Drum roll, please.............Our Christmas Card is FINALLY finished! This is the picture Duane took of the kids on Sunday. I was VERY happy with the way it turned out. Do you have any idea how long it takes to get 4 kids to look in the SAME direction at the SAME time with a somewhat pleasant expression on their face? Let's just say it took soooooo long that the batteries ended up dying, but it is ALL OVER! That is, until we do it all over again next year! :)Saturday evening we all were watching a Gomer Pyle episode and Sgt. Carter was talking about a taking a vacation to Hawaii. Simon pops up and does the following dance for us. We howled with laughter, ran got the camera, and had him demonstrate again for us.
The tree pictured above is our Christmas tree that we won in a contest several years ago. It's still alive and growing taller each year!
I love the expression on the squirrel's face and his little paw holding on to the tree branch. It's as if he/she stopped to pose for the camera! 
Okay.....so I decided to curl my daughter's hair for her very first Christmas program. Let's just say it turned out FAR curlier than expected! LOL I think she actually enjoyed the whole process. She didn't complain one time when I was putting all the curlers in her hair. I figured when I put her to bed she would have a fit about sleeping in them. But, no....she actually cried when putting on her nightgown messed some of them up! She wanted to have pretty hair! Dear me.....what will she be like in a few years!!!!!!!!! HELP!!!!!! :)The following is a video of my two youngest children having a blast with the early Christmas present my parents gave us at Thanksgiving. When we got it home, we sat it out on the table in the living room. Samuel & Callie were jumping up and down, laughing and dancing all over the place and pushing the button to make the snowman sing over and over. It's a wonder the poor snowman is still in one piece, the lamp not knocked over, or the curtains pulled off the rods, the way they were carrying on! :) It is a much used and enjoyed decoration. The batteries will probably have to be replaced soon! Hope their energy & enthusiasm is contagious to all who watch! We could all use some extra energy right about now. :>
Seth mixes up the pudding for his yummy chocolate pudding pie! He did a great job with making his pie. All four of my children love to bake and cook as often as mommy will let them!
I think this sweet potato was absolutely darling. The nest is coconut, tinted brown with chocolate icing. The bird has pineapple leaves for the tail and wings, olives for the eyes, and cinnamon sticks for the fancy spike! Simon did a great job with his creativity on this project! 
~3rd. & 4th. grade choir~
Simon made alot of interestig faces as he was singing! 
Simon with the 1st. and 2nd. grade choir. He is the one in the suit that has his mouth opened the widest of ALL the kids! :)
The 1st. - 12th. grade singing the final song. 
The boys did a great job singing. After it was over, I used a free movie rental coupon to rent WALL.E for us all to watch and picked up pizza from Little Caesars. We let the kids stay up until after 10:00! They were thanking us over and over for letting them stay up and eat pizza and watch the movie they had been wanting to watch for months! 
My 2 year-old daughter FINALLY decided it was time to grow up and be a BIG girl. She made the decision to potty train! On Friday evening, Daddy was on the computer when he heard Callie grunting. He looked over at her and asked, "What are you doing?" She replied that she was pooping. (sorry if I am offending anyone here) Daddy told his daughter that she needed to do THAT in the potty. She ran and told me that she needed to poop in the potty! I didn't really believe her, but sat her on the potty anyway. To my surprise, a little bit later she yells, "Mommy, I'm done!" She had went in the potty!!! I put underwear on her and she has went in the potty ever since. (with only 2 accidents-which made her so sad that she cried) I have learned through previously potty-training 3 other children, it is far EASIER to potty-train when THEY decide to do it and when Daddy encourages them.
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This is our very first attempt at making a gingerbread house. I have been wanting to make one of these with the kids for YEARS! I figured out it's a lot harder and takes a lot longer to make one of these than I thought! There were tears, icing that was like glue everywhere, arguing over who was going to decorate what, a little girl eating part of the rock hard gingerbread roof than throwing the rest of it in the trash can (we had to fish that part back out), someone taking a bite out of one of the gummy roof decorations, not to mention spilling an entire bowl of itsy, bitsy pieces of candy (which resulted in one screeching mommy), it wasn't as perfect as a family memory as I would have liked, but hey, we all learned from our mistakes last night and will do better next year. Yes, I would do it all over again next year! 
Last Saturday, Laura & I spent the day in Columbus. We spent most of the day in the Blue Moon Event Center learning all about the products of BeautiControl. You see we both bought the Consultant packages and had to attend the training seminar before we could get Part 2 of the package. We sat through about 5 hours of training!!!!! The fun part was going out to eat twice in one day without 4 kids along, shopping without pushing a double stroller and two more kids beside the stroller, and seeing the stadium where the Ohio State Buckeyes were playing at the very moment we passed it and I snapped the picture to the right of this blog post. The un-fun part of the day was getting up at 5:15AM to leave! That was WAY TOO EARLY! The funny part about that was Duane having to get up and drive me to Laura's house. You see, he forgot his keys at work and had no spares at home. So.....in order to have transportation while I was gone the entire day, he had to get up out of his nice warm bed, along with ALL 4 of our kids and drive me across town. To be honest, I'm kinda glad he forgot his keys, I really didn't want to drive myself anywhere that early in the morning! I figured everyone would go back to bed...but I guess they all stayed up!!!! It was very nice to have an entire day off.
We arrived back home at around 7:00PM. The kids all came running up, giving me big hugs and telling me how much they missed me. I had to go straight to my laptop and finish a digital scrapbook and get it ordered. The coupon for the FREE book expired at midnight that night! I had most of it finished. I basically had to proof-read it and swap around 2 pictures. Simon got my camera and snapped the shot of me. The two older boys are enjoying being able to take pictures with the digital camera and seeing them right away! He tried to take a picture of both he and I together.....it didn't quite turn out! :) Later Duane went out and got pizza for everyone and than put all the kids to bed for me! Wow! It was wonderful having an entire day off!The following is a clip of Seth playing with his flarp. This was a prize from his teacher at school and all 4 of the kids thought it was hilarious! Mommy was glad when the prize finally went bad...probably from too much use! :) Just a few days ago, it was deposited in the trash can....It stopped working. Thank goodness!!! Seth wanted me to take a clip of it and share it on my blog.....Enjoy!
I thought I would share some sweet cards Seth and Simon made for me last week. While teaching lessons last Tuesday, the boys were supposed to do some cleaning (part of their daily chores). I had a long talk with them about going the extra mile when doing a job....giving it their all....going beyond just doing the bare minimum to get it done. Well, when I finished with lessons, they had not only completed the jobs I had given them, but had the dinner table set, a load of laundry folded and put away, and had made these cards for me. Mommy was very happy and proud of her two older boys! Seth made the Christmas card on the left and Simon made the card on the right. You can click on the pictures to see them closer.
I used my wonderful 50% off rotary cutter/mat to cut out different shapes. I sewed them all together, added a double layer of warm-n-natural batting and a muslin back and "ta-da"....a new quilt for Callie! If you're a quilter don't look too closely at my quilt. I don't use a pattern. I just cut and start sewing and whatever happens, that's the way it's going to be! :)
Here is the SAD little princess........
and here is the HAPPY princess under her 
~Callie Rose~
~Samuel Adam~
Simon showed Callie how to catch snowflakes with her tongue! Callie is looking at this picture now saying, "Callie's funny!" 
~Catching snowflakes~
As soon as the kids saw the snow they pulled out all hats, gloves, coats, boots! It's really not that cold outside!
Seth wanted to take a picture of my hair covered with snow.
Seth takes another picture of Mommy.
Simon enjoys the snow!
Samuel begged me to let him make snow angels. This is the second time he has been out in the snow today. The first time outside he was totally soaked! Now he is getting wet again. :)
Our backyard covered with snow!
