Snapshots of our Christmas

...while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.

Oh my goodness he did come!

Margie's First!

Checking out Ava's DSI.

Stick horse mania!

Hop on Elsie, we'll ride double!

Look what Santa left the girls!!

A little bugger.

He is full grown and just their size. He is 2.5 years and needs some handling but he is a sweet little thing. More to come!! Hope you enjoyed your Christmas day. We were thinking of you all.

Baby Jesus needs a bottle!

Well we trekked to "daddy's school" yesterday to not only watch the annual Christmas show, but also to play with the fun recreational games he is doing in class right now.

Finally the show! There is Frosty, Santa and all his reindeer and elves!

After the sow the kids and father R. do a reenactment of Jesus's birth. Here is the angel visiting the shepherds.

The Holy Family. Most of my pictures didn't come out because we were far away and I had to zoom waaayyyy in therefore the need to hold the camera VERY still was required but not successful with a bouncing Emeline on my lap.

One of the Three Kings visiting the newborn King.

Just thought I would share this with you. Whoever was playing baby Jesus was not a happy camper. Hope you can hear it. After the story Father R. invited everyone to sing Silent Night and after the song was through he said something to Joseph along the lines of "Joseph get your baby a bottle".

Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain

Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain is one of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time. It is written by two Christian psychiatrists and I must admit that psychology has not been one of my favorite areas of study. I say that not because I don’t believe in it but because I think it has brought about a wave of parents that question every move they make for fear of permanently damaging their children. After reading this I have once again gained some newfound respect for the subject.

This book takes a look at “our seven universal struggles” which include: injustice, rejection, loneliness, loss, discipline, failure, and death. As each subject is considered one of the psychiatrists gives a real world example of someone going through the respected pain. Doing this made the book instantly agreeable because I found that I could relate to many of the different examples. Upon further delving into the certain types of pains the authors give you very clear examples of how God is there. It answers those questions that we all have from time to time such as, “Why me?” and “What have I done to deserve this?”. At the closing of each section the real life example is concluded and a neat wrap-up is displayed with questions to ask yourself. This makes a great reference to go back to for quick access.

Overall I thought this book was well thought out and very professionally written. In my opinion it is the perfect book to give to oneself, a close relative or even a casual acquaintance whom we know is experiencing a hardship and may need help seeing the light of God through hard times. I believe that it can also help in fostering the recovery process because it has a sort of overall empowering message which teaches that there is potential to grow and become stronger in our most painful experiences.

Toilet Paper tube Nativity

Look what the kids made. I was searching around for a printable nativity for the them to play with because they LOVE playing with our "real" nativity pieces. I found this at Catholic Icing
and knew it was a must for us. Now they spend time playing with their own nativity giving me a sigh of relief.

Looking at the Sky on Friday

Here was the prelude to our sunset last night. After many days of drab clouds that spit snow every now and then the skies cleared and only a few remained yesterday.

18

Ben and his girlfriend, Tracy.

It was Ben's 18th Thursday! We wish you a blessed year Ben. Keep your sights on God and all will be well. Love you so much and would do most anything for you. xoxo Jenny

My cutie patootie Emeline

This was a rare treat to see Emeline with her hair down. You see she usually has a flip-out if it is down and asks for a hair tie immediately and says "I want it up top and fancy.". Then I put it right on top of her head and she runs off flipping her pony tail back and forth thinking she is just soooo fancy.
Caught her in a blink here but I just love that little profile. It makse me want to bite her little nose and chin!

I showed her this picture enlarged and said "Don't you look beautiful?" She answered, "Yeah I look like Theresa". There you have it Theresa, Em thinks you're beautiful!!

Just to let you know, as soon as these pictures were done it was "up top and fancy" once again. Didn't last long!!

Coffee Filter Angels

We made some coffee filter angels that turned out pretty.

First we took our coffee filters and smooshed them out flat. Next we took some cotton balls and placed them in the center.
ooops this is step three. Take another coffee filter and turn it into a fan shape.

ooops this is step two. You wrap the coffee filter (and we only have small ones) around the cotton ball.

Tuck the fan shaped filter up into the one with the cotton ball and hot glue it together. Tie a string around them all under the cotton ball head.

Next take a third filter, flatten it out, fold it in half and..

..tie a string around the middle to form wings.

Hot glue the wings onto the back of your angel.

Form a halo our of a pipe cleaner and glue it on.

You end up with this cute little thing. I wrapped anothe pipecleaner around thier middles and made a loop in the back in order to hang them up.

Here is another.

Bird art and Amphibian art

We now made our bird for our animal classification projects. Not sure what you call this one but it is really pretty.
Check out our amphibian. We used a 3-D squeezable pen. It turned out shiny and sort of rubbery feeling to give the effect of a slimy frog. This has been neat because they have examples right in front of them and the characteristics to make sense of it all in a much clearer way. Now we have only the mammal to complete our set for now!

Snowed-in fun

During the storm we used a baking set that Josie got for her birthday from her Aunt JoAnn (Daddy's side) to make some mini-cupcakes.

I told them to frost them themselves and left them alone....

....only to pop in to snap a picture or two.

Look at what they did!!!! There is more frosting than cupcake!!