Christmas Snapshots 2007

 

 

Haley- 4 yrs. old

Jenna- 11 yrs old

Mikayla- 7 yrs. old

Christmas Letter 2007

Merry Christmas One and All!

I want to admit that this will be a SHORT Christmas letter. But...if you want to look at the every day details of our lives you are welcome. All you have to do is scroll down to the "Archives" section in the right hand column and you can look month by month at our lives.

In July/August we took a FANTASTIC vacation to British Columbia Canada, and Yellowstone and a zillion other places in between! This was a major highlight of our year. We hiked in the Badlands of South Dakota, and visited Mount Rushmore. It was a 30 hour trip, ONE WAY! But a great time!!! We have decided that driving that long in a car really brings us all together. Besides being "attacked" by a baby chipmunk it was great trip! :) We are already planning our next vacation for this summer! Who knows where we will show up next!

Here are the highlights of the year person by person.

Jeff: Continues to sell Real Estate, although to a somewhat lesser degree, as the church begins to take off. We had our first double service ever last week, with 150 in attendance. Jeff works incredibly hard for the family and rarely has any down time.

Amy: I am still teaching 4th grade at Heritage Christian School and between being a mom, pastors wife, wife and full-time teacher I sometimes do not think that I can go on much longer!! But, I love every aspect of my life and couldn't give any of it up! But it sure does take its toll.

Jenna: She is the busiest one of us all as a 5th grader! She is really learning time management as she has school, basketball, cheerleading, guitar and saxaphone all to tend to. Oh, yeah, homework too! Somehow she gets very good grades also. She is such a young lady now, and had her first babysitting job last weekend. (Besides watching her sisters)

Mikayla- like I talked about in my previouse post, she turned 7 today! She is excelling in first grade and reads like the wind. She has a very funny sense of humor and she loves to keep Haley laughing. She enjoys ballet, tap and jazz classes.

Haley- Haley is also in school. She attends Heritage 5 days/week from 8:30-1:30 in Pre-K class. She does awesome and is learning amazing things for her young age. After school she gets picked up by different people and babysat until Mom can pick her up after my work day. She loves the Disney Princesses and plans on decorating her new room with the Princesses.

I know this was pretty short, but the highlights (and lowlights) are all documented in my blog, in great detail. I invite you to catch up on our lives. If you do not want to look at the past, I invite you to continue to enjoy the future with us. I know many of you are our faithful blog readers who we feel are a part of our lives because of this blog. We wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year. May yours be Merry and Bright!

If any of you have lost our phone or email or house address just click on the "Comments" section and we can send that to you. We look forward to hearing from you!

Love to you all!

Happy Birthday Mikayla

My precious daughter turned 7 today! Amazing! I couldn't ask for a better daughter, she is loving, kind, caring and very funny.

We had planned to pick up a few friends tonight and take them putt-putting and then pizza but the news predicted a bad storm tonight. We changed the party from 5 p.m. to noon, and we are glad we did, as the storm rages outside. We are to get anywhere from 6-8 inches tonight. At every t.v. commercial Jeff turns it to the weather channel and the big joke is that nothing has changed the last 15 times he's watched it, but he still watches it like he's never heard it before! Every time we look outside we (My sister and I) like to act like we are soooo surprised that it is storming, like it has caught us completely by surprise.

Yes, my sister and her family are here. They came in last night, late. They will be here until Wed. It has been wonderful because they have been able to celebrate every birthday with Mikayla they always come to Iowa for Christmas.

Here are some things you should know about Mikayla:

Her favorite food: Watermelon Sherbet Ice-cream- from the mall.
Her favorite subject in 1st grade is Math and Science.
She loves Hannah Montana and plans to decorate her room in H.M. paraphanalia (sp?) when we move to our new house. Her favorite Bible story is: Jesus dieing on the cross because "he took our sins away."

p.s. the middle picture is of Mik taking a picture (up close) of grandpa with her new Hannah Montana digital camera that grandma and grandpa had just given her. The picture to the left, is her holding her 7 year old Precious Moments figurine. Grandma buys one for her every year. The bottom middle picture was the hit of the party. She LOVES the crane game that you see at arcades etc. We never let her play. I found a miniature version of the game that has candy inside. It is really cute and the kids loved it!

Christmas Letter 2007

FOR THOSE OF YOU WAITING FOR MY CHRISTMAS LETTER...IT WILL BE POSTED ON FRIDAY NIGHT!!!! School gets out Friday afternoon and so I will have time to reflect on the past year then. For those of you new to my blog, please feel free to browse aroundin my "Archives."

Tune Back In!

p.s. Jenna has her second basketball game tonight at home. She had her first away Monday night. They got killed like 10-42. Most of her team is 5th graders that have never played before! It's going to be a long season! I pity the coach! She also cheers at her first game tonight! She cheers at 2 boys games, after her game. She won't be done cheering until about 7:30!

Christmas program

These are some pictures of our Christmas program practice. The program went very well. Some people said it was the best Christmas program that they've ever been too, which blows my mind. God definatley blessed it, that's for sure! The angels looked so cute, they had a little button where when they held on to it their wings twinkled, and during the acutal program it was really dark,(we had a spotlight), so it looked really cute. There was one more little angel, she is 3 ,but had to leave before this picture was taken. She is so cute, she really looks like an angel in real life. Also, right after this picture was taken, Mikayla fell off her perch. They are standing on a table. Jeff and I laughed and laughed that one of our angels "fell from grace!" She even knocked the whole wall of the set down! Luckily she wasn't hurt and the set was fixed easily. That's our Mikayla!
This is Mary and Joseph in the manger at Bethleham. Jenna was Mary. We had originally planned on Mary to actually ride in on a live donkey, but the owners of the donkey got scared that it wouldn't be tame enough. Maybe next year!

This past weekend was so busy. On Saturday we had Christmas program practice at church. That was from 10-noon, then Haley had a party at noon, (which she was late for). I dropped Haley off at her party and then had to go and buy a present to take back to the party. I ran to Wal-Mart quickly got a present and took it back to the party. (Luckily I know that mother well, and she understood how frazzled I was!) I then went back to the church for another couple hours to help ready things for the program. I then went and picked up Mikayla who was at a church friends house, then went and got Haley. We went home...oh actually we dropped off a birthday party invitation off at a little girls house for Mikayla's party this Sat. and in the driveway Haley and I both wiped out on the ice!!! So...then we went home, we were home for about 20 mins. and Haley and Mik got picked up to go to a movie with some church friends...I could go on and on and talk about how I had to get Jenna home from mall so she could babysit (her first job!!!) and then Jeff and I had a dinner meeting with Jeff's pastoral coach, and our life coach, from Indiana. All in all...by the time Haley and Mik got into bed that night they were both crying because they were exhausted!!! Jeff and I were too!

Sunday was busy too. We had our first ever 2 service Sunday!!! We had sent out mailers into the community to advertise our service. We had a 9:30 and an 11:00 service. Between both services there were 150 people!!!!!!!!! Our best ever!!! We had several new families and even went out to eat with one of them afterwards, we didn't get home until 3:00! Haley and Mikayla and Mik's friend Cole played outside in the snow from 3-5, and it was cold, but I couldn't get them to come inside. Oh well, it was peaceful inside. I even took a nap.

Even though it was such a busy weekend, we are really pumped about our Sunday service! 150!!! Wow!!! That is the best service we've ever had. Can you believe we have almost been here 7 years? We moved when Mik was about 6 weeks old, and she will turn 7 in 4 days! Unbelievable! It has been such a journey! A hard journey, but a worthwhile one.

p.s. Christmas cards might be late, but you'll get them! Our Christmas letter will be posted on this blog this year. So soon, I will have a year recap on here.

Winter Wonderland

Mikayla and Haley shovel the snow (ice) off the driveway, the frozen berries in our backyard. Click on the berries to make the picture large, they are really beautiful.

Here are our basement walls.

SNOW DAY!

Well, it should actually be called an "Ice Day." We had an inch of ice on Monday night so school was cancelled on Tuesday.

I was called at 5:30 a.m. to be informed of the day off from work. Luckily I was able to go back to sleep until the girls woke me around 7:30. On Monday afternoon I had anticipated a snow day for Tuesday so I gathered up all my Christmas recipes and went to the store with a long list, after the girls' dance lessons. I made 10 different recipes between Monday night and Tuesday. (2 on Mon. night and 8 on Tues.) I had 2 recipes going at once. I froze them all for the holiday season.

I was exhausted from doing that, and helping the girls in and out of their snowsuits etc. during the baking, and stopping to get them lunch and doing this and that also...that after my last recipe was done (toffee) I laid down to rest for while. Haley climbed up with me and fell asleep. After about an hour I got her up and declared to all the girls, "It's time to put on your Christmas dresses, I am taking you out in the snow by that beautiful ice covered tree and taking your Christmas picture." Amidst lots of grumbling and complaining to have to get out of their pj's on a snow day, (and comb their hair, and have their hair curled etc.) we traipsed outside. It was beautiful! There is a bush with berries on it that was covered in ice. BEAUTIFUL! I snapped several pictures of them, (no they didn't have coats on!- so I told them to try and not LOOK cold!) I down-loaded them, made a collage of them with a background of the berries, sent them via email to Wal-mart, had them made into cards and wa-la, there's my Christmas cards, ready to be picked up today! I also chose the best one to be made into 8x10's, 4x6's, 5x7's and wallets to pass out. I am quite pleased with myself! :) I can't include any pictures in my blog today or that would give away my Christmas cards!

After that was done I made a pot of chili for supper, and finished up the many dishes etc., did laundry, got the girls ready for bed, got a bunch of stuff ready to take to Goodwill, then went to bed!

It was a very productive day, but tiring. I did not get any presents wrapped or any school work done, 2 things I also needed to do.

I was hoping for a delay today of school but no, the roads were clear and so we were off and running, out the door, at 7:15.

Tonight we are taking supper to Troy, Angela, and Baby William. (previous entry) I have a turkey breast in the crockpot. Jenna has guitar lessons, cheerleading and basketball practice today after school, and they all overlap. Soooo I haven't quite figured out how to handle all that. I will probably end up cancelling her guitar lessons since that isn't a team effort and others aren't counting on her to be at practice. Still don't know how she will be at 2 places at once though.

Update on the house, we have the basement walls poured now, but the ice storm has slowed us down. We are hoping they can pour the basement floor, and do the plumbing yet this week, but we'll see. There isn't supposed to be anymore precip.

Hope you all have a great rest of the week.

New Baby

Our dear friends, Troy and Angela, had their baby yesterday morning. His name is William and he is CUTE!! We enjoyed going and holding him last night.

I couldn't let this precious moment in Jeff's life go by without sharing it with you. Jenna has started cheerleading, and Jeff has had fun making up cheers. She got her uniform (skirt) yesterday and so he tried it on so he could do his cheers in an official way. We laughed quite hard. Look at those legs!!! :)