Week in review

We decided to have a marshmallow roast in the back yard a couple of weeks ago. The kids had so much fun. It was cold, but we got all bundled up and made hot chocolate and sat by the fire. After we were done, Riley got to have a sleep over at Lilli's. What fun that is. The next morning Lilli and Tammy came over for breakfast. Terry made pancakes and bacon. It was very good. Thanks Terry:)

Our Josiah is getting so big. He has figured out what coloring is. He loves to sit at the table with Riley while she is coloring. So the other day I just had to take some pictures of him coloring. He is really growing up fast. He is 19 months now and also has a big vocabulary now. He loves to walk around the house calling everybodies names, especially the kids.

The Finished Product!

So while Riley and Josiah were coloring in the dining room, Joel, Jesse and Joel's friend Brandon were playing in their bedroom with they lego's. Now that Jesse has his own Lego's he has been building a lot. On Friday (there was no school for the kids) and he played with his lego's all day long.

Now this weekend was a big weekend for the kids. Their uncle Kerry moved right across the street from our subdivision. They are so excited, especially Joel. We can walk over to his house anytime we wanted to. Uncle Kerry has already watched them for us:) We had to go pick up Joel's birthday picture from the mall and he offered to watch them for us. We were nice to him and took Josiah with us, just in case he needed a diaper change. (Hey, we want him to watch them again for us!) So after we got home, we got in the van (I know, we should have walked but it was COLD!) and went to see his appartment. It is pretty nice, except for the smell in his refrigerator/freezer. It is pretty bad. Anybody have any tips on how to get an AWFUL smell out of the refrigerator/freezer? I mean it is BAD!! I believe he said that there is an Arm and Hammer box in there but that is just not going to do it. Any ideas... I welcome them.

Then today after church we invited Callie over for lunch. We like to invite her over for lunch after church, especially on the 3rd Sunday of each month because we do nursery together with her. But today was also her birthday. So we stopped at the Pig and got some fried chicken with some green beans and broccoli salad (which not good at all). And the kids also wanted me to get a cake. So after lunch we found some cake candles, put them on the cake and sang happy birthday to her. We love you, Mrs. Callie and hope you had a nice lunch:)

Dank Je Wel, Hooijmans Familie:)

We got a nice surprise in the mail yesterday. A box full of Christmas presents from my sister in NL. It was so nice. The kids were so excited. Each present was individually wrapped so they got to have Christmas all over again. Riley got a set of earrings;necklace and a ring. Joel got a PJ set (I think it is a pj set) with a name of a Dutch soccer team on it- which I believe my nephew probably picked out, right Marjolein??? Jesse got a new set of "dutch" perler beads (bet you didn't know those existed, LorriEllen??) and Josiah got a puzzle book. They all loved it.

Heel erg bedankt Marjolein. De kinderen vinden ze allemaal heel leuk. Alleen Joel zijn broek is te groot- hij heeft helemaal geen buik. Maar hij is zelfs met zijn shirt naar school gegaan vandaag:)

Ik heb Lilli haar kado nog niet gegeven maar dat zal ik denk ik vanavond wel doen als haar ouders thuis zijn.

Heel veel liefs aan iedereen. En geef iedereen a "BIG HUG".

Love You,

Pauline

So this morning while Joel and Riley were at school, Jesse wanted to work on his perler beads. So we make the crocodile. He did it all by himself. I just helped him count the beads and showed him where some of them would go. It is hard!

Poor Josiah, now that school has started again he has to get used to getting up early again. He got his blanket out and his "Gus-Gus" and just layed on the floor.

Christmas Traditions...

I just wanted to share some of our Christmas traditions we have started around the Rogers' Neighborhood. First we do the Advent Calendar. We found one a few years ago at the Family Christian book store and it is a great one. The kids each take turns opening the door and hanging up the "figuring". This year we added a bit of a surprise to it by adding a chocolate in each door. They had fun with that:)

Another tradition we do is light the Advent Calendar. Again, the kids each take a turn lighting it and then Terry asks one of the kids a question about Advent or the Christmas story.This is another activity the kids really enjoy.

And then finally we do the "Indescribable Gift". This is a "gift" under the tree with a "slit" in it and the kids (and parents) can put a note or picture in it to describe His "idescribable Gift". The kids love working on that! They put pictures and sentences in it. It is really cool to see what they see in God's love:) Terry actually made a little power point slide show and I'll see if I can post it on here. It was really cool. On Christmas morning this is the first gift we open and read out loud all the notes that are inside.

So, here are the Rogers' Christmas tradions. I hope this might give you some ideas. If you have any traditions that you do with your family, I would love to hear about it. Leave me a message or email me.

Happy NEW YEAR!!

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!