Christmas Eve 2009

Merry Christmas Eve to all of our family and friends. I can't believe that tomorrow is Christmas day, where has the year gone?

Emily and I finished wrapping Delmar's gifts this morning but this afternoon has been a lazy, rainy one. The boys have been gone since about 12:30 and Delmar got home from work about 1:30. He and Emily are sitting on the couch watching Eloise at Christmas.

Tonight we will go to Delmar's mom & dad's for games and sandwiches, tomorrow morning we are at home and then off to lunch at Sandage's again, tomorrow night we will go to dad's and then to Aunt Nancy's afterward. We had Christmas with mom last Sunday.

Delmar, Emily and I hope you have VERY Merry Christmas. Please take a minute out of your busy schedules to thank God for sending his son to us.

Have a blessed day,

It's time for school again!!!

I think Emily was a "little" excited about her first day of Second grade. She was up at 6:20 am ready to go! Here are our annual first day of school pics. The second one is of her and her new bus driver. For the last 3 years, her driver has been Twilla and we loved her. I don't know about Emily but I was sad to not see her this morning. But, alas, change happens and now we introduce Mable. I hear that she is also wonderful and loves the kids and honestly, that's all that really matters. YEAH!!Have a blessed day,

July in a nutshell

WARNING, THIS POST IS INCREDIBLY LONG AND FULL OF PICTURES-Proceed at your own risk... :O)

This summer has flown by and I can't believe that school starts this Friday (albeit, only a 3 hour day??) Anyway, since the posting has been sporadic at best, I thought a jumbo post covering July would catch us up a bit. Here goes............

The first week of July ushered in a new experience for Emily. Our local YMCA hosts a day camp called Camp Osage and Emily LOVED it! We went on vacation so early this year that I was worried Emily would have a long BORING summer at home. But never fear, Y Camp is here!!! She has learned how to fish, play lots of new games, learned several new songs, seen many friends from school and met lots of new friends. Here she is on her first day and a picture with Delaney, her friend from down the street.

Here is a song that she learned entitled, "God Bless My Underwear". Just in case you can't understand here are the words (to the tune of God Bless America):

God bless my underwear

My only pair

Thru the washer

Thru the dryer

On the clothesline

In the air

Oh, God bless my underwear

My only pair......

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Repeat until it drives your parents CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually, this time was hysterical. She was just belting it out in the shower one night after camp. Cracked me up!!!

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July also brought the first fruits from my garden, go figure, it was zucchini.And who doesn't need a little more mulch on their garden in the heat of summer? Certainly not I. And our neighbor, Emily's best friend Don, was willing to share his grass clippings with us and Emily helped him out with the rake.Still keeping with the garden theme,I am proud to say that I learned how to can. My dad's friend Mel gave me a rather large bag of green beans that I used as my "guinea pig". Back in June, I had told my step-dad Bob that I wanted him to teach me how to can as my birthday gift. So he came over one day while Emily was at camp (mom came with him to keep an eye on my little ones that I babysit) and I had my first (and only) lesson. Here are some pictures from the experience.

Beans before:
Necessary tools:
Me and my teacher. Final results, MMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These jars sat on my counter all afternoon and evening and every time I walked by I just smiled and felt so proud that I had provided food for my family. And it was all free! The jars came from Freecycle. I was also blessed with a pressure canner as well as some other items needed. And I was presented with the Ball Blue Book for Canning and Preserving by my teacher. THERE'S NO STOPPIN' ME NOW!!!

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THE CHICKEN BORDER COMES DOWN!!!

From the day that we moved into our home, I've not particularly cared for the border in my laundry room. After all, what to chickens/roosters have to do with laundry??? Anyway, one day I got a wild hair and started pulling it down.

Before:
During:

After:

The aprons are mine and Emily's cooking aprons. Delmar's mom gave me the black and white checked one and I love it! I would like to get some other vintage ones. The pink one has a ladybug on it and Emily loves to wear it when we cook. As you can also see, I still haven't decided what color I'm going to paint the doors.

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Relay for Life

Most of you know that I've been participating in Relay for Life since my sister Lori was diagnosed with Kidney cancer in 2002. My first one was in 2003 and I've been doing it every year since, making this my seventh year WOW! Our team is now sponsored by our church and we had a great night this year. The weather was beautiful but cold. But, I'd much rather it be cold than hot.

This year our camp had a hippy/Woodstock/Age of Aquarius feel to it. Here is a picture of our mascots. (Thanks David, Delmar & Gene for keeping us laughing well into the night!)

What is a night being up until dawn without a little food?Kids lap (Emily is in the orange shirt right in the middle of the pic):Me and my man. Stay away ladies...he's all mine!! :o)One of the chiropractors in town was selling massages (all proceeds went to the Relay). Pat tried it out first and convinced MANY on our team that it was awesome and it was!What???? Mike is asleep and SNORING??? No way!

Each year they make a banner of hand prints of survivors. This banner is from 2003, Lori's hand print is the pink one and it overlaps our dad's (the upside down one). I take a picture of it every year.

What a great end to Relay week, the stargazer lillies that I planted in my garden in memory of Lori bloomed! I honestly didn't think they were going to this year but one day, there they were! These were Lori's favorite flower and were in all the bouquets that Mike would send her.

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Our final adventure in July was tent camping at Weldon Springs. We were invited by our neighbor Jenny to join her and some of her family and friends. What a weekend! Friday night was great but Saturday it rained almost all day. We didn't care, we stood around under umbrellas around the fire and at one point gave up on the umbrellas and sat at a picnic table in the rain playing Scrabble. Fortunately, the Scrabble game was mostly wood and plastic!!!

Here is princess Jenny in her castle. Not too bad considering she started Friday with a ridiculously small tent with a queen sized mattress in it. She was movin' on up!!!

Lilly trying to learn to ride a 2 wheeler:

Rise and shine Emily and Kyla:

Here I am helping Sal make breakfast. This covered screen room would have been a great idea BEFORE it rained. Here are a group of campers putting it up and you can't tell but it is pouring!! HA!UHHH...Delmar....Emily....everyone else is up!!

I pray that you all had a blessed summer. While it has gone incredibly fast, Emily and I are both excited that school is starting in a few days. She has already met her teacher and we've heard that she is great!

Rainy days and Mondays...

can be made better with tomato soup, tamales for hubby and I and a grilled cheese for Em. YUMMO!!!!!:o)

This was my gourmet dinner after a day of tackling Mt. Washmore, paying bills, getting the house back in order from the weekend and canning my first batch of green beans solo. Aren't they pretty???

Between the rainy evening and Y camp, Emily was exhausted and said she wasn't feeling well. I hope she isn't coming down with something!! This is how she spent most of her evening.
Hope you all weathered the storms without any damage.

Goodnight all,

My new books came!

I ordered 2 books from Half.com last week and now they are both in. While I am still finishing up the Left Behind series, I still need to locate the sequel and prequels. I am starting to read Home Comforts (see my sidebar) and just got in the mail today, Mary Hunt's "Debt-Proof The Holidays-How to have an All-Cash Christmas". I'm quite excited about both books and will now be torn as to how to split my reading time. :o)

Have a blessed day,

Eleven years ago today...

I said "I do" to the love of my life. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MY LOVE!!!!

We are going to Red Lobster for dinner and do some Walmart shopping in Decatur. Our friend Jenny is watching Emily for us. Thanks Jenny!!! Then we will come home and watch So You Think You Can Dance. A simple evening with the one I love doing things we love~~~well, except for the Walmart shopping!

UPDATE: Here is a picture of the flowers Delmar brought home for me. There were so many, I had to separate them into two jars. More to spread around the house!!!

DUDE!!!

I soooo feel like this woman some days......then I'm reminded why I do it! :smile: This one is going on my sidebar so I can be reminded everyday!

Have a blessed day,

Got my internet back...YEAH!!!!!

Last Wednesday, a storm came thru that sent a surge thru my phone line into my modem and then on thru to the ethernet cards in both our computer and Emily's computer. It fried all three items and thus began the process of replacing them all. This should have been a simple thing, just call the phone company and have them send a new modem out and then replace the cards in the 2 computers. HOWEVER, my computer has Windows Vista on it...big pain in the butt!!! We were able to check email and such thru Delmar's wireless laptop and by "borrowing" a connection from a neighbor but updating the blog was not able to happen because of the spottiness of the connections.

But, all is well now and we are once again connected to the world. So, let the blogging begin!

Have a blessed day,

Menu Planning/Kitchen Work

I've been working this week on getting food into the freezer and planning menus. Since Delmar was gone over the 4th weekend shooting fireworks in Southern IL, Emily and I decided to make him a special dinner last night. I loaded up 4 kids and off to IGA we went to by steaks. This was miraculous two-fold. First of all, many of you know that I don't travel too much with the babysitting kids, it just makes me nervous and secondly, I rarely buy steaks and NEVER full price... It was indeed a special day! With the steaks, I made cheesy tater tots with onions and peppers and fresh green beans - from my garden :o) - made with soy sauce, olive oil and fresh garlic. YUMMO!

I have also been freezing blueberries. Last week Kroger had them for $1.25 a pint!!! I bought 16 pints and have frozen 12 of them to enjoy later this summer and this winter. MMMMM, a cup of coffee with a homemade blueberry muffin.....sorry, I got lost there for a moment! The rest we have been nibbling on here and there.

Also, when we came back from Florida on vacation (yes, it was over a month ago), we stopped in Georgia and bought a 25 lb. bag of Vidalia onions that we split with the Shews. (I'm sure that Sharon has had hers in the freezer for weeks but I am just getting to mine.)

The time you save by chopping all at once is amazing! I've been doing this with green peppers for a couple of years now and it's so nice to be able to just grab a baggie of chopped veggies and just throw it in whatever you are making. It's also a good way to take advantage of the discounted produce at the store. Our Save-a-Lot almost always has packages of bell peppers that are on the edge, maybe with a spot or something on them. Usually they are packaged in 4's for around a $1.00 and are a mix of green, red, yellow and orange. I'll buy these, cut out the bad spot and chop, slice and chunk them for different recipes that I work with.

While working on my onions this morning, I've also prepped my onions for tonights dinner and now just have to work on the potatoes.

Gotta head for now, about time to get the kids ready for Lunch Time Bible Club!

Have a blessed day,

Vacation Bible School

Emily has loved VBS this year. Thru school, she knows many of the kids, which makes her want to go even more. Tristin even got in on it a couple of days and then got nervous about going. They had theme days and were able to dress appropriately each day. We missed the theme for Monday which was hat day.

Tuesday was crazy hair day. You can't tell in the picture very well but Tristin's hair is spiked:

Wednesday was mismatched or backwards clothes day. As you can see, Emily chose to do both:

Thursday was beach day. Tristin was dressed for it but decided at the last minute, he wasn't going to go:

Today, Friday, was PJ day. (I didn't get a pic before she changed.) Emily LOVES PJ days! She was able to wear them all day a couple of days of Kindergarten and 1st grade. The fun continued into VBS.

The kids were also raising money thru offerings to help Barb O'Donohue's work with Pokot children in Africa. According to a newsletter, if their goal of $1111.00 is met, Ernie (the children's minister) will dye his hair blonde! The must be really getting behind this since as of yesterday, they were at $904.27 and the last 2 day's offerings were over $300 each!!! GOOOOO KIDS!!!!

We may have to go to 1st Christian this Sunday just to see Ernie!

Next week starts Lunch Time Bible Club at the Baptist Church, Emily is excited about this too. I'm also considering sending her to Camp Osage at our local Y several times during the summer just for something else to do.

Must run for now, she will be getting of the VBS bus in about 15 min and I like to have her lunch ready for her or otherwise she wants to go out to play and then eats too late!

Have a blessed day,