Friends

I've been doing a bunch of different things today: taught a friend to knit (that's a story for another time...I'll write something when it's over.), did a great workout, took Savanah to a babysitting job at the church tonight (14 Young Women are babysitting 42 kids tonight to earn money for camp!)

I just got home and found Ben and Michael swimming! It's been a beautiful sunny day amidst gray and rainy ones and the temperature is only 72, but there they were, in the pool. They said it was cold. (Yeah, I'll bet!) I guess they went long-boarding and got hot, so they thought they'd take a dip! I can't remember the last time I saw Ben swim in our pool.

Anyway, I thought I'd share...fond memories of young, active boys. Now they're young, active men! :)

My Cute Sisters!!!

Since I'm on a roll, I just have to say how much fun I had while I got to spend a week with my sisters preparing food for our Dad's wedding!

We not only made and decorated a wedding cake, and the food for the wedding breakfast, but we made jelly bean topiaries, went to the store several times, had two family dinners, and generally a good time.

I love being with them because I feel like I can tell them anything and they'll understand. They also share my sense of humor and are quick to laugh at just about anything!
So, when the wedding cake went from slightly tilted to the leaning tower of Pisa, to a crumbled mess, there was a little stress, but mostly a sense of 'What can we do now?' It ended up being two chocolate cheesecakes on the bottom, to party cakes for the middle layer and the top layer of the wedding cake on top. If you didn't know, you wouldn't have suspected anything!

Christmas

After going through some pictures, I decided that I needed to publish these pictures (since I figured Mandy would like to see them!)

We've got a picture pretty similar to this one for each Christmas we've lived in this house...since Ben was 5. That would make 17 pictures - two of them without Ben - of the kids in their jammies before they opened presents. I love to see their 'Christmas Jammies'. I hope they like to get them as much as I like to make them!

Remember when we opened presents one at a time, one person at a time? That method went out the window in our family about the third Christmas after we had kids. Now it's about a 10 minutes free-for-all! We can finally sleep in until about 8:00, instead of waking up at the crack of dawn, thank you Savanah! It does make it a little more complicated for Santa to come deliver all the gifts when the kids stay up until midnight.

After the gifts under the tree, we move to the stockings. This year, 'Santa' gave me some jewelry and John some screwdrivers. That was pretty funny...who was my Santa? (Me!) Who was John's Santa? (John!) Can you see the matching jammie bottoms for John and Ben? After I cut them out, Tessa saw the fabric and said she'd like some of the same. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough and she had to settle for pink hearts with black cross-bones.

Someone even saw fit to 'wrap' puppy in a ribbon. She didn't like it much, look at how she's cowering!

Anyway, a Merry Christmas it was! Hope yours was the same!