THOUGHTS

It just continues to amaze me how the Lord picked the perfect child for us when He picked Yulia.

1. Friday I picked her up from school. On Friday, she gets her progress report and our expectation is that she will have "excellent" in behavior. As Paul says,"If she can't get anything else, she can get sitting still and listening."

On my way to pick her up Friday after school, I was dying for a blizzard from DQ. Of course, if she didn't get "excellent" we couldn't go. She gets in the car and I ask her "Excellent?????" She says, "No Mom, Very Bad." I almost pulled the car over. Of course, I was very upset that I wasn't going to get my blizzard. She let this go on for 2-3 minutes before dying laughing and showing me she did, indeed, get "excellent." We enjoyed our blizzard!

2. She loves musicals. I can't get over this. It was butt-cold here today so we got some DVDs. I got Jungle Book for her and Hairspray for all of us, thinking she'd fall asleep. She loved Hairspray and afterwards was dancing and singing. I asked her if she wanted to be in a musical like Hairspray or HS Musical one day and she said, "Yes."

3. I'm trying to get her to work puzzles. She's getting better but doesn't have a lot of patience(that's nothing like me). While working the puzzles, she was singing at the top of her lungs and I told her "shhhhhhh". She said, "But Mom, I'm singing." I remember when my parents used to tell me "no singing at the table." Oh my gosh, it's frightening.

4. Like me, she's CRAZY about Pop. When she hears his truck, you would think the entire cast of HS Musical or Hannah Montana had just pulled up in the driveway. Of course, then she has to hide and scare him. Yes, everynight in the same place. You think he'd learn by now!

5. She is very hard headed and will argue with the fence post.(No laughing now)

6. I must say she's beginning to like hot foods. We're slowing weaning her in and she's doing very well.

7. She really is taking a liking to football. She likes to cheer against the Cowboys and Longhorns, but we're working on that.

8. She's VERY ATHLETIC(like her father). I finally put her into private swimming lessons and she's already swimming half-way across the pool, without any assistive devices. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Also wanting to play basketball, softball, dance and gymnastics. We're a one-thing at a time family here. A little too old for running from activity to activity.

Just some thoughts I thought you guys would enjoy!

A MILLION SCREAMING GIRLS!

WHERE CAN YOU FIND A MILLION GIRLS, DANCING AND SINGING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS, WEARING "I LOVE TROY" T-SHIRTS?????????

At Disney's High School Musical(On Tour)!!! Yulia and I were just two of the thousands of females that were lucky enough to snag tickets for this weekend's performance. I must admit,
it was very good. Kinda a "Grease" for us old folks.


I think this is probably the most excited I've ever seen Yulia. She was full of unadulterated EXCITEMENT!!!! She couldn't stay in her seat for most of the numbers. (Of course, no one else could either, so it really didn't matter.) She sang at the top of her lungs, unaware that the words she was singing didn't match the song's phonetics. (Who cares???) Everytime I stopped clapping, I was immediately chastised to join back in. We had a blast. Yulia cried through most of the performance. I asked her why and she couldn't tell me. Really think she thought the movie characters were on stage in St. Louey. That's a hard concept to try and explain so I didn't attempt an explanation. None was needed. I think it was just such an unusual experience for her, which made it worth the money spent. (Of course, the next day, she heard Hannah Montana was going to be back in St. Louis. "Mom, You, me...Hannah Montana?" Um, let me think about this. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!)

When one attends the concert of the year, it's most important to look your best in case you should see Troy or Gabriella. Note the pink boa, pink bracelet and sparkly purse!!!

When not attending broadway productions, Yulia likes to play with the makeup kit she received for Christmas. I'm afraid she's getting better at putting on makeup than Mom!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Our high Saturday is 9 degrees. That is not a typo. They said it was cold here. I'm beginning to believe it!

BRAGGIN'!!!

For those of you who can't stand bragging parents, please exit this blog site now. For all others, here's what Yulia's teacher had to say on her second quarter progress report:

"Yulia's positive attitude is infectious. She is a well-liked member of the class. Yulia has demonstrated wanting to learn and do tasks the other students are doing. I admire her willingness and perseverance."

We were quite excited to hear more good things from the classroom. She is a pass-fail student and is passing all coursework. She's made improvements or held steady in all areas of study. They've tested her I.Q., academics and social. We have a meeting set for January 28th to discuss the results.

Tony Romo Spotted in Wentzville, MO!!!

If you're wondering why Tony Romo didn't show up for the Cowboy's game against Washington, it's because he was dining at the Applebee's in lovely Wentzville, MO!

Seems Missourians don't find the Dallas Cowboys as important as many of us former Texans! Since the losing St. Louis Rams were playing at the same time as the Cowboys, we didn't get the game at home. (Yes, we're paying $99 for NFL ticket next year!) So, we get this great idea that we'll go watch the game at Applebees and Paul Barry would wear his new Romo jersey he received from my sister for Christmas. So, the 3 of us load up and proudly head to Applebees with plans of taking pictures for our blog site. How funny would it be to post pictures of Paul in his Romo jersey and say he was spotted at Applebee's with a woman who's not Jessica Simpson???? (Just older, fatter, less endowed, etc, etc, etc. Plus, this woman would have had a 10 year old with her, drinking milkshakes!)

We thought it would be funny at the time, but after the Cowboys began losing and Tony Romo continued to prove why Jessica's not good for him, Paul Barry was too embarassed to even go to the bathroom and wouldn't let us take any pictures. In fact, we had to quickly run from the restaurant with bags over our heads when we were ready to leave!

Paul Barry now says if the Cowboys lose their first playoff game he's going to burn the jersey in the front yard. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Texas, Our Texas, All Hail The Mighty State!

The alarm was set for 4:15 Saturday morning, pre Christmas. Paul Barry told the troops we need to be on the road by 5:30 since we have a long drive ahead. We made it out of the driveway by about 6:00. Not too bad.

Two hours later, we've managed to blow up the portable DVD player. Lucky for us we let Yulia open some of her gifts early, one of them a Leapster Learning System. 12 hours later we arrived in Texas, just as the batteries were running out on the Leapster!

We had quite a visit in Texas. We're using several blogs to tell you about our visit:

First stop was to our friend's annual Christmas get-together. All 5 of us(we're missing one regular) were proud Kangaroo graduates in 1978. We're planning a big 50th birthday celebration in a couple of years!
My friend Jennifer(speech queen) always graces us with her presence on holidays. She's become a holiday staple in the Barry/Burnette house.

Some of our best friends, this is Albert(Bubba) and our goddaughter, Gracie.

Had time for a last-minute speech queen meeting. Paige Preston and Summer Mittig, with speech princess Maggie Mittig. Cuestas, Bedeiree and queen bee Susan Schaetti were unable to attend.

Our two goddaughters Katie and Anna were our last stop before heading back to Missouri.

Kitty's Birthday/Christmas

Kitty(Bobby) celebrated her 88th birthday on Christmas Eve! She's in pretty good health. Has been living in an assisted living, but plans to return home with a caregiver in February. Yulia had called her Babushka(grandmother) for the longest time, but has now resorted to a more comfortable Bobby. That's fine with Kitty since she grew up as Kitty Bob!


Yulia and mom helped Bobby with her world famous cheese soup Christmas Day. She's not too willing to give out the recipe. Just a little bit of this and a little bit of that until it tastes right! For those of us who aren't quite Martha Stewarts, those kind of recipes can be very frustrating! Other family members were asking me if I "got the recipe?" That would be a no.

Yulia jammin' in her jammies from Aunt Teesie.

We got to spend two full days with Colyn. It was great since we didn't get to see much of her Thanksgiving. Jon was in New York(poor thing).

Burnette Christmas

Continuing our trek across the state of Texas, we landed in Celina Christmas night.

Julie and Yulia!

Courtney up front, with Debbie's step-son Troy in the background with his girlfriend.

(Thank you for turning your head to the right! I still don't know how to turn pictures right-side up) Troy's football team won state the Saturday before Christmas and Uncle Larry hand-decorated a Celina sweatshirt for Yulia. There are little sequins glued around the "Celina Bobcats" lettering.

There's not much to do in Celina and Yulia and Uncle Larry spent much of the morning after Christmas waiting for the trash truck! No, really Larry had told Yulia they had to wait outside to help the trashmen. We're happy Uncle Larry could teach our child about the finer things in life.

Before leaving Texas, we were able to have dinner with Aunt Fern. She's Daddy's last living sibling. Debbie, Kevin and I had a great visit.