Christmas greetings to you & yours....

I've been sick and still trying to function amidst this holiday hustle & bustle. The Christmas letter & pictures are still sitting on the dining room table, gifts are still unfinished for friends & extended family members, so much blogging has been left undone!!!! I've turned on survival mode, which meant a lot of sleeping took place and barely anything got done. I am physically feeling much better (but not nearly close to being 100%) and I'm just going to let everything else wait to be dealt with in a few days. It will still be there, right, and you all won't mind some extra holiday cheer after the actual holiday. Afterall, we all know that is not what the holiday is all about anyway. Time to check out of all the hustle & bustle & spend time with the family & focus on the real reason for the season, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christmas Program

I have some video of the Christmas Program put on by our church. It's pretty typical & some classic memories were made. I wanted to post to share to help make your Christmas holiday special.

Andrew is in this video. He is wearing the green & blue stripped shirt on the left hand side. It's a little hard to hear, they are singing Away in a Manger.


Brianna is in this video. She is in the middle, next to the girl with a very sparkly shirt. They sing Silent Night and then the youth pastor gets up & gives a short message to them. I only meant to get them singing, but kept the camera rolling. I'm glad I did because there were some comical, unplanned & true kid moments are included.



The kids are officially out of school now. That means I should....SHOULD have more time for some blogging. I do have all of my shopping done, only a few things left to wrap. Time to sit back & relax for the holidays!!

Princess Tea Party

Yesterday was baby Carmen's birthday. She is now 3. Yes, I realize that qualifies her as no longer being a baby. But I'm sure she'll forever be called that. My dad still calls me baby, not to be confused with baby Carmen, just baby. I'm 34. I never get tired of it. Anyway, this is about Carmen.....3 year old Carmen.

We had a princess tea party for 11 of her friends. Yes, I know, I am crazy. They all braved the 2" inches of snow that fell the previous night to enjoy some girl/princess time. They all dressed in their nice clothes & we enjoyed some yummy royal food. Like hot dogs. YES, if you say royal hot dogs it makes them sound fancy!!

Here they are about to enjoy their lunch.
We also played a game and of course enjoyed cake & opening presents. It was a crazy whirl wind time. Maybe not for them, but my head was spinning the whole time. I gathered them for my mandatory/traditional group picture. How I got them all sitting in this one picture (I did have help from some other mom's, but still) is a surprise to me, but hooray, I got it!

I know I have more pictures to post, a video too. But this is all I have time for. I don't want guilt about not blogging about this special event so I wanted to at least get this on. Happy Birthday to my precious princess baby Carmen.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

As per usual we put our Christmas tree up Thanksgiving weekend. We have a "new to us" tree as Jim's aunt & uncle gave us their old one. It is so much bigger, fuller and not cheap looking like our previous ones. Not that the quality of a fake tree really matter. We all know it's more about what goes on the tree. You bet that ours is covered with nothing but love & memories. So really, it's always a fabulous looking tree : )

Jim & I set it up & let the kids do the decorating. I very rarely buy ornaments to put on it. Everything has been given to us. Some of them have been handed down as they were the ornaments that I hung on the tree when I was a kid. Those are some of my favorites. We also have many that we have received through out the years as gifts & through ornament exchanges. Some are homemade ones that the kids brought some from school or church through out the years. It's all just a hodge podge of anything & everything.


The kids do a great job & spreading everything out. Although I'm realizing that our tree is also new looking every few days as things are often moved around by a certain toddler in our house.


I remember my mom making that candy cane & solider ornament when I was about Carmen's age.








Afterwards we gathered around for our usual family picture. I won't mention names, but a suddenly turned grumpy teenager didn't want to participate in the picture. (Don't worry I'll get her another time).


Ok, wait.....yep....this seems more like it : D


Often we find this extra addition to our Christmas decor.


In the evening you often find this peaceful glow in our house. Lucky for you you can't HEAR what's going on while I took this picture. Things may look peaceful, but the zoo rarely ever sounds peaceful.


A little added PC picture to finish off my post for today.

Excuses...excuses

I haven't been meaning to ignore you all. Although, let's be honest....y'all are not sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for an update from me. First off, that is what facebook is really good for and second, you are likely not a maniac like me who checks peoples blogs more than once a day when they don't give their usual daily update. Anyway, I do feel bad for not getting on here & getting things posted. We have had A LOT going on which means I have a lot to post. But I have plenty of reasons...or, uh, excuses for this.

The first of which is beyond my control. We were without internet for 2 whole days last week. This was a bit of a blessing as I used this unplanned internet fast to get some projects done around the house. 1 or 2 of them were actually computer projects that had very much ignored lately. I also had plenty of cleaning to tackle. PLENTY! Aside from my regular cleaning which very much demands a lot of my time. I mostly got busy down in the basement. Here are some pictures of how "bad" it was.



This is actually only one of the rooms in the basement. I keep the laundry room pretty clean since I use it quite often. The other 3 rooms though tend to be come a catch all of all the stuff that needs to be organized and/or stored. It gets bad a few times a year. In case you can't tell from the picture you can't walk through this room in a normal fashion. It's like a land mine and you never know what you are going to step on. There is also the side room where things are stored and the game/sewing room that is not pictured. I got the game/sewing room cleaned before I came up with the idea to take pictures of my mess. It's nice to have that room back to "normal" & in functioning mode again. I have a sewing project or two to tackle. Which, by the way, while cleaning it I found some quilting projects from 3 years ago that I never finished. Oops!!! Some I had completely forgotten about!!

My little internet outage helped throw me back on track to getting things done around the house. Not just the basic cleaning or bare necessities, but the real stuff that I too easily put aside & ignore. I'm working on it.

I hope to get the blog up to date soon. One thing at a time though....I have some cleaning to go do : )

Rites of Passage

We are frequent users of our public library and the great services they provide. I'm sure I'm fairly ignorant in the grand scope of libraries, but I'd say ours is pretty awesome. The librarians are wonderful on every level.

When you are 5 years old they allow you to have your own library card. Since Andrew just turned 5 we took him in for this special rite of passage. In his little 5 year old mind it was like I just gave him his drivers license. To help make the occasion even more special the librarians let Andrew come behind the counter and taught him how to check out his books.

Scanning the card:


Scanning books:


Stamping it with the date:

Kuk Sool Won karate tournament

Mandy & Brianna participated in the KSW karate tournament a few weeks ago. Jim was used as a judge instead of competing. Both girls did very well in their events of sparring & Korean wrestling.

Brianna is in the red helmet. That girl can kick very high!


Mandy is in the red helmet this time.


Mandy is being declared winner of this match. Brianna won some too, I just don't have a picture of such a moment.


Here they are with their awards:


Here is Brianna competing in sparring:


Here is Mandy competing in Korean wrestling.