Our first Thanksgiving at our house!

I'm going to count this as our Frolicky Friday, since this post is about our entire day. :)

We had our very first Thanksgiving at our own house this year, the day after Thanksgiving. We started off cooking and cleaning, of course!

Jayla helped with the pumpkin pie filling. Jonathan had already helped make the crusts.

Jacob made the "Peach Stuff" all by himself!

Jonathan made the cranberry fruit salad. Yummy!

My mom was feeding Jack a little early. Little guys just can't wait for all of it to be ready! I thought this picture Jonathan took was funny. Maybe it's the angle or their expressions?

We only have a small table at the moment and no chairs! We have freecycled so many things lately, so we're sort of in-between table & chairs right now. So, the kids ate on a sheet on the floor. They thought it was fun to have an indoor picnic!

Jack has an, um, interesting look on his face!



Grandma brought us a hot air popcorn popper. The kids loved watching it! We weren't sure what happened to the lid, so we improvised. :)


At the same time, Grandma was having Jayla "help" with the peanut brittle.

There was too much going on, I guess. Grandma has made this probably a thousand times, but.....

something went wrong. She was completely dumbfounded! What could it possibly be? Hmmm.......

Corn syrup! She forgot to add it in! But here is proof that it was sitting right there on the counter! You can even see it in the picture above! It's alright, Mom. It still tastes good! LOL!
Seriously though, she makes the most amazing peanut brittle every year. I requested that she make this because it is SO GOOD! I've never seen this happen before! LOL! At least the holiday season is just beginning so there is plenty of time to make up for it. :) :) :)

Jacob helped serve the pie. Jonathan and Jayla wanted her to try both of their pumpkin pies, so she got a small sliver of each. Jacob couldn't wait for his, so he just drug his finger through for a sampling.

I have come to realize that dirty faces to little boys is an art! They are very proud, especially this one.

The rest of the day was just relaxing and playing. We were going to go watch a river parade, but since Jack was sick, we thought it best not to get him out in the cool air.

I like this picture of Jacob and Daddy looking at a magazine together. Right after I took this, Myles flipped him over his shoulder and they started tickling and giggling. There is so much of that around here!

This is the boys' room. It works best like this for now (we only have 2 bedrooms), but their "bedroom" is in the middle of the house, so we have to step over toys all the time. At least it helps to keep it clean (out of necessity). In this case though, we had to weave through the yarn "laser beams" as the kids were playing spy games.

Myles really got into spying with them. He even insisted on changing his code name when I overheard his first one. They were all running around the house, using code names, coming up with secret spy plans. They were even using our cell phones for communicating!

Next we started making popcorn strings to hang on the tree. We still have not finished these (as of Monday), but we will get them added to the tree this week.

We had also discussed the persectued Chritians in other countries, specifically India, and about how thankful we are to have the freedom in this country to worship God anytime we want. (See previous post for details.) Finally by midnight everyone was asleep. Jayla had said she had the best Thanksgiving ever. :) She wanted to sleep on the couch, so she brought what appeared to be her entire room in with her!


They're always so cute when they're asleep!


Oh, look who is still awake! This little guy has his hours backwards. At least he is feeling better. :) I think he went to sleep just a few minutes after I snapped this picture.

It was a great day of food, family and fun, with new and old traditions. What more can you ask for? We had a great day!

So thankful!

I will blog about our Thanksgiving more when I get pictures on the computer, but I wanted to get some thoughts down before I lose them!

Tonight ds1 got the mail and there was a newsletter from Voice of the Martyrs. I glanced over it and laid it down beside me to finish reading later, but ds1 and dd1 were curious and wanted to know what it was about. So first I just read the captions under the pictures. Dd1 especially was very sad to hear about the Christians in India being persecuted and sometimes killed simply for converting to Christianity. Hindu radicals burned many church buildings down and some of them still had people inside. I was hesitant to read it to them, but I want them to have a real world view, especially when it comes to our faith. These people on the other side of the world that we will likely never meet until Heaven someday are our Christian brothers and sisters!

So I read the captions and then laid it back down. Ds1, who has been reading for nearly 5 years now, picked it up and started reading (to himself) the rest of the stories. He only read the first one where it talked in detail about a man being killed. So then dd1 wanted me to read all the rest of it to her.

It was hard, and I skimmed ahead on parts just in case there was anything really graphic. (The only thing I left out was that a girl got raped....I am NOT ready to have that discussion!) We both cried on the first story that talked about the Christian man dying. It was sad.

Oh, and one thing I pointed out to them was that the date that was mentioned was the 2nd day that we were on the beach on vacation, so that made it more realistic to them.....while we were playing on the beach and in the ocean and visiting the lighthouse, our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world were facing persecution that led some of them to death. Wow. That really puts it into perspective!

I also discussed with them about religious freedom and that we are blessed here in America to have rights to protect us from things like this happening to us. We talked about how many other countries besides India also have persecuted Christians. So we are THANKFUL that we live in a country where we do have religious freedom and can worship God openly without fear of persecution.....although we could lose that someday! But we still have it now, and for that we are so thankful!

After I finished reading the entire newsletter, we prayed for everyone there; the Christians, the radicals who persecuted them and the VOM informers who are living there. Dd1 has such a heart for the lost. She said something like, "God, please help the bad guys see that being a Christian is happy, but maybe not too happy sometimes if you get killed, but they can be happy if they become a Christian. Please help the Christians there to not get hurt or killed and to have more bibles to give to the bad guys so they can become Christians and be happy." It was really sweet. Then, when we were all done praying, she told me to remind her to pray for persecuted Christians every night before bed! Then she talked about deciding whether to give money to the Christians there (via VOM) or spending it on toys instead, and she would choose "dying Christians". She had several different scenarios that were all similar, and each time she said she would choose to help her brothers and sisters who were being persecuted and also help get bibles to the anti-Christians there.

I just love how she is so unselfish. She genuinely wants to help others and to tell others about Jesus. She has said several times that she wants to be a doctor. After reading this, she now wants to be a missionary, and then she got very excited when I told her she can do both! :) And it really wouldn't surprise me a bit if she does. We would be proud.

Ds1 during this whole time was in deep thought. He sat on the other side of the room but was still praying with us (not outloud, but head bowed & eyes closed). I could tell he was in deep thought. I may discuss this with him more tomorrow if we get some time alone.

Check out the VOM website, and be sure to support them any way you can!

http://www.persecution.com/

So thankful!

I will blog about our Thanksgiving more when I get pictures on the computer, but I wanted to get some thoughts down before I lose them!

Tonight Jonathan got the mail and there was a newsletter from Voice of the Martyrs. I glanced over it and laid it down beside me to finish reading later, but Jonathan and Jayla were curious and wanted to know what it was about. So first I just read the captions under the pictures. Jayla especially was very sad to hear about the Christians in India being persecuted and sometimes killed simply for converting to Christianity. Hindu radicals burned many church buildings down and some of them still had people inside. I was hesitant to read it to them, but I want them to have a real world view, especially when it comes to our faith. These people on the other side of the world that we will likely never meet until Heaven someday are our Christian brothers and sisters!

So I read the captions and then laid it back down. Jonathan, who has been reading for nearly 5 years now, picked it up and started reading (to himself) the rest of the stories. He only read the first one where it talked in detail about a man being killed. So then Jayla wanted me to read all the rest of it to her.

It was hard, and I skimmed ahead on parts just in case there was anything really graphic. (The only thing I left out was that a girl got raped....I am NOT ready to have that discussion!) We both cried on the first story that talked about the Christian man dying. It was sad.

Oh, and one thing I pointed out to them was that the date that was mentioned was the 2nd day that we were on the beach on vacation, so that made it more realistic to them.....while we were playing on the beach and in the ocean and visiting the lighthouse, our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world were facing persecution that led some of them to death. Wow. That really puts it into perspective!

I also discussed with them about religious freedom and that we are blessed here in America to have rights to protect us from things like this happening to us. We talked about how many other countries besides India also have persecuted Christians. So we are THANKFUL that we live in a country where we do have religious freedom and can worship God openly without fear of persecution.....although we could lose that someday! But we still have it now, and for that we are so thankful!

After I finished reading the entire newsletter, we prayed for everyone there; the Christians, the radicals who persecuted them and the VOM informers who are living there. Jayla has such a heart for the lost. She said something like, "God, please help the bad guys see that being a Christian is happy, but maybe not too happy sometimes if you get killed, but they can be happy if they become a Christian. Please help the Christians there to not get hurt or killed and to have more bibles to give to the bad guys so they can become Christians and be happy." It was really sweet. Then, when we were all done praying, she told me to remind her to pray for persecuted Christians every night before bed! Then she talked about deciding whether to give money to the Christians there (via VOM) or spending it on toys instead, and she would choose "dying Christians". She had several different scenarios that were all similar, and each time she said she would choose to help her brothers and sisters who were being persecuted and also help get bibles to the anti-Christians there.

I just love how she is so unselfish. She genuinely wants to help others and to tell others about Jesus. She has said several times that she wants to be a doctor. After reading this, she now wants to be a missionary, and then she got very excited when I told her she can do both! :) And it really wouldn't surprise me a bit if she does. We would be proud.

Jonathan during this whole time was in deep thought. He sat on the other side of the room but was still praying with us (not outloud, but head bowed & eyes closed). I could tell he was in deep thought. I may discuss this with him more tomorrow if we get some time alone.

Check out the VOM website, and be sure to support them any way you can!

http://www.persecution.com/

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We've had an interesting Thanksgiving day so far. All is good now, but early, early this morning Jack had another seizure! :( I was still awake, finishing up after baking some yummy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies....my favorite! I was about to head to bed when Jack woke up SCREAMING! I ran to check on him. He was still laying face-down, unable to move, and he had a fever. We just put 2 and 2 together and figured out he must have had another seizure.

So I had to mentally prepare for a long night and very little sleep. :) We were at the ER from about 2am until 5:15 or so, and he didn't get back to sleep until 4:45, just before we checked out, because there were just too many distractions. He has had a cold this past week too, but I thought he was nearly over it when he just developed this nasty cough that sounds really painful. :( So the diagnosis is Acute Bronchitis with a possible (because we didn't actually see it) febrile seizure. He didn't really seem too concerned about this being his 2nd seizure, I guess because it was again caused by a fast-rising temperature. If he hadn't had a fever, they would be much more concerned, I guess.

So we have decided to stay home today. We were a little bummed about it, but it's okay. We're still on for our own Thanksgiving dinner here at our house tomorrow with my mom. We're really looking forward to that! Afterward we plan to decorate for Christmas.

In the meantime, we will just bum around the house, watch football and cartoons, play games, eat those yummy cookies that I was going to take today......and just relax! It has been a trying year for our family, but we still have a lot to be thankful for! God is good!

Vacation - Day 1

I will attempt to get all the pictures together from vacation and blog about one day at a time. Maybe I can get it done that way. :)

We started out leaving in the *afternoon* on Saturday, September 20th. We actually left after Myles' nephew's wedding had already started, and it was 2 hours away! So obviously we missed it, but we still went to visit his brother and their family. It was nice. We hadn't been there in years! We just hung out and relaxed. They have grandkids that are over a lot, so they had plenty of toys for our kids to play with. They offered to let us spend the night. What a blessing! They also invited us to church the next day, but we really needed to get on the road. We were planning to go to the zoo that next morning and then get as many hours on the road as possible.

So I guess there is not much left to say about that day we left, and not many pictures either, but it's a start! LOL! It was SO GREAT to get to sit and relax with *just* Max and Gerri. We had a good time and plan to go back again soon.

Girl Scout "Mommy and Me" campout!

Okay, okay, okay! I'm finally getting to this post.

So last weekend at this time we were on a freezing cold hike in the mountains and on a lake! That wind was cutting! But the scenery was beautiful. Jayla had lots of time to actually get to know some of the other girls and she played some fun games and did a few cool crafts. I was with her the whole time.....she wouldn't have let me leave anyway. :) Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

The theme was polka dots, so here the girls were decorating hankies with fabric paint into dots. They were required to wear something on their head any time we were outside, and most wore a hanky or hat all weekend.
Flag cermony. Jayla is the small one in the blue shirt.

Being silly in bed, trying to wind down the first night.

The girls made pudding in ziplock bags and then had pudding in cones for a snack. They were all being silly in this picture. All of these girls are 1st graders.


All the Daisies and Brownies who went, minus one who was not cooperating with her mom (the Daisies leader), so she stayed behind. Jayla is the one in the front with pink sleeves in between the pink and purple coats.

Our hike out onto the lake. This is the view back toward the cabin.

They used nylon loops to make bracelets, headbands, jumpropes.....Now Jayla is showing her brothers how to make these. :)

Here is the view from the cabin down to the lake.

This was cool. Down the road there was a Boy Scout camp where they had a "ghost town" that they either built or use for projects, we guessed. They also had a huge fort, pirate ship and a castle!





Then we had a bonfire. We were too far away from it to really feel any heat. :(


And then we ended our trip with a few last pictures of our group. We had a great time!

Catching up

Okay, I think this was from two weeks ago. We went to the Lowe's Build-and-Grow kids workshop. Jonathan has been before but I don't think the others have, so it's been a while! I've already signed them up for the December one, which will be gingerbread houses. They look so cute!

In case you can't see the picture very well, you can click to enlarge, but it is Jimmie Johnson's (NASCAR driver) hauler and car. The kids had a blast making them. I was helping Jacob and Jayla both, and we were ahead of Myles and Jonathan for a while! They've really had a lot of fun playing with these. I wish I'd gotten a side picture, but Jonathan took this one and another of them upside down. LOL!
As sad as this may be, I believe this is the only picture I got of Jacob on his birthday! If you look closely you can see that he is standing in Jack's walker and holding it up. That silly kid!
I can't believe he is already four years old! He keeps us in stitches but is still also in that trying stage. He's maturing though, I can see it nearly every day. Just the last couple of days he has eagerly helped clean up his toys and has also shown a lot of kindness to Jayla since she has been feeling a little under the weather. He has been so sweet to her. :)

So for his birthday, we started the evening with a birthday gift scavenger hunt. We wrote clues down that he had to figure out on his own and follow until he reached his gift! He received Cranky the Crane (Thomas the Train toy) the night before, and then for the hunt he tracked down the games of Perfection and Uno and also a pirate dress-up set! He loved that the most, of course! What little boy wouldn't? :) Then we went to his favorite pizza place as a family. It was the same place as last year, and he even got a birthday balloon hat like last year, from the same balloon guy. Afterward, Daddy wanted to take him to pick out a gift from him and he wanted him to choose something that went with Cranky the Crane, so he chose Jeremy the Jet plane with the airport. Now he can connect the two together with the tracks. That is pretty much all we did, but he had a blast and is loving his new toys.

Jonathan lost a third tooth! He has only lost three on the bottom, which is weird to me. I thought number 3 and 4 would be the two on the top! Oh, and when it first came out, I commented on a "pool of blood" and a huge gaping hole, so he called it a 4-star hotel. LOL! I have no idea why he said that, but it was funny, for some weird reason!
I think I'll save the Girl Scout camp for a separate post, and I'll try to get to it in the next few minutes. :)

Cybercocoa

For those cold days when you are out of hot chocolate....

A moment in our lives

Right now we have just finished up breakfast.

Jayla isn't feeling too well, so she is laying down and watching cartoons. She ate breakfast, so I guess that's a good sign!

Jacob is building tracks and bridges with his train tracks. He has had them all over the living room this week. Myles showed him how to use the couch cushions to support a track and build a bridge from the couch to the cushions, so now he uses anything and everything he can find to support a bridge, and they go all around the room!

Jonathan is reading. He has been reading a LOT lately, mostly nature books. He just told me all about how gravity works and about mass. I didn't realize he knew so much about that stuff! LOL! He is also constantly telling me about some kind of animal, where they live, what they eat, etc.

Jack is drumming with a piece of track and standing by the heater (no worries, it is not hot to the touch!). He giggles when he first gets next to it. :) So now we have all four of them fighting over 2 heaters! (sigh) He is also drumming ON Noah's (the turtle) aquarium. He wants to get a closer look but I have it guarded so he won't touch the light. It is indeed hot! He can't reach it though. :)

So that is our little moment of our day. Next we are about to do some cleanup, but I also promised Jacob he could play computer games. If I have time later today, we may make some play-dough. That's always a big hit! I just need to find that "perfect" recipe and the icing coloring.....

Without any formal training in spelling, grammar or handwriting, Jonathan is working on his first "official" comic book. (He has written a story before, but this one is comic book form with lots of pictures and bubbles, etc.) Super-heroes are his passion in life, apparently, that and animals of all kinds (we caught a snake today, in fact). He has created over 20 super heroes and villains. Some are still being developed and some he created a couple of years ago.

So just now, Jonathan got a quick lesson in writing. Daddy was reading his comic book and just *had* to correct him. There really weren't that many errors, but he spelled two words wrong ('arownd' and 'thru'....they look right, at least!) and was hyphenating words incorrectly. We didn't mention the misspelled words. In about 2 minutes though (maybe less), he learned about syllables and hyphenating and correctly hyphenated about 5 words! He's a quick learner, especially since we didn't push it on him but waited until he was ready! Now it will stick, and he doesn't feel horrible for doing it wrong! :)

Jayla's room

We (including the kids) have all been working VERY hard in our house for the last couple of months. It has actually felt like we're moving! Myles' overtime will not last too much longer, so we are taking advantage of the "extra" money while we can. Specifically, for the last two weeks, we have been working on the bedrooms and laundry. They are almost all done!!! :)

We had some clutter that is nearly gone, and we have also finally given Jayla her own bedroom. She has been needing more privacy for a while, but we only have a two-bedroom house, so the kids were all sharing for a while. The 2nd bedroom is small and has been used for a variety of things over the years, but we finally decided to clear it all out and make it into her bedroom. She LOVES it!

Fortunately, the boys are able to sleep (on bunk beds) in the 2nd living room, so they do have their own space, just not as much privacy. We plan to (hopefully next year) turn the "middle room" into a brand new kitchen and then convert the current kitchen into a 3rd bedroom. Both of those changes will increase the value of our home immensely! Then we plan to move! :)

ANYWAY!

Here is a glimpse of Jayla's room. I haven't taken any other pictures yet, but this is a start.
She has a little nook in the corner that has a shelf/desk, but we thought it might be nice to hide it with a curtain, so last week we bought some. She also needed some storage for her toys. These little plastic drawers are perfect, and she loves the color! The windows will have matching curtains soon, but just this little setup right here was about $50! Yikes! So we just did the corner for now. We also plan to paint her walls a light yellow and get her a new twin bed (she currently has a full size and it takes up way too much room). She will likely get the bed this week. I think we already have the paint, but I don't think it will get done before Thanksgiving. It is not a priority over the clutter and other things! :)