A very Blessed Christmas!

Wow. This month has flown by. What a whirlwind! I headed back to work part-time at Broulims, and between all the regular family activity and holiday cheer, have hardly had a moment to even get online at all! That said, brace yourself. This could be a long post. =)

We had a wonderful Christmas. We truly experienced the "miracle of giving" from so many people. Our family has been so blessed to feel the generosity and Christ-like love of others. I long for the day to do for others that which has been done for my family. In hopes that our anonymous friends might read our blog(...and to our friends and family who I know read this blog), might I offer to you our most heartfelt thanks and gratitude!

On Christmas Eve after making cookies for Santa,
we went to my parents home for a lovely dinner and then we all participated in the traditional Nativity, in which my dad tells the story of our Saviors birth from the Bible while some of us act the story out silently. This year, Paul was Joseph, Nick and Andrew opted to be Sheppard's, Josh was the Angel, and Chelsea was Mary. It was really nice. Following the story Josh treated us all by singing several Christmas songs. He is so amazing. I wish I could express how beautiful the spirit was that was there with us.











Before heading home, I chose to let Paul have his Christmas gift from me. He had really been wanting a professional "Big set" of drums, but that was just out of the question. I decided to see what I could come up with. Using old buckets and tins, some spray paint and ribbon, and with the help of my parents, I created a substitute... of sorts.



Thankfully, Paul LOVED it.


That night Mr Paul was so excited that he hardly slept a wink. I woke up at 4:30 to catch him in the front room checking things out, as well as at 5:30, and 6:30! By 7:00 when we decided that it was time to get up, we had to send Nick in to wake Paul up!
The boys were so good. So kind, and patient, and sweet. We couldn't have asked for better behavior! They were so delighted with every gift too!








That afternoon we headed out to Josh's brother's house for the Jardine gathering. We had a great dinner and the children all played together happily. We were able to meet a friend of Jodi's, (also named Nick), and have some good laughs all together.




This is such a beautiful time of year. There is so much to reflect on, and to be thankful for. So many blessings~ both spiritual and tangible. And so much hope for the future. Light and good deeds shine forth from others and love abounds!

Fun fun fun!

This last week or so, has been a lot of fun for us. The weather is still pretty dang nice and so Andrew, Paul, and his friend Aubree decided they needed to picnic in the backyard--


And we made some Apple Turkeys with our friends Ella and Isaac. It's kind of a tradition at my house to do the apple turkeys. The fun thing is that they vary in how they look from year to year depending on what "decorations" I have on hand.





Josh and Paul were able to participate with the scouts in assembling food boxes for Thanksgiving too. Paul so loves going to scouts. I'm so happy he's enjoying it.


Most of my family was able to get together (all except for Chris & Sharon and their A-mazing children) at Mom & Dads place for T-Day and it was total and complete fun CHAOS. Love love love it! It's a funny thing about seeing people that you don't get to see often... It seems like I miss everyone even more once I've been with them! I guess I just realize how MUCH I love them and how much I'm missing out on!
A couple of fun things from this week:

I made these crazy cupcakes for all the squirts:



"PEAS & CARROTS"



"MASHED POTATOES & GRAVY"



"CORN ON THE COB"

And of course, for dessert~


"CHOCOLATE PUDDING"

That was fun. They loved them, and believe it or not, they actually ATE them! I thought maybe they wouldn't get eaten, since they were so weird!

Later I brought 2 of my nieces back to my place and gave them another cupcake project:









Did you guess yet? Now look.


"SPAGHETTI & MEATBALLS!!"

Crazy, huh? But so much fun.

Oh Yeah! One other fun thing that I did! Well, ok, that I made my sister do. ;)
See for yourself.






VOILA!


Yeah. It's been a fun week or so... :D

More about us...

And if you haven't heard enough about us already, here's some more! :D

Tagged again:

1. How many people are in your family? 5



2. When did you get married? June 15, 2000



3. Are your children boys or girls? Boys!



4. What do you do for fun as a family? Go for drives (usually to the mountains), watch movies, ride bikes, go on walks, hit the park, make cookies, get together with more family, camp... whatever. Just hang out.


















5. Is your family complete, or are you planning on having more children? No. We're not done yet, but we don't have plans for when the next addition will be either...

I LOVE the things kids say.

This morning while in the car with Nick, I told him about a cute girl we were going to go see... Nick responds like this:

"None of girls look cute to me.... just you. You're the only one that looks cute to me..." (pause) "...even Dad. Both of you guys are cute to me."

LOL It made me laugh out loud. I told him "Well, Thank you Nick. That's very nice of you." and then I pulled to a stop sign and quickly jotted down what he had said because it was so sweet!

I Guess I'm "IT"

Ok, so I got tagged... a couple of times... so... Here ya go:

SIX unspectacular/quirky things about me:

*I love stocking up on preparedness items because it makes me feel safe! If I had the money for it I would totally go to town on my storage. I LOVE being prepared. Some of my relatives have started comparing me to the boy scouts-- ALWAYS PREPARED!

*This one really is wierd. I have a thing about clean ears. I LOVE Q-tips! It's like a mini-massage or scratching the un-reachable itch.

*I HATE leaving my house ANYTIME if it isn't clean. I mean, I'll do it, but I hate it. And it makes no difference if no one is coming over, I like it clean for me. A tidy house makes me feel like I have some control.

*I am an awesome Gleek-er. Josh hates it, but seriously, I could win contests.

*I ALWAYS rinse my glass before I fill it with water to drink... even glasses straight out of the dishwasher...(Sometimes I even rinse plastic cups!) I have even rubbed of on Josh with this one. I'll be the first to admit that this one doesn't make any sense.

*When I sing along with songs, half the time I dont know all the words or the correct ones, so I kind of fill in the blanks with what I think they should be... Josh always gives me funny looks and laughs when I do this because of course HE knows all the words.



And I was also tagged for Crazy Eights:

8 things I'm obsessed with right now:
1- re-organizing/cleaning
2- getting ready for the holidays
3- Christmas gifts
4- trying to learn new skills
5- thinking of ways to bring in more income
6- planning
7- cooking
8- writing lists

8 words or phrases I use often:
1- Are you kidding me?
2- Whatever.
3- Seriously!
4- I love you!
5- Go tell Dad.
6- Uh huh...
7- Awesome!
8- Oh! Doggone it!

8 TV shows I love to watch:
(half of these aren't even on anymore)
1- The Office
2- According to Jim
3- Home Improvement
4- Almost any cooking show...
5- M*A*S*H
6- Bewitched
7- I love Lucy
8- Andy Griffith Show

8 Things I Did Yesterday:
1- Took a kid to preschool
2- Went shopping
3- Made a salad
4- Wrapped a gift
5- Went to a family gathering
6- Laughed
7- Froze some homemade jam
8- Gave heart medicine

8 Favorite Places to Eat:
1- Mom's house
2- My house
3- Sizzler
4- Olive Garden
5- Puerto Vallerta
6- Texas Roadhouse
7- Craigos
8- Johnny Carinos

8 Things I am Looking Forward to:
1- Being Healthier
2- Josh finishing school!
3- Becoming financially free... someday!
4- Thanksgiving
5- Christmas
6- Seeing family for the holidays
7- Making my yard more "finished"
8- Next years garden

8 Things on My Wish List:
1- I could give more to others.
2- Family lived a little closer.
3- Josh could get that record deal he dreams of...
4- I knew more.
5- VACATION!
6- Fewer bills/ more income!
7- They didn't put that house right behind mine.
8- It was time for another mom/daughter weekend...

8 people I tag:
1- Jodi
2- Mindy J.
3- Carolyn
4- Bonnie
5- Amie
6- Melissa L.
7- Angela
8- Natalie

(Do whichever one you want :D )

Batty

Well, For Halloween we headed down to Primary Children's for an appointment and since Josh had school, and a band gig, we talked my mom into coming with us and staying for a couple of days! It was a pretty good weekend.

I learned that Nick is using his pacemaker about 15% of the time; that his battery still has a good charge to it; that he is having VT (ventricular tachycardia) several times a day~ but that it's lasting only about 2 seconds or so at a time; and that we'll need to schedule a time to go back for another heart catheterization so that they can administer some adrenaline to his heart while he is sedated and put his heart into fibrillation on purpose to check whether or not the defibrillator is functioning properly, and if it isn't they will be there to rescue him from the fibrillation and correct any problems. The reason that this would be necessary is because as he grows, the leads that are screwed into his heart are being moved around a bit and in order for the ICD to work, the leads need to be in just the right spot. And now we're back, and if all goes well, we wont need to go back for SIX MONTHS!! That is only the 2nd time in 4 1/2 years that we have been scheduled that far out! YAY!

Nick was delighted to get to see Dr. Cowley. He was concerned that Dr. Cowley wouldn't have a "trick-or-treat" so he made sure that we brought him something good... Nick wore his Batman pajamas as his costume and gave the doc a rubber bat, a York Peppermint Bat, & a hand drawn card in a bag with bats on it.
I thought it was really cute. I can't express enough how much Nick adores Dr. Cowley. We are just so fortunate to have such an amazing cardiologist!

Here are some pics of the day at the hospital.


THE ECHOCARDIOGRAM



THE X-RAY



THE EKG



DR. COWLEY & NICK



DR. COWLEY & BATMAN

Pancakes

We had some fun the other night with "Breakfast for Dinner". We decided to make words with our pancakes.... well, names anyway. We've done shapes and faces and stuff before, but I thought it'd be fun to write the boys' names for them. They had fun with it and ate so many pancakes that I had to make another batch. These days in childhood can be so fun~ It requires just a little effort to make something boring a memorable occasion!