Chicken Brittany

Brittany thought that all the pinestraw we raked up in our yard looked like a chicken nest. She's the chicken in the nest.

Joe and Sarah's Wedding Celebration Party

Sarah and Joe finally were able to have a wedding shower/reception. Here's some pics.

Beach Theme

Guests put messages of wisdom in a bottle

They also signed the picture frame. This was before all the guests finished signing it.

Of course there was food.

Joe's sister signing the picture.

A honey-do whistle.

It didn't take long for Sarah to start wearing that one!

A classic. How many mother-in-laws do you see LITTERALLY pointing a knife at their son-in-law? My husband said that she needs to quit talking with her hands.

Joe's dad talking.

Joe's mom and sister

Joe's cousin. She and Joe's mom were a tremendous help getting things ready.

Half Way to Nowhere

Yesterday my husband decided that today would be a good day to take the kids on a trip down to Wilmington to see the battleship. Around 9:30 we were on our way, and you couldn't have asked for more beautimous weather. Our children were quite excited and traveled the two hours quite well. Before we got on the ship, we ate a Burger King lunch complete with Kids Meals (a treat for them.) The kids were quite impressed with the ship, and the deeper inside we got the more excited the baby got. They had a great time, and the only mishap was that Addison messed her diaper when there were no bathrooms around.

Trying out the bunks. I would have felt clausterphobic.

Mixing up the baby.

For some reason Addison would not look at the camera.

Our trip on the way back home however, began with my husband's super sensitive nose smelling something amiss. "Does Addison have a stinky diaper?" was his question. My reply: "She shouldn't. I just changed her." Only, I turn around to see that those Huggies weren't hugging too well. There was this mustard colored stuff coming out the side. I got my things together to change her, thinking that Spencer wass going to pull off to the side of the highway, but he just kept driving. The next time I turned around there was a bigger blob of mustard colored stuff coming out the side of Addison's leg and it was still expanding. My husband decided to stop.

After we got that little problem taken care of, Spencer started worrying about the possibilities of a gas station being nearby. For anyone that knows him very well, this is not an uncommon situation. He doesn't worry because he might run out of gas in the next 50 miles, it's more like the next 50 feet. I told him that I did not remember seeing a gas station on that stretch of road, and thankfully, I did not know how low that needle was. I was already praying as it was. We did spot a gas station that was so out of date that there were still individual pumps for each type of gasoline and when Spencer paid for the gas with his debit card he had to wait for the woman inside to get off the phone so they could use the dial up connection to put his card number through. FINALLY, we were headed on our way home. After 30 minutes we realized that we had once again followed our usual tradition of taking the scenic way home. We didn't recognize the road...nor the highway signs....nor anything else for that matter. We were once again in middle of nowhere. I looked at Spencer and said, "I don't have a clue where we are. He said, "I know. We're half way to nowhere. That sounds like a country song doesn't it?" I had to agree with him.
We decided to take the highways that were marked North and pray we didn't end up too far off our target. We finally saw the name of a familiar town nearby and were happily speeding our way home (hoping we were really going the right way), when a car in front of us pulled off to the side of the road. As we passed him by, we noticed that there were lights on top of that car. They promptly began to flash their luminous blue color and followed us down the road. To make a long story short, the Highway patrol man told us how to get home, but in April,Spencer has to figure out how to get back to where we were lost......if you get my drift.
In spite of the way it ended, we had quite a bit of fun, and it definitely was a day we won't forget anytime soon.

Brittany Killed Biscuit

At Christmas Brittany fell in love with Biscuit. Biscuit is a life size "Fur Real" dog. She will obey commands, and does pretty much everything except eat and poop. Tonight unbeknownst to us Brittany decided that Biscuit needed to take a bath with her. I went to help Sierra get her bath after Brittany was done and noticed that the floor was pretty wet and the dog pretty bedraggled. At first, I thought Brittany had wiped the dog down, but then realized that the very wet floor was actually the result of the water running out of the dog that had been submerged. Unless a miracle happens, Biscuit is pretty dead.

Birthday Month

Even though February is known for Valentines Day, it seems that the boys have designated February as their month for birthdays. We've had a party every Saturday this month exept for the last Saturday. No it's not going to disappoint me not to have a party to go to this coming up week.

Zach turned 8 this year. Even though there's a six on the cake there are two little candles added beside it. He knows how to add. He had a great birthday week. We first took him and two friends to Chuck E Cheese and then had a sleep over for them. Somehow he ended up having brownies made in his honor at Papa and Mema's house, a Transformer cake another night at our house, and it seems like something else too. I think he definitely felt like he had a birthday.

The little Batman boy here had a birthday the next weekend. My husband and father in law were asked to dress up as Batman and Robin. I think they had a little too much fun with that.

What did I say about too much fun dressing up?

This is my very cute nephew's 2nd bithday. Almost all of his cousins made it there.

My husband turned 31 this year. I made my first carrot cake (pictured below) for the occasion. Evidently our baby thought the frosting on the cake was so good that she bit through the candles trying to get all the frosting off of them.

This last weekend our kids went skating for a birthday party. They liked it so much that it will probably end up as a Family Fun Night activity one Thursday.

My grandma, my husband's grandmother and grandfather, my husband and our two oldest kids

This last year has been an interesting year with a whole lot of death. We've lost neighbors that our children loved dearly, church family, my husband's former youth pastor, and hopefully lastly my husband and I both lost our living grandparents this year. My grandma died in Feb of 2008. Spencer's grandparents both died in the past 6 weeks.
I never used to know what to say to people who had lost a loved one and always dreaded the day when I would lose someone close. Those days have come, and I've found that you still don't know what to say to someone who has lost that special person in their life. The only real consolation is if the person who died knew Jesus as their Saviour. Then you know that they are in heaven enjoying a much better existance than they have ever experienced before. This brings to mind an interesting quote:
For and unsaved person, living on earth is the best heaven they'll ever know.
For a saved person, living on earth is the worst hell they'll ever know.

I'm glad I'm saved.

Texture

This is something that a girl I knew at college wrote. I thought it made good reading. I also thought that this picture I took today was appropriate with the theme.

Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 9:16pm
Lately, maybe because of the Christmas-toy-overload, I have been growing more and more concerned with the plastic-ky world that is beginning to surround my children...and therefore myself. Please don't misunderstand me. Plastic is good and necessary for certain things. When raising children especially, certain plastic is necessary. But I have been on a concerted effort to see what plastic items I can replace with a well-made, long-life product. It has been quite challenging so far! I am not on an environmental kick. My philosophy on this started to take root when I was old enough to understand the textures of my childhood and how they play a role in my life today. Unfortunately, I was totally unprepared for the primary-color, shiny-plastic underworld that quickly sucks in the mother of small children.Plato said, "The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things." The beautiful. The simple. The well-made. My memory of my childhood is filled with texture. My father, God bless him, raised six children on thirteen thousand dollars a year. I did not know I was poor. I knew we couldn't afford things, but I did not realize the extent of it. The inability to buy things "off the shelf" forced my mother to be creative. To look for multiple uses for an item. A discarded tire and scratchy piece of rope became a tire swing. We would dump out the water onto the dirt patch underneath the tire swing. The mud would splash against my legs and barefeet as I swang. That old rope dug into my skin as I gripped tightly. Texture.Our pans were thrifted items and they lasted forever. They were cast iron and weighed a ton. When they got used to the necessary point, my mother would rub oil in them and put them in the oven to cure. Texture. Sheets were...gasp...also thrifted. My mother would find sheets, usually very old and very well made, that were discarded because they didn't have the most recent print on them. They were never in a package so she would go by the feel of them. They always felt so comforting and snuggly. Texture.One year my parents stayed up half the night on Christmas Eve cutting and sanding handmade blocks for my brother and me. They were natural, knotty and solid wood. They were large, sturdy and easy to build with. Texture. My toybox was an older steamer trunk. It was covered with all sorts of brass buckles and notches. My mother lined it in burlap and screwed dowel rods inside to hold up the lid so it wouldn't suddenly shut and pinch our fingers. I loved that big toy box. I would crawl inside and be covered in toys. We would also stand behind it and use it as a puppet theater. The textures of playtime with that old trunk are burned into my memory. I could go on and on with memories of the textures of my life. Now, as a mom, I strive to seek out texture for my children's lives. I want to set up my home so it is warm and liveable. I have a special love for old things because of fond memories that were born from living among them. In my home, no place is too special to sit, there are no scratchy or polyfilled duvets. I allow my one year old to eat from pottery style plates and use real utensils. Texture.Thanks to a good idea from a book I'm reading, I decided to start drawing and painting journals with my daughter (my four month old is a bit young yet). The author suggests to purchase some "good" materials for your child to work with. Acrylic paints. Charcoal pencils. A book of canvas-style paper. Even old burlap or a bag of good thick paper scraps can be used for painting and drawing. The bottom line is to look at an item and think of an alternative use before pitching it. Things can often be given a second life on a child's craft table. It is very difficult for a child to feel creative when the tools he or she is using are frustrating to work with. I personally can't do anything with a dulled, waxy crayon! I am new at this and have some undoing to do. Right now I am staring at a collection of toys that since Christmas already need new batteries or are missing all of the pieces that made it fun for ten minutes. I certainly hope this doesn't sound pretentious or unappreciative of all of the goodness bestowed upon my children. I am simply challenged this New Year to seek ways to create a haven for imagination, experience, and wonder that will follow them throughout their lives. I personally feel that "toy overload" inhibits those creative expressions and the appreciation for the simple. The everyday. The truly beautiful.
By: ABK

Our New Year's Day Family Get together

It's really hard for all of us to get together for Christmas, so we started a tradition of getting together sometime in January. This year we were able to get together New Year's Day. We only had finger food, but I think everyone still got really full. We just messed around on the piano, the Wii, and with the kids' Christmas toys.

All of us that were there.

Sarah

Revka virtually bowling

Peter and his little boy Cavin

Spencer being himself

My parents. Don't they look happy LOL You know, smile there's a camera in your face!

Peter's wife cleaning up a mess. Poor thing.

Robert, Revka's husband. You can smile too. I know, never come between a man and his food.

Bowling Sierra

We got the kids a Wii for Christmas. This is how Sierra bowls. If I tried to do it that way, I wouldn't even hit one pin.

Baby doll by Fisher Price

We bought this baby doll for Addison for Christmas because she fell in love with it. Now we're going to have to take it back. Can you hear it saying, "Islam is the light"?

This is what a homeschooled baby learns

This is what our schooling was competing against the other day. She's discovered the pencil sharpener.................and loves it.

Happy Birthday, Sierra

Sierra's other cake decorated according to her instructions.

Zach said that it looked like Dora was doing splits in the mud.

Cake and presents. I bought five presents from the dollar section at Target and put one in each bag so she felt like she got a lot.


Sierra with her opened presents...
an erasable board, a wallet, sock slippers, paint by number set, and a cup.


Yesterday was Sierra's actual birthday. We had a small celebration at our house for her complete with another cake and $1 presents from the Target dollar section. She was thrilled.

It's Wednesday, so it must mean it's time to update. I'm sorry about not being able to write as often, but school and housework are keeping me pretty busy lately.

Tomorrow will be my third child's birthday, so we celebrated it this past Saturday. That day turned out to be quite eventful. The night before a tornado had passed through the area, and my husband's cousin's house was damaged. Though quite traumatized, everyone is ok. We went over there after the party and helped move things out. Later that evening we went to my parents' house and visited with my aunt and uncles who were up here from Texas for a couple of days. As I said, it was quite an eventful day but also good.

Right after blowing out the candles

PRESENTS!

The tornado stricken house. You can't really see it from this side, but the far end pillar is completely missing, and the far side of the roof was gone. It also took out part of an upstairs wall inside the house.

Cracks like this are all through the house

The girls playing snakes and ladders with my uncles. Dumb me forgot to take a picture of my aunt.

Another Typical Day

One of the kids left the water running in our slowly draining sink. Of course I didn't know about it until I heard the baby splashing and having fun.