Party Like It's 2009

Maddie at 11:30 tonight.  

New Years Eve

I think New Year's Eve is overrated.  Movies, books and television tell us that cool people go out on New Year's Eve to exciting parties.  They wear beautiful clothes and spend the night dancing, sipping champagne and looking for the perfect person to kiss at midnight.  

I obviously am not cool and never was.  The most exciting New Year's Eve I have ever spent was with Bud.  We were married for six months and were in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  We went to dinner and by the time we hit the exciting nightlife in downtown I was tired and so was he.  We went home, crawled into bed and I fell asleep before I could kiss him or he me at midnight. Even in my young and single days I never had a more exciting New Year's Eve than a movie or dinner.

Tonight is no exception.  Bud is in Texas with Destiny visiting his parents and I am home with my mom and the two younger girls.  I have on jeans and a Darlington sweatshirt with my hair in a ponytail and no makeup on.  I am curled up on the couch with the girls watching Ryan Seacrest try to top Dick Clark (which he will never do).  We are eating popcorn and drinking Coke and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world tonight.  It would be nice to be cool though!!

Happy New Year's to all of our family and friends.  

Camping Anyone?

Anyone that knows me well knows that I am not a camping kind of gal and I am not even afraid to admit it. Give me a nice hotel with the comfortable bed and the free breakfast and I am there. Offer to let me sleep in a tent in December when it's been raining much of the week, regardless of whether it is 100 steps from my back door and the answer is a firm "no".  Thank goodness the girls have Bud or they would never get to experience such joys.

One of the gifts that Bud gave the girls for Christmas was a night of camping out in our upper side yard, camping out with tent, firepit, and lots of junky camp-out food.  After a trip to Kroger on Saturday night for hot dogs, root beer, potato chips, brownies and don't forget the fruit-mandarin oranges, we (yes, I had to help set the tent up even if I wasn't sleeping in it) headed up the hill to set-up camp.  We pitched the tent, started the fire in the firepit and I quickly retreated down the hill along with Maddie who decided at the last minute that camping out didn't sound like that much fun (and if she slept in the house she could have Bud's spot in our bed).  Destiny and Abby made multiple trips into the house for the bathroom and teeth brushing before they settled in to watch a movie on Bud's laptop.  Is it really camping if you watch Space Jam on a Mac?

 All was well until three a.m. when the rain started again, Bud had to go to the bathroom and they decided that their beds sound pretty comfortable.  They all trooped in smelling like a forest fire.  Bud hopped into bed with Maddie and I just in time for Maddie to wake up and start vomiting.  But the next morning eyes smiling, they proclaimed how much they loved it and wanted to go again, possibly in Tennessee or parts further north.  I will gladly support their plan, however I will be snuggling down into my comfortable bed at the nearest four (okay three) star hotel.

I am sure our neighbors loved our tent and campfire so close to their dining room window

My kids always eat a balanced diet

Warming up fireside

Christmas 2008

Every year Christmas comes a bit more quickly and this year was no exception. I looked up one day and it was the 20th of December. Forget making cute cookies and watching holiday specials with the girls and wrapping presents ahead of time and getting our Christmas letter out, and sending Christmas gifts to other family members far away. It was all I could do to just finish the basics before my mom arrived, things like cleaning the house and getting all of our laundry done so she wouldn't wonder what it was that I did with all of my time. (things like playing on Facebook or my mom's board).

My mom got here on the 23rd to spend her first Christmas with us since Maddie was a year old. Christmas Eve day I took the girls to see Santa. I wish that I could say that it is a family tradition to wait to see him until Christmas Eve but the truth is that ever year I find myself at the last moment taking them. Guess how long you have to wait in line on Christmas Eve? Because the line was 2 hours long I left Destiny in line at the city square in Marietta (she had a cell phone and a nice mom behind her in line to watch out for her) and hightailed it over to Honey Baked Hams to pick up our dinner for Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve was spent at church. It was a wonderful peaceful interlude and a reminder of the reason for the season. We then grabbed some late dinner with our friends, Cindy and Kyle and their kids. When you wait until 7:00 on Christmas Eve to find someplace to eat you have to take what you can get. Our choices included Mexican or the Waffle House. I voted Waffle House but was overruled and we ate Mexican and were the absolutely last customers of the evening. When we got home the girls fell asleep fairly quickly but as much as I wanted to go to bed, there were a mound of presents to be wrapped and so wrap I did until almost midnight. The girls made out this year. Next year I am getting an excel spreadsheet so that I can keep track of all the "bargains" that I find through the year to avoid the kids getting so much.

Remarkably, everyone slept until after eight and the girls were even sweet enough to grab a Bible and remind me that the Christmas story needed to be read before we opened presents. Favorite gifts included, new bikes for the girls from Oma and Opa, a sewing machine, flip video and arts and crafts table from Santa, new clothing from Mom and certificates from Dad good for a night of camping out, a set up of their own computer and the building of a stage so that they could have their own shows in the basement.

We have been hanging out the past few days. The girls and Bud have gone to lunch and to an indoor play place, to the driving range to hit golf balls and camping out in the backyard. Mom and I have enjoyed some mother and daughter time shopping, eating lunch and today we went to visit Dr. Stanley's church in Atlanta. Bud and I are back to work tomorrow for two days and then he will head out to Texas with Destiny to visit his parents and the girls and I with my Mom are headed to the new indoor waterpark in Gatlinburg for a few days.

We hope that your Christmas was a wonderful and memorable one. BTW-Our cards are coming. I mailed them the 26th. I am so glad I went ahead and ordered Holiday cards this year instead of Christmas ones!!!

My Mom and the girls at Christmas Eve Services

New Christmas Eve Jammies, our tradition

The girls in front of the Christmas Tree

Santa's Milk and Cookies.  He ate every last one!!!!

Abby under the weather still managed to unwrap presents

Maddie 

All the girls with Grandma

The Tale of the Gingerbread House

Once upon a time there was a mother who thought that it would be a wonderful Christmas memory for her children to make a gingerbread house.  After looking online and at cookbooks and envisioning the hours that it would take to make, she changed her mind and decided that it would be a wonderful experience to put together a gingerbread house kit. She headed to the store with all three children, bought the kit and exhausted brought it home where she promptly put it on top of the fridge and went to bed.  Several weeks later, after a long day at work she decided that it would be fun to put the gingerbread house together.   The mother didn't count on the bag of icing that was already split open in the box, a child who insisted on eating the candy that they were decorating with, one who managed to wear half of the icing and one who was trying to pretend that she was "so much more mature" than her sisters.   After a few tears, a couple of mentions of spankings if they didn't "knock it off" and a huge mess, one beautiful gingerbread house emerged.  The mother cleaned the kitchen, took some pictures, made the wayward children go to bed and then collapsed on the couch thinking that maybe next time coloring a gingerbread house would work just as well.

Happy 12th Birthday Destiny!

Destiny turned 12 on Friday, She is "almost a teenager" as she likes to say. It is hard to believe that four years have passed since she came to our family. Some days I don't think she has grown at all but when I look at pictures of her back then it is easy to see how much she has grown.

She invited three friends over to go to dinner and spend the night. We took all six girls out to a Japanese Steakhouse (a family favorite) where they enjoyed the chef cooking on the grill in front of them. The meal ended with a sumo wrestler headpiece on her head and a rousing version of Happy Birthday. We came home and the girls painted picture frames before heading to bed about 11:00. I count myself fortunate because all the girls were asleep before midnight (although they were up before 6 am the next morning). We had homemade waffles for breakfast and then they played for several hours before all were safely delivered back to their parents. All in all a rousing success!! Favorite gifts included a new cross, clothing, gift cards, a knot quilt and a messenger bag. Her big present was the 4th and 5th grade retreat for our church in January.

We have struggled the past four years as we went from a family of four to a family of five but Destiny has truly been a blessing to us and we are so thankful that she is ours.

The whole group at dinner

Destiny in her Sumo hat

"Fire"

Destiny, Abby and Savanna

The girls

Friends

Being silly

Opening gifts

Destiny and her sisters

Thankful

I would describe the mood around our house as thankful. Several events have happened in the past few weeks and days that have made me realize how blessed we are and how thankful we should be. It is easy for me to complain, in fact I am very good at complaining about the bad without acknowledging the good. Several events in the past week or so have reminded me how blessed I am.

Thanksgiving evening one of the pharmaceutical reps that I know from work lost his 11 year old daughter, Alexa, to complications from cancer. This family has been devastated with her disease from the time that she was just over a year old. I read her caring bridge site last night and the entire entry is a thank you to all their friends and family that have supported them. In their time of grief they are still thankful and able to acknowledge the blessing of Alexa to their family.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity with our church group to participate in a community project. We helped serve breakfast to a group of high school students and children. The high school students are from Kennesaw Mountain High School and they have adopted these economically disadvantaged children and raised money to take them on a Christmas shopping trip. We were able to take our girls along and they enjoyed being able to serve others and they began to realize that others didn't have as much as they did.

In this time and the economy that we live in we are thankful that we both have jobs and are working, we are thankful that our children are healthy, we are thankful that we have a roof over our heads and food to eat. As we step into the Christmas season I want to keep the heart of thankfulness for all of our blessings and acknowledge the One who gave it all to us. There is no one like our God.

Thanksgiving Memories

We had a wonderful time in Gatlinburg, Tennessee over the Thanksgiving weekend.  We rented a cabin with one of our best friends from Ohio and her girls. It was a relaxing weekend filled with good food, good friends and plenty of laughs.   It was warm enough to eat our Thanksgiving dinner on our deck overlooking the woods behind the cabin.   Heather and I enjoyed going to the outlet malls at midnight on Thanksgiving and shopped until 4 a.m. We hiked to Laurel Falls in the Smoky Mtn. National Forest on Friday and rode the trolley to the aquarium and downtown Gatlinburg on Saturday.  The girls had the best time playing with their friends that they only get to see about twice a year.  We headed home on Sunday with the rest of the United States.  Our three hour trip became about five and half hours but we didn't mind and plan on doing it all over again next Thanksgiving.