Drum Roll Please.....

We have decided where we are going for MED SCHOOL! I typed in the name of the town into GOOGLE IMAGES and these are what I found. Can you guess???

I'll give you some hints, here were our options:

A. Des Moines, IA

B. Glendale, AZ

C. Kirksville, MO

D. Parker, CO

If you guessed C you were correct! I would NEVER have dreamed that I would end up in Missouri. We all called it MISERY when we were growing up in KC. And now, here we are. Even when applying, we SWORE up and down, AZ would be the place for us. Especially during the winter time. But, alas. That is not our plight.

It turned out to be the better school over all. There is a bonus! It is close to my family! I have lived in Utah for 9 years, it is about time I get on back to my "ruts". PLUS the boys might get a little accent! :) YAY...my two little hick boys...oh so cute!

I'm SOOOOOOO proud of you Mikey! You have worked so hard and I am proud to say after six years of undergrad, you've progressed to grad school! AHHH...what a relief. I don't have to dump you after all. :) JUST KIDDING! I LOVE YA BABE! Way to go!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Remember my sis, AMANDA?!? She is 15 TODAY! I MISS YA BABE

and Remember my friend, Heidi, who adopts? She just got sealed to her son, Lincoln, three months ago? She got another baby. Romnee Emma Bird was born this morning! YAY! I can't wait to meet the little cutie.

Chalyse's Birthday

For Chalyse's Birthday Mike Hall took her ice skating and shopping for some jeans. A dream come true. Heidi had planned on watching her kids for the night, but she got the call that she was having the baby that night, so we moved the party to our house. Mike set up the tent and we popped them some popcorn they watched Kung Foo Panda. They had lots of fun, but after Elle Bell went to bed, the boys were scared of the basement. So we moved them upstairs. We put a mattress on the floor in the kitchen and the boys fell asleep almost instantly. It was fun to have a "sleep over" that ended at 9:30pm.

Opened the Presents

Okay, Santa, I hope you're not mad, but we only made it TWO DAYS without opening what you brought us! :)

Two Sundays ago we woke up to Porter begging (again!) to open what Santa brought him. Mike said "okay" before I could even say "NO! WAIT!" Porter had the wrapping torn off! I said "WAIT FOR ME TO GET MY GLASSES ON!" and he politely did. :)

But that was so much fun, that we kept saying "one more," and all of a sudden all of them were opened! :) It was a great time, though! Lots of fun being the kid again.

Thanks for the gift cards, the scentsy stuff, the computer and army guys, the ball popper is sweet! It's a good thing Andrew can't play with it yet, cause there would be some fighting with Porter. :) And, we saved the Christmas Eve stuff, so we have SOME surprise! Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much! The gifts were JUST our style. Who would ever know exactly what we needed and wanted! hmmmmm...... THANK YOU!

I Love Ellen D.

Ask Mike and he'll tell you I have a heart of stone because I rarely cry. I have been quite emotional lately though. I have noticed so many sad things going on with SO many people. Health, Financial and Personal struggles have made me realized how blessed I am. NOT to mention the MANY kind things people do for our family DAILY, even though they have their own struggles to think about! I have wonderful friends and wonderful family!

Today I had lots of laundry to fold, so I watched clips of Ellen helping struggling people. It just made me cry for those people who have so much on their shoulders. My heart really went out to them.

It always makes me happy to watch Ellen, she can always make me laugh and she does so much good for others! I am not a freak about celebrities, but I think she deserves a shout out for bringing joy to so many people!

Besties

This is my BFF. We have known eachother since we turned 13. We are 4 days apart. Cascia and her family have influenced my life more than they even know. I will NEVER forget what they have done for me. Cascia, I love you sis! I am thinking of you guys tons and think the world of you! You are so kind, happy, funny, beautiful, smart, wonderful and much much more and I can't imagine what life would be like without you. You always bring a smile to my face! Thanks for being my personal angel on earth! I love you!

Dear Santa,

Have you ever wished that for ONE more day you could go back to when YOU were the kid again? No worries. No Responsibilities. You could enjoy a TRUE surprise and the feeling of excitement for Christmas day. The magical experience when Santa sneaks around your house leaving gifts JUST FOR YOU, without a trace.

It has happened for the Cranneys.

Last night we spur-of-the-moment got together with the Birds and Halls for a fun night of games. We put our kiddies to sleep and transported them to the Birds and we partied like we were single again. ("single" is the new lingo meaning "without children".) We enjoyed free Papa John's, courtesy of Mike Cranney's place of employment, we played games and then Rock Band. Which was so much fun. We chit chatted and laughed and were silly until 2 o'clock in the morning!!! It was so nice not to have to be like "kids, why are you fighting?" "who hit who?" "stop crying!" But, like all great things, the party has to end sometime, so, Mike and I head home, get back into parent mode "you get Porter, I'll get Andrew" we walk into the living room, turn around, do a triple take at our tree......"uh. what?!" it was a pretty jaw dropping moment. "PRESENTS?!?!" "What?!"

There was a card in the tree "please open now" it says.

"UHHH...YEAH!"

"Cranney Family-

Santa decided to bring your gifts early this year with a little extra cash to help buy the rest of your Christmas..(instructions)...love-Santa"

Jen-"How the heck"

Mike-"Call Heidi"

The gifts are gifts that only Heidi and Chalyse know about. I haven't talked to anyone else about what we're doing for Christmas, and those two are also the only ones that knew we were gone for the evening, except for Liz. So...we call Heidi

Jen-"how'd you do that?"

Heidi-"how'd I do what?"

Anyway, this convo went on for about half an hour, "santa's magical" I think is how Chalyse explained it. Either way, however this went down, WHOEVER DID IT, however they did it, we can't say enough how big of a help and weight off our shoulders this is. This was well planned out. Obviously time, money, thought and love was put into our family and I can't believe that we are the lucky recipients! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I have to add that it's a little creepy that folks were walking around our house while we were gone, but at least the living room was clean and all of our millions of dollars of electronics and other fancy things are still here, and then some :).

I was on such a high from this whole thing that I asked if Heidi and Chalyse wanted to go to Walmart with me to get the LAST spiderman transformer that they had. "hey, when will we get to do that again?" So...off we went. Did some Christmas shopping at 3am. Got home and crawled into bed at 4am and up at 9am. I didn't care. I am footloose and fancy free today.

Porter woke up and started organizing and counting the presents for each of us. (he's an organizin' foo, just like his mom) We all can't wait to open our presents and it really is being like a little kid again. We have to wait 33 more days to find out what Santa brought. How frustrating to be a kid! :) I love it, I won't EVER forget this feeling and can't wait until I get to play Mrs. Clause myself someday! Thanks for the great ideas!

Love,

The Cranneys