Christmas Parties

I'm trying to get caught up on the blog...

We had a fun Christmas, filled with a lot of different parties.

The beginning of December we had the Knowles Family Christmas Party!

Sandy, Lynn, and Grandma

 

We had a lot of fun!  This year we all brought one item to put in a gift basket

and by the end, we had a large basket to deliver to someone of our choice.  I loved this idea!

 Here's our group!  We only had a few missing :)

The next day was the "Loveless Girls Christmas Party."

We started this party about 16 years ago, after my Grandma Loveless died.

She LOVED to have parties!

She died in December so the girls in our family get together

and have a party, in her honor.

 This year my cousin, Leslie hosted at her house in Salem.

She made fake flower corsages for everyone (my grandma loved fake flowers:)

 My mom and her 2 sisters

 Maddie, Talbie, me, my mom, Brittany

 Leslie did such a fantastic job hosting!  She even made everyone a copy

of the Phil Donahoe show that my grandma was on when they all went on 

a trip to New York, just before she died.  

He was in the audience asking questions when my grandma 

took the mic and gave him an ear full :)

Last, but not least - here is a picture of our "girl's night"

Christmas party.

We have been getting together for over 15 years.  Most of us have known

each other for over 20 years.  

We used to get together every month but over the past few years, it's just

been at Christmas.

Miscellaneous School Projects

I don't love saving school projects but I find

if I take a picture of the kids with their project, I can still remember

what they did ;)

Here are a few from this year...

 At the beginning of the year (6th), Emmie's teacher

had them make their own iPhone poster that highlighted the

things they liked.

 This is a book report project Emmie did of one of the 

Diary of a Whimpy Kid books.  It's a school dance.

(I notice that I take a lot of pictures when my kids are

in the pajamas :)

 Bronson's plant cell model - 9th grade.

Thanksgiving 2013

We had a great Thanksgiving this year.

We did our traditional thing and went to the Marriott as a family for brunch

and then we went as saw the movie "Frozen"

It was such a great day!

Brittany and I also did our traditional Black Friday shopping :)

We got great stuff!!

Dave's Surgery

It was  rough couple of weeks for Dave but as of this week,

he is back at work and feeling much better!

Here is the x-ray of the bullet behind his prosthetic left eye

before they did the surgery.

 Dave - feeling excited before the surgery

 Here are the souvenirs they took out of his eye.

The bullet is on the left, the clear implant that his muscles were wrapped

around, and his old prosthetic eye.

 He was in a lot of pain after surgery

 The kids came to see him.  He had to spend the night in the hospital

and have his pain monitored.

 He had a pretty gruesome black eye afterwards.

 Boston and Brittany came to see him the next morning.

Boston made him a picture...

 It had a one-eyes turkey on it ;)

 This is a picture of Dave at his 1 week post op appt.

He was still having a lot of pain but it started to improve right after

this appt.  The black and blue was going away and the swelling went down.

 He's doing so well now.  He is pain free and he will have a 

new prosthetic eye made in 2 weeks.

I'm so glad we finally had this surgery done and that he

is "bullet free!"  I really think this will help improve his health!

DISCLAIMER...

HERE IS A PICTURE OF DAVE IN SURGERY.  IF YOU ARE 

EASILY GROSSED OUT - DON'T LOOK AT IT ;)

Kailyn's Shower

I have known Kailyn Jackson since she was 5 years old :)

Her family was in my ward for years and I taught her in 

Young Women's, she taught Bronson piano lessons,

and we go way back.

She works with me at Dr. Myers' office and we decided to have a baby shower

for her before she has her little girl.

Here are some pictures of the party.

We filled the sacks with baby items and we

all guessed what was inside.  Kailyn kept the gifts

and the best guesser got a prize.

Bargain Ball (Senior Ball)

Talbie left for the Bargain Ball (Senior Ball) tonight.

I thought this was a fun theme because there are 3 guy choice and 3 girl choice 

dances during the year.  The Bargain Ball was a boy's choice dance.

Homecoming and Prom are the other 2 and they are formal - expensive - dances.

Bargain Ball is a fun theme.

 This is how Talbie got asked...

 She answered him by filling an oven mitt with candy and writing...

 ...and then said "yes" inside.

Here they are before they left, in their fancy outfits they found...

 You'll noticed that my house is already decked out for Christmas :)

We did this last weekend because I knew Dave wouldn't be up to getting

down big boxes and trees for a few weeks.

More on his surgery tomorrow...

For their date, they went to the D.I. and picked out outfits and

them brought them home to wash them and get ready.

Blog Catch Up

Before I post about Dave's surgery - I really need to catch up on some

events from October and early November, that haven't been documented.

Katie Perkins had a baby shower.  She is having TWINS!

A BOY AND A GIRL!!

It was fun for the Knowles family to get together and celebrate!

Lauren, Abi, Maddie, Emmie, and Talbie

 Katie with a little blue and pink hat that Talbie knitted :)

 Granny, Sandy, Talbie, Maddie

 Lauren, Catherine, Lynnie, and Abi

Halloween came and went.  We had our first annual

Knowles Pumpkin Carving Contest.

 We had Aunt Brittany judge the contest.  

Everyone was a winner though and got a little prize :)

I think in the future, I will make it a little more competitive!

 The kids dressed up for school.  

Brock went as Clark Kent (Superman)

Bronson was Captain America

and Talbie was a grunge rocker :)

 (nobody recognized her because it was so out of 

character for her!)

 I went to my very last Halloween parade at the elementary school :(

Emmie with her friend, Mercedes.

 Brittany and I helped with Emmie's 6th grade Halloween party.

We played "Minute to Win it" games.

This game was seeing how many marshmallows they could pick up

with chopsticks and put in a container in 1 minute.

Their class has a student that just moved here from Korea.  

He ROCKED at this game!

 The next game was trying to find the piece of bubblegum at the

bottom of their plate of whipped cream.  After they found it,

the first person to blow a bubble - won!

I wanted to document a book report project that Emmie

worked so hard on.  This is a scene from the book she read.

It was a dance at the school gym.

 I thought it was so clever - disco ball and all

Dave's Surgery

It has been almost 20 years since Dave's accident when he shot is left eye out.

Maddie was 1 when it happened.

This Thursday he will go into surgery to have the bullet removed that still

behind his left prosthetic eye.

They left the bullet in after the accident because they thought it

would do more damage to have it removed.  They didn't want to

disturb the muscles around it to dig it out.  By doing this, they thought

it would give his prosthetic more movement.

His eye does have great movement.  A lot of people don't even realize he has a fake

eye most of the time.

But, over the past 5 years the bullet has been causing a lot of problems.

The problems started as headaches, which he's endured almost every day since the accident happened.

He also has chronic infections.  The ophthalmologists that have seen him over the years

feel like the copper jacket around the bullet are the source of the problems.

Our bodies don't like to have copper inside of them.

Dave's body has been trying to get rid of that bullet by building up pressure and 

fluid around it - causing him all these problems.

So, Thursday he will have it removed.  

The surgery isn't too risky.  The main risk is the damage that can be caused

to the muscles around the bullet.  That doesn't really matter to us at this stage.

We would rather have a little less movement in his eye, than all the problems he's

been experiencing with the bullet.

He will have to spend a day in the hospital after the surgery so they can monitor 

his pain and other things that can cause complications.

So dear family and friends, if you could offer up an additional prayer in our behalf

that things will go well for him - we would be eternally grateful :)