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!