Merry Christmas

Wishing your family many blessings this Christmas season and in 2010!

We had a lovely Christmas here!  It was our first Christmas with all 9 of us at home, so it was very special.  

These all loaded in reverse chronological order, and I don't feel like taking the time to fix them, so here is a 

White Elephant gift exchange

Our cousins from out of state and their children came to visit.  :)
All of us went out for lunch at a Chinese buffet on Sunday.


This is how the girls spent Christmas afternoon.  
Opening presents at home on Christmas morning





The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there.


Listening to The Night before Christmas after the Christmas eve service at church
The lake froze!  We all went ice skating. Sarah-Grace did awesome for her first time on ice skates, and Kai figured out how to skate backwards!

Decorating the Christmas tree

So after waiting a week to get around to it, we began to mutilate our beautiful Christmas tree.  Snow flakes made out of lace? Yup! Rudolphs made out of cloth pins?  Yup. But wait...  Isn't there only one Rudolph? Well we have about 12 so.....  Plenty of angels and ball ornaments and anything else 27 years of having kids can get you.  So after plenty of help,

  

Our tree is now mutilated and we still have 2-4 boxes of ornaments that we couldn't fit on!

Christmas trees

So this last weekend we all got in the car and begain the epic journey for a christmas tree. My parents decided it was a great idea to take a two hour drive  so we could cut down a tree with my sister. After a stop for a snowball fight,
We headed over to a tree farm with what seemed like 20 million trees. Gladly it was cold outside so we didn't spend long in deciding on a tree. 
It was then killed by having it cut by daniel,
and Dad
And Daniel some more and I left out Sarah Grace and kai who needed a try

We then loaded up and went to my sisters apartment for lasanga. 

It was  great day and lots of fun. It was also cool because it was Sarah-Grace's first snow.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

        Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving thanks.

 ¹ Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

 ² Worship the LORD with gladness; 
       come before him with joyful songs.

 ³ Know that the LORD is God. 
       It is he who made us, and we are his 
       we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

 ⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving 
       and his courts with praise; 
       give thanks to him and praise his name.

 ⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; 
       his faithfulness continues through all generations.

This week in our curriculum we learned about the first Thanksgiving.  We read a couple of pilgrim books, did some 'pumpkin' science and played some Native American Indian games.  We made hand turkeys--a first for Sarah-Grace--Kai remembers making them last year.  

Our  kids did an awesome job making all the different parts of our Thanksgiving meal.  This made it easy for me!  It was Sarah-Grace's first time ever to eat a roast turkey.  When asked how she  liked it she said, "Good, it's better than chicken, for me."  

Before dinner everyone wrote things we are thankful for on the 'feathers' of our turkeys.

Here are some of those things:

1. God-salvation
   
2. Clean water and food everyday
3. family
4. creation
5. kids
6. dogs
7. friends
8. clothing
9. nature/creatures God made
10. sense of humor
11. jobs
12. family
13. health
14. looking good bald
15. mobility
16. sight
17. faith
18. people
19. ears
20. feet
21. our whole family will at last be at home for Christmas for the 1st time ever!
22. house
23. 5 senses
24. God
25. Jesus
26. being at Jonathan's house for Thanksgiving
27. my sisters
28. rainbows and butterflies
29. love
30. a real mom and dad
31. hands
32. smart and nice writing
33. photography
34. Mom and Dad
35. tofu
36. fun times
37. the world
38. opportunities
39. turkey
40. ham
41. pheasant
42. my husband
43. my wife
44. life
45. phone
46. my good looks
47. college
48. the Bible
49. flowers
50. cars

About Time!

I guess since Thanksgiving is right around the corner I ought to post some pictures of Halloween.  The kids had a fun time, but unfortunately they are STILL eating candy!

This composite shot is from Sarah-Grace's second post placement report.  It is hard to believe she has been home 6 months.  

These months have been both slow and fast.  It is hard to believe sometimes it is ONLY 6 months.  She feels like she has been part of the family forever.  

Sarah-Grace is doing really well.  She is growing very fast and her English is getting very good.  She even prefers to say most things to Kai in English.  She is enjoying the family and she (and we!) are glad she is here.

Kai is struggling some lately.  Which makes life harder for us all.  I think having Sarah-Grace home has made him worry again about his place in the family.  Unfortunately this makes things difficult for Daniel, who is apparently a threat.  And who does not have the maturity to always deal with things in the most positive way.  

It will be nice to have Annie and Rebecca home for a while over the holidays!

A bit of sanity. . .or at least insanity grown-up style!

What We've Been Up To

An easy day of school while we recuperate from a weekend of flu


I was actually afraid to start school this year.  The attitude and backbiting in our family over the summer was getting really horrible and I didn't want to think about schooling this crew.  But God gave us grace!  While we still have attitude problems (myself included)and way too much competition among the ranks we are actually accomplishing our school work and sometimes (on those rare occasions) we have fun!

Here are some pictures since I've been such a poor blogger:

Making an American Indian wigwam

       A sailing ship like explores of North American may have used

Observing how salt water is more buoyant than fresh

Another wigwam

A fun train field  trip with Daddy

Painting the rivers on our salt map of the USA

Our salt map finished and labeled -- complete with our American Indian artifacts!

Another fun field trip--this time colonial style
Can these be my younger children and my youngest niece?  Yikes--they look like preteens if ever I saw one!  Dressed for the symphony (daytime--for kids)

A big thanks to Jonathan for the great pictures.  He does lots of school work too--but manages to stay out of our pictures.  Perhaps because he has become the photographer now that Annie is away!

Hi from Costa Rica!

Hi everyone! I've been enjoying my time here in Costa Rica and learning a lot. Our lecture phase of the school I'm at just ended yesterday, and now we start the outreach phase. Our team of 10- 5 Costa Ricans and 5 Americans- will spend the next 2 months traveling to several different towns in Costa Rica (Talamanca, Jaco, and Tilleran) to do outreach. We'll be doing presentations in schools, performing dramas, sharing our testimonies in churches and as we meet people, working with youth in impoverished communities, and helping out the Red Cross.

Our whole team combined needs to raise $8,000. We're already halfway there. Would you consider helping us reach our goal? Posted to our sidebar is a chip-in widget. You can use it to make a donation through paypal. If everyone that each of the 10 of us knows gave even just $1, we'd probably meet our goal.

All of us (including staff) after a day of painting and hole digging

Our whole team plus staff the first week of school 

The Distant View

See this crazy, wonderful, insanely awesome stair-step family of mine (minus Tim, Annie and myself)? I've been away from them for two weeks now. It's been amazing. 

I don't at all mean this in a nasty way, but you grow older and you need to move on. Even if your family is still so new and wonderful and growing into more of a family each day, you still have to step out and head off on your own. But sitting here in my blessedly silent apartment, fresh baked bread on the window sill and a 'to-do' list rapidly dwindling, I find myself looking through pictures of the summer - and drat it, but I miss those crazy little kids. My roommate and apartment, my books and walks to the park, papers and interviews, they are all great. But their entertainment (and irritant) value compared to a bunch of siblings? Pretty much non-existent. 

So here are some of the best pictures of my crazy siblings that I really love very greatly (especially from a few hours away). 

Sleeping with sunglasses...

Acting shy...

Being crazy with cousins...

Swinging...

Chillin' with Dad and Java...

Reading comics while dressed like Spiderman...

See what I mean about insanely awesome?