Happy Christmas Eve!

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Flashback Friday - Special Santa

This was taken at our Christmas party at church in December 2006. My dad, who was one of Santa's special helpers, is the man in the middle with the white beard. My mom was home with baby Addy who was only a few weeks old.

WebCam Wednesday - Gonna Find Out Who's Bad Or Good

I was cleaning up the kitchen yesterday after the kids all left for school. Addy was putting on a special little show and I couldn't resist pulling out the video camera.

*Please note that I said I was cleaning up the kitchen and try not too notice how dirty it is.

Tis The Season

Christmas time. The most wonderful time of the year. It sure is around these here parts. We are loving it. We have all radios, in the house and car, tuned to Christmas music and the CD changer loaded up with Christmas Cd's. After all these years and all the Cd's I must say that Amy Grant's Christmas CD is still my favorite. I have lots of others that come close, but for some reason, it's my fav.

We went to our church Christmas Party last week. Was that last week, or the week before. I really can't remember. It was decked out as a glorious winter wonderland. And it was a winter wonderland outside that night. As we drove home from the church, we had fun watching the temperature gage drop from 9 all the way to 0 just as we were pulling into our garage. Thank goodness for a warm house! Here are some pictures from the party and the kids with Santa. Addy was so cute. She kept kissing and hugging Santa and she was so excited when he told her she was on the good list.

One of the bestest things about Christmas is the traditions. We have a brand new tradition that we just started this year, and we are all loving it. Several weeks ago I was reading Christmas ideas on some blog and there was an idea to wrap Christmas books under the tree and let the kids open one every night and read it. They said it was a good investment and you can reuse the books every year. I loved the idear, but, um, HELLO! Last time I checked, we were in a recession. Buying 25 Christmas books just didn't seem reasonable or feasonable. So I forgot the idea. Then, Addy and I were at the library and, lo and behold, to what do my wondering eyes...somethin', somethin' (can't remember the words), but anyway, right in front of me was a library cart stocked full of Christmas books! FOR FREE! (as long as we return them in 3 weeks) So Addy girl and I, we loaded up on the Christmas books. We went home and wrapped them. Addy took great delight in handing me the tape and putting the books under the spare tree that we just so happen to have in our kitchen.

So all month long, the kids have been taking turns opening a book every night and reading it. We have read all kinds of fun books and some...not so fun books. Kinda makes you wonder how some of them got published. Must have been a slow year for Christmas books that year. Anyways, last night we read a fascinating book about how the song, "Silent Night" came to be. And tonight we read a German Christmas story. We LOVE our fun new family tradition. You should try it out.

Need anymore fun Christmas ideas? Try looking here.

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Flashback Friday - Beautiful Blue Eyed Babies

Emily and Zac in 2000.

They are all grown up now. Emily is 9 and Zac is 12!

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful

Today, Sweet Cheeks Addy and I took my sister Lauren to do her Christmas shopping. Lauren was helping Addy get her shoes and coat on while I was putting the finishing touches on myself. I thought I looked purdy guooood. I put my coat on and grabbed my keys and went out and told the girls we could go now. They were not as amused with my appearance as I was. They just stood there staring at me. Lauren said, "I'm not goin' with you like that." And I said, "If you wanna buy Christmas presents you are!" And she said, "Not like that." So I took Addy by the hand and said, "Come on Addy, let's go get in the car." She shook my hand off and said, "Not like that!" *Sigh* Fine. Be that way. So I went back to the bathroom and smoothed things out. How boring is that? I'm tellin' ya right now, it would have been way more fun to go shopping with the me in picture #1.

Monday Morning Musings - Sideways

So, my dear, sweet, wonderful, hardworking husband was out of town all last week. I missed him somethin' fierce. I am so glad he is back now. He missed out on all the fun we had around here. I have posted some pictures of some of the fun. However, the pictures are posted in a sideways manner. You see, my dear sweet Addison broke my camera and Steve took his (that I have been using since mine was destroyed) out of town with him. Therefore, I had to take pics with my phone. And who knew that there was no way to rotate them once you took them. I can't even rotate them on my computer. So, sorry.

Last week, Zac was in a play called Dig It. Here is a picture of him with some of his friends.

Zac and Emily both came home last Monday, insisting to me that their Science Fair projects were due on Friday. I looked on my calendar and assured them that no, they were actually due on Monday. After 10 minutes of arguing with them, I gave up. Fine. They are due Friday, you can work your little behineys off and get them done by Friday (we hadn't even started). So we worked very hard all week to get them done. Then Thursday came around. I picked the kids up from school and the first thing Zac and Emily said to me was this, "Oh, by the way, our Science Fair Projects aren't due tomorrow, they are due Monday. So we don't have to finish them tonight". Really now? Well, too bad! You are finishing them TONIGHT. Even if it kills us all! So we stayed up until midnight finishing them. Then they didn't want to take them to school the next morning. Well, TO BAD AGAIN! Get them out of my house and out of my sight!

Here is Zac's project.

He did an experiment to see if gender makes a difference in memory. He gave his class a list of items to try and memorize and then recall for his short term memory test. Then he gave them a paper with these pennies on it to test their long term memory. Can you tell which penny is the correct penny? Yeah, me neither. I had to cheat.

This is Emily's project. She did an experiment to see which brand of gum lasts the longest. We tested 9 different brands of spearmint gum. A special thank you goes out to our across the street neighbors and my mom and sister who joined in on the fun. We were all ready to puke spearmint by weeks end. In fact, I saw a pack of spearmint gum at the store today and went into convulsions.

Here is some helpful information for next time when you just can't decide which pack of gum to buy:

Stride lasted the longest.

Dentyne lasted the shortest.

Orbit Mist was a very comfortable gum to chew for me personally, but the flavor didn't last long.

Eclipse is downright nas-TAY!

Everything else fell somewhere in the middle.

Flashback Friday - Meet The In-Laws

Back Row: Lisa, Heidi, Steve

Middle Row: Mike, Roy, Myrle, Heather

Bottom Row: David

This is a picture of Steve's family, taken in November 1986. Steve was 19 years old. I know this, not because I'm good with math, but because that is what it says on the back of the picture. Let's see...in November 1986 I was 12 years old. Little did I know that there was such a handsome, uniformed 19 year old hunk of a man in St. Charles Missouri waiting for me to grow up and be his bride.

I have been a part of this family for over 14 years now, and I love them just as much as I do my own family. I am so thankful to be a part of their family.