busy days...

things have been crazy busy around here lately. too much so i must add!! i am ready for life to find a rhythm and stick with it. wishful thinking- i know.

we had originally planned to spend our thanksgiving at disneyland but with the five month layoff period we ended up staying here. there are a few things in life that i tend to hold sacred and i must say that the thanksgiving meal is one of them. it was so hard to "settle" for other people's food this year. don't get me wrong the food tasted fine- it just wasn't how my family does things. for instance i grew up with cornbread dressing and giblet gravy. none of that this year. i grew up with asparagus. not this year. again, i will say that the food was good just different. the kids and i did however get to make the pecan pie which turned out fabulous!
something else about not hosting thanksgiving is we didn't have any leftovers. i totally missed the late evening sliced turkey on white bread. because we didn't have turkey leftovers i cooked a turkey for our family. i can remember loving the leg of a turkey when i was a kid and sure enough our kids totally loved the legs. even anna needed something with a bone in it so she could be like the big kids.

it doesn't rain here too terribly often but when it does come it can be almost as exciting as snow in houston. the kids have always enjoyed playing in the rain and so this time they again asked and i said yes. i grabbed the camera so i could capture the fun.




if you cannot understand what daphne says in the beginning of the video she says, "thank you God for the rain!" i just love that she was praising Him in the midst of her play. oh how i pray she would praise Him in all things all her days.

my "no no no" at the end of the video was because they started knocking on the neighbors garage door rather loudly!

let's see...once thanksgiving was over we got out the Christmas decorations and got right to it. the kids once again made decorating the tree tons of fun! i loved listening to them try to tell the stories of each of the ornaments. our sweet family tree is looking exactly as i had once hoped- full of handmade angels with class picture faces, hand prints and glitter everywhere. i think next year will need a bigger tree so we can fit all these little treasures on the branches!


we've already made lots of Christmas candy, a yearly tradition. we made chocolate covered cherries, caramels, peanut butter & marshmallow fudge, peanut brittle and i think i will make some divinity today.
now that all of those things were done we celebrated henry's 7th birthday. i cannot believe that he is seven. i have been so thankful for this little boy God blessed us with who gave us the names, Mom and Dad.

for his birthday party we had a "messy" party! we had pizza, the kids made their own ice cream sundaes with whip cream and tons of toppings. but the grand finale of the party was the 72 cans of silly string that those kids went nuts with!! it was a blast!!
**note the ground covered in silly string behind henry!

miss ramey has finally weighed in at 13lbs!! she is doing fabulous and even started eating some cereal in the last couple of weeks. she is sleeping through the night, talking up a storm and working so hard to strengthen her little leg muscles. i am sure that in no time she will be crawling all over the place and we will be in for it!!
i guess that is the quick update as of late. like i said- life has been crazy busy!

at this time of year i can quickly loose sight of what we are celebrating. this year however it is my prayer for myself and for my family that we would not get caught up in the hustle and bustle of commercialized Christmas but rather have a growing excitement as we approach the birthday celebration of Jesus!

Lord, i pray that you would captivate my mind and heart in such a way this season that my eyes would be fixed on you. thank you for your Word that has revealed your son, my savior's, coming since the very beginning and thank you Lord for giving a far greater gift than anything we will give or receive this year.

Merry Christmas to all of you!! For any of you who may not have received a Christmas card from us this year please know that you are not the only one...i under ordered by a huge margin this year!! here are some of the pics from our attempts at a Christmas card...enjoy!!