Merry Christmas

As I sit here writing this post, it is 2:40 am Christmas morning. As you can see, Spencer is busy figuring out how to put together a new toy for Brittany who by the way has been throwing up this evening. We don't do Santa Claus with our kids, but we like to have a couple of surprise presents sitting out for them. Now if we can only get ourselves up later this morning.

Taking a Break

Give me a few days and I will have more to write. My sister has a friend staying at our house, and we are busy. Just to entertain you, I will tell this little story. In preparation for this friend staying at our house, I was thoroughly cleaning the bathroom. I got up on our puny counter, and evidently it is not fastened to the wall because it tried to throw me off. Does that really surprise any of my college friends? NO!!! I didn't think it did. I won the battle though. How do I know??? The p-trap of the pipe under the sink broke, and started dripping water everywhere. Of course Spencer had a little job to do when he got home. After many harsh words to the sink, a couple of trips to Lowe's, and a few exclamations of how much Spencer hates this house, he finished up right before my sister's friend got here. There was just once glitch though. The faucet to the sink no longer works, but the pipe drains great! I guess that means more work for Spencer later.

The Real Laundry Pile

You know that laundry pile that I posted about a little while back? A friend and I were talking, and she mentioned that the picture of piled up laundry was too neat. Well, I found a picture of my true pile. Did I mention that I finally did get it under control? Did I also mention that I would love to have a laundry room as nice as the one in the previous post?

I learned a little secret. The kids can fold and put away their own clothes. Wish I would have thought of that sooner!

The Making of a Family Picture

Well, everyone is smiling, but there are a few technical problems.

A few tries later......

STOP singing and look AT THE CAMERA!

I SAID...........

OK. Now, y'all just look _______ (you fill in the blank)

Finally!

Mr. Allen

This is Mr. Allen and his wife. She's a litte miss handy woman in the sewing and craft department.

Spencer presenting a gift basket to our pastor and his wife. Notice the pastor's tie. It plays music. One time he wore it to church and it kept going off during his Sunday school lesson and when he was preaching the Sunday morning sermon. There's also someone else in this picture, but I will not mention his name. You know who you are! 

Family

My mom and mother-in-law

My mother-in-law and father-in-law

My brother-in-law, Cameron and his girlfriend, Miranda.
(Notice the guy in the background. That's Mr. Allen from our church. He helps Spencer with the youth group. He also reads this blog pretty often. Hi, Mr. Allen! He told me to forewarn him if I ever put a picture of him up here. "Well, here's your warning! It's up here!)

 

Pictures from Sierra's birthday

It finally took a little help from Momto get the candles out.

Isn't Papa supposed to be feeding Sierra?

All the kids in front of the snake tank. Sierra seems to be preoccupied with taking her shoe off.


We had Sierra's 2nd birthday at a children's museum. It's a great place for the kids to run around when there is cold weather.

 

I've Been Tagged With This

A - Available or single: Available...only to my husband
B - Best Friend: Spencer
C - Cake or Pie: Pie
D - Drink of choice: Lemonade
E - Essential Item you use everyday: Dishwasher
F - Favorite color: Lavender
G - Gummy Bears or worms: worms
H - Hometown: McAllen, TX
I - Indulgence: Buying clothes
J - January or February: I really don't care
K - Kids & Names: 3, Zach, Britt, and Sierra
L - Life is Incomplete Without? The Lord; Friends
M - Marriage Date: April 2000
N - Number of Siblings: 3 sisters and 1 brother
O - Oranges or Apples: oranges
P - Phobias or Fears: Falling backwards down stairs
Q - Fave Quote: Can't think of one
R - Reason to Smile: when someone does something unexpectantly nice for you
S - Season: Spring
T - Tag 3 or 4 people: DJ, Davida (when she gets back online), and Mema (you need to put something on your blog!
U - Unknown Fact about Me: I don't think I have any unknown facts. I talk too much.
V- Vegetable You Don't Like: Peas
W - Worst Habit: Staying up late and Sleeping in late
Y - Your Fave Food: Too many to list-Cheese Enchilada's, Breads, Granny's cooking
Z - Zodiac Sign: No clue

Legalism

My sister wrote this post on her blog, and I thought it was pretty good. http://ourfamilyporch.blogspot.com/2006/12/legalism-chain-that-binds.html

The Story of My Life

This picture definitely explains why I haven't written anything lately. No, that's not me up there, but it could be. I have been doing piles of laundry. I washed my final load this morning, and will be putting it away shortly. (I think!) 

Remodeling

We have two very seventies looking bathrooms. At the moment, Spencer is remodeling the smallest one. It's coming along nicely. We now have 12 inch tiles on the floor waiting to be grouted. I'm sure more will be done by the end of December! :) As soon as the tile is done, I will get to work my "magic" on the walls. Not quite sure what I want to do with them yet. 

Four Wheeling Anyone?

This land that surrounds our neighborhood is up for sale. 89 acres for $179,000. This is where we go four wheeling when Cameron brings his four wheeler over to our house. 

Homeschooling Tip

Brittany has been having a hard time with her cursive writing. A lot of times, I will put my hand over hers to help her out as she writes. The other day, she was playing around with her writing but was using a crayon instead of a pencil. I could not get over how beautiful her writing was. Since that time, I've been letting her use a crayon and she has done wonderfully. The only disadvantage is that you cannot erase mistakes made with a crayon, but she has not had a whole lot of mistakes. It might be something you might want to try for your little homeschooling angel.

Happy Birthday!

Today is Sierra's 2nd birthday. Her party will be this coming Saturday at a children's science museum. The kids will get to play and then see a demonstration of live lizards. One time we were there for a party and the demonstration was on snakes. That didn't go over so well with my kids. Maybe the lizards will do better.



PS I have a picture of the birthday girl to go with this, but I forgot that I had taken the memory card out of the camera, and I don't have the software to download the pictures. The camera is not mine..........did you figure that out.

What A Weekend

Our minivan has a peculiar problem. Whenever it drives through a nice sized puddle of rain, the drive belt falls off, and the van is practically undriveable until the belt is put back on. The Sunday before last, it rained all day long, and right before we got to church, we hit a big water puddle. We had a suspicion that the belt had fallen off, and we found out for sure when Spencer went to turn into the parking lot of the church. There was absolutely no power steering and the engine temperature was getting hot. Spencer and his dad were able to get it fixed the next day.

Spencer took off this last Friday and today to work on completely redoing our bathroom. On his way to Lowe's, he stopped by the car dealership just to see about test driving a Tahoe. When he got there, they were having a red tag clearance sell, and the Tahoe's were marked $4,000 off the sticker price, but amazingly, no one waited on him. He went on to Lowe's like a good man should. When he got home, he decided to check out how much payments would be. After that, he ended up at the dealership for a couple of hours, and brought home a vehicle for me to see.

We then went back to the dealership and haggled over prices until we almost walked out the door without anything new. The dealer finally made a good offer, and we bit it.

I didn't tell Spencer until afterward, but posted on the door was an advertisement that said, "Red Tag clearance, The Price You See Is The Price You Pay." :) He said he never saw it.

Future Rodeo Girl

Sierra loves horses. Daddy is training her to be a bronco rider. See, she even loves it when she falls off! 

What A Little Liar!

Sierra did not want to finish her supper last night, but she wanted to eat grapes and cookies. I would not let her get down until her food was gone. She finally called me over there to say that she had eaten her food. I looked on the floor and on the bar to see if there was any food thrown around (usually her way of getting rid of food), and there wasn't. I was so proud of her, and told her so. She was looking at me saying UH HMMMMMMMMMM (her way of agreeing that she has done something well.) Then.........I looked in a plastic cup, and her food was buried in a lake of water. I resurrected the food, put it on her plate, resalted it, and made her eat it. She was not happy with me. Of course, I wasn't really happy with her either. 

Reclaiming Your House Week

What a week! Starting with the three aforementioned birthdays and a week of revival does not leave much time at home. Throw a messed up vehicle a few other things in the mix, and you are glad the week is over. Needless to say, my house is a plain wreck. My sister, Revka, is having the same problem with her house, and she came up with the Reclaiming Your House idea on her blog, ourfamilyporch We've always been competitive, so I'm going to take her challenge and see who can get done first. If anyone else would like to join us, just mention your progress in the comments section of this post, and we'll see what we've accomplished at the end of the week. If there are no other takers, Revka and I will duel it out between ourselves, and have a clean house to boot. May the best cleaner win!

This was not really flattering

You Are Italian Food

Comforting yet overwhelming. People love you, but sometimes you're just too much.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Will Be Writing More Later

Things have been really busy this past week and will not let up till the end of the week. We had three birthday parties and a two hour play to see this last weekend. Right now we are in revival at church. I'll write more later when I have a little more time. 

Hunting Buddies

Zach practicing shooting with his daddy's first BB gun

Deer meat is so good I could eat it raw!
My brother in law is crazy.

 

Family Fun?

As we were sitting down to supper last night, we got a phone call that Spencer's brother had just shot a deer. Zach and Brittany wanted to go and see it right away, but we ate first anyway. When we got done, we went to see the deer and found that Cameron had shot another one. They had one deer skinned and the other one was lying on the truck. I thought Zach and Brittany would be upset seeing a dead deer, but they went up to it and patted it, and Zach kept moving the legs back and forth. Brittany got bored after a while, but Zach stayed to see all the meat cut off.
After all the excitement was over, we went home and had real family fun. We found that the kids just really want us to play with them. Every time we ask them what they want to do, they say they want to play games. It took me a while to get the point. Personally, I would rather get out of the house, but we finally figured out that the kids just want time from us. Hey, that's nice and cheap. We may end up investing in a few more games. 

Brittany's Sayings

Brittany has said some of the funniest stuff lately, and I thought I'd write some of it down while I remembered it.



After a discussion about dating and marriage:
Brittany: "Mom, if Mr. Anthony hadn't growed up so fast, I would have married him."
Mom: "Why?"
Brittany: "Because I like him!"

While watching a sad portion of a movie:
Brittany: "I'm not sad, Mom. My eyes are just pretendin' they're crying."
(Brittany always cries during a sad part of a movie. We won't be watching Where the Red Fern Grows with her.)

We went to a birthday party last night while Spencer went on church visitation.
When asked where her dad was:
"He went on vegetation."

This is one I won't ever forget. Brittany was about three and while I was helping her get dressed she sneezed and passed gas at the same time. She started laughing and said, "I blessed ya, and I blessed ya in my pants!"

Dog Food

At the supper table the other night, Brittany was crying about her elbow hurting because she had fallen on the vacuum cleaner while she and Zach were rough housing. After she was finally done telling her side of the story how Zach had been jumping around and made her fall, Zach raised his hand and said, "May I tell the truth now?" Spencer replied, "What I want to know is why you were eating dog food?" Spencer then told me about what happened while Zach was playing with the neighbor boy. The little boy came up to Spencer and said, Zach won't stop eating dog food. Spencer said, "Zach, stop eating dog food." A few minutes later the little boy came back and said, "Tell Zach to stop eating dog food!" Spencer was busy doing the microwave (hole in the wall) project and was getting irritated that the little boy kept tattling. That was until Spencer went to talk to Zach. When Spencer walked around the corner, Zach had both hands full of dog food and both cheeks stuffed full. Eew! Gross!

After Spencer finished telling me the story, he got up and started reading the ingredients off the dog food bag to Zach. He made them sound really scary and Zach's eyes kept getting bigger and bigger. Spencer kept saying, "I hope you don't get sick, Zach," and all other sorts of things. We were cracking up. Poor guy. I don't think that he'll eat any more dog food.

BTW Zach's reason for eating the dog food..."Because it had good flavor, Dad."

He Did It!

This past Saturday, Spencer was trying to decide what he was going to do. He finally decided to FILL IN MY HOLE IN THE WALL. I about fainted. He wasn't lying when he said he'd do it before Christmas. So, the question remains, what do I want for Christmas. It seems everyone is voting for the digital camera. Spencer jokingly made a deal with me. He said, "I'll get you the professional digial camera and you get me a laptop........they'd cost about the same." Boy would we be in a hole if we did that! I guess it's back to the drawing board.

 

What Do You Want For Christmas?

Do you see that black hole to my left? That's where a in -the- wall oven used to be. We took it out and put a microwave in it's place. The only thing is that the hole has never really been finished off in the four years we've lived here. The other day Spencer asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I knew he would be asking that pretty soon, so I was prepared. I said that I wanted the "microwave area" finished off. Spencer said, " That is not a Christmas present. I am not doing that for Christmas. I'll finish it before then, but you are not getting that for Christmas." I'm not holding my breath about it being finished any time soon, and it's back to the drawing board for what I want for Christmas. Hmmmm Should I ask for the professional digital camera then? :)