Going out the same way we came in

We are starting New Year's Eve with our annual tradition. Every year on this day, we order Outback to go and go pick it up and enjoy the wonderful meal at home together as a family. We avoid the crowds and save on drinks and a tip and just look forward to doing this every year. After our special meal, we are planning on spending New Years Eve this year with our good friends-the Hills and the Koehlers at the Koehler's house. We have never been together on New Year's Eve before, so this will be a first for us. However, it is only fitting as we spent New Years Day last year with them as well(First time for that too!).

We are so blessed to have close friends that we all enjoy being with. We have been through a lot together this year, as in the years past. But I was thinking this morning about the last year, in particular. We had 2 kids hospitalized this year from the group-one VERY serious. We had one death in the families-Doug- and our friends were there to support us through that. On the good side, we spent a lot of vacation time together this year. It was our first vacation with all 3 families, including kids. I think every family had vacationed with the other families before but never all 3 all together-with kids. We spent Spring Break (also a first for us!) together all week in a cabin in Gatlinburg, Tenn. We went camping over Memorial Day and Labor Day with the Koehlers. The Hills don't do camping. :( We took the girls on a cruise for their birthdays. And all 3 of the older girls really matured and we saw some big changes physically in all of them. The Hills and us went on a cruise together in September without the kids and enjoyed a week on the Freedom. The Koehlers already had a family cruise planned for December so they couldn't join us this year. Steve, Dana, Dale, and I all went to Universal Studios for the first time for each of us. We spent the fourth of July at the Koehler's house as normal. We had many happy days and evenings spent by their pool. We always get together for Christmas and continued that this year.

We spent some glorious days at the lake with the Koehlers this year. Unfortunately, because of Jaclyn's surgery, hospitalizations, and complications with Staph infection, they stayed away from the lake this year. Hopefully, 2010 they will be able to join us on the boat and jetski sometimes. We spent lots of time at White Water together again this year, as usual. We went to the zoo together. The Koehlers and Dale & I went to one of the most expensive restaurants ever together-for FREE! We went to the movies together and enjoyed watching lots of DVDs while we were on vacation together during Spring Break. We survived some challenges in school with one of the children. All of the men held onto their jobs through a difficult period of downsizing and economic change. Tina and Dana are persevering with the home schooling, and I was able to hold onto my real estate career and my part time job with the consulting firm. I even added a new job this year to pay for my hobby with Heritage Makers. The ladies all started out the year meeting a few times a week at the mall to get in our walking exercise. That was lots of fun since we could talk while we walked. We kept that up pretty good for a while. Maybe we should start that again?!?

The kids are all growing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They are all great kids!!

We were able to ALL do swim team together for the first time. That was fun to have our good friends with us. We met for meals, sleepovers, ballgames, and at Brusters throughout the year. Both Courtney and Jordan were able to come see Jennifer in her CFT play this year. Courtney and Jennifer went away for Jennifer's first youth trip together. We have many happy memories of all the fun we had together this past year and hope that there are many more to come in 2010. God has truly blessed us with some special friends and special times.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful New Year as well!

Pawsitively Play time

Every now and then, we take Jake to Play time at the place where we had him trained. He loves to go and we are glad to see him play with other dogs. Although truth be told, he plays with the dogs but constantly goes to people for some loving and attention. Good thing all the people there are dog lovers!

The first time I found out about play time, I was skeptical. That many dogs inside one room at a time? I really didn't believe it until I went to see for myself. They have the small dogs (under 40 lbs) go from 9-11 and then the big dogs (over 40 lbs) from 11-1. The first time I went without Jake (he was too young at the time) just to see what it was like. I was amazed that there were that many Big dogs in there and it wasn't chaos. There was no barking or fights or anything. Tina (the owner) keeps a tight rein on what goes on in there. There were 2 dogs that day that weighed 150 lbs each!! A lot of the dogs are therapy dogs, so they are well mannered and well trained. All the dogs even share the toys!

The very first time Jake went he was still under 40 lbs but would be a big dog so we went from 10-12 so he could get used to the little dogs first and then gradually the big dogs would come in while the little dogs meandered out. That worked well. Now, of course, he just goes with the big dogs. He has seen a lot of them over and over, so I guess you could say they are friends.
This is Jack which is probably Jake's best friend there. He is a little older than Jake and is already doing his therapy in children's hospitals and schools. It is funny how Goldens recognize each other and like to play together.

Jennifer's Christmas band concert

A couple of weeks ago, Jennifer had her Christmas band concert. They sounded really good, as usual. I really don't know much about that stuff, but several people who do are really impressed with their group of 7th graders. They must be pretty good!Jennifer found out right after that that she was invited to participate in the 8th grade band trip. Only 25 7th graders were invited, so it was quite an honor to jsut be invited. And they were going to Universal Studios. How fun!! We are so proud of her many accomplishments. She was so excited until she told me the dates and I had to break the bad news that she couldn't go. They are going to Florida for the band trip at the same time that she will be participating in the "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" play. She has already committed to that, but what an honor to be invited. And hopefully she will be able to go next year.

Do you hear what I hear??

Our neighborhood decided to line the block with luminaries this year. I had been wanting to go Christmas caroling and thought this might be a good year to get some people together but had been too busy to take action on my thoughts. Well, while we were lighting the candles the first night (3 days before Christmas), I jokingly asked when we were going Christmas caroling. A neighbor said "in about 30 minutes". I was shocked and asked if they were serious. She said that everyone was meeting at her house in 30 minutes to go caroling. I ran in and got the family and we went caroling. We met at the house and did a "warmup" on our voices and the words and the guitar.Then we went around the neighborhood to all the neighbor's houses. Everyone was surprised and very pleased that we were there. The 2 that stood out the most to me were:

In one house where a sweet lady lost her husband of 60 + years this year came to the door and was so tickled that we were there. About halfway through the first song, she disappeared and came back with a tissue. She cried through the rest of the songs. The, of course, I started to cry and couldn't sing. Jennifer was trying to figure out why I was crying. Dale couldn't even see the lady from where he was standing but he saw me crying so he knew that she was crying. :) I hugged her neck as we left. I was so glad she was there as I knew we would minister more to her than anyone. She even called us about an hour and a half later to thank us and she was still crying. Bless her heart, I can't imagine how sad she must be without him.
And then at another house, the lady waved us closer and we came in closer. Then she waved us closer and we huddled closer. Then she backed into the house and kept waving. We kept singing while we all entered into the house. She had the TV remote in her hand and was conducting the music and singing along. She really enjoyed it!Afterwards we went to another house where we had cookies and a hot German drink. It was so much fun to go caroling around the neighborhood and hang out for a little while. I had cooked vegetable beef stew in the crockpot so we had a hot bowl of soup for when we got home. We had a wonderful evening!!

Christmas with our friends 09

Every year for the past 13 years, we have gotten together with our good friends from church. We have added kids through the years, of course. Originally we had 3 girls and 0 boys. Now we have 11 kids ranging in age from 13 to 3. This year we went to the Koehler's house. Tina did an excellent job with the food!!

We did something different this year for gifts. We had the kids choose where they wanted to get a $5 gift card from and did a white elephant exchange. It was tough concept for some of the smaller ones to get that someone could take their present, but it went pretty good. My kids ended up with Blockbuster and Game Stop.We also played "are you smarter than a 5th grader?" and my team won!! The guys and I beat the girls. We always have to get a group shot of the kids and it is neat to see how they change from year to year.We had a great time with the kids playing upstairs and outside while the adults relaxed and chatted. We are so thankful for our good friends!!

Christmas Eve 2009

We always start Christmas festivities by going to church for the Christmas Eve service. The music ministry did a fantastic job leading us in worship. The worship center was beautiful and the music was too! Nana and Mimi sat with us and we were surrounded by precious loved ones from our church family.

Then we went to Mom and Bill's and waited for everyone to get there. Brandon, my brother, was flying in and Brian went to the airport to get him. Bill sang at both church services. We were very excited to see Brandon for only the second time this year.

We ate our traditional Christmas Eve service-ham sandwiches (The best of the year!), chips, congealed salad, and our favorite-the shrimp tree!!

Then we opened gifts. I made Brandon a deck of cards of this year, since he had missed most everything that happened this year and his life from a newborn on up. He has been living in Miami with no family and no family pictures of anyone, so I think he was real excited to receive the gift.
Poor Brian~~He didn't get as many gifts as Brandon. :)

We always do family pictures around the tree.Then we came home and got ready for bed, checked the Santa tracker, and headed to bed. It's the most exciting time of the year!!

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Jesus!

We hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas! We have. I will have to catch up on the blogs over the next few days.

This morning the kids came running in our room at 7:30 am where we snuggled in bed and read the Christmas story out of the bible. Jennifer read it this year aloud, but she informed us that she had already read it last night before going to bed on her own. I am so proud of her for reading her bible and continuing to study God's word on her own. It makes a Momma proud. But, it was a great way to start Jesus's birthday by snuggling with those I love and listening to the familiar story once again.

We always make the kids stay upstairs while we turn on lights and music and see if Santa came during the night. The anticipation is so exciting!He did come, ate his cookies, drank his milk and left lots of goodies for the kids, and even the animals.
At the bottom of their stockings was a note from Santa that explained that one of the presents wouldn't fit down the fireplace so he left it in the garage:I have to admit I have ALWAYS wanted a trampoline, so I was super excited when I found out we got one. The kids were too!
Jennifer and I had matching pajamas this year-Thanks Mimi!!After we had breakfast, we opened our gifts from each other. This is a HM book that I made for Jennifer from the birthday cruise we took with her friends.Justin had a piece of bamboo and carved this out for his sister to make a flute.Dale was surprised to find some Jamaican blue Mountain coffee!
Jake was laying on his gift waiting for his turn to open it.Jake opened his own gifts-AND they weren't even food or bones. This was a squeaker toy that he opened by himself.Patches joined in the fun too-waiting for his turn.He got it open in no time!This was in Jake's stocking and he took it straight in front of the tree and baby Jesus. I told Dale even the animals bow down to baby Jesus. Jake had a wonderful time shredding the tissue and wrapping paper while we opened gifts.Sam watched up open gifts by climbing in one of the empty bags. He looked so cute! We gave the cats some catnip stockings and they had a blast playing with them under the tree.

Then Nana and Dana came over to see what everyone got. They stayed a while then we went to Dad & Sarah's for our Christmas dinner. Everyone was there-all the kids and grandkids-except Ashley. :( But we had a good time anyway. Here are some of the family shots by the tree. There weren't many gifts exchanged this year, but the kids all got money. And I made Sarah a calendar with everyone's birthday and anniversary and pictures in it. And we got Dad a fishing swiss army knife thing and another gift.This is the picture we will show any boy that wants to take Jennifer out in the future. :) Looks scary, doesn't it? Its really just a BB gun. Sarah loved her 2010 calendar!

This afternoon, we came home and started watching movies. I actually fell asleep and took my first ever Christmas nap. We have NEVER been home on Christmas day (during the day) for me to do that. The kids ended up playing outside with a bunch of kids, and had a great time.