Grandparent's answering machine

I still need to finish my Christmas postings but i read this today and my parent's, sisters and i got a kick out of it so i thought i would share...maybe you can get a little laugh out of it too...

GRANDPARENTS' ANSWERING MACHINE


Good morning. . . . At present we are not at home but, please leave your
message after you hear the beep.

*beeeeeppp*

If you are one of our children, dial 1 and then select the option from 1
to 8:

If you need us to stay with the children, press 1

If you want to borrow the car, press 2

If you want us to wash your clothes and do the ironing, press 3

If you want the grandchildren to sleep here tonight, press 4

If you want us to pick up the kids at school, press 5

If you want us to prepare a meal for Sunday or to have it delivered to
your home, press 6

If you want to come to eat here, press 7

If you need money, press 8

If you are going to invite us to dinner, or, taking us out for entertainment,
start talking, we are listening !!!!!!!!!!!"

Christmas morning

All 4 kids came pounding like an excited herd of elephants into our room at 7am! They seemed extra loud because of the lack of sleep for me the night before...didn't seem to be affecting Raegan quite the same as me!!

they already had all of their gifts sorted into little piles

and the present opening began...

Ethan got his very own game to play in the nintendo ds!

the aftermath of the paper and box storm!

as mommy cleaned up everyone split up to try out their new presents. daddy and trey put together his new model car, avery started working on her scrapbook...

raegan had a princess, baby, water everywhere tea party!

ethan started tackling his new nintendo game that he didn't have to worry about messing up or erasing levels!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we went to the candlelight Christmas eve service at church. Raegan had felt kind of yucky the previous couple of days but had seemed fine that day. No fever, nothing. We were near the front of the church towards the beginning of the service and she suddenly grabbed her mouth and belched and then followed with hurling all over. I grabbed her coat to catch what i could and grabbed her and exited as quickly as i possibly could really hoping she didn't have another hurling episode while i was walking down the aisle! Right as i got out of the auditorium she said "oh man, that was not awesome!"

The kids were really excited to open their one gift that they get to open on Christmas Eve. I also let them open their gift from great Grandma since i knew it was pjs.

On to making some yummy chocolate chip cookies for Santa...

the kids had been waiting to tear into the gingerbread house. i don't think they were very impressed. i had to take the knife away from avery before she chopped someone's finger off!

We let the kids sleep out by the christmas tree and watch a movie. Avery wasn't feeling very well so ended up in her bed. Raegan would not stay laying down so ended up being made to sleep in her bed. Ethan wanted only to sleep right by the cookies so that he was right in the path of Santa and got a little upset when Daddy locked the door cause he was worried about how Santa would get in!

Santa managed to do just fine despite no chimney and locked door and Ethan was super excited that Santa wrote a note back to him!



Raegan was obviously not feeling well still and decided to relive her babyhood with mommy christmas eve night. She was up almost all night long crying and wanting to be held. It was a looong night and Christmas morning came a little early with all the kids running in at 7am!!

Games

The kids played the "smell the food" game the other day. Thankfully they didn't play the "taste the food" game that i played growing up. They asked if i would play that with them and make them taste things and guess...hmm, one can have fun with that. We didn't get around to playing it the other day but maybe another day. They might not like my idea of the game though... my poor brother John, my memory of the game growing up was when Susan and i gave him yeast to try (a good amount of it i think) and he threw up! That might have been the last time we played that game!

The other game i remember playing was the "don't spit your water" game! We had two kitchens in our house one in the addition at the back of our house and one at the front of the house. We would start at two different sinks with a mouth full of water and run back and forth passing each other and of course we would start laughing and spray the water everywhere. This of course was played when my parents were gone. I can't remember if they ever noticed the carpet being all wet when they got home!?? We cleaned up pretty good though...

Kids when you read this don't even think about playing this game! mommy will know! :)

Christmas Praise

The three oldest kids sang in the kids praise yesterday for the services at church. They have been practicing on Wednesday afternoons for the past month and a half. They sang "The Gift Goes On" by Sandy Patti. They did a great job. They also sang a couple of songs with the praise team as well. Ethan hadn't been feeling well but pepped up enough so that he was able to sing but was feeling pretty yucky by lunch time.

We got a call during the first service that Johnny's grandpa had gone on to heaven. We were singing Angels we have heard on high as he was going to meet the angels! The funeral will be on Wednesday.

I have a video of the kids song but have yet to succeed at uploading it... here is a couple of pictures that i took...

A night in the kitchen

I wanted to start a new tradition this year. I am not much of a baker, so i decided a ginger bread house kit was the way to go for us. While i was at the store picking that up i also picked up some white chocolate to cover pretzels in. I looove those! I thought the kids would have fun covering them. I was right...

getting ready to dip away

Avery found a less messy way to get it on the pretzels

and look who jumped right in on that idea!

you will have to pardon raegan's low cut shirt! she likes to wear her big sister's clothes! She says she looks beautiful in them.

mommy was busy making some too, we had a lot of stuff to use up!
(plus, i wanted some fully covered ones :))

anxiously waiting for the gingerbread house to be built

we started with a small one. next year i will get a bigger one. four people is too many for one little ginger bread house! but, it got decorated without falling apart!

and the finished product!

Girls weekend

I just spent the past weekend with four pretty special girls! I didn't even have to leave town but i felt like i was out of town. My three sisters, my mom and i had some quality girls time away at a hotel for the weekend.

We always start our weekend at Target loading up on snacks for the hotel room. We eat out, we shop, we eat out some more, we shop some more, we go to the movies, hang out at the hotel and eat some more...

My mom was the only good one of the bunch who actually got on the treadmill at the hotel and ran during our weekend!

trying out the self timer at the hotel

we always have to make a visit here during our weekend and ingest a whole lotta salad

our hotel that i obviously did not take a picture of this weekend since the grass is green and it's sunshiny instead of blowing snow around!

Another of our favorites!Oh and we also saw a fun chic flic. It was a very relaxing weekend! Always nice to sleep in, meander down to the hotel lobby for a hot breakfast that you don't have to cook OR clean up, pay no attention to time, stay up late talking or racing to see who can get swagbucks first...yeah we are nerds like that!

Love you guys and thanks for the fun weekend! Can't wait till next time!

$100??

Yesterday i was a stress case! A major stress case! Remember my thankful post and how i said i was praying our van would keep running without problems? We suddenly after Thanksgiving started leaking oil at a pretty rapid pace. My thoughts were "are you kidding me? can we not catch a break?" We pay it off and hope to get some money put away only to have something go wrong the next month?? I have a tendency to automatically think the worst. I justify it as that i have to prepare myself for bad news. We have a history of bad news when taking our vehicles in to get looked at. A new engine and transmission in one year a few years back really hit us hard!

Sooo, needless to say i was hoping for $500 or less in repair and was preparing myself for a cracked block and needing a new engine...call me a pessimist if you like...but i was trying to figure out how we were going to come up with several thousand dollars possibly.

I prayed a LOT yesterday!

The shop called right before i was walking out the door to go to work... "it took us a long time to find where your leak was but we finally found that you have a hole in your oil filter. We should have it done in around an hour and it will be about $100 for everything." I could have literally jumped up and down.

Thank you Lord for answering my prayer!!

I am really trying to learn to "be still" but boy do i struggle with it when in a stressful situation! i looked at scripture verses (amazing how many people put verses and things on facebook yesterday that were really good), sat and listened to the song "still" (very good song on my playlist on the side over there if you haven't heard it) I know that it is such a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it is so hard for me in those situations to just truly "be still" It worries me a little about how i would handle a real storm in life!

Still a work in progress! I'm glad God is so patient!

Christmas photo

What happens when your trying to get a Christmas card photo and your crazy hunting cat comes bouncing around a mouse through the midst of your children?

Ho Ho Ho

We went to visit Santa at Bass Pro tonight. They do free photos so i went knowing i would be waiting in line for awhile. We waited about 45 minutes which wasn't bad at all and the kids kept busy with all kinds of activities while we waited. Raegan stayed right by my side, very anxious to catch a glimpse of Santa. She was soo excited! We would have even gotten through the line faster but had a last minute run to the potty break with Raegan. I could just imagine the horror if she peed her pants while on santa's lap!

I watched families get up their with their little ones after waiting in line only to have the little one's screaming and wouldn't touch santa let alone sit on his lap...thinking to myself "i'm glad i'm beyond that stage!

mommy snapped some pictures while they were getting their picture taken

raegan telling santa (despite her telling me she was going to ask for a baby doll) that she also wanted a gun like her big brothers! i heard santa say "oh you do?, chuckle"

avery telling santa that she wanted an American girl doll

this is for Trey. outside of the store there was a bunch of bushes with a little opening in the middle. the kids thought it looked just like it could be right out of Chronicles of Narnia. raegan was unimpressed

a failed attempt at catching everyone smiling. raegan is holding her chewed up and spit out candy cane in the paper towel. some things just are not worth the fight! "sure you can take that home honey"