Christmas Joys

Oh, we have had so many over the past week and a half.  Lots of family time, lots of love, lots of wonderful gifts, lots and lots and lots of food!  There are so many pictures I want to share that I'll need to upload them to an online gallery.  And I'm trying to get a plug-in to work with iPhoto and have had zero luck.  I'm quite the bulldog here, and won't let it alone until I figure it out.  SO, in an effort to at least post SOMEthing here before the old year fades away, I'm sharing some of the family pictures that were taken at various celebrations.

The picture above was taken with Jmk's family.  (sounds weird to say that, because they are truly my family too.  But, for clarity's sake, I'll say Jmk's family).  We were at SueSue's house on Christmas Eve Eve.


And the following picture was taken on the Saturday after Christmas at MooMoo and GaGa's house when we had everyone in "my" family in town at one time!  Even though Poodle's eyes are closed, it's really the best picture of the bunch, because my big ole head was covering up Jmk's in all the other pics.  Besides, I love how Audrey is studying the leaf.  It's sweet.
Excuse the lack of cropping on this one.  It needs it, but I haven't had time to edit any of the pictures taken over the past couple of weeks.  Well, except for the one up top.  I had to edit that one.  Jmk knows why.  Stinker.  ;-)

I do hope everyone's Christmas was joyous and focused on the Greatest Gift.  And I pray that you all have a 2009 filled with many blessings.

Here Comes Santa Claus...

He was visiting at the place where we go to eat after church a couple of times a month.  And Poodle was ALL about it this year.  She wasn't interested in being any where near the jolly guy before now.  But, this year, she brought her list to him (which contained the same 3 things that she has been asking for for the past 6 months) and was ready for action.

Tooter, on the other hand, is still in that stage where he really isn't so sure why this fellow who only shows half of his face and dresses in an extraordinary amount of red wants to be all up in his kool-aid.  Notice, if you will, the death grip on GaGa's tie and the look of mass confusion and dislike.  Or is that disdain?  He had on the cutest little Santa vest that came from Eli's boys' closets.  But he was velcro'd to GaGa.  There was no convincing him to turn around for the camera.  No how.  No way.

The fun traditions of Christmas are so much more fun when little ones are involved.  We are so grateful to have these bunchkins.

But, of course, it is most important to remember that while Santa needs a list to know what we want and elves to get us what we need and magical reindeer to deliver it all...  Jesus does not.  And THAT is where I hope we truly focus this season.

Words to warm a heart

When GaGa says to us "You have some good kids".  He has no idea how that brought my heart to its knees.

SNOW DAY!!!

Oh, my goodness, oh my soul.  We got sho'nuff snow today.  Started with sleet, turned to REAL snow for a couple of hours, and then sleeted again.  But, good golly, I turned those kids into full-on popsicles for as long as I could!
I mean, really, how often does it snow around these parts?

Yep.  I *so* cancelled school today.

Here are some video links for you:
Snow Angel
Playing Around

Hope y'all enjoy those as much as we enjoyed playing in the white stuff.  Oh, and yes, we did build a little 8 inch snowman.  He was fabulous, but didn't last long enough for a picture.  He fell victim to his maker's idea to jump on top of him.  Sad for the snowman.  Barrel of laughs for the maker.

Always Learning

This past weekend, my mom, Poodle, and I took in a couple of Nutcrackers.  We have two good ballet schools in our area who put on the Nutcracker (we have 3 good schools, but the third one is a Christian school and they don't do the "real" Nutcracker).  So, I bought tickets to one, and Mom bought tickets to the other.  Both were good, and they were different from each other.  One was in a small auditorium, one was in the large performance hall in our downtown area.  One was slightly abbreviated with some sections taken out of the 1st act and Sugar Plum's dance.  One used a celtic version of the music during small parts of the party scene.  (I kid you not.  It was......  different).

Poodle with Arabian - this sweet girl (who is a beautiful, seriously talented dancer) goes to our church.

What I've finally come to peace with in my mind is that I need to quit criticizing others' take on the Nutcracker.  The staging and choreography and casting and overall vision of this ballet will be different inside of each company.  There are as many versions of this ballet as there are versions of pizza.

MooMoo and Poodle at the Sunday performance.

And, I've been in a lot of different versions myself.  I guess the ones I'm going to be most comfortable with, though, are the ones that I was in last.  The ones that Miss Jozia staged.  Very classic, very traditional.  And close to my heart AND my active memory banks.

So, from here on out, I'm going to try my best, when asked about a certain school's/company's version of the Nutcracker, to just give a generous description of it.  I don't have to like it or appreciate it.  Because for those children who are in it, it's the only Nutcracker they know.  And that is the one that is close to THEIR heart.

Although, I'm sorry, as much as I enjoy celtic music, it doesn't belong in a ballet based on a story set in Nuremburg, Germany.  I'm just saying.

Poodle takes a picture with Clara.  You'd think she had met Queen Elizabeth.  But WAY better.

Baby Blues

I'm getting pictures off of the camera(s) and saw this one from Thanksgiving night. This is SueSue.
The best Mother-in-law in the world.








Is there any doubt where Jmk and the kids get their gorgeous blue eyes?

The Centrality of the Home

Voddie Baucham, Jr.

Hat tip to Patti Monroe for this (passed on to her from her daughter Joanna).  This was a huge message that was actually delivered to an audience of Southern Baptist pastors.  I had an easy time listening to it, and that might have been because I was listening to it from a MacBook.  Patti said that she had to subscribe to iPod to download it.  Do what you have to do to listen to it.  I guess it was about 20-25 minutes in length.  I'm not sure, because I had to start and stop a bunch of times because of the kiddos.  It's worth it!!!  Go listen!!!

Here's the link to listen to the message. 

Old Pictures

I'm going thru a folder full of pictures that were recovered from the old laptop when it decided to cannibalize all of the files in the My Pictures folder.  There were lots of photos on the old laptop, including many from years back that have long since been archived to cd's.  But I had to share a few of the babies - especially Tooter when he was still our big roly-poly!  (And I'll get pics up of his healing scar - it's looking good).

I guess I'm sort of forcing you to walk down my memory lane.  :-)

Family

I'm sitting here, after having spent a lovely, quiet hour and a half at a fabric store, blogging because my sweet parents came and picked up the kids to take them to the zoo.  This is after having a lovely Thursday with two Thanksgiving celebrations for which I didn't cook at all. And having my folks come pick up the kids and take them to lunch yesterday.

Now, I say all this not to brag.  Or gloat.  Or do anything similarly obnoxious.  Truly.  I just want to say how much I appreciate my family - the ones I'm related to by blood and the ones who I was blessed with when I married Jmk.  It is a true gift to be able to be physically close to family.  It's even more of a gift to feel close to family.  Those people who love you AND yours.  And those people who love you, even though. (fill in the blank)  :-)

Thank you to my family!!!  And I love you back.

Interesting Quiz.....

.....Regarding American History and civics .  I am not happy to report that I only scored 75.76%.  Boo me.  BUT, there were three questions that I changed at the last minute.  I had the right answer at first, and then talked myself out of them.  Silly me.  Even with those three, though, my score still wouldn't have what it should have been.

I betcha Jmk knocks this one out of the park.  He's a history guy.

One I hadn't heard before

(hat tip to Jimmy Stiglets, via my mom)

A Blonde is watching the news with her husband when the newscaster says "Two Brazilian men die in a skydiving accident."   The blonde starts crying to her husband, sobbing "That's horrible!!! So many men dying that way!" Confused, he says, "Yes dear, it is sad, but they were skydiving, and there is always that risk involved." After a few minutes, the blonde, still sobbing, says, "How many is a Brazilian?"

Happy Birthday Tooter!!!

Happy Birthday to our dear, little, banged up Tooter Pooter.  Yay for being three!!!  Thank you for sharing your day with the Thanksgiving play hooplah - you'll have lots of birthday cookies tomorrow!

We love you and we cherish the days we have with you.  Happy Birthday Son!!!

Unfortunate Tradition

Three days before Christmas (when Poodle was 2), she fell on the old rocks in the backyard, cut her forehead, and got stitches.  (Those rocks are now gone and replaced with deck).

Now, in another three-days-before-an-event accident, Tooter has joined the stitches club.  Three days before his 3rd birthday.  Poor fella!  We were outside for just a few minutes, in the front of the house, and he was headed towards the front door on the front walk.  He tripped himself up, fell, and made contact with one of the front steps.
Concrete + little boys = 4 stitches.
But, as you can see, there's hardly any swelling and just about no bruising to speak of.  Not too shabby.  Kids are beautifully resilient!

The fall happened Monday night, and I took this picture this morning as I was changing the bandaid and cleaning it.  Stitches will come out next Monday!

Like Jmk says......  Chicks dig scars.

School Update

A sweet friend reminded me on the phone the other night that I haven't talked much about how homeschooling was going, and looking back, I really haven't.  SO, to fill the bowl with grandparent gravy, I'll see what I can share about Poodle's year so far.

First - she has finished the primer book in Math-U-See! This dealt with counting, shape and number recognition, place value (units, tens, hundreds), introductory addition, skip counting by 2's, 5's, 10's, addition +1's, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5, addition of hundreds and to make 10, tally marks, telling time, and a brief introduction to subtraction.  Everything in this book was presented in an "easy" fashion, and she was able to have a lot of fun with it.  She LOVED the telling time section.  And it's nice to see her be able to read a clock now.

We have read lots of good books using the five-in-a-row system, and we've had the chance to talk about countries like Russia, China, Japan, England, France, and Italy.  And, of course, the United States of America!  Nothing is terribly in depth at this age - it's more of a spray of information in lieu of a directed stream.  But she enjoys it and is getting a good geography introduction along with some new vocabulary words.

She practices handwriting - just using the "old-fashioned" tablets and lots of patience.  A couple of letters a day, along with some copy work.  Right now, her copy work is lines from the Thanksgiving play that she is doing with our homeschool group!  Usually, though, the copy work is Bible verses that she is currently memorizing.

We use readers like the BOB Books that help her with her individual reading.  We even have some Dick and Jane books for her to use as practice.  She continues to develop her reading skills.  I'm not sure when you can say a child is officially "reading", but she is certainly on her way.

And we play.  :-)  It IS Kindergarten, you know.  With one of our books, How To Make An Apple Pie And See The World, we ended our week with actually making an apple pie.  I had pictures of it!  But, they were lost on the other cpt, and then some of them were recovered, but all of those pictures are completely unorganized now.  So, they'll be hard to get to in general.

We've had lots of field trips and parties.  And we're currently knee deep in practices for the Thanksgiving play (that I previously mentioned).  Poodle is playing a pilgrim girl named Charity.  :-)  One of the things that I'm beginning to notice about homeschooling is we're not home a whole lot!

We don't do EVERYthing every single day.  Both school and life have to be flexible in order for them both to work.  Sometimes life has to give.  Sometimes school has to give.  But whoever gives tends to get it all back eventually.  So, it's cool.  So far, I'm really enjoying what we're doing.  I'm enjoying not only spending this time with her, but also watching her develop right in front of me.  It's humbling and extraordinary all at once.  I still will never say that we will homeschool forever and ever amen, because only God knows what the future holds.  But, for now, it's working for us.  She's growing in knowledge and love for God, she's growing in her basic skills, and she's continuing to develop friendships.  It's lovely.

She's still a "very active" 5 year old  ::ahem::, but we try every day to work on self-control.  And, we may even begin ballet lessons next school year.  :-)  We'll see.

So, that's a quick run down of what we've done so far, and it's a good indication of what we'll continue to do until the end of this school year.  And, now, you know!

Mom's 70th

We are super busy right now with school things, Thanksgiving plays, etc.  Not much bloggin' goin' on.  But, here's a little diddy from Mom's party.  :-)  And one of these days, I'm going to figure out how to embed these durn videos.

Happy Birthday to you.......

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

I've gotten out of the habit of wishing happy birthdays on the blog, BUT, one doesn't turn 70 years young every day.  Oh, to look as good as you at any point, but certainly when I turn 70 myself!!!

Happy Birthday MooMoo!!!

We love you so much - 

The Zoo

Happy Fall....

YA'LL!!!

Okay.  Listen.  Awhile back, I went on a rant regarding the word "voila".  Fair warning, I'm about to go on another rant.

It's not Ya'll.  It's y'all.  It's a contraction of the two words "you" and "all".  Not "ya" and ...... oh, you get my point.  I have a cousin-in-law who will go on a rant from time to time about it's and its and your and you're (and etc) and I will admit that I tend to do the snoopy dance when he puts that out there.  He hasn't quite gotten around to the y'all/ya'll thing, so I'm jumping on his verbal bandwagon.  And I will freely admit that I'm sure I make many grammatical errors - that's not what I'm discussing here.  Just contractions.  Come on.  We can do this people.  We can all be smarter than we seem to be at the moment.

:-)

Happy Fall Y'all.

Grandparent Gravy - Halloween

I know they've been waiting to see pictures of the trick-or-treaters!

We had a lovely time with cousin Audrey, who came and trick-or-treated with the Zoo babies.  She was a cute farmer girl, complete with freckles.  Tooter, who didn't know what trick-or-treating really was and couldn't tell me what he wanted to be, got to be a "black-eyed Pea".  And Poodle, who had a costume to be a princess ballerina (what she told us a month ago she intended to be) and even had a "real" Snow White costume, said one day before Halloween that she wanted to be Cinderella.  Uh-huh.  Okay.  So, scrooge Mommy, who wouldn't go out to buy a costume at the last minute, helped her pieces-parts a costume from what we had at home.  The wedding dress was from SueSue two years ago, the gloves are from sweet Allison at church, the shoes came from Maggie, the headband...  (gosh, was that Allison's too?  Maybe that was from Kimberly.), and Poodle and I made the ribbon necklace together.  Honestly, I thought Poodle was pretty creative!

It was fun - we trick-or-treated on Thursday night, instead of Friday, because our county wanted to leave the sheriff's department free for the football games on Friday.  But our whole neighborhood was out.  We had a lot of customers that night!

And Tooter now asks for his "treat treat treak" candy.  It's cute.  To us, anyway.  ::grin::  We think that he'll be all over this T or T thing next year.  :-)

TINKLE!!!

We have tee-tee!!!  In the potty!!!  On purpose!!!

And, it wasn't my idea to try it.  And he actually had a dirty diaper at the time he brought his potty seat to me to let me know that he wanted to get up on the potty.  So I took his diaper off, we disposed of its contents in the potty, and cleaned him so he could sit down.  And he sat there.  And dropped his head and didn't say a word.  I really didn't know if he was being dramatic or if he was concentrating, so I just sat there with him, equally silent.  Seeing as how this was his idea to get up there, I figured there's no harm in playing along.

Three minutes later, I hear some tinkling water, and he looks up at me with his eyes just as twinkly as can be and he smiles.

Whhheeeeee!!!

Poodle and I did the tee-tee dance and there were treats for all.

Maybe we're getting close to being able to truly potty train.  YAY Tooter!!!

Nacho Night Recipe

Lepidoptera at Foothills Valley asked for our Nacho recipe, because of the popularity of Nacho Night in the family.  Well, honestly, it's not so much what Nacho Night IS as what it ISN'T.

But, before I get to that, I need to brag on Jennifer from our recent Florida trip.  We get there on Friday afternoon, and get unloaded and settled, and we go into the "big house".  (The place where we were staying had a separate carriage house that we stayed in so as to avoid giving the other adults an early toddler wake-up call).  Come to find out that Jennifer has not only bought food for our meals so we didn't have to rely on restaurants, but she actually planned a nacho night for us, since she knew that this is what we usually do on Friday nights.  Can you be more thoughtful???

Now, HER nachos were waaaay better that what we usually do.  They were more of a taco salad, really, and were SO yummy.  Iceberg lettuce on the plate, topped with seasoned beef, refried beans, salsa, a bit of cheese, (and sour cream if you like).  Surround with chips and don't hurt yourself eating.

Our nachos?  Well, for Poodle, nacho night consists of things other than chips and cheese, which she thinks she doesn't like.  So, she'll ask for things like olives, cheese, and brown bread.  No lie - it's one of her healthiest meals of the week.  Weird.

Tooter's nachos consist of nothing more than chips with cheese melted on them.

Ours aren't much fancier.  Chips, cayenne pepper, cheese, and jalepeno peppers.

Not too exciting, huh?

So, why is it so popular?  Well, like I said, because it's not what nacho night IS,  it's what it's not.

It's not sitting at the table - it's sitting in the living room.  On the couch and comfy chairs.

It's not having to have good table manners while Mommy and Daddy talk - it's watching a movie.

It's not some food they're not sure they like - it's fun food.

It's not a stressed mommy who has had to figure out what to have for supper - it's already figured out.

Nacho Night can be pizza, tacos, soup - whatever your family thinks is groovy.  If the rules get relaxed and the mood is light, then that's what Nacho Night is all about.  :-)