JodySimmer.com

We are so proud of Jacy! This is her first year of Girl Scouts. She is a Daisy, and just had her first ceremony to earn her Daisy pin and the first of her "petal" badges for her vest. Her troop does fun things together like planting gardens, going bowling, they went to a horse show, and hope to use the money they earn from selling girl scout cookies to go on a horseback riding trip! Jacy did an awesome job selling cookies. Her goal was to sell 140 boxes and she sold 221!!!

So today I learned a lesson... if you don't clean the spilled over cake from the bottom of your oven, it will, in fact, catch on fire at 425 degrees! I was trying to preheat my oven for a "quick" reheat up of some french bread pizza. All of the sudden I felt like there was A LOT of smoke, more than usual, coming from the oven. I opened the door to a huge ball of fire! I immediately turned off the stove and even took the precaution of turning off the outside breaker and waited for the flames to go out. I didn't think that any real damamge had been done, but I was getting ready to leave for the afternoon to run errands and I really didn't want to come home to a burned down house. I called the fire department (NOT 911) and simply asked if the fire could have spread anywhere outside of the oven. The dispatcher said, "Well, we have a crew in your area, let's just have them stop by to take a look to be sure." I didn't realize that it would be a full b...

Jacy took another session of dance lessons with a young girl in the neighborhood and was so excited to have her friend Brenna in class with her! Last night was her recital and she did AWESOME! Thank you to Great Grandma Greta and Pardner, and Grandma Debby and Granpa Zeke for coming to her performance!

What a fun Halloween it was! Even Jay and I dressed up with the kids! We wanted to go as a crew of pirates, but we couldn't talk Jacy into it. Jay, Jake and myself did end up as pirates, but Jacy decided to be a couple of things... For school and for the trunk or treat at church she was a ballerina, and on Halloween night at Uncle Justin's house she wore a "southern belle" dress with hot pink Strawberry Shortcake hair. Not the typical, but she looked cute and had a great time! The kids both had a great time at their school Halloween Parties and they each brought home more than enough candy from Trick-Or Treating! We also had some great pumpkins for our front porch. Jacy had a pretty tough request with Snow White, but he pulled it off! Happy Halloween Everyone!

This year our family participated in the Spina Bifida Walk-N-Roll. It was hosted by the Phoenix Chapter of the Spina Bifida Association as a one day walk dedicated to raising funds for programs and services to benefit those with Spina Bifida and to promote awareness. It was a wonderful opportunity to support the local Spina Bifida community. We walked around Indian School Steele park and it was a beautiful day! A HUGE thank you for those who came to walk with us and for those who generously donated to our team! Our team raised $1,315.00! With Jacy being only 5 years old she doesn't really understand how many lives she has touched and many people she has inspired, and until she does she is Our Angel Unaware. That was our team name this year. It was inspired by a beautiful book, of the same name, written by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans about their daughter born with Down's Syndrome. Aunt Nellie came over for a slumber party the night before so that we could make our team shirts. We ...