Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

We had a great one. Christmas Eve we all sat down and listened to the Christmas Story read by Dad..and had Liam and Grace each holding their own baby Jesus..it was so cute. Then we sang some songs while Meagan played the piano - I cant tell you how much we love to hear her play. Emily and Mark arrived and we sat down together to watch the GRINCH..and afterwards put the dear little ones to bed. Christmas morning was full of happiness and cheer with everyone so happy with the treasures they were given. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!

Grace turns 4

Grace turned 4 years old today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sweet little girl.

I took her to Costco today to pick out a birthday cake, and wouldnt you know her favorite one was this one with a Christmas Tree and bear on it. They had rainbow and princess themes, but it makes me laugh that she wanted the Christmas one..She is so funny!! And of course before we got the cake home she had poked a hole in the package and put her finger in the cake, she is a sneaky one..But we all love her. Jake & Angela came down for the party and we all had good times!

Let me tell you a little bit about Grace.

My dear little daughter is just full of love, life and energy. Her sense of humor often has the whole family laughing. She is a SILLY SILLY GIRL - Can you tell from the pictures?

She is always trying to help everyone with whatever they need, a very hard worker.

Grace can often be found in her room playing with toys while humming or singing her favorite songs. She is so happy most of the time, but still has a little firey temper too. She goes to Head Start Preschool for trouble with her speech, but she is improving every day. She loves bringing us all home paintings and artwork, and loves to tell us about her letter of the day she just learned.

She is so much of a joy to our whole family.

We love you our dear little GRACE! Happy Birthday!

Here are some video clips from today - enjoy!

Holiday Lights

Our Little Cozy Home - All decked out

Can you believe this was our first year we have ever put up Christmas Lights? Moving every 2 years or so has kept us so busy and we havent had the time or energy to do them. Well this year when Liz came down she inspired us by putting up the bush lights for us...
and we couldnt stop there..
so I went down to Walmart, one thing led to another...
and I brought home a bunch of lights!When Matts mom left he got to work on putting them all up. We all know how men love a new project right? heehee..

Well, Matt put up all but one of the red rope lights for my other pillar. I am still thrilled. I love my sweetheart-and appreciate all he did to make our house so cute on the outside!

snow.

*Sigh*.. the snow is gently falling down and it looks so beautiful and peaceful.

Big Huge white fully flakes.

I love looking at white thick snowflakes in the light from the street lights , perhaps it reminds me of childhood Christmas past.

I love when everything is blanketed with snow.

Beautiful.

Tonight while the snow was falling, we all got super cozy and sat down to watch the movie "Fred Claus" together. Made some warm popcorn and enjoyed some family time.

Its nights like these that I sometimes wish would never end.

Grandma Time

Grandma Truman came all the way down from Canada to spend time with her grandkids. She spent the first week with Jake and his family, the second week with Emily & Mark and the last week and a half with our family. We all had so much fun with her we didnt want to give her back to Grandpa!!
Some of our memories of this week,

*Liam calls her Grampa (I think on purpose.) he would say "Grampa HOLD me!!"

* Grace running to hug Grandma when she got home from school to show her her newest painting! Grandma always has the biggest compliments for Graces artwork.

*Micah recieving some very needed socks from Grandma..she is too thoughtful!

*Grandma and Matt trying each night to get off to a movie (and it never happened..)

*All of us SICK! Liam was up the first 2 nights Grandma was here all night every hour. We didnt get much sleep at all, then after some antibiotics Liam was feeling much better. But all of us were not - Colds, Flu and just plain old tired all week.

*and last but not least, Liam running to Grandma as fast as his little legs could carry him when Mommy said, "Time for Naptime!" He ran and said, "Hide me Grandpa!"

We will miss having you around. Please come and see us again soon Grandma!

A Box of Food

Recently I read a blog of a mother who has 8 children. She was talking about what to give her children for Christmas. The two things that are most important to her as a mother are time and teaching her children something useful (a life lesson). She decided to combine the two and come up with a gift that would allow each child to feel completely special even though there were 7 others who needed their mom as much as they did. What she came up with was so awesome that I knew I had to share it with all of you.

A BOX OF FOOD

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
*paper
*pen
*the ingredients of your child's favorite meal/dish.

HOW TO MAKE IT:

Write out the recipe for your child's favorite meal on the piece of paper.
Box up the ingredients to make that meal.
Wrap it all up.
Include a date that you will make the meal together.

The idea behind the box of food is that when it comes time to make the meal that your child received for Christmas, that child is the only one who will get to help out in the kitchen making that meal. They not only learn a lesson (how to cook their favorite meal) but they will also score some really awesome one on one time with you while you cook. It's a memory I guarantee they won't forget.

New Blog Header!

Hey everyone!! I bought Photoshop elements 7 this week and have been busy learning how to make a blog header -- I thought I would make a cute Christmas one -- what do you think of the new header?

Funny Video Clips of my kids

On the Right hand side of this blog are some links to some of my blog buddies.. You absolutely HAVE to check out Emily & Marks and Meagans Blog (videos on Nov 12 I think..) for some HILARIOUS videos and pics of my kids.

December is here!! Up goes the TREE

I am so glad its this wonderful time of year! Full of traditions, parties, sweets and fun! The day after Thanksgiving, Matt worked really hard at putting up our tree..we have a fake one that we use every year and it saves us money. I do miss the pine smell..so maybe next year we will do real. Our poor trees lights this year werent working anymore.. so Matt went to work adding new colorful blinking ones.... Here is the finished product, not the best..but its our little tree and we LOVE it!

Under the tree is our Christmas books! We have 25 of them, so each night one of the children gets to unwrap a book and we all read it together! Its one of our favorite tradtions.


All the children helped place bulbs and ornaments on the tree - they love that part. We are currently in search of the perfect star.

Emily and Matt hard at work..slaving away getting our tree JUST RIGHT!

Jena's Birthday Fun

So Jake, Angela, Jena and Shay all came to our house to celebrate Jenas 3rd BirthdayParty! What fun we had. Before we had the party we let Grace and Jena outside to ride bicycles. They had a blast and we watched them warmly from inside. But we did manage to snap a few fun photos of them on their bikes. Then after that we sang Happy birthday and ate yummy cake! Then Jena opened her presents and squealed with delight with each present. It is sooo funny!!

Happy Birthday Jena!

Double Dating!!

*Double DATE!* Woo hoo - we had some fun! First we went out to dinner at Cousins restaurant and ate - it was great! Then we went and stood in line to see Twilight the movie. We were there a half hour before show time..and we still ended up in the front rows at the movies..darn it all!Twilight was good, but also a bit of a dissapointment -- there were some cheesy moments in it. And Matt was nearly attacked by all the teen girls when he started giggling at the meadow scene..and his giggling got Angela giggling too!..I had to give him the stare of death..to get him to knock it off. We all thought the movie was just okay - but had a great time all together. I hope we can all go out again sometime!!

Launching my NEW BLOG!!

Hey everyone -- I am launching my new COUPONING BLOG!!!

That address is www.FistFullofCoupons.blogspot.com

Please check it out and post a comment to be entered into a drawing!!

Halloween Costumes

Sorry - My camera card had a virus or something, and I had lost the cord to my camera too - so I couldnt upload halloween pictures of the kids. I know, late late late!! But better late than never, right?

Liam was a pirate - and did a few houses trick or treating. He says "trick or treat" really well!! Its really cute.

Monica wanted to by an Egyptian this year...cleopatra.. :)

Micah was a boxer -- he has boxing gloves that he didnt wear for the picture. Also please note that this is the outside of our house. I purchased my first REAL Halloween decoration this year -- the BIG BLOW UP BLACK CAT!! ALL the kids in the neighborhood loved it!! We used it on top of our trunk for trunk or treat too..LOL!!

Graces newest passion is the Doodlebops. She wanted to be Dee Dee Doodlebop. So she wore a pink wig and had a blast!

And now for the fun part -- look at the massive quantities of candy they got -- TONS!!!

TWILIGHT!!!

Soooo...Yeah I will probably be embarrassed looking back on this a year from now...but I am totally obsessed with Twilight!! The movie comes out in less than 20 days and I am so excited!! I want to go opening night! These series of books by Stephanie Meyer are about a vampire falling in love with a human girl. Now, I am not usually a big reader at all (indeed never even read Harry Potter books)-- and I dont ever read vampire or scaryish books..But These books are not scary at all - it is truley a LOVE story - and I love it more than I like romeo and juliet! The author paints a picture of true love and it is sooo beautiful. Thanks to Emily Bleazard who recommended them to me!!
I know many of you who read my blog have read Twilight and would appreciate some EYE CANDY for the movie -- so here ya go!!

And here are the links to some trailers!!

This one is from the Penelope DVD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_hSNELxpXM&feature=related

This is a make fun of twilight spoof -- really funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dompotjTeIA&eurl=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/twilight/index.html

And this one is one of my favs

http://perezhilton.com/2008-10-28-what-if-hes-the-bad-guy

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

We went to the Pumpkin patch last friday and of course our camera ran out of battery power after the first picture - but here it is!

I hope you all get LOTS of CANDY!!

Happy Halloween!!

Monicas Photography talent

My little lady Monica is so much fun these days. She is 9 years old and such a big help to me! She has such a beautiful heart - and this girl is FULL of talents! From soccer star to writing stories, to dancing...and piano...and introducing her newet talent --- PHOTOGRAPHY! Last month we went to the park and Monica asked if she could take some pictures..I said "Sure!...Just be careful!" So then when I got home and looked at her pictures I was amazed. Sure there were a few junkers in there..but as you can see some great ones came out. Enjoy! Every picture except this first one Monica took with my cheap-O digital camera.

Fun at the FAIR!

Every year its our tradition to take the kids to the fair - this spring we just moved to the Tri-Cities so I took the kids to the Benton Franklin County Fair this year. Highlights of the day --
- Purchased Monica & Micah bracelets for rides
- within 1 Hour of riding Rides Micah was SICK and didnt want to ride any more rides - he went home with his friend Danny as Danny was also sick from the rides.
-Took Grace, Liam & Monica to see animals - as pictured


- Went to the kiddie section of rides and let Grace go on them with Monica... Grace at first was a little scared of rides ...

But Monica helped her get into the fun...

Then I let them all go on a pony ride--they all LOVED it - especially Liam!

More Rides with Grace and Monica!

This donkey did NOT want LIAM near him -- he was a grumpy DONKEY!

All in all a fun day - I just LOVE the fair!!