Welcome to Our Home!

TAD's kitchen =)

front door and front room

the view from my bedroom window

garage door, basement door, and hall to bedrooms and bathroom

we love love love the high ceiling!

that's it, on the right

the "loo"

the big ol' basement...we'll make it more cozy

home sweet home!

the kitchen

bathroom and my room on the right, T's room and linen closet on the left

We will be moving in this weekend and the beginning of next week. I, at least, have so much junk to go through before I pack up and leave. I'm sad to leave mom, but she is happy for us. If you want our address email me. I can't just give it out randomly considering T's line of work. I'd love to get mail at my very own new address! Praise the Lord =)

Merry Christmas yesterday!

scarf from TAD; Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans were in my stocking

I spent all afternoon and evening with the Woodby family. So fun!

TAD wanted to hand out the jelly beans and not tell us the flavor so we'd

have to figure it out as we ate the jelly bean.

This Christmas was definitely different, but it was fun. We opened our gifts on Christmas Eve this year. I didn't really want anything much for Christmas. You know, the older I get, the less I care about gifts. They just don't really concern me much. Oh well. Anyway, I did have a favorite gift and a favorite "stocking stuffer". My favorite gift was Harry Potter 3-6. I bought 1 and 2 for myself quite some time ago, and mom got me 7 for my birthday. Now my set is complete! Already I am almost finished with book four. (Ok, I listened to 2, 3, and the first half of 4 on disc=) My favorite stocking stuffer was the bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. They are a candy from the Harry Potter books. The flavors are things like sardine, black pepper, pickle, ear wax, dirt, sausage, earthworm, and vomit. Totally disgusting! Once all our presents were opened I got them out and TAD, Annie, and I tried a few. You should have seen our faces! We had to spit out a few because we just couldn't stand it. These were a favorite because I got to share them with TAD and Annie, and they made us laugh and have a good time together. Weird, huh? It has been so long since I've spent time like that with those two; it was so much fun!

From 2:30 til about 10:45 I was at Woodby's house. We played games, watched movies, and ate a fabulous dinner. I love being at their house. Everyone was there and all the kids love being together as a family. You don't see that a lot these days. We had a fun, relaxing time. It was definitely different from any other Christmas, but I'm ok with that.

Family Christmas Caroling

Jeff and Will

Rosana and Grandma waiting to leave

Cate's just about ready!

Kameron is ready to go

Sam gets Will bundled up while Jeff...who knows what he's doing?

and we're off!



Alex and Luke get distracted and share a few snowballs with each other

what song should we start with?!

Aunt Sandy, Mom, Sam, Jeff, and Will

Cate commented to Sam, "Mom, we're singing in the street!"
Sam replied, "That's what we do!"

A Very Merry Christmas Party!

Mitchell won the "pass the present" game

I love my kids!

oh, this poor tree...

we watched Madagascar this afternoon


wonderful gifts from wonderful students


they liked their gifts from me

our goofy tree with many gifts

getting ready to open our presents

Yeah, today was the last day of school before Christmas and New Year's break!! We had a super fun day today. The morning started with a Bible and spelling test, and everyone did excellent. What awesome students I have been blessed with! Then we played the rest of the day. We did some word games and puzzles that took a few minutes each and winners got a piece of candy. Our first big activity was a "pass the present" game. For the first round I read a story I got off the Internet; every time I said "left" or "right" the gift was passed that direction. At the end of the story, the person with the gift unwrapped a layer of paper. Then I played music and when it stopped another person unwrapped a layer. So on and so forth til the gift was completely unwrapped. Mitchell was so excited to win the book Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliet.

We did our gift exchange...everyone got what they wanted from each other and from me. And, I got some pretty neat stuff from them. Mostly chocolate. Bummer =) We had a pizza lunch at noon, then came back to class for my favorite part: an auction! I bought 18 fun, under-two-dollar gifts and wrapped them. Each students had $100 (plastic bingo chips) to spend, and they could bid on whatever they wanted. Everyone got at least two gifts. They seemed to enjoy it. Maybe this will become a tradition in my class. You know, something for upcoming students to look forward to. I certainly had fun! After lunch we played the animal game (they figured out that if they got me laughing hard enough I would get out. but, I was able to get control and held my first- chair position!) Our final event of the day was watching Madagascar. More laughing! Oh, it was fabulous day. I love my students, I love my school, I love my job, I love the Lord...life is truly beautiful!

Glow-in-the-Dark Mistakes

All I can say is "grrrrr". I am quite annoyed with myself at the moment. Today I bought a package of glow bracelets to use with an activity at our class Christmas party on Friday. I had to open the box and set some aside, but the ones I set aside I either bumped or smashed one way or another. If you crack one of these things the glow stuff starts seeping through the bracelet and lights it up. Yeah, four of them wasted! They don't last forever, you know. Oh, I am such an idiot!

Girls Night

Since Brett and Beau Hendrick are in Zambia, I was able to go to Andrea's and have a Girls Night with her, Cara, and Segrid...oh, and Dallis too! We played Settlers of Cataan, ate some dinner, and took silly pictures. I spent the night, but had school the next morning so I had to leave early. It was fun though. It sort of reminded me of college days. Even though Andrea and Segrid are married, they are just as wacky as the rest of us. I thank God for such a large number of fantastic friends!

Correction!

I made a mistake in my previous post. Mom caught it when she was reading it yesterday. These adorable little birdies were not my great- grandmother's, rather they were a gift from my grandma to my mom at my parent's first Christmas together. Mom had six of them to start with. Two of them she gave to good friends of hers on some special occasion or other. Annie and I will each inherit one eventually as well.

Holiday History

So here is my handiwork from yesterday. The star on top of the tree belonged to my great- grandma Warnock - my mom's mom's mom. =) The cute little birdie also belonged to my great- grandma, and it has three siblings perching elsewhere on our tree. The treble clefs are only a few of my mom's hundreds of music ornaments. She has been getting them as gifts for around thirty years! One of my ornaments is the adorable Precious Moments girl you see here. She was a gift from Aunt Ellie, a friend of my parents' in college, at my first Christmas. Oh, and the gifts under the tree are just a few I wrapped because the tree looked so lonely without presents underneath it!

In the Mood

If my camera batteries were not dead I would have some lovely photos of today's holiday activities. I spent the morning Christmas shopping, the afternoon putting up the Christmas tree, and the evening wrapping gifts. If you had walked in my house at some point today you probably could have felt the Christmas spirit all over the place! The only thing not Christmasy was my music...I was listening to the soundtrack from Shall We Dance?. Oh well. =)
Sitting here at the computer I can look out the window and see houses down the street with all their lights sparkling and blinking. One of my favorite things about this time of year is all the colorful lights. I could look at them for hours. But think, all the lights and tinsel and gifts and family and happiness cannot compare to the greatest Gift of all - Jesus Christ. Rejoice this Christmas, for He came and died for you!

It's December 6th (I think)

This year has totally flown by me! I cannot believe it is December already. I must say, when all of life is focused on and revolves around one thing, time just zooms on by. I let my kids decorate our classroom for Christmas. That is one of those times when I just have to sit back and keep my mouth closed because I am a perfectionist and would rather just do everything myself! But they did a good job. And my contribution was the bulletin board. I am quite proud of it actually. I got the idea off the internet and adapted it to my personal needs and style. I am pleased with how it turned out.