Moran Family Fun

And that's about all I have to say about my birthday yesterday. My birthday celebration wasn't typical because we're in the States to see Jared's grandmother before she passes away. We spent the morning trying to recover from jet lag and then drove to West Virginia to visit with Grandma McNally. Then it was running errands with Jared's mom and trying to keep the kids quiet in the house. By the time we got around to celebrating my birthday, we were all hungry, cranky, and tired. In fact, Natalie fell asleep in the car on the way to the restaurant and didn't wake up until this morning so she missed the entire thing. Anyway, we went out to eat and even ordered dessert. Jared and the girls (minus Natalie) sang a quiet Happy Birthday to me after the waiter brought out the cake and that was it. Back to the hotel and asleep before 10 pm. No presents, no party, no fun. Next year birthday number thirty-four had better be spectacular.

It's official, Madison is thirteen. So far we haven't had to deal with tons of crazy teenager behavior or moods. Madison is a just calm and easy going most of the time and I hope that doesn't change. The only thing she gets really worked up about is being a good big sister, she sometimes takes that responsibility too seriously and I have to remind her to leave the serious worrying to me. We are so blessed to have Madison in our family and here's why: 1. She is always willing to help and rarely, if ever, complains when we ask her to do something around the house. 2. She sets goals for herself and doesn't quit until she's achieved them. One of her goals right now is to get straight A's during seventh grade; so far she's right on track. 3. Madison is the neatest person I've ever met. The books in her room are organized by either size and color or alphabetically by author's last name, like in a library. We never have to remind her to make her bed or...

Sometimes in life, it's all about how you look at things. Your perspective really can determine how you interpret what you see. Just as an example, if you were at Burger King and looked up to see two men with machine guns you might call 911, run away screaming, or hide under your booth. When I'm in Burger King and see two guys with automatic weapons I just assume they are there for lunch, just like I am.

Our resident super speller Abigail participated in the school spelling bee last week. I'm not kidding, she really is an amazing speller. She has never gotten less than 100% on a spelling test, and I think that is pretty dang special. Her class had a Bee at the beginning of the month and she placed second which was good enough to move her up to the school's 3rd-8th Grades Spelling Bee. There were 31 kids participating and I was surprised to learn that they all would be spelling from the same list of words. I had thought that the third graders would get third grade words, the fourth graders would get fourth grade words, and on up the line. Nope, they all got the same words which were a mix of every level. So much for the words we worked on here at home. I wanted her to do well, but I figured she would get out in the first round. She was crazy nervous and hadn't studied anything except the list of twenty or so words her teacher had given us. One little third grader got up to t...

We made up a Moran version of the 12 days of Christmas in the car we hope you enjoy it: On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a root beer in a tree. On the second day Christmas my true love gave to me 2 turkey legs. On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me 3 BLTs. On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 4 french fries. On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 5 roast beef sandwiches. On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 6 chicken nuggets. On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me 7 cheeseburgers. On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 8 bologna sandwiches. On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 9 chili dogs. On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 10 cans of spam. On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me 11 links of sausage. On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me 12 pounds of bacon. --Madison

Yesterday about when the kids should have been coming home from school I happened to glance out the front door and saw Abigail standing at the door with blood dripping down her face while she was crying and trying to unlock the door. I ran over and opened the door and pulled her inside the house to try and find out what had happened. She told me that she'd been having a race with Justin from the bus (I still have no idea who Justin is) when she tripped and fell. Emily was home sick and Madison had after school stuff, so the poor thing was all alone. She had one small scrape on her knee, but every other injury was on her sweet, beautiful face. We got to the kitchen and I started cleaning her up, but the blood just kept coming, darn head wounds! I did eventually get the bleeding to slow down enough to see that she has a pretty deep cut above her eyebrow that would probably need stitches. I grabbed an ice pack for the Blabbs and had her sit on the couch and then enlisted Emily and Sam...

Right before school started back up in the New Year I made appointments for all of the girls to get haircuts. It had been way, way too long since we had gotten this done and we were all looking pretty ragged. Madison did not want her hair to be cut, she's growing it out again so she can donate to Locks of Love when it is long enough. I decided that it's her hair so she can do what she wants with it. No one else is old enough to have control over their own hair yet, so they all had to get a cut whether they wanted one or not. (Cue evil mom laugh) There are no pictures of Samantha here because her hair grows so s-l-o-w-l-y that she only needed a little trim. No big changes to her look. For Abigail, Emily, Natalie, and I however; it was big change day. Here's a look at our before and after shots: Our sweet Abigail before the big haircut day. . . and after; man, she is so stinking cute. Sometimes I look at her and am blown away by the beauty that is Abigail! Emily before her ...