Christmas Week Photos...

Yeah, Yeah...it took me a while to post some photos of our "Christmas Week." Not really a shocker, now is it?? So I started out with the best of intentions. I was going to post the pictures individually. Then ran into some technical difficulties. Just decided that I am simply too lazy to try again, so I made a slideshow. :o) We have so many pictures, we really can't post half of them, much less all of them. So here are a few of my favs... enjoy! :o)

Merry, Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas to everyone!! Even though I lament on how stressful the holiday season is, it's always great when it gets here! We had a busy "Christmas Week." It started on Saturday, the 20th, at My sis-in-law's house. The boys had a great time playing with their cousins, and we all had a good time opening our gifts. We had a great steak dinner and watched a decent movie and a good time was had by all. We always have a good time there and miss them more than we realize.

On sunday, we had another fun day at my parents house. My brother and his family were also there. Mom did a great job with Christmas dinner! And again, of course, everyone had fun opening their gifts.

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, we had dinner and opened gifts with my grandparents. Another good time was had! After that dinner we came home and baked cookies for Santa. After the cookies were done and the boys played with their toys that they had gotten up to that point, they settled down and waited patiently (yeah right!) for Santa. After the boys laid down, Walter and I settled in to Watch "It's a Wonderful Life." Can you believe that was the first time I had ever seen that movie?! It was a really good movie and has definitely moved onto my list of favorite holiday movies!

This morning was, of course, the highlight of the season for the boys! Santa came and left lots of goodies! We had a great morning going through everything Santa left and opening gifts from each other and Grandma (who is hitting the road to move back to GA this weekend! YAY!!!!). In just a couple of hours we are doing our final Christmas dinner this year with the B's and their gang. I think at last count Tracy said there was going to be 17 people total! That equates to lots of food and fun!!

We hope that everyone has a great Christmas with their family and friends! We are SO grateful for everyone that is a part of our lives and we love you all very much!!

I will make a post of photos from this week either tonight when we get back from the B's or tomorrow morning! :o)

Tis the Season....

I love the Christmas season. I love to look at all the lights and to watch all of the celebrations. I love the spirit of the holiday and I LOVE seeing my kids' faces as they open gifts.

Having said all the things I love, I DON'T love the stress. Every single year I spend a freaking month thinking "oh...I can do that later, I still have some time." Then all of sudden it's Christmas eve and I'm running to the stores with all the other poor schmucks who either let time get away from them or were just too lazy to shop earlier.

As much as I love giving gifts...and I know this isn't going to make sense...I usually hate shopping. It sounds crazy I know, but unless I know with 100% absolute certainty that I am getting the perfect gift for someone, then I will spend forever worrying that it's not the right thing. Ugh...being the ...ahem... adult that I am, I know that gift giving and getting isn't the real reason for the season. I also know that it's the thought that counts. But seriously...have you ever watched a 10 or 12 year old open a gift and then look at you like "what the hell am I going to do with this?!" Yeah...tell them "it's the thought that counts" and see how much they love you from now on. ;)

Well, this year is proving no different than any other year. Maybe even worse. It's now less than a week before Christmas, and do I have still shopping to do? You betcha.

Sigh.

Crap.

Oh well. While I spend the rest of my free time from now until the 25th wondering the aisles of department stores everywhere, talking to myself and drooling, you can view some photos of recent activities.

Last Friday, our homeschool group went caroling at a nursing home. Our group has been visiting them every year for quite some time. It's always nice to go and to know that we hopefully brought some cheer to everyone, even if only for a few minutes. This is a group shot. Notice the beautiful banner...we worked on that with the kids and it was fun. Each child traced and cut out some handprints for the adults to glue to the banner. I think it turned out really great!
Funny story about a couple of the boys...Braed was wearing a springy type santa hat...hard to describe other than...well...its springy. Instead of a typical hat, it has the bottom of a normal hat, but has a spring coil on top with a white puff ball on the end. When you move your head, the spring bounces. Anyway...I looked down during some of the songs to find Braed bouncing along with the song...too cute. I thought that was funny...and it was...but I almost choked when I looked down and saw Zman (down front with the green antlers). He has bells on his little antlers and during the song "Jingle Bells" I actually hear bells. That's when I looked down and saw him bouncing his head and "jingling" in time with the song! It was SO funny!

Here is a shot of my boys with the "B" boys...the 4 of them are just something else... :o)
On to other happenings...

This past Monday, our Cub Scout pack had it's last meeting of 2008. Many of the boys got recognized for earning A LOT of beltloops! It's really cool to know that they are all working hard. Here is a group shot of everyone singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" at the end of the meeting:
It was a good night..and to be perfectly honest, I am looking forward to a break over the next couple of weeks!

That's all that's been going on I think. This weekend we start our Christmas celebrations by going to my sister-in-laws to have dinner and exchange gifts with her family on Saturday. Then Sunday we are doing the same with my parents and my brother and his family. It will be busy, but fun. Next week will be just as busy. I think we are heading to the B's on Monday to do some crafts with Tracy's sister-in-law. (YAY!) Then we will have Christmas with my grandparents on Christmas Eve followed by waiting, not so patiently, for the big guy to arrive. :o) Christmas day, hopefully, after we have opened everything from Santa, we are again heading to the B's for our family dinner with them. It will be a good time and will be a great end to our week of Christmas gatherings!

Just as an added bonus to this post, here is a picture of my boys and Teagan...aren't they just too cute for words?? ;)
Oh! BTW....big thanks to Tracy and her blog for some of my pictures, lol!!! :o)

Conquering a fear...and enjoying it!

This past weekend, our cubbies had a chance to do something VERY exciting. While enjoying spending some time with another local pack, our boys got to ride in an airplane! In regards to our family, with Walter being the only one of us who has ever been on a plane, it was definitely something new and exciting for us!

Leading up to the weekend, I was honestly hoping that we would get a torrential downpour of rain, thus leading to the cancellation of "Scouts in Flight." Why, might you ask? Well...I'm a worry-er. And I don't mean just a little. I mean big time, bleeding ulcer, nightmare having kind of worrying. Yeah, I'm sure there is some sort of clinical, mental illness type of name for it, but I'll go with "worry-er."

I was terrified that my oldest was going to go up in an airplane for the first time. I figured it was a small plane, like a Cessna, but I didn't know just how small. On the way to the airfield, as I was lamenting the fact that Bails was going airborne, Tracy calls me to tell me that they were going to let siblings go. This matters because we spent a week trying to explain to Braed that he couldn't go. It was a big-brother only kinda thing. If any of you have ever tried to explain to my youngest that he couldn't do something, then you completely understand the drug inducing state this put me in.

Anyway..so now they both were going to get a chance to go. But in my mind, they weren't going to go at the same time. I couldn't risk losing them both at once. Yes...that is unfortunately the frame of mind I was in. I'm a luna...ahem...worry-er, remember??

We finally pull up to the field and the excitement coming from the boys was unreal! As soon as we got there, everyone was ready for a group picture of all the boys with the plane.

As I walk away, taking Teagan (our new doggy that we adopted) to the porch of the hangar, I turn around and see Tracy and Walter shuffling my boys and ZRB onto the plane.

Imagine the "WTF???!!!" moment that I had.

Yeah.

But...trying to be "not-crazy" for a moment, I thought I would be alright. I watched them shut the door and turn around to go down the runway. As I watched the little 4-seater plane slow down towards the end of the runway, I was almost jumping for joy. In my feeble mind, the plane was slowing which meant it wasn't about to take off.

Again...I did say in my FEEBLE mind. As it turns out, and everyone BUT me knew this, it was slowing because it was turning around to come back up the runway for take off. As the plane started back up the runway, I felt my breathing start to pick up and my hands start to shake. Then I see this:



In my "SWEET JESUS, SOMEBODY GET ME A DRINK" moment, I managed to do the one thing that any mature, responsible adult would do. I called Daddy. Hey...there is no shame in my game. When I need my Daddy, I call. :o)

He managed to talk me out of a full blown panic attack and he stayed on the phone with me until the boys landed, about 15-20 minutes.

Now I have to say, I didn't think that there would be anything sweeter than seeing that plane land safely on the ground. Well, I was wrong. The smiles that were on the faces of those 3 boys, made all of the panic and worry SO worth it!!! The boys were ecstatic about their flight!





The boys had a lot to say about their trip and it was so wonderful to see all of them so animated! We waited around with our mirror family, the B's, thinking that we were going to a small town Christmas parade together after all the kids were done flying. Then Tracy comes up to me and says "we're going up." I was terrified and excited about it, at the same time.

Even though I had a little time to process and think about it, (or change my mind about it, as I'm sure that's what Walter thought I was going to do) I surprised myself and everyone else by climbing aboard when it was our turn.



Can't you just feel my glee??

Yeah. Me too.

I was pleasantly surprised and really, really enjoyed my flight!! I wish that I could put into words how it felt to look down on that little town and see everything from above. It was a truly amazing experience and I am so thankful that I got to do something like that! Thanks Tracy! ;-)

After Tracy and I landed, it was Walter and Scott's turn. Walter had a great time and was very excited because he has flown in a Cessna before and knew what to expect. He got some great aerial photos of the town...one in particular that I really loved was the picture of one of the many rock quarries in the area.











































It was such a great day. We didn't make it to that parade, but we weren't upset about that. We went back to the B's house and a had a great afternoon and evening watching some TV and a movie, playing some RockBand and enjoying a pizza dinner.








On one final note, and I know this was long post...thank you for staying with me, lol...for those of you that haven't had a chance to meet our newest addition, here is Teagan. She's a lovely, albeit noisy, little girl that we adopted from the Humane Society. They had rescued her from an abusive home and we are thrilled that we are able to welcome her to our family!! :o)

Ok...I'm trying again...

Yep. I'm blogging again. I know, I know....you're gonna say that I never keep up with it and I don't post often enough. That's true. However, I want to turn over a new leaf. I want to post and blog and rant and show off pictures (that I...ahem...have to steel from Tracy's blog cause I suck and can't remember to take my camera anywhere, but hopefully that will change too!) and do all that other fun-time blogging stuff.

So what will this blog be about? What else does any mom blog about? Her kids; her family. I'm sure you will see my proud mom moments. I'm sure you will read a post all about me. Or a post about someone else entirely. Point is...the blog is about everything. I will need an outlet to vent sometimes and this will be it. I will need a digital photo album more frequently than not and this will be it. I may even want to review a product, album, movie, show, etc., and this will be it.

I want everyone to comment and share with me. Yell at me for not posting when I should. :o)

For now, I will leave you all with some updated pics of the boys. Bails is 9 now (Holy Clap! I have a 9 year old??!!) and Braed is 4. For those that know and love my demonic little toddler...is that not a perfect image of him?? :o)