A BIG task...

Ok, so we have been putting it off for too long and yesterday we finally faced it head on....

THE FISH TANK! It was NASTY!!! I have to say, I was pretty proud of Joel, he actually got his hands dirty and helped us out. Joel and my job was to clean the rocks that were on the bottom of the fish tank. I told him that there are probably people out in the world somewhere that pay LOTS of money to have this done to their skin and we get to do it for free:)

Cleaning the fish tank is always an all day task. But we got it done. After we put Nemo back into the fish tank we took a ride of "Fishy Business" and 3 older kids got to pick out 3 new fishes. Jesse got to pick out a sucker fish- one that eats the skum. He named him Batman. Riley picked out a gold fish- it is white with a orange head and she named her Kit after Kit Kittredge. Then Joel picked out another goldfish and named him George-don't really know where he got that name from. They had such a good time picking them out.

Here we go!!!

Ohhh, this is so much fun!

Happy New Year!

Christmas Morning

Ok, so it has been FOREVER since I have posted anything. I am hoping things will slow down again and I can get into some kind of routine. A lot of things have been going on this month. We started out with Joel turning 9. Can you believe it? His last year before the double digits. WOW! I believe he had an amazing birthday. He got a star Planetarium for his birthday. It is really cool. You turn it on in a dark room and you can see all the stars. It also came with a disk that you can put on the computer, it looks a lot like Google earth except for stars. Then 2 weeks later, it was Terry's birthday. I had been saving my money that I have been making at church and got him a blue ray DVD player. As you can imagine (if you know Terry at all) he is very excited about it. They actually had a great "special" at Walmart if you bought this DVD player it came with a $50 gift certificate- HELLO Christmas present!!! So he went and bought a Blue Ray disk with that and a couple of other things. I got really spoiled too. He got me a new tea kettle and then when I opened it had an IPod touch in it. I could not believe it. I really didn't think I was going to get that:) I LOVE IT:) As for the kids, Joel got a leggo set; The Hobbit movie and a rock tumbler (which he loves). Riley finally got a piggy bank; The Kit Kittredge Movie and the Kit Kittredge chapter books. She is really starting to enjoy the whole American Girl thing. Jesse also got a piggy bank; a playmobile set and the Leggo Batman Wii game. and finally Josiah, he got a ball set; a new truck and a Wall-e plate, cup and bowl set. They had a good time:)

Thanksgiving Fun!

I am a TEENAGER!

WOW, what a weekend. We decided to go to Alabama to visit my sister and her family. My poor sister had bronchitis so we really didn't see her all that much. She could hardly talk or breath. But we still had fun. The Sunday before Thanksgiving was my nephew's birthday, he turned 13 years old!!! NO WAY, I still remember when he was born. Before I know it, Joel will be 13!

On Thanksgiving morning we woke up at 5:15am to the sound of Joel being sick! Poor guy, he was crying on the toilet saying "Now we have to go home"! I told him, we were not going anywhere with him being sick. Luckily like everybody else who have gotten sick in our family with this stomach flu, it only lasted a day. He was sad that he didn't get to eat the turkey dinner (just wait till I tell you that cooking story!!) but the next day he was pretty much back to normal.

Have you met my new friend, Mr. Bucket!
So, Rich (my brother in law) took on the job of cooking the turkey. When it was time to take the bird out of the oven, there was a problem! The oven LOCKED UP! The top heating element broke and would not turn off. So the oven thought it was in the "self-cleaning" mode and locked itself up. We could not open the oven. Rich even tried to turn the breaker off but it still would not open. Rich even pulled out the manuel to see if there was a "secret" to it. But in the end, we just had to wait for the oven to cool down for it to unlock.

If you look really close, you will see th "LOCK" light under the time.

Its all Greek to me!

"Maybe if I push here..."

The Final result!Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson brought a ham too. But I have to say, the turkey really was not bad after you scraped the "chard" off!!

After dinner the girls got to sing some of the songs they learned at school. They did a great job. Riley also got to join them.

Christopher even got into it!
Taylor being silly! Josiah "walking" Tom!
The Day after Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving...

Just wanted to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving. We are getting ready to go to Alabama for the weekend, we will be back on Saturday. I am excited to be going, although my sister is sick with bronchitis. So please pray that we will not get it!

Last night Tammy came over to the house and we made our little Pilgrim Hats. We had so much fun. I made them for Joel and Riley's class. I actually went to Riley's class this afternoon and I have to say, they all loved them (I think).

Here are just some "other" pictures of the family:) Enjoy!

Josiah helping decorate the church.

"Just me and my Dad".

Future Daughter-In-Law?

OK, so this is Caroline. Jesse has been telling me for the past two years or so that he is going to marry Caroline:) I love this picture, it was taken this past summer at our VBS. I just found it again and just had to share! They make a beautiful couple, don't you think?

Just the girls...

(L to R): Emily; Mari;Myself; Billie; Sheri.

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, I started this bible study with some friends a couple of months ago. We meet every Tuesday night at 7pm. Well, we finished the book last week. So last night for our meeting we decided to go out to dinner. We went to Olive Garden. It was so much fun:) We had a blast. I have to say, I was proud of myself because I remembered my camera. So after dinner we asked our waiter to take a picture of our table. The funny thing is, we go out as a group just to have some "away time" from our kids and what do we talk about the majority of the time???? our KIDS! God has blessed all of these ladies with some beautiful children and I guess each one of us can't stop talking about them. It was fun:) Here are some pictures that Mari took with the camera. She is a very sneaky lady, taking the camera from me so she is not in any of the pictures. I did end up taking one of her with Billie.
Thanks ladies for a great night:)

Myself and Sheri.

Billie & Mari

Just some pictures from dinner...

Last night while I was getting ready to go on a "girl's night out" (see post above), Terry was having dinner with the kids and decided to take some fun pictures. They were having a blast. I don't know what all they were doing, but they were loud! But wow, look at these beautiful faces! God has blessed me with a beautiful family.

Nesting?

OK, so I know I am NOT pregnant but for some reason I want to organize. So I started with my pantry. I have been wanting to do it for so long. It is always such a mess and hard to find anything in it. I got my handy-dandy label maker out (which I LOVE) and started. I guess you can say, I went a little over board. But hey, it looks GREAT! See for yourself.

Josiah had fun. He got to throw all the trash away in the trash. That is his new thing. He loves to go to the kitchen (that is the only time he is allowed in the kitchen) and throw trash away. So when I was almost done, I think HE was about done too. While I was taking these pictures (standing on the chair) he was grabbing my legs going "mama, mama, mama", as you can see in the picture below:)
Here are some other pictures from the past couple of days. Yesterday, after I dropped Jesse off at school Josiah fell asleep in the car and he actually kept sleeping when I got him out of his car seat. So when I got inside, I layed him on the couch and he stayed there for about 15 minutes and then I decided to wake him up because other wise he would not have taken a nap later, when I REALLY wanted him to take a nap. I did take some great pictures of him though. It actually looks like he has his eyes open in some of the pictures.

In this next picture, he has found my keys (still in the door) and started pushing the button, locking my door. He loves doing that, because the van honks when it does that.

This actually got me in trouble last week. I was over at Mari's house picking something up. And her kids had climbed into my van (the doors were still open) while I was holding Josiah. Well, he was playing with my keys pushing the button. So after a few minutes I layed my keys in the driver seat, buckled Josiah in and closed the door. RIGHT when I closed it I noticed my keys in my seat....yes, you guessed it. I locked my child in the car. Luckily Donovan had given him a toy so he was a happy camper. So I had to call Terry and tell him to come to Mari's house and unlock the car. He was done with class so he got in the truck and came right over. Luckily the weather was nice and cool so I didn't have to worry about getting over heated. Wow, hopefully that will never happen again:)

"What just happened"?

He has this look of "Why am I in here all by myself"?
Yup, there are my keys. In the driver seat next to the poppy seeds.

Thanks Mari for taking the pictures!