December Happenins' (so far)

Whew! It's been a bit since I posted here. Then I posted on my 365 for a bit in a vain attempt to catch up there and then... well, December happened. But we've enjoyed every bit of it (or at least a large majority of it! LOL!).

Celebrated a certain handsome man's birthday at the beginning of the month. He requested potato soup and a quiet evening home with a netflix movie and he got it.

Playing harder than ever!

Had the "worse storm" in years... ummm, yeah. People took off work and kept kids home from school for this dud of a storm. Although it did flood quite a bit in some areas. This storm and the subsequent rain that followed for days has taken the edge off of our drought. And yes, that's Koda's crater all caved in and filled with water.

Made some ornaments for a gift exchange.

Bethany got an award for memorizing 300 verses.

More basketball... although his game has been hampered by back pain due to tight hamstrings. A recent growth spurt is slowing him down apparently. Lots of stretching and has recently been put on two weeks of no activity. For an active kid this is pure torture. Please keep him in your prayers for quick healing.

I know it's hard to tell but the pic above is of his best game ever. Even in pain he played hard. The photo is of his pass through traffic to a teammate who made the shot. Awesome play, too bad it's a not-so-awesome pic.

We finally got the Christmas tree decorated and the kids wanted to do an impromptu photo shoot. They got dressed for it and everything!

Made a "tree farm" for a school gift exchange. It was a lot of fun and we've heard that the girl who got it has no plans to spend the money because of the awesomeness of the gift. Yeah, wonder how long that will last when she's short on cash, LOL!

We forgot to get a pic of Elisha's present to give out. We put money and candy in balloons in a box that said "Pop Me". Stuffing those balloons was waaayyy harder than folding the trees in Bethany's gift.

Class performance of "Deck the Halls". Hilarious! I'll try to remember to post the video soon. Elisha is second row on the right, in dark clothing so he's kinda hard to see. Bethany is front row third from the right.

The class performance was followed by the band performance.

Santa came to the preschool again (and Bethany made a surprise visit to see him!).

Then came home for a quick pic before a shower and a beard trim, HA!

Church performance of "Light of Christmas".

Another video I've got to get posted for you to see. The kids did awesome!

Photo with "Cow Santa" at Chik-fil-a. They may be too old for photos with the real Santa (except for Daddy-Santa, of course) but a silly Santa was a blast. Getting breakfast at Chik-fil-a was a bonus!

Attended a Living Nativity at a local church. I hate to say it but I think the kid may just have outgrown this as most of it is geared for smaller children.

Well, that's it for December so far... If you don't "hear" from me before then...

Merry Christmas! 

My Daily 5 ~ #11

Whoops! Forgot to even write out yesterday's five! I got just a little caught up in the season finale of Elementary we were watching on DVD late last night.

However, I did still want to make note of the one blessing I remember from yesterday:

394. getting not one, but both kid's school pictures for free (Every year I coordinate the kids and get them from classrooms to the picture area, organize them and assist in getting them situated, it's my job. But hey, if they want to give me free pictures for that, I don't mind a bit!) 

And now for today's:

395. having Yohn be gracious and forgiving when I embarrassed him in front of a friend today (let's just say it had something to do with hand slapping and scolding and leave it at that, K?)

396. having a hard laugh with Yohn when he mentioned said embarrassment later on

(for the record I did apologize, but that did not stop us from re-hashing it and laughing all the harder at my rather juvenile behavior)

397. sitting with Yohn watching both kids at basketball practice

 

398. that it has been confirmed that Bethany will definitely have a team

399. time at Panera bread with the school families

400. spending time sitting and talking with "my boys"

(Elisha & Tavahri) 

My Daily 5 ~ #10

389. morning Bible time

390. working with the first graders (although they can be frustrating at times, LOL...)

391. being able to get off work early for the kids' basketball practice

392. working with my daughter on her ball handling skills

393. re-connecting with the coaches and some of the parents after not seeing each other for several months (we've known some of these families since the boys were in 3rd grade)

My Daily 5 ~ #9

383. having Yohn be teased, not once, but twice about his "Baby Ruth" and that he is "Ruthless" without me... mostly this one is just about the smile on his face!

384. taking "all my kids" to basketball practice today 

(all "four" of them)

385. getting to watch practice today

386. feed my unexpected guest

387. planning our fantasy basketball league

(and naming Harmony's team Homany's tuppie, LOL!)

388. having Elisha say that he loves having us for his mom and dad

(You slay me kid!)

My Daily 5 ~ #3

353. Eating free See's candy at work (that they sent to us to try to lure us into a fundraiser)

354. seeing the girls excitement for having an opportunity to play basketball

(she's under the basket in the sunburst, sorry cell phone photos are not the best)

355. watching the girls at practice

356. a hot shower! (after the whole water fiasco)

357. a nice cool evening

My Daily 5 ~ #2

(except there's 6)

347. watching my boys at practice

348. winning my fantasy football game this week (HA! Deb)

349. seeing Bethany ready and willing to start her new job cleaning shelves in the bookstore today and taking it seriously

350. chicken tacos

351. free milk (nevermind that I had to purchase 3 packages of oreos to get it, 4 if you count the pumpkin ones we added at the end)

352. my noisy old bird (23 years old) who still insists that you share 

your food with him each time you eat

Bonus Pic:

Her completed project!

Thanksgiving Events

Each year the kids' school hosts their annual Friendship Stew the day school lets out for Thanksgiving Break (I know, I know, we didn't have Thanksgiving Break when I was a kid either. Only Thanksgiving and the day after, and half day on Wednesday if we were lucky).

I always insist that if I am going to eat lunch with them, then they have to sit at the table where we are at. However, their friends then migrate to our table! See:

No biggie, we love these kiddos!

Our annual family photo at the Thanksgiving Stew.

Each year on Thanksgiving Day we take individual pictures for our Thanksgiving book. It's a great tradition we started years ago and the kids love to look back at it to see who we've joined at Thanksgiving and what they were thankful for.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with many families who brought food potluck style to our church multi-use room. There were far too many people to count, some I didn't even know as the numbers kept increasing right up until the moment of. We had a good time enjoying each other's company. Yohn and I spent a lot of time with our kids and of course the kids they were playing with!

Yohn and Bethany watching Turbo.

Elisha insisted on a photo shoot of him doing a lay-up in the gym. Ya know, where the lighting is bad and me and my inability to get a great photo in a dark room. Me thinks I'm gonna have to play with those settings on the camera and stop finding every excuse not to. If I want to take better gym pics that is. But with some editing this one didn't turn out too badly. (blah, blah, blah, I know!)

Lil' Cutie!

We had T and Harmony over to stay the night. The kids all planned on staying up all night long, but after watching how hyper they were and then how that all turned around when they started to get tired and gripe at each other I insisted they lay down with a movie. T lost his "bet" of being able to stay up the longest when he fell asleep withing 5 minutes of laying down.

Bethany none too happy that I used the flash! :)

She won by the way, she stayed up the latest. She has that kind of "endurance" and can pretty much outlast anyone anytime she pleases. But then she crashes pretty hard later on!

Elisha went down second!

And this is how I found Harmony, after she had fallen asleep third! Love this pose! It's one of those you could think up a hundred captions for. 

Hope your Thanksgiving we a great one! I can't wait to see pictures!

Basketball

The basketball season has just began around here and my son's team is two games in. This is the third time he's played basketball. It would have been the fourth, but we skipped last season. This year is different though, this year his best friend T is on his team too!

Not the greatest of pictures I know. Gyms aren't known for their great lighting. Neither I am known for my ability to adjust controls on my camera. Elisha is on the left looking for a pass.

A few photos after the game...

And what's a game without a captive audience?
I say that while I sit here and laugh because really, only Harmony wanted to watch the game. The other two sat and played DS or goofed off.

Ice cream afterwards!

Look! We were there too!

It was a sad start to the season as the boys lost by a landslide. At one point they came back having us believe they were really going to make a game out of it. Then the other team took off again (point-wise) and

the Saints never had another opportunity to catch up.

Welcome to Jr. High ball boys!