Traditions

When it comes to Christmas I'm all about traditions. (Sigh, every time I think about that I start singing Fiddler on the Roof). So when I read Jill Savage's blog about blogging about your family traditions as it relates to putting up Christmas decorations, I thought "this should be easy". Then I relived putting them up this year. I thought it would be fun if we always had Chinese food on the day we put the decorations up. Fun, but impractical. We don't really have any good Chinese in town, so scratch that. We had Italian this year...it's red...maybe we'll continue that. We do always rotate who puts the star on the tree, but that also leads to the tradition of a huge "discussion" prior as to who's turn it is to do the task. I usually end up having to pull up pictures from last year to see who did it then. And then there is the tradition of me standing in the middle of the living room stating rather firmly (some would say with a raised voice, but I'm not convinced) that you CAN'T TOUCH ANY OF THE ORNAMENTS UNTIL I HAND THEM TO YOU! YOU MIGHT BREAK SOMETHING! The one tradition that we don't have and I'm rather glad to be done with is the untangling of all the lights and plugging them in and checking them one by one to see which light is out and then plugging them in again and then finally getting to put them on the tree. That doesn't mean that we don't have any related to lights....I changed out 40 bulbs on our tree and am still trying to figure out how to get the lights to hang on the front window. They hung on there last year, but I also remember going through the same dilemma as to how to get them to stay. It seems like I do that every year. Does that make it a tradition? How about the tradition of Joe and I going back to the tree after the kids have gone to bed and rearranging all the decorations? Yes, we definitely have some traditions as it relates to putting our Christmas decorations up. And they definitely aren't the ones I would choose to have, but that is what makes us our own little family. And I think the goal was somehow met this year in the words of Sara at the end of the evening "This is a special night, isn't it Mom?" Some of the best traditions are the ones we don't try to create, but just sort of happen on their own.

Nathan's moves

Nathan got some new costumes for his birthday and decided to try his bumblebee transformer outfit with his new dance moves. Thought you would enjoy... (this is the first video that I've tried on my blog. Hope it works....)

lovin' my boys

Nathan:

So I got to spend my morning with Nathan. It was fairly typical...except I was reminded this morning how much fun that kid is! We got to sing Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs in the Kroger parking lot. He was so excited you couldn't help but join in. I turned on Christmas music at home as I unloaded the car. He said to me..."watch my moves mom". So I turned and looked at "his moves" as he, in his superman outfit, jams out to Ella Fitzgerald. Awesome!

John:

John's been learning about Thanksgiving. I was so impressed yesterday when he told me the right reason that the pilgrims came to America. Today's story was little more entertaining. Evidently, since they didn't have water faucets like we do, the pilgrims went to the river to get water and it was too salty. Sara stepped in and corrected him at this point and said "no, it wasn't too salty. It was full of fish pee." I let John continue. He said that since the water was too salty they didn't have any water at the first Thanksgiving. They just had beer.

103 kids hearing about Jesus!

As most of you know Joe posed a challenge to our kids at AWANA in September. If we hit 100 kids, he would shave off his hair. We started around 60 kids. So last night in our small town we had 103 kids. It has been close to 20 years since we've had 100 kids at our Wednesday night kids' program. You may be having the same thought as some of my kids: "Why did you have to tell them you would shave your hair." (One of them was in tears on the way home because he/she was definitely not a fan!) Because, as we explained to the kids, the cost of losing one's hair is so minimal compared to the cost of someone spending eternity with God. The fruit of the challenge: ...lots (too many to count) of kids who have never been to church before, don't know what a Bible verse is, and haven't heard about Jesus. What makes it worth it all? A little girl in my group last night who's eyes literally popped open and sparkled as she heard me explain John 3:16 to her. And seeing a little kid cry after getting her first Bible. It's definitely worth a little bit different looking husband/daddy. Now to go to the store and invest in some hats....

November update

I didn't realize until the other day how long it had been since I had blogged. Where have the first few weeks of November gone? Only two weeks until Thanksgiving! Yikes! Here are some things I've learned over the past few weeks:

Joe doesn't like blow pops. He prefers tootsie pops. I didn't know this until we started going through the Halloween candy. It has sparked a huge debate that is visited daily. I mean, seriously, what is not to like about the blow pop...bubble gum surrounded by hard candy. (And I wonder why Nathan likes gum so much). Ah well, more for me!

I have come to despise strep throat. Until this year I had never had strep throat in my life. Now I am currently battling my third round of it. It is like my body reached 36 and decided "That's it. We're done. We're not fighting off strep germs anymore." And it isn't like 36 is old. I'm going to hate to see what my body decides not to fight off when I'm 70! Of course I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I have three kids that come home from school carrying their germs and all the other 20 kids in their class germs as well.

Despite the economy, there is a really, really, really hot market in used Little House on the Prairie books. I'm getting a head start on Christmas shopping and thought I would pick up a few deals on eBay. Wowzers, the bidding is not for the faint of heart.

I've been going through Romans and am really enjoying it. God's grace is amazing!

Joe blessed me with a weekend away last week. I got to worship and study my Bible with 8800 women with some insight from Beth Moore. A little taste of heaven...

Bow hunting is hard. I didn't learn this from first hand experience. Joe is trying it for the first time this fall. They make it look so easy on Whitetail Freaks. I guess there's always a muzzle loader and a shotgun that can make it happen next weekend. Ashley's been begging daddy for some more deer steak.

Happy Birthday!

A big Happy Birthday wish to my father-in-law! We love you Dad and Grandpa!

Happy Birthday Big Nate!

In the midst of all flu drama at our house this last week, we had a huge milestone. The herd will no longer have a 3 year old in its midst. I'm sad. I like 3 year olds...a lot...especially 3 year old boys. But, as Joe has now famously put it, "we are raising adults, not children!". So I guess it is for the best that my baby turn 4. He was certainly excited about it. Here's some Nate facts:

Favorite food: marshmallows

Birthday cake: Strawberry with white icing (yes, I made my 4 year old boy a pink cake for his birthday. In my defense, he requested it over and over and over again!)

Favorite candy: You can take the chocolate and anything else sweet as long as you give me GUM!

Favorite toy: his electric guitar

Favorite pasttime: playing dress-up...it doesn't matter what as long as it isn't his normal clothes

Favorite TV show: old superman cartoon

Favorite stuffed animal: Rosie the bear, of course!

Here's my now four year old in his new birthday outfit:

Here's how poor Sara spent Nate's birthday:

It's amazing how something invisible can totally take everything out of you...

Last night was the first night I've slept through the night since I had the flu. Yeah, that sore throat last weekend wasn't strep, it was the first stage of the flu. So I woke up this morning feeling really, really great. I spent about the first half hour with my cup of coffee and coughing...coughing a lot. But I hadn't woke up coughing in the night (NyQuil is really, really great!) so I didn't really mind coughing this morning. The sun came out which, frankly, has been a very infrequent occurrence lately. So I got out my to do list and at the top was to rake the leaves that are piled everywhere around our house. I took the kids to school (except for Sara...she has the flu now) for the first time this week, came home, changed my clothes, and promptly sat down to catch my breath. But I was still feeling pretty good and was very tired of sitting on my couch staring at all those leaves. So I went outside, started the fire in the pit, and tackled those leaves. After about 5 minutes I realized this was going to be much more draining than I realized. Okay, so I'll lower my expectations and only do part of them. I cleaned off the driveway (you couldn't even really tell where our driveway was) and then I was done raking. The gutters had to get cleaned out before it rained. So now it is 10:38, and after many breaks (helping Sara with her homework) I raked the driveway and cleaned out 2 of the 4 gutters. And, yep, I'm done for the day. It's back to the couch to stare at the leaves for me.

The secret to good cooking

I spent most of my weekend on the couch. The body couldn't hold off the germs in the house any longer. I'm doing much better now thanks to a great husband who kept me medicated with ibuprofen and tylenol all weekend (and made sure I didn't OD on any of it as I kept asking for me). Almost back to normal except the excruciating pain that I have whenever I swallow. My throat is so very sore. Ahh, swallowing is overrated. Joe keeps hinting that a doctor visit in my future. Anyway, since I was on the couch and Joe was watching the herd I got caught up on a lot of my DVR'd shows and then some. I'm fairly TV'd out at this point. I actually watched QVC for part of the weekend. They were selling Rachael Ray's kitchen equipment so I didn't feel like I was completely wasting my time. And I picked up a very important cooking tip. It is the secret to great and perfect food. Cooking food in Rachael Ray's stoneware makes the food taste good. Who know that was all it took? I'm sure it's true...the sales lady said it so matter of factly. And here I've wasted all that money on my cookbooks. I just needed good Rachael Ray stoneware! I bet my kids would even eat creamed spinach if I just made it in that.

It's confession time

Joe and I are fairly responsible people. Our children get 3 meals a day and snacks if they are hungry. They go to bed at a decent time. If you ask us to do something for you and we say we will, we do it. We had good parents that taught us how to arrive on time and go the extra mile. However, there is one area that for some reason we fail every time....movie rentals. Yep, I think I can count on one hand the number of times that Joe and I have returned a rented movie on time. I don't know what it is about returning the movie to the video store or the library that turns us into completely irresponsible adults. I'm also not sure how many movies we could have actually bought with the amount of fines and late fees that we've had to pay. Because of this we usually go through spurts of renting movies...after two or three late returns we stop borrowing them. And then Joe usually says to me "We should just join Netflix. They don't have due dates on their movies." And then I always say "No! That will cost us a lot more money then we would typically spend in a month on movie rentals." And then Joe says "Really? How much did we spend this month including late fees?" And then I say "But I know we can return them on time the next time!"

Well the proverbial straw broke the camel's back this week. We returned our movie night video Star Wars: The Clone Wars three days late! Yikes! That's a lot of late fees. So yesterday I signed us up for Netflix. We'll see if I can get them to the mailbox! I mean, seriously, it can't be that difficult to put it back in the mail, can it? But then again the video store is on the way to church so you know how often we drive past it...

So I published this post and the google ad that showed up on my page after it posted was for Netflix...very funny...