Today has been filled with family, church, a Christmas gathering, and a birthday! Maddie turned 15 today and it just seemed right to make this my photo of the day. She’s turning into such a lovely lady and I’m super proud of her. I love you, Maddie!
Category: 2013 in Photos
Three Guys in a Tractor
We arrived at the farm in Pike County, IL last night and today has been a flurry of farm fun for the boys. It’s been super fun to watch our extended family on both sides embrace the boys as part of our family for this season of time and be so willing to give them all the love and experiences they give our own.
Truly, this is foster grandparenting at its finest.
This Cutie. I love her.
Today has been a day of illness and recovery in varying degrees for different members of my family. So. I have no photos from today, but I do have this really great one of Millie I took a few days ago and I really wanted to share it. So here you go.
I love this girl. Super duper much.
Christmas Concert
The girls sang in one of four December concert events this month with the Canterbury Youth Chorus. Nice job, ladies!
Jamberry Nail Wraps!
One berry, two berry, pick me a blueberry…
I did something this week I thought I’d never do: I signed on as an independent consultant with a sales company. It started off as an innocent “think I’ll host a party and try to earn some free Jamberry nail wraps” and then I saw how everyone was loving them and how the wraps basically sold themselves and I thought, “Hmmm, why not try this myself?” So I signed up.
Since last Monday I’ve booked three online Facebook Jamberry parties and have solid leads for three others (two in-home parties and another Facebook party). Most of the attendees have never heard of Jamberry before and they all seem pretty excited to learn more. And I’m happy to tell them.
My consultant kit arrived tonight and I’m now ready to send out samples! If you are interested in checking Jamberry out for yourself and want me to send you a sample, just let me know! Or if you’d like to host an online party for yourself as a way to earn hostess credit, I’m happy to help you with that too. Or if you are local to Oklahoma City or Tulsa and would like to do an in-house party, we can arrange that as well. Or if you just want to place a retail order without messing with a party at all, you can certainly do that as well.
Or if being on the cutting edge of a sales company that doesn’t have a consultant on every block already is appealing to you, I can tell you more about that as well!
Clearly I’ve lost my marbles here and have gone completely crazy. But I love Jamberry and I think you will too. I’d love the chance to show you more!
So that’s that. I now have some samples to pop in the mail. *grin*
Peaches the Christmas Dog
Oh, Peaches, you are such a poser.
Snow Day!
We had a family snow day today and I will confess: At 8:30 this morning I said, “Only 12 hours to go until bedtime!” because…*cough*…two little boys pent up in the house all day, save for a few forays into the snow is a recipe for disaster.
We made it, though. We had one outside play time in the morning, followed by my new snow day tradition of a big brunch/lunch of sausage egg casserole and cinnamon rolls, then naps, then an afternoon play time, lots of Lego playing, and a lot of Wild Kratts. And I do mean a LOT of Wild Kratts.
Then we hauled them all over to McDonalds for the simple fact that they have an indoor play place and weren’t crowded tonight. They burned off some steam there and we headed home for bedtime.
Whew.
And we get to repeat a lot of this tomorrow, sans the evening McDonalds. Here’s hoping we make it.
Sorry!
Katie’s weekly participation in a reading clinic through the University of Oklahoma came to a close tonight with a Reader’s Theater presentation and a parent/teacher conference. At first it was just going to be me attending like I do every Monday, but then Millie decided to come. I thought we’d have some lag-time, so we brought Sorry! with us. As it turned out, due to a series of unfortunate traffic issues, I was unable to get Maddie and Chloe to their speech & debate club on time, so they ended up having to skip that and go with us to the Reader’s Theater. I think they wanted to support Katie anyway. Also, it turned out that there was no lag-time and I didn’t get to play. But I was glad we brought the game because while I was in the parent/teacher conference, the other girls did play. So. Good decision there.
Also, I think it’s all kinds of awesome that the last time my kids played they filled in the missing pieces with colored counting bears. It ended up being perfect because we have colored counting bears in all the Sorry! colors and there’s just something special about getting put back to start by a a snarky smiling bear.
Book Christmas Tree
It’s a little short and squatty, but I’m still super happy with my Christmas tree made from books. I built it and tore it down and re-built it and tore it down and re-built it one more time. In the end, I could have kept at it because I think I know what I really want to do to get it to look the way I want it to, but I decided to let it go. And the more I see it the more I like it. Ah, December, you no longer scare me. Come on in, we’re waiting for you.
A Return to Sabbath Rest and Meals
I am possibly the worst technology offender in my house. On one hand, I don’t feel like I’m as dependent upon it as I probably am; on the other hand, I know I utilize it far more than I really need to. As we came home from our family Thanksgiving yesterday, I woke up this morning feeling like I could very well lose the day. I could get sucked into a waste land of Facebook and Pinterest and the like and give in to the perpetual, “Can we watch another movie?” request by any one of six kids in this house.
And in truth, we did do a fair amount of that this morning. But sometime before lunch I decided: We needed to return to our old tradition of taking a media/electronics fast from 5pm Saturday to 5pm Sunday and bring back the intentionality of a thought-filled meal time. Now then, I didn’t plan this well in advance and we had a lot of chili leftover from last night’s dinner, so I didn’t stress over the meal. I simply set the table as nice as I could for a chili supper and we gathered around to eat, pray, and read from the Bible together. And I discovered that really it isn’t the meal that sets the tone so much as it’s the intentionality that does. Chili on china communicates something far different that does chili served in a paper bowl.
I’m writing this post on Sunday night, so our media fast has come to an end for this weekend. It was a fairly fascinating exercise. Our kids played better together than they had in a long time. I was primarily concerned about the boys, but they just followed our lead and didn’t mind. The girls played Legos with them and they pulled out cards for some Nerts. Chloe did some extra baking. The girls decorated the Christmas tree. We read some books. I reorganized both the fridge and the pantry. Craig reorganized his study area and we shuffled around a lot of books. We even fired up our ancient victrola for a bit.
Oh, and we got a lot more sleep.
It shouldn’t surprise me like it does. I’m so resistant to pulling back and doing this, yet when we do, the blessings of efficiency and peace and rest and enjoyment just abound. It just so happened that this was also the first weekend of advent, but that wasn’t the driving force behind this decision earlier in the day – I just took one look at the calendar and realized our whole family desperately needs this time.
And so here we go. We are making an attempt to return to our weekly Sabbath meal and technology fast. Since our church meets at 5pm on Sunday nights, I think I may propose the fast go from 7pm Saturday to 7pm Sunday, or I could just suck it up and do a 26 hour fast. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…
At any rate, it was a lovely way to bid adieu to November and tip our hat in the direction of December. I already have our meal for next weekend planned and I’m looking forward to it already.
Half-Pint House 