Christmas: Part One

As I transferred the pictures of Christmas from my camera (which is NEW by the way...more on that later) I realized that I had taken roughly 500 pictures. So tonight we will take an in depth look at each and every one. I will have Ashley, my photographer friend, come in and do a guest editorial and critique the aperture and iso and focus and shutter speed and a lot of other complicated words of which I have no idea what they mean, of every picture...wont this be fun??? Yes it will! Say it with me...."yes Nicole, it will be FUN".

Stop...come back in here, DO NOT run away from my blog, I will come find you....yes I will...don't test me....I mean it.


Ok...ok...I won't have Ashley guest editorialize...ok? Better?

No?

What more can I omit from this blog!?

Huh? OOOOHHH....you want me to omit 490 pictures from this blog?

I don't know....that is a tall order.

Ok! Ok!! If it means that you will read on, I will only make you look at a few tonight...but that means MANY more Christmas blogs.


So, since you forced my hand, we will focus tonight on the school Christmas play.



See Olivia...so excited. Just bouncing as she anxiously awaits the start of the play. She can not stand the anticipation of seeing her brother and sister on stage.

Speaking of her brother; here is my little man on stage. Look how handsome!


Singing...isn't he the cutest thing?

Oh, she woke up! Just in time to see her sissy and her part of the play. See how happy she looks?


There is my big girl. She is getting so big.

Uh oh...Olivia says; no more singing! This is all of the Christmas cheer I can give in one night...you made me dress in red...what more do you want???

I love that they sign during their songs, it really is amazing to watch these kids sign and sing at the same time.

And one last picture, just because I think it is cool. (and my new camera ROCKS...I am still learning how to use it)

Take a look at The Huckleberry Patch!

A fantastically talented friend sent me a great Christmas gift. One that she made with her own two little fantastically talented hands.

She has recently opened her own store on etsy. In her store you can see the apron she sent me. She will be adding more of her talents soon. Including the shopping bag she sent me for Christmas...yes she spoiled me.

Also included among her talents are; pillow case dresses (TO DIE FOR) (pppssssttt...Cindy...get them on etsy...NOW!!), produce bags etc...

Take a peek at her store and then make an order!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6014743

It is hard being two

It is a rough life for a two year old.

You have to deal with that big brother, the one who will sneak you a string cheese and juice box from the fridge, who loves you so much that he shares his Saturday morning blanket and couch camp out in front of the cartoons...yeah...that has to be rough.

You can scream and cry and make the meanest face you can come up with and all mommy does is giggle and tell you that you are cute.

You just can not relax ANYwhere. It is so hard to get comfortable.

You have to get angry at mommy again and scream GRAPE loudly to get your yummy fruit.

But the one perk of being two is that once you get your grapes...you look adorable with a little tear while you munch them down.

I..............AM...............

DONE!




Christmas Shopping that is!



WOO-HOO!

First, um............?snow?

"SNOW SNOW SNOW!" was the excited shriek that came from down the hall where the kids had been playing.


I peeked out the window and sure enough, snow was falling. Pretty, soft and silent snow flakes. I adore snow. I love watching it fall, I love the crunch when walking on newly fallen flakes. I adore the quiet-peacefulness of a snowfall.



However....................

When it snows and my three small children see it, they can think of nothing else but going outside to play. This requires that I bundle them up in three layers of clothes, boots, hats and scarves. They go running outside and play in the snow for about 10 minutes and then come back in the house. Cold, wet and stripping layers. I do laundry for the rest of the day while I clean up the dirty snow from the floor.

Anyway, lets take a peek at the fun ten minutes the kids spent outside in the ?snow? Well snow is a stretch....skiff...dusting....only enough to make snow to make the kids excited and my floor wet and dirty.

Look..the snow is so deep...I can barely see my children. KIDS! KIDS!! Where are you!?

brat....

brat in training


baby doll

so happy that I bundled him up like an Eskimo...see how happy he is?

CHRISTMAS TREE!

To lighten the mood around here...lets take a look at our newly up Christmas tree.


We have a pre-lit artificial tree, well....actually pre-lit is an exaggeration. It USED to be pre-lit, but now 9/10 of the lights are burned out. We got this tree when I was pregnant with Makayla. I loved it so much. It is one of those high quality trees, with all of the lights tightly interwoven in the branches, the strands are clipped on to the tree and when it was new and all the lights worked, it was breathtaking. However for the last three years we have had to add more lights every year. Sitting down to remove all of the lights from the branches would take days and more time and patience than I possess. Instead we bought lights and put them on the tree with the burnt out strands. It was not terribly noticeable until last year when all 8 pre-lit strands were out and so it was fairly obvious that there were 800 burned out bulbs on the tree under the 600 or so that we had put on in replacement.

So anyway...this year we decided (we being the kids and I) that we would get a small real tree and make all of the ornaments and decorations. So I popped pop-corn, bought fresh cranberries and the ingredients needed to make cinnamon and salt dough ornaments.


We spent days stringing pop corn and cranberries, you see here Cameron eating the pop-corn intended for the garland. It kind of went like this; one for the garland, five for Cameron, one for the garland, three hand fulls and 15 minutes of Spongebob for Cameron.



Finally the garlands were done and we put them in a "safe" place. Safe until Olivia woke up from her nap. She then proceeded to pick the pop-corn from the garland and eat it until I hid the strands from her grubby little fingers.



We spent nearly a week making, baking and painting salt-dough and cinnamon ornaments. They were fun for us all.



Then on Sunday we went to get the tree. We had originally decided on a small tree so our ornaments would look good, however we had MA with us and in his opinion, bigger is better, so we ended up with a 61/2 foot tree and our few ornaments and garlands only covered a small portion of the tree. So along with our few home made ornaments we also have some of our regular ornaments too. The tree turned out well...oh and hey...we did not have to buy any lights....we already had 600 waiting to be used!

The kids waiting to decorate the tree

The finished product!

So, we don't have to worry about making it on the flex board anymore

Things are happening quickly here. Too quickly, my head feels like it is spinning and I would like someone to stop the dizzying spin..please?

Someone?

Anyone?

Oh good...it is you LORD...thank you. You are always here...please keep reminding me of YOUR presence...I need it right now.
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This morning, after working all night MA came in and finished up his paperwork and prepared to come home, when his manager stepped from his office and said, "MA...we need to talk"

MA emerged from that office unemployed, or the technical company term is "economically terminated". For the first time in his working life...he is unemployed.

Can I tell you how far your stomach drops when your only source of income for your home; the support for your three small children; the check that pays your mortgage, groceries, utilities, is instantly gone. Let me tell you, it took me a little while to pick mine back up.

We are being blessed with a small severance package and full unemployment pay, it is more than many.

MA has a lead on another job but it will be after the first of the year before that possibly comes through. His manager told him he felt pretty sure he would be able to call him back, but that also would not be until after the first of the year.
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LORD?

Oh good You are still here. Stay close....my knees are feeling weak.

Thanksgiving, short trip, shopping, a funeral and job woes

A catch up thread:

Thanksgiving day we packed up the van, ready to skip out on the holiday. Preparing to leave the dysfunction that holidays inevitably bring out in all families, the stress of Michael's impending job changes and life in general behind for a few days. We didn't make it out scott free however. My grandma called, she had purposely cooked early so we could eat before our planned escape time of noon. Bless her heart, we contemplated escaping early but decided that even with all of the dysfunction, we love our family dearly and stayed for lunch.

While eating, my grandfather got up from the table and to the bathroom, he had a piece of turkey stuck in his esophagus. This is not the first time this has happened and not thinking it was going to be a big deal, we loaded to kidlets into the van and away we went.

Wrong. Papaw ended up having minor surgery that evening to clear the obstruction. He was home that night but still.....crazy.

Our trip was nice, relaxing, we got most of the Christmas presents bought for the adults in our families. I am, however, a lame brain and forgot my camera, so you will just have to take my word for it, it was fun.

On our way home my mom called. My great aunt had passed away. Her funeral was today...it was so sad to see my grandmother mourn the loss of her sister-in-law. She was the first of her six siblings and their spouses to pass away. It is also very sobering for me to think that someday I will lose my grandparents, it is not a thought I want to entertain.

Moving on to more fun stuff...Mikes work has been slow. They laid off two people which means we lost our bid and are now back on the flex board. What is the flex board..you ask? It means we are not guaranteed work. It is also swing shift, days nights, whenever...we will never know day to day...hour to hour. It is also a 20-40% pay cut.

So um...yeah.

We are ok though God has never let us down, and I do not expect Him to start now. We made it for two years on the flex board and we can do it again. God will support us spiritually and financially.

Now...on to Christmas!! Tree is up this weekend...pictures to follow :)