Foot Orange?

The other day I was telling Gracie about Navel Oranges. I explained how the one part of them looks like our belly buttons and she thought that was really neat. So the next day she comes up to me and asks, "Can I have a foot orange?" I asked her what that meant and she said, "I like the orange that is shaped like a foot". So Matt and I took some pictures with her and the foot orange to see what it looked like.

Belly Button?
Foot?

What do you all think, is it a foot orange or a belly button orange?

My Snowglobes

I decided when we first got married that I wanted to collect 1 new snowglobe each year... well I guess word got out and here is my collection!We've been married 8 years, and I have a few more snowglobes than that! I always get 2 at JCPenny the day after Thanksgiving, so each of my kids has those.

Of course there is our Little Drummer Boy. Given to us by a friend the Christmas Aaron was 18 months old, and loved to sing the "rum pa pum pum". That's a memory we'll never forget!

Christmas Decorating

Today we were finally allowed to decorate for Christmas, burn my Christmas candles, and play Christmas music. Matt and I decided that out of respect to the turkey, we wouldn't do anything Christmasy until after Thanksgiving! This blog will be picture filled, but enjoy!Aaron actually put our tree together this year. Here he is with the finished tree!!

Gracie was in charge of setting up our Nativity! She did a pretty good job, just lining them all up!

Matt and the kids decorating the tree

Still just decorating, Gracie decorated about a foot square and Aaron decorated one side, so we had to fill in the rest!

Sneakers helping out!

We were playing Christmas music and Gracie was dancing while she decorated the tree!

More dancing!

Snuggling on the couch next to the finished tree.

Now Matt is outside, being so very nice to me, by putting up our Christmas lights!!

Thanksgiving card

Aaron made some Thanksgiving cards for a few of us this year, and this card was his first attempt. I made him stop and not make any more cards about eating the Turkey.

It starts out about the turkey being cooked, then he goes on to have a conversation between the turkey and the person going to eat him. Here's how he read it to me:

Turkey: "Help I'm being cooked"
Person eating turkey: "You are"

Turkey: "Yes"

Person eating turkey: "Ya" (yay)

Person eating turkey: "I'll eat you"

So I had to put a stop to that, and the rest of his cards just said "Happy Thanksgiving, Love Aaron." Those were much better to give out on Thanksgiving.

Goats

Camp has been an experimental grounds for new ways to prevent fires in our forests, and just large areas of property. There is a couple who brought 40ish goats to camp and put up an electric fence to keep them in and coyotes out. It's been really neat for our kids. We actually had the goats behind our house for 4 or 5 days a few weeks ago. They've moved around camp, and cleared so much of the underbrush. I of course didn't take any pictures of the goats at our house, but I took the kids to where the goats are now, and grabbed a few shots so we could always remember that time we had 40 goats 10 feet from our house!

Christmas Picture

I found out about an art contest at one of our local art galleries and we thought Aaron would enjoy making the picture and entering. So below we have his "Country Christmas" The tree has a Cowboy hat instead of a star, and then boots hung instead of stockings. He also has some boots and hats as tree decorations. I'm pretty proud of his nice artwork! I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Aaron is crazy about Bones

Aaron went on a hike the other day with some adopted Grandparents from here at camp. While on the hike they ran across a few sets of bones, so Aaron started picking them up, then they just decided to pull the truck up to where they found the most bones, and load them up. I got the call as they were heading home, that they were bringing quite a few bones. So below you can see the pile of bones that my son brought home.

He also wanted to see of he could make any skeletons from the pile of bones, so here he is with what he thinks used to be a Javelina. Who knew my son wanted to play with bones all day?

Family Fondue night! :)

Tonight Matt came up with idea of us having fondue for dessert! These next few pictures will show you just how much the kids enjoyed it!! They also enjoyed posing for all the pictures. Here we have Aaron being sweet, and Gracie being a bit sassy! Kind of how life is at our house.:)

Our first posing bite!

Getting ready to dip

2nd posing bite, and last bite of the night!

Chewing the very last bite!

This was the at the very end, we were showing Gracie's chocolate face, and Aaron was winking since it was such a great dessert!! Thanks, Daddy, we loved fondue!!! :)

Fun with the video camera

Yesterday we pulled out the video camera to capture the kids and all the silly things they do. Gracie had a good time in Aaron's Darth Vader Mask and Aaron just shared a few of the songs he has written. Enjoy!!

Here we have Gracie wearing Aaron's Darth Vader Mask and singing her favorite song, "Never Let Go" by the David Crowder Band. She also loves to say "I am Darth Mader, I am Darth Mader" It's just cute!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXLZ2Lkd_P8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1yokTgdqF0


Aaron has written a few songs. The joys of home schooling, Aaron write the lyrics for his journaling each day and then comes up with a tune. He's formed a band, made of himself, his cousin Caiden, and my mom. It's precious, but you can enjoy these next few songs!

This one is called "The Otter Lullaby"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0dNE77HsE4

This is "Fa La La Little Tiger"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0dNE77HsE4

Here we have "The Elephant Question"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfxxpvAqXrI

Next is "The Giraffe Question"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAk6jFsJgqU

Last but not least "Animals love Baklava"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Yx14bmcAk

Here is Gracie singing Aaron's "The Otter Lullaby" and "Never Let Go"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA6YX5nQG_I

I hope you enjoy!!

Prayer

I don't know who reads this, but the more prayer the better, right!?!? I've had a strange pain in my abdomen for over 4 years. I've had two exploritory laporoscopic surgeries and my c-section with Gracie, and still no answers on what it could be. We've thought scar tissue and so two times they have taken scar tissue out, only for it to form again. The pain used to be about a week a month, and now I'm happy if I'm not in pain a few days a month. Anyways, I've turned from western medicine for awhile to see if there is something else that could help, and I've been seeing a Bowen therapist (it's like chiropractic for your nerves.) She thinks it could be a hernia. So she sent me to my family practice doctor, and he's sending me in for an ultrasound on Friday. So my prayers are that the ultrasound see what is going on, and secondly that it is something they can fix. If not, I'm back to the drawing board. I'll post something when I know more, but for whoever reads this I could really use some prayer. I'm to the point now, that even a 5 minute walk puts me in so much pain, that I hardly can function the next day. It's just frustrating. Thanks for reading and praying.

Matching

Our kids LOVE to wear matching clothes. They love to match Mom and Dad, they love to match each other, they love to match friends, they love to match cousins. They love to match! Today I dressed Gracie in the cute pink and white striped outfit, then after church I came home and put on this sweatshirt that is pink, white, and black striped. It didn't even dawn on me that Gracie would love it or even think we were matching, but when I came out she just freaked out saying we were matching, so we had to grab a picture.

Then Aaron looked at what Matt was wearing and looked at me trying to figure out what he had that would match. I remembered a shirt he had that was the same color and I whispered to him what shirt would match. He quickly ran to his room and changed his clothes and came out and matched his Daddy! Matt kindly sat and took a picture with Aaron, but he plays that he hates to match any of us, but we all think inside Matt loves to be matchie-matchie!

Halloween 08

Here are a few pictures of our pumpkins this year. They'll actually be our pumpkins for a few years, we bought those "Funkins" this year and they're made of foam. They were interesting to carve, but no guts and all that, plus they haven't rotted on us yet either! Aaron wanted a white pumpkin and so we carved Mickey Mouse for him and he painted the glitter on, and Gracie wanted Cinderella's castle on an orange pumpkin. Orange is her favorite color, and Cinderella's Castle is her house as she calls it!

Here is our little Giraffe, Gracie, and her pumpkin.

Here is our Darth Aaron with his Pumpkin.

My little Aaron, I needed a picture of him without the big mask!

Our Friends, Collin, Charis, Cousin Caiden, Aaron, and Gracie. We all enjoyed trick or treating at the mall. It was fun, safe, and easy to keep track of the kids!

After the Mall, we went to Willow Hills Baptist church and enjoyed their fall festival! The kids loved the slide. They went on that slide over and over!

Side by side Sliding!!

We went as Disney World Tourists! Now all we want to do is go back there. Maybe someday in the next few years we can figure out how to get the whole family there again!!

The morning after Halloween, Gracie finally got to wear Aaron's Darth Vader helmet. She just kept chanting over and over, "I am Darth Mader, I am Darth Mader, I am Darth Mader." Then she would giggle and it would just seem so silly, the dark force giggling! :)