such an important event for us so special!

Christmas 2007

This Christmas we were blessed to have Brian, Caila and Hudson fly to California to spend the holidays with us. The Cowgills invited us to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them in Moreno Valley. What a wonderful time we had being together with both families helping Hudson experience his first ever Christmas! After Christmas Eve church service in which Hudson was dedicated to the Lord we went driving around to see all of the Christmas lights and then made the ever important "Starbucks Run" at a 24 hour Starbucks in Moreno Valley. Boy! There were some interesting characters showing up there on Christmas Eve. Then it was back to the Cowgills so we could turn in and be ready for an exciting Christmas Day! Hudson is just days less than 6 months old but he already had the hang of ripping off the wrapping paper to see what was inside! OK, so he really just wanted to eat the wrapping paper, but he did do a great job at ripping it off! This was a great Christmas with our new family and we hope to have many more Christmases together!

Mel's Thanksgiving Feast

Thanksgiving Day at Melissa's

Melissa did a great job cooking her first Thanksgiving Feast! It was great! What a wonderful and relaxing day we had! We also got to video chat with Brian, Caila and Hudson for a little bit.

Getting ready for Thanksgiving at Mel's

It was great, they let us off at noon today from work so we could start our Thanksgiving holiday early and try and beat some of the crazy traffic. This year for Thanksgiving we are going to Melissa's apartment to celebrate. This will be her first Thanksgiving feast in her own place and she is doing the cooking. Last Sunday most of the ingredients were purchased and the final few items were purchased today. It's going to be so fun and Kevin and I are really looking forward to tomorrow and the great feast that Melissa will be having!

Friday Night Lights at Trabuco Hills Highschool

Melissa just sent this pic to me from her cell phone. Seems like Trabuco Hills made it to the play-offs and she ran into some old friends! Here she is with EJ and Carrie. E.J. was probably my favorite of Melissa's high school friends. I always new that if she and her friends were with E.J. then she was safe. No one was going to mess with Melissa with E.J. around. He gave me a lot of peace of mind. Just for EJ...."GO SOX!" :-)

T.G.I.F.!!!

Yeah, it's Friday and I'm so excited for the weekend! Kevin and Melissa are playing golf tomorrow morning (If she feels up to it) and then afterward Kevin will get his hair cut and then maybe they will go to lunch.

I plan on sleeping in until around 7:00 a.m. and then get up and make a fresh pot of decaf coffee. Saturday mornings are one of my favorite times. I can sip on my fresh coffee, watch any tevo'd television shows that I need to catch up on. I can putter about the house doing chores at a leisurely pace. Then I can mix in some fun stuff too, like working on the Guest Room/Nursery. We bought the crib mattress for the crib last week. We set up the same crib that Kevin built for Brian and Melissa. Now it is going to be the slumbering place for the next generation of Murphy grandchildren. The owner of the company where I work gave me a baby swing, a bouncer and a walker. I may see if I can also find a door hanging bouncer too. Hudson really loves the one they have now.

I just found out that Craig's, one of our new in-laws, ROTC team is competing tomorrow in Temeculah. So I am going to meet Chris, my other new in-law and we are going to watch the competition and then go to lunch afterward. It'll be interesting since I have never been to this kind of a competition. But I am the ultimate fan, I love to watch all kinds of competitions. It should be a lot of fun!

Our kids have grown up!

It's hard to believe that it's been over 22 years since I worked at Texas Oil and Gas. What fun days those were. Kevin and I were in our 20's and starting our family. At TXO we had a young group of singles and newlyweds starting out and starting their families. Over the years I've been able to keep in touch and rekindle some of the friendships that we developed at TXO. Such friendships as Merla, Tammie and Clyde. It's been great to see them again and have lunch occasionally when traveling back to Oklahoma to work on our properties. Who would've thought 23 years ago that our kids would one day continue on the friendships that we started. Here is Cortney, Clydes son and Melissa enjoying getting to know each other while hanging out with her cousin Kandie and Kandie's fiancee Michael!

Grandma had such a great time!

It was so fun when I was in Hawaii with Brian, Caila and Hudson! Here we are hanging out in their livingroom. I was in Heaven holding Hudson. I just couldn't get enough. Caila would feed him and then it was up to me and his other Grandma to burp him. So fun!

One more day....

I'm so glad there is only one more work day this week! It's felt like an extra long week, probably because I know next week will be nice and short!

We watched The Office tonight, it isn't as good as it used to be. There still are some funny parts but not the knee slapping, roll on the ground cracking up kind there used to be. It's getting a little too weird.

Poor Melissa has been sick. I went by and fixed her some soup and crackers. It was the first she'd eaten all day. Cindy has been sick too. I wonder if they have the same thing? I hope that everyone that she's been around lately doesn't wind up sick too! That'd be a bummer.

So far, Kevin and I are fine! Yay! This weather is so crazy going from hot to cold it's no wonder that so many people are getting ill!

The Cutest Little Grandson in the World!

I just got back recently from visiting Brian, Caila and Hudson in Honolulu. His other Grandma Chris and I went together ready to baby-sit as often as we could. We got in lots of hugs, kisses, cuddles and even a little bit of feeding him when his momma was away. What a little sweetheart he is. He is definitely the cutest and smartest baby I know! He is so strong and just loves to stand on his two cute little legs as much as possible. It was hard to leave and come back to California but we are eagerly awaiting their arrival in December to celebrate Christmas with both families! We'll even be getting the "4 Generation" picture with Great-Grandpa Murphy, Grandpa Murphy, Brian Murphy and Hudson Murphy!

The Murphy Money Pit

Thank goodness I have my family. I don't know what Kevin and I would do without them. They are the hardest working group that I know. Even after a hard days and night work we can still have fun singing "YMCA" to the old stereo that still works. Sometimes things don't always go along smoothly. Just when we get relaxed another whammy comes along. This whammy was in the form of a flooded kitchen, laundry room and den in our Oklahoma City house! Thanks to the great folks at the city water department we now are in the process of trying to fix the damage that was caused by water running for almost two weeks in the kitchen! They fixed the meter at the street and rather than leaving it off like we told them, they turned the water on. :-( Not good in a house that the plumbing needs a lot of T.L.C.! But, it's just one more thing to get to deal with at the Murphy Money Pit!

First Blog

Well this is the first blog. Don't really know the direction this will go or if it will go but I thought what the heck! Brielle is the one who told me what to do. :-). So here goes....