A Couple of Christmas Shots

Here's a couple sneak peeks of Christmas pictures. I took other group pictures and individual pictures, but I thought these were funny.

Miss Merry Christmas Pageant 2008

These are some pictures from the Miss Merry Christmas Pageant. The girls had so much fun!

Lauren won Queen(1st place) in the 4 & 5 year old division. She also won Most Beautiful.



















The back of her dress has a heart cut-out.



















Richard had the idea to braid Natalie's hair and pin it up. Between both of us braiding and styling, this is what we came up with... a flower.



















Natalie won Best Personality in the 6 to 8 year old division.



















Nicole won Queen(1st place) in the 9 to 11 year old division. She also won Most Beautiful.

















We are very proud of all three of our beautiful girls!

Christmas is Almost Here!

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."
This is one of my favorite Christmas ornaments! It reminds me to stay focused on the REAL meaning for Christmas, Jesus.














Here are a couple of pictures of our tree this year. Richard makes a different display each year.








































This is a Santa train going around the tree and a Disney monorail passing through it.















Santa driving the train:















The Christmastown figurines from "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer":




















Rudolph and Clarice:















A couple of the Christmastown village pieces. (We have over twenty pieces of the set so far.)

Faith's Favorite Things

Another blog that I visit frequently tagged all her readers to show their favorite things (sorta Oprah style without the freebies). Here are five things that I am loving lately(in no particular order):

#1 - Starbucks hot chocolate - YUMMY!!!!





#2 - Shoping at Hobby Lobby - Found some things on sale the other day for 90% off! Can't beat that!





#3 - My Sony Vaio laptop that I got a few months ago. In fact, I'm leaned back in my chair with my feet propped up on my desk as I'm typing this.





#4 Just Bunches! - I just started eating this new cereal a couple of months ago. YUMMY! I had eaten the Honey Bunches of Oats before, but I usually saved some of the bunches for the last couple of bites because that was the best part.





#5 Dove Dark Chocolate - LOVE these! The quotes inside are cute too. Of course after I read one today that said, "Go ahead, have another!" I thought I need to be like the lady who sued McDonald's because her coffee was hot(and won millions) and sue them for making me overweight!(Haha)

Tag YOUR IT!!!!!! If you read this, please post a few of your favorite things on your blog and link it back here in the comments section, or if you don't blog, just post them in the comments section.

Another Addition to Our Family

With a dog, chickens, quail, and the squirrels(before we gave them to Dad), I already feel like I should be singing the theme song from Green Acres! Well, now we have a new addition, Wilbur, a baby pig! Here are some pictures of the kids with Wilbur. I must admit, he is a cute little thing.

Favorite Things

Now that it's getting chilly here, we have had two of my favorite things almost every day this week: a fire in the fireplace and hot chocolate. Yummy!!! Almost time to drag out the flannel p.j.s and flannel sheets. Now the only thing that could make it better would be to wake up to snow on Christmas!

Carving Out Memories

Every year we get a pumpkin to carve. Richard and the kids clean it out, I carve it, and he makes a homemade pumpkin pie. These are some pictures from this year.































The girls all wanted Cinderella so I carved Cinderella on one side for them.












































































Then I carved a castle on the other side for Jack.

Prayer Requests

I have two huge prayer requests tonight.

1) Please pray for Wade, the nephew of our pastor's wife. He fell from the monkey bars at school today and was unconscious. They lifeflighted him to a larger hospital. He has a fractured skull, but is coherant now and talking to his family. Please pray that he will heal with no permanent effects. His grandfather was preaching an old fashioned tent crusade last night, tonight, and tomorrow night, so I think this is the devil working over time trying to prevent people from being saved.
**Update** Wade was able to leave the hospital today!!!! Praise the Lord! The dr. told them that it was a miracle that he wasn't seriously injured. Those types of head injuries usually turn out much worse. He will have to have tests to check his hearing in that ear in a few weeks.

2) This prayer request comes from my teacher's aide at school. She knows this family from camp. The mother tried for a long time to have a baby. She had seven miscarriages before being able to have a baby. The baby is now two months old. The family was in a car wreck. The dad and baby are fine, but the mother was killed.:-( It just breaks my heart! It's hard not to question God when things like this happen, but we have to trust that He has a plan.

Thank you for your prayers!

Posting Comments

I made some changes to the way comments can be posted for those of you who keep telling me you want to comment, but don't have a blogger or yahoo account. I have heard stories from others who opened their blogs up for comments and then kept getting hit with a bunch of spam comments and links to other websites, even inappropriate websites. If that starts happening, I'll change it to where I have to approve comments before they can be posted. Please post comments using your name so I know who is posting. Thanks for taking a look at our blog. It's nice to know that we are loved!

Happy Halloween

Nicole and Natalie have been every princess imaginable: Cinderella, Snow White, a regular princess, etc... You would think their little sister would look up to them and try to copy them, right? I tried to talk her into being Tinkerbell because that's what we call her, but she had other plans. She said, "I want to be a PIRATE! I want a SWORD!" I must admit, she made a cute pirate!









































She even won second place in the costume contest at school! I was shocked! Usually only homemade costumes win. She was so excited!




















Nicole decided to be Supergirl this year. It makes me sad to see how much she and Natalie are growing up. They both wanted more grown up costumes this year.









































Natalie was a High School musical cheerleader. She wanted to be Batgirl, but we couldn't find the costume that she wanted.



































Jack was Spiderman last year, but he wanted to be Spiderman again this year! Will see what happens next year. Nicole was Cinderella two or three years in a row.








































I was taking a picture of the kids while we were walking to all the Halloween festivities downtown. I thought they were all so cute walking together. (Side note for my photo buddies - I got sunflare! What a great accident! I was so excited when I loaded these and saw it.)















And guess what?! We weren't even going to do the costume contest in town, but the girls decided to try it at the last minute. Lauren won "Cutest Costume"! She was so surprised!




















We all had lots of fun and got TONS of candy! Anyone want to volunteer to baby-sit four sugar filled children for the weekend?!?! Ha-ha!

Fireproof

WOW!!! What an awesome movie! If you have not gone to see this movie yet, you MUST go see it. If your spouse will go with you, even better. Whether you have been married a day or 100 years, you can learn some lessons from this movie. It's so easy to get caught up in our daily lives and spend so much time on kids, work, etc. We need to put just as much effort into our marriages as we do other areas of out lives. There are scriptures quoted in the movie and great witnessing scenes, so be sure to invite unsaved people to go see it as well. They give a website at the end of the movie, http://www.fireproofmymarriage.com/ , if you are interested in Bible study material or the Love Dare book that is featured in the movie. If you go see it, please post your comments. I'd love to hear what you think about it!

Busy Weekend

We have a lot going on this weekend. Hopefully we can get it all done! This afternoon after work I need to run into town and deposit our paychecks. (Can't do anything else until we do that! ;-) Then, we need to do some grocery shopping, pick up some things for church, get some birthday presents, and be at church by 6p.m. We are having a fall fest for the kids tonight. The younger kids will stay from 6 to 8. We are going to do face painting, bobbing for apples, pumpkin painting contest, ring toss, hay ride, etc. We are serving homemade chili and/or Frito pies. The older kids are staying from 8:30 to midnight. Either Richard or I will stay to help with that and the other will take our kids home. Haven't decide yet which one of us get to be the lucky one to stay up until midnight! On Saturday, I need to get up early and go to Lufkin. I have to have my rings checked and cleaned every six months to keep the diamond bond up to date. I am meeting a friend and her family in Nacogdoches to do their family pictures at 11. There are 6 adults and 4 children. We are going to do some with every one. Some with spouses. Some with individual children. Whatever we can get everyone to do. I want Richard to go with me to see Fireproof. Everyone who has seen it says it's great and that EVERY married couple should see it. It is showing tomorrow at 1pm and 4pm. We have a birthday party to take the kids to Saturday at 6. Told you to was going to be a busy weekend! We have church Sunday. Anyone know of anything I'm supposed to do Sunday afternoon?! Ha-ha!

Dancing With Cinderella

(The picture posted small for some reason. Click on it to see it bigger.)

The girls love the song "Dancing With Cinderella" by Stephen Curtis Chapman. If you haven't heard it, you need to listen to it! It's such a sweet song. Sunday afternoon they all went and dressed themselves up and starting playing the CD in the living room and dancing to it. They were so excited when Richard came in and danced with them. It looked like Dancing With the Stars... twirling, sliding, dipping... too cute. Of course, I had to sneak my camera in there. ;-)

Afraid of Heights

Here are more pictures of the squirrels. We took them outside to get some sun. Richard put a branch in the ground and set them on it. They got about an inch off the ground, but they were too scared to climb any higher! This is crazy! Squirrels that are afraid to climb. (Ha-ha.) They are both getting around well now and will chatter at us when they get hungry. We tried to sleep in Saturday morning, but they made so much racket that Richard finally got up and fed them. Nicole's squirrel even came to her the other day when she called it!